Suggestions from Doreen Marchionni (Pacific Lutheran University teacher and editor at The Seattle Times).
Reporters need to be on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Taking simple steps such as crowdsourcing story ideas or encouraging feedback increases a reporter’s credibility with a digital audience, Marchionni found in her research.
And, having a Twitter account that mixes appropriate personal messages along with work-related tweets can let the audience see the “person behind the news,” which also builds trust.
Provide online bio pages with photos and short biographical sketches.
Produce reporter-focused short videos. Video communicates to an audience that a reporter is a real person, not a “data spewing automaton." They need to put themselves out there in videos.
Look to columnists and the Sports Department for cues. Columnists, often take a conversational tone, use fact-based analysis and portray a strong public persona. She is not suggesting opinion-based reporting, but rather bringing more voice and perspective to typical news writing.
When a newsroom does engage with readers, and invites early participation in the newsgathering process, Marchionni says it is important to publicly note that interaction. “You must tell audiences that you did it.”
Read more at Poynter
Wednesday, March 16
Newspapers Still Falling
The modest recovery in ad spending over the course of 2010 did not benefit newspapers, which suffered yet another round of ad revenue declines in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
Looking at the full year, total print ad revenues fell 8.2% from $24.8 billion in 2009 to $22.8 billion in 2010. This works out to a decline of 51.9% from $47.4 billion in 2005; meaning that newspapers lost over half their print revenues in just five years.
Online advertising is the sole beacon of hope for an increasingly desperate industry, but it still remains a relatively small part of the overall business.
Read more at Media Post
Looking at the full year, total print ad revenues fell 8.2% from $24.8 billion in 2009 to $22.8 billion in 2010. This works out to a decline of 51.9% from $47.4 billion in 2005; meaning that newspapers lost over half their print revenues in just five years.
Online advertising is the sole beacon of hope for an increasingly desperate industry, but it still remains a relatively small part of the overall business.
Read more at Media Post
Tuesday, March 15
Internet usage transforming news industry
The Project for Excellence in Journalism said Monday that local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience in 2010. But in its eight annual State of the News Media survey, the project says news consumption online increased 17 percent last year over the year before. The percentage of people who say they get news online at least three times a week surpassed newspapers for the first time.
Read more at Business Week
Read more at Business Week
The Media Industry: Now Hiring!
According to the Pew Project for Excellence director, Tom Rosenstiel. "(Social Media hires) come close in scale for the first time to the losses in print newspapers...”
Read more at Forbes
Read more at Forbes
Monday, March 14
You Won't Believe How Many Viewers Fox News Lost
In 2010, about 42 million different people watched CNN for at least an hour a month. That was more than Fox’s 41 million and MSNBC’s 37 million. The median prime-time viewership at the three channels together dropped 16% to an average of 3.2 million viewers. The prime-time audience at Fox fell 11% to a median viewership of 1.9 million. It lost 234,000 viewers.
Read more at Business Insider
Read more at Business Insider
1/2 Adults Get News Mobile
Nearly half of all American adults (47%) say they get at least some local news and information on their cell phone or tablet computer, according to a new study. But mobile applications are not yet playing a major part in that consumption -- only one in 10 use apps for local news and only 1% pay for those apps.
When it comes to the type of local content people are looking for, it's typically practical and real-time: 42% of mobile users get weather updates and 37% get material about restaurants or other local businesses on their phones or tablets. Fewer get news about local traffic and transportation, general news alerts or other local topics.
This research is part of a larger study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Read more here
When it comes to the type of local content people are looking for, it's typically practical and real-time: 42% of mobile users get weather updates and 37% get material about restaurants or other local businesses on their phones or tablets. Fewer get news about local traffic and transportation, general news alerts or other local topics.
This research is part of a larger study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Read more here
WSJ: 200K Tablet Subscribers
The country's leading business news publication has now sold 200,000 digital subscriptions to readers who own tablet-style devices, including the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle. The WSJ charges mobile subscribers $3.99 a week for the digital edition. On an annual basis, this equals about $41.5 million in extra circulation revenues. (Theoretically, that's more profitable than print circ revenue, since the publisher saves costs on ink, paper, and fuel and labor for delivery.
Read more at Media Post
Non-Traditional TV Viewing Surges
Nearly one-third of urban media consumers watch TV on non-traditional platforms -- well over the average for the U.S.Larchmont, NY-based media researcher Horowitz Associates says 31% of city consumers watch TV content on computer/laptops, mobile devices or tablets, or streamed from the Internet to the TV through so-called "over the top" devices, such as Apple TV, Xbox or blu-ray DVD players.
Looking specifically at individual multicultural urban consumers, the new study says 41% of Asians watch TV content on alternative platforms at least weekly; 37% for Latinos; and 36% for blacks. This is versus 25% for whites. Just observing one alternative device -- computers/laptops -- 35% of Asians report watching TV on them weekly, compared to 22% for Latinos; 17%, blacks; and 15% for whites. Weekly mobile TV viewing is highest among blacks and Latino consumers -- 14% -- compared to whites, at 7%, and Asians, at 5%.
Read more at Media Post
Looking specifically at individual multicultural urban consumers, the new study says 41% of Asians watch TV content on alternative platforms at least weekly; 37% for Latinos; and 36% for blacks. This is versus 25% for whites. Just observing one alternative device -- computers/laptops -- 35% of Asians report watching TV on them weekly, compared to 22% for Latinos; 17%, blacks; and 15% for whites. Weekly mobile TV viewing is highest among blacks and Latino consumers -- 14% -- compared to whites, at 7%, and Asians, at 5%.
Read more at Media Post
Gains for NPR Are Clouded
The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism will issue its annual State of the Media report on Monday, and you will be unsurprised to learn that journalism remains in broad retreat.
News is still on the march: for the first time ever, more people consumed their news on the Web than with newspapers. That’s great if you’re building an app, but not so great if you’re one of the legacy media companies struggling for relevance. In terms of audience, television networks slipped 3.4 percent, newspapers were down 5 percent, radio fell 6 percent and magazines were down almost 9 percent.
Amid all that creative destruction, there was a one large traditional news organization that added audience, reporters and revenue. That unlikely juggernaut was NPR. According to the State of the Media report, NPR’s overall audience grew 3 percent in 2010, to 27.2 million weekly listeners, up 58 percent overall since 2000. In the last year, its Web site, npr.org, drew an average of 15.7 million unique monthly visitors, up more than five million visitors.
Read more at the New York Times
News is still on the march: for the first time ever, more people consumed their news on the Web than with newspapers. That’s great if you’re building an app, but not so great if you’re one of the legacy media companies struggling for relevance. In terms of audience, television networks slipped 3.4 percent, newspapers were down 5 percent, radio fell 6 percent and magazines were down almost 9 percent.
Amid all that creative destruction, there was a one large traditional news organization that added audience, reporters and revenue. That unlikely juggernaut was NPR. According to the State of the Media report, NPR’s overall audience grew 3 percent in 2010, to 27.2 million weekly listeners, up 58 percent overall since 2000. In the last year, its Web site, npr.org, drew an average of 15.7 million unique monthly visitors, up more than five million visitors.
Read more at the New York Times
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