|
Home | Contact Staff | Directions |
   |
News this week from NJPA
September 18 Advertising Sales Camp
September 25 Photography 101
October 9 Designing an Ad
Campaign
Press Release:
BCT Introduces a New Web Site That Offers Faster Access to News Burlington County Times June 16, 2008 By Ron Martin Bigger is smaller and smaller is bigger. So goes the news of the world, the nation and the county these days. Within an instant, you can see and hear what is happening in any remote part of the world. But in Burlington County, you still depend on local news gatherers to keep you informed of the day’s news, which is much more important to you because it’s closer to home. With that in mind, the Burlington County Times today is launching a new Web site, myBCTnow.com, that will give you instant access to news, sports and views about Burlington County. You can also be a part of myBCTnow.com by becoming a contributor. As a myBCTnow.com contributor, you will have the opportunity to post information about your club or organization. The guidelines are simple: Register for the site, then begin posting. Limit your posts to two or three paragraphs, and be sure to update your information regularly. … Effective today, Web Editor Audrey Harvin will oversee the technological aspect of the BCT’s Web sites, myBCTnow.com and phillyBurbs.com/bct. Online Content Editor Steve Wujcik will manage all aspects of the news content for those Web sites. Media Specialist Rose Shields will coordinate all photography and videos on the web.
Exclusive Traffic Report: Top News
Outlets on the Web for May Several newspaper networks surpassed Google
News in netting more “unique” traffic in May, according to new data from
Nielsen Online.
‘St. Pete Times’ Named Among 10 Best
Print/Web ‘Fusion’ Designs in World The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times has been
picked among the top 10 newspapers in the world that “illustrate the
evolution of newspaper design and how it is beginning to relate more to the
Web.” For the rest of the article: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003818682
Traditional Media Not Dead Yet for
Marketing, Study Says A study to be released on Wednesday finds that advertisements appearing in traditional media like television are still “much more likely” to have made a positive impression with consumers than ads running in digital media. The study, called “When Advertising Works,” was conducted by Yankelovich… The study covered 16 types of media. Besides TV, the traditional kinds included billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio and movie theater commercials. The digital kinds included e-mail messages, Internet banner ads, social networking Web sites, video games and video-sharing Web sites like YouTube. When asked what kind of an impression the ad made, 56 percent of survey respondents said traditional media ads made a positive impression, in contrast to 31 percent who said that about digital media ads. Thirteen percent reported a negative impression of traditional media ads versus 21 percent for digital media ads. Thirty-two percent said they had neither a positive nor a negative impression of traditional media ads, in contrast to 48 percent who said they had neither a good or bad impression of digital media ads. A principal reason for those results, said J. Walker Smith, president at the Yankelovich Monitor division of Yankelovich in Atlanta, was that for ads that made an impression, consumers using traditional media were in a more positive mood and more likely to be interested in entertainment and relaxation. By comparison, consumers using digital media were more likely to be in busy moods, seeking control or solving a problem, Mr. Smith said, and they were more likely to be by themselves. In contrast, traditional media are often watched, listened to or read by people in groups. For the rest of the article: http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/traditional-media-not-dead-yet-for-marketing-study-says/?ref=technology
Google Study: Print Ads Drive Online
Purchases Think about the last time you saw an ad in a newspaper and went online to learn more about it. Come to think of it, think about the last time you read a print newspaper. New research suggests it’s more common than you think. Actually, it’s 50 percent more common. According to a study, commissioned by Google, there are people who research products and services after seeing them advertised in newspapers. Even more startling is that among these people, two-thirds (67 percent) of them use the Internet to find more information. Of that group, nearly 70 percent of consumers actually make a purchase following their additional research. Not only does this group of respondents read the newspaper a lot, they seem to trust its content more. The study showed that nearly half of respondents (48 percent) said that seeing a product in the newspaper after seeing it online would make them trust the product more and be more likely to purchase it. More than half of that group (52 percent) said they would be more likely to purchase the product. For the article: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-content/google-study-print-ads-drive-online-purchases-002758.php
On Saving the Classifieds Business for
Newspapers In nine months since I was carried from the bloody arena of the newspaper business and ascended to the ivory tower, I’ve gained this perspective: Most newspapers don’t need the best new idea to grow their classifieds business. They mostly need to get better at executing what they already know. I’m not an expert on classified advertising, so I can’t offer advice to anyone else. Here are a half dozen things I wish I’d done about classifieds and what I would do today:
For the rest of the article: http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/06/12/on-saving-the-classifieds-business-for-newspapers/
Research Brief: A new study from the World Newspaper Congress on the media habits of young people in three countries found that television continues to be their most important source of news and information for the young, despite the rise of the internet. 3,500 people between 15 and 29 years old in the United States, the Netherlands and Finland said they get their news and information from a wide variety of sources, but that television continues to be their preferred medium. Robert Barnard, Partner and Founder of Canada-based DECODE, observes that “Young people do not seem to understand the inherent value and difference in newspaper content versus other news media. TV still dominates even in perceptions of credibility and depth of coverage.” Nevertheless, the study showed that newspaper companies are well placed to attract young readers if newspapers are committed to the task. The study, to help publishers better understand and meet the needs of younger readers, found:
For the article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1732
A Pitch Only a Mother Could Love Moms can fix all sorts of things, from scraped knees to belly aches, but can they help save local ad sales? An increasing number of local media companies are launching Web sites aimed at mothers. New York Times Co.’s Boston Globe last month kicked off BoMoms.com, which hosts discussion boards and local listings, while the Journal Communications’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Cox Enterprises’ Dayton Daily News also have mom-focused Internet portals. Meanwhile, newspaper chain Gannett, one of earliest entrants in the mom sweepstakes, is broadening its ambitions. The company has had some success over the past 18 months winning over local advertisers with local Web sites that allow moms across the U.S., track down neighborhood play dates and swap tips about the best restaurants in town for fussy kids. … The bulk of advertising now comes from a combination of regional businesses – such as hospitals and grocery stores – and mom-and-pop outfits, like photographers offering to take family portraits. … The mom sites are far too small to solve newspapers’ financial woes, which include a drop in local ad revenue. But the sites are an important test case of the plan by some newspaper chains to gradually move from being a mass-market product to being a bunch of niche offerings, both online and in print, aimed at slices of consumers, like pet owners or baby boomers. For the rest of the article: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121375217488282967.html
Gannett Buys Minority Stake in Cozi
Group and Gets a Seat on the Board
Newspaper publisher Gannett Co. Inc. said Thursday it bought a minority stake in Cozi Group Inc., a web service that helps families manage schedules and stay in touch. … Cozi offers a central family calendar, customized shopping and to-do lists, family blogs and messaging tools. The web service now has 600,000 family members, Gannett said. The company said it will collaborate with Cozi on product innovations. New features will be announced later this year, Gannett added. For the rest of the article: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080619/gannett_cozi_group.html?.v=1
Step Away from the Computer, Kids: Baby
Boomers Embrace Social Media Advertisers may see the Web and all its iterations – from online video to casual games and social networking – as an ideal channel for reaching young adult consumer, but new data from the AARP and the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication shows that Americans over age 50 are also Web 2.0 denizens. And sometimes they even use the Web more than their younger, more tech-savvy counterparts. For example, 42% of consumers over 50 check the Web for news daily or several times a day, compared to just 18% of users under 20. And older Americans are increasingly using the Web for fun and interaction. When it comes to social media, some 70% of consumers age 50 and up said that their online community was “very” or “extremely” important to them. So much so that almost 70% of them log on daily or several times a day. In contrast, just about half of all social network members under age 20 said the same. For the AARP, the stats come as no surprise, as the organization made social media features a prime component of its site redesign in February. Photo and video sharing, live journaling and commenting on articles are activities that have caught on with the site’s 2.7 million unique monthly visitors, said Patricia Lippe Davis, associate publisher, marketing at AARP. … Davis said that advertisers in the travel, health and real estate categories had shown particular interest in developing hybrid campaigns that featured online, print, and sometimes even TV and special-event components. “About 70% of our advertisers are requesting integrated packages,” she said. “They want online and print at a minimum, then events and then broadcast. They understand that the Web has become a very important channel for reaching people over 50, and Baby Boomers in particular.” For the rest of the article: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=85173&Nid=44195&p=356351
Ad Leaders See Web’s Threat and Promise The growing advertising ambitions of technology powerhouses like Google and Microsoft are creating alarm in the executive suites of ad agencies. At an annual gathering here [Cannes, France], executives harshly criticized Google’s recent agreement to place ads next to Yahoo search results. The move could strengthen Google’s dominance over the most lucrative portion of the fast-growing online advertising field. Ad executives worry that Google and Microsoft, which is moving to bolster its capabilities in search and other areas of online advertising, will not stop there. They fear that the companies want to extend their reach into traditional advertising – transforming, as they see it, a business built on creativity to one controlled by the sterile algorithms of computer programmers. Google “clearly wants to replace the advertising industry in its totality,” said Cindy Gallop, a former chief executive of the New York office of the ad agency BBH. … Even some ad executives who said they had good relationships with Google expressed unease about its deal with Yahoo. Derek Robson, managing partner of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, not far from Google’s Silicon Valley base, said he placed his hopes in Google’s corporate creed, “Don’t be evil.” “That mission is the right one, because they could become evil so quickly,” he said. “Nobody wants to work with a monopolist.” For the rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/business/media/23cannes.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Tough Times, Tough Choices Reinventing. Repositioning. Right-sizing.
Whatever the preferred euphemism is these days for downsizing, The Hartford
Courant is preparing to embark on dramatic changes. Specific staff and newshole reductions at
The Courant had not been announced as of Saturday. Whatever the numbers turn
out to be, the newspaper will be something new and different come the fall.
The directive is clear: This is will not be an exercise in tweaking. For the rest of the article: http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-hunter0615.artjun15,0,4826988.column
Abrams’ 15 Ways to Grow Newspapers 3. THE NPR FEEL? Newspapers strike me as
being a little TOO NPR. I like NPR, and their shows like Morning Edition do
well. But NPR can also be a bit elitist. … 5b. LIBERATE THE PHOTOGRAPHERS...Or at
least do everything in your power to maximize this STRENGTH.
Phone It In: Cox Newspapers Go Mobile Cox Newspapers, which publishes 17 daily and 26 non-daily newspapers, has teamed up with Quattro Wireless to launch 19 mobile newspaper Web sites that will allow the publications to reach consumers with breaking news, weather, sports scores and listings for businesses and events. Included in the new mobile sites are Statesman.com in Austin, PalmBeachPost.com and DaytonDailyNews.com. As part of the deal, Quattro is providing Cox with expertise and services including ad operations and sales, according to Tonya Echols, executive director of CoxNet-Cox Newspapers. He hopes the partnership will “expand our reach with the mobile audience, as well as provide for efficient production of our local mobile sites and additional sales and revenue opportunities.” For the rest of the article: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=84914&Nid=44004&p=356351
The Associated Press to Set Guidelines
for Using Its Articles in Blogs The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright. The A.P.’s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of “fair use,” which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances. For example, a book reviewer is allowed to quote passages from the work without permission from the publisher. Fair use has become an essential concept to many bloggers, who often quote portions of articles before discussing them. The A.P., a cooperative owned by 1,500 daily newspapers, including The New York Times, provides written articles and broadcast material to thousands of news organizations and Web sites that pay to use them. Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words. On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers. The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet. … “We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy said. For the rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/business/media/16ap.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
House Subcommittee Votes to Stop FCC
Media Ownership Rule A House subcommittee voted Tuesday to block the Federal Communications Commission’s rule allowing cross-media ownership in the country’s 20 largest media markets. The provision is part of a spending bill that provides funds to the FCC and would deny the agency any funding to implement the rule. The Senate in May passed a bill to rescind the FCC rule. House leaders aren’t ready to take up the Senate bill, but the action in the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee would achieve the same result. Blocking the FCC rule could affect several news organizations such as News Corp. (NWS), Gannett Co. (GCI) and Media General Inc. (MEG) that own several local newspapers and broadcast stations. Until the FCC’s action last year, single companies were barred from owning both a newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market. For the rest of the article: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200806171817DOWJONESDJONLINE000610_FORTUNE5.htm
Navic Networks to Microsoft: Will
Television Ever Be the Same? Hmmm. What are the ramifications of Microsoft buying Navic? … I think the move is an intriguing one for Microsoft. While Microsoft’s interest in growing its share of the Internet advertising revenue is well known, its foray into television was a surprise to many. But it shouldn’t be. … [T]elevision represents a very large piece of the advertising pie. Microsoft wants its share. So why Navic? Navic has an interesting business with a presence in 35 million set-top boxes nationwide and strong relationships with the largest cable entities. Perhaps best-known for their set-top box monitoring and diagnostics service, Navic has spent a great deal of time and energy attempting to navigate the advanced television advertising landscape. Navic provides targeted TV advertising with a nascent ad network called Admira. With it, advertisers can run ad campaigns targeted to viewer groups, with interactive features, like the ability to click during the commercial to view long-form content. Navic’s solutions have had extensive trials, and they give Microsoft some credible tools to offer the cable industry. As someone who has worked directly with cable operators and advertisers that have deployed or funded Navic’s services, I think by and large Navic’s technology works. … If we look for a moment at Hulu and the broadcast and cable network sites, it is clear that the line between television and the Internet is no longer the Grand Canyon. With television content being made available online and more original content being created for the internet, that divide will continue to shrink. There are many, myself included, who would say that traditional television advertising looks like a business that time and technology have left behind. … Microsoft has not articulated how a new focus on television advertising will fit with its larger Internet strategy, but I would surmise that they have decided to punt in the battle against Google in the text-based advertising business. Traditional television … was never designed for advanced advertising. IP based networks will replace them one day soon, and Cisco and Microsoft will be waiting. In the meantime, Microsoft has stepped into the war involving next-generation video advertising, and Navic is their first play from scrimmage. And no, television will never be the same. For the rest of the article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/tv_board/?p=336
Left Out When The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey asked readers what they thought of the paper, many said they thought it was too liberal. So editor Frank Scandale has embarked on a six month self-examination to find if they’re right. Brooke Gladstone interviewed Scandale for NPR’s program, “On The Media.” When she asked what the Record will do if its investigation finds liberal bias, Scandale said, “If we find examples in our news pages that we have exhibited a sincere bias in a way that is truly against what news should be, and it is definitely costing us readers, then as a newspaper the right thing to do would be certainly address it, make adjustments and make sure that we’re not presenting the news unfairly or unbalanced.” For the interview transcript: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/06/13/04
Who’s a Survivor? It Can Be Hard to Tell Obituaries occupy a special place in the newspaper. In death, the subjects are brought to life, their legacies usually burnished to a soft glow by recountings of their achievements, their personal qualities and their most memorable moments. Unless they are known and their reputations already public, the deceased are rarely cads or crooks. Like salty language, descriptions of their human frailties generally don’t make it into print. Most often, the departed go gently into the long night. Yet news obituaries can be wellsprings of conflict. Most of them include lists of survivors that read like entries in a phone book. Seemingly mundane, they can carry an emotional punch. It’s not just a matter of who’s included, but who – or what – is left out. In the last few weeks, to the chagrin of the families, The Chronicle declined to make space to list an ex-wife, a poodle and a former son-in-law. A stepdaughter was unhappy to be listed as such because she considered her bond more akin to that of a biological child. At one time, naming same-sex partners was a source of conflict. But for decades now The Chronicle has listed life partners. Today, the most problematic issue is naming exes, a potential trigger for hard feelings and hidden (from the newspaper, at least) disputes. For that reason, many papers are cautious about listing former wives and husbands. “It’s a double-edged sword,” says Erik Ingram, a Chronicle assistant metro editor who has written obituaries for about 38 years and edited them for three or four. “It offends some second wives to have the first one included with the survivors. Meanwhile, children of the first wife (or husband) want that parent listed as a survivor. It gets into all kinds of family dynamics that can turn ugly in a heartbeat.” That’s not to say that exes don’t deserve a role in obits. Ingram prefers to work references to former wives and husbands into the narrative of the story, an approach that’s shared by Nigel Starck, a journalist, senior lecturer at the University of South Australia and author of “Life After Death: The Art of the Obituary.” “I strongly believe that ex-partners should be included within the life story – but not ... at the end as ‘survivors,’ “ Starck says. “It is a delicate area, with a constant threat of backfiring upon the writer.” He follows the maxim, “If in doubt, leave it out.” Writing last year about an artist “who had had numerous liaisons that had produced an uncertain number of children,” Starck finessed the survivor list in a way that might have made other writers nervous: “He was married at least twice, and there were children of those – and possibly of other – unions.” … Despite his caution about exes in the obligatory survivor list, Starck is not averse to creative touches. Even inanimate objects can have their place, he says, citing the example of a recently departed British fashion writer: “She is survived by her husband and a large collection of hats.” For the rest of the article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/15/IN9A1189UR.DTL
Longtime New Jersey Reporter/Columnist
Murray Dies Rick Murray, a newspaper reporter
and columnist of 39 years who covered everything from politics to UFOs, is
dead at age 58. For the rest of the article: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/newsroom/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003819708
Gonzalez Quits BoMag Godspeed to Boston magazine senior writer John Gonzalez, who’s leaving that post to write a sports column for The Philadelphia Inquirer. It’s a great move for Gonzalez, who’ll be joining his hometown paper in an extremely high-profile position. But it’s a real loss for the Boston media market. When he was on – and he usually was – Gonzalez may have been the most entertaining writer in the city. For the rest of the article: http://thephoenix.com/MediaLog/2008/06/19/GonzalezQuitsBoMag.aspx
Send us news about your newspaper for NJPA Notes and InPrint. Please email the information to Catherine Langley at clangley@njpa.org. Photos welcome!
Goodbye GUI, Hello TUI For all its good points, the graphical user interface (GUI) that we’re so familiar with today is a poor substitute for the manner in which humans truly interact with their environment. Sure, drag and drop is a fairly intuitive action, but it does little to replicate our more primitive and adaptive behaviors for sorting and working with our hands – which is exactly the issue that tangible user interfaces (TUI) are seeking to solve. MIT Media Lab graduate students David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi and associate professor Pattie Maes have tackled the issue with Siftables, which they describe in their research as “a novel platform that applies technology and methodology from wireless sensor networks to tangible user interfaces in order to yield new possibilities for human-computer interaction. Siftables are compact devices with sensing, graphical display and wireless communication. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media.” Translation: Picture a mini iPhone, about 2 inches by 2 inches. You have a dozen of them sitting on a table in front of you, each with a different picture, graphic, text block or application on it. Shuffle the different Siftables in front of you to create new orders, ideas or combinations of ideas. It’s essentially your computer screen, fractured into a dozen pieces, each piece able to communicate with the other pieces while also understanding its relation to the other pieces. The Siftables react to each other and their changing surroundings - like good little nomads. For the rest of the article: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=83051&Nid=44004&p=356351
Acknowledge What You Don’t Know Venture capitalist Mike Hirshland recently explained how he was delighted when the CEO of one of his portfolio companies said to him: “I’d love some help here, I think we are doing the right things but to be honest I don’t know what I don’t know.” Hirshland noted that to be successful, “entrepreneurs and startup CEOs need to have the maturity and confidence to know when they are treading in foreign waters and ask for help.” True, but Hirshland’s advice is applicable far beyond the land of startups and entrepreneurs: Early in my career, I used to believe asking for help, or not knowing things, was bad. I used to work very hard to appear knowledgeable in every situation. For a variety of reasons, I felt pressure to exhibit everything I knew and then some. I was driven by immaturity, social pressure, workplace competition and fear. Not knowing was a sign of weakness. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but my mindset changed somewhere in my mid to late twenties. I eventually became comfortable with the fact that there’s just a lot I don’t know, and never will. Even masters are not masterful in every dimension of their discipline. Call it maturity or common sense. I now consider acknowledging what I don’t know a critical pillar of success. In fact, it’s more important than actually knowing. Why? First, anyone who fails to acknowledge what he doesn’t know is only fooling himself. … Let the anxiety of what you don’t know motivate you! Second, acknowledging what you don’t know implicitly means you’re open to alternative viewpoints and solutions. Allowing others into your realm enables choice and optimization, and greatly improves problem-solving likelihood. Third, acknowledging what you don’t know opens you up, transforming you into a beacon to attract experts and creative ideas. The fact is that people want to help. Being open identifies yourself, makes you visible and encourages others to contribute positive thinking and support to help you succeed. Fourth, acknowledging what you don’t know guarantees you’ll become far more knowledgeable over the long term. Getting into the habit of acknowledging what you don’t know means you’ll seek answers to more diverse questions and problems - and more often. It will lead to more intensive problem solving that will only breed experience and intuition. It will force you to cultivate a network of experts and idea sources that will grow ever more valuable. Finally, acknowledging what you don’t know simply makes you look good. It shows you’re the kind of person who’ll find the best solution. Whether in your head or not, it sends a signal that you’re the person who’ll get the job done right. If you want to succeed, acknowledge what you don’t know. For the rest of the article: http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?p=1321 ___________ If you are an member of the New Jersey Press
Association and would like to receive our NJPA Notes
weekly newsletter, Privacy Policy: NJPA does not sell or share this distribution list or the names and email addresses on it.
|
