Looking for ways to make users pay for digital content, many editors consistently make a wrong assumption: That stories from the printed newspaper have higher value than the web stories.

I have read it numerous times: Interviews with chief editors who present the fact that a story was printed in the newspaper as the very definition of users’ willingness to pay for the same story in a digital version.

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I think the assumption in most cases is wrong.  That a story has been printed in the newspaper has little bearing in itself on whether there is a willingness to pay for that particular content in digital form.

One big challenge of introducing user payment for digital content is to decide which content is premium and which content should be free.

Making this decision is very hard – as it goes to the very core of defining what type of journalism constitute real value to the readers.

The easy way out is to say as many chief editors do: The content from the printed paper is premium, the online content is free.

And why shouldn’t we think like that? People have after all through decades shown that they are willing to pay for the content in the printed paper. Therefore the argument is convenient: Let us make the same content available to them online for a charge, and they will be willing to pay.

Wrong!

But as a result of this way of thinking, most attempts at asking users to pay for digital content, for instance on iPad, so far are more or less replicas of the printed paper.

It is time to end this way of thinking.

In the long run the distinction between premium and free content cannot be defined by what has been found worthy of being printed in the newspaper. One reason is that much of the value of a printed newspaper is in how content has been packaged and put together for that specific format. As the content is being split up on digital platforms, the value proposition changes and different rules apply.

Therefore we need to find a new way of distinguishing between premium and free content – and that distinction can no longer be defined by platforms, but by the distinctive qualities in the content itself.

Why is this? Because when studying their own content in depth and trying to make readers pay online, many editors will find the following to be true:

• Parts of the content in the printed newspaper looses its value when disaggregated from the print package and presented in a digital version
• Parts of the content that has been produced “free” for the web site actually provides great value for readers – and in fact have the potential to be treated as premium content instead of free.

This being said, it is easy to understand that many news organizations have chosen a replica of their printed product as the first attempt at making users pay.  The strategy in fact makes sense – at this stage. After all readers have a clear picture of what product a newspaper is – and may be willing to pay for the convenience of receiving it in a different format. Also most newspapers are organized primarily with the printed paper as the main output.

But now is the time to move on. Premium content should be defined across platforms – and with qualities that makes it truly unique no matter where it is published. At the same time we need to take into consideration also the other factors influencing people’s willingness to pay.

Among media companies not just choosing the replica model we basically see three ways of distinguishing between premium and free content:

• The meter model – allows free access to a specific number of articles per month and starts charging after the level has been reached. This is the model used by The New York Times, which reportedly now has more than 300.000 subscribers. The meter model does not try to distinguish as much between which content is premium and which content is free. Rather the underlying assumption is that all content is premium, but that readers can get some of it for free anyway.
• The freemium model – defines some types of content as free and other as premium, depending on topics or qualities. This is for instance the model used by Wall Street Journal, Hamburger Abendblatt and the highly successful Swedish news site Aftonbladet.
• The paywall – charging for all content, no matter where it is published. This is basically the strategy of The Times in London. A

This discussion is primarily based on the freemium model. What are some of the qualities that could define premium content in this model?

It of course depends on the brand in question and how it is positioned in its market.

But I think many editors will find that they need to develop new content formats to succeed with user payment. This is necessary to make sure the content is sufficiently unique, deep, engaging, useful or entertaining to make readers think they cannot be without it.

Some of the questions that need to be answered:

• Is the content truly unique? Can you find more or less the same other places – or is this really the only place to get this type of content and quality? Is the content in a format that makes it unique?
• Is the content useful? Are readers being helped in achieving their personal goals, like getting in better shape or improving their finances? Will readers feel they will be better off in their life with the content?
• Is it engaging people?  In today’s world of social media only content that engage people have real value.
• Is it convenient to get to the content if you are willing to pay?  Is in fact being a paying customer much easier that to be a freeloader? Is the media company making it so convenient for readers that it is just “too damned easy to pay”?
• Is the payoff clear?  Do you immediately understand what extra value paying for the content gives you?  Is is deep enough? Entertaining enough? Or just another copy of what you will find on any other web site?

Newspaper readership will continue to drop in most markets in the years to come. As this happens, defining premium content in terms of whether it has been printed on paper or not will become increasingly less relevant.

We need a new definition.

So how, then, should we define premium content in the future? What are your thoughts?

Few other analysts give as comprehensive and solid analysis of current Internet trends as Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. Here is her latest presentation of mobile and other digital trends.

KPCB Internet Trends (2011)

I always try to bookmark the presentations of Mary Meeker, as I find myself going back to them again and again. And what is a better way of bookmarking a great presentation than to blog about it?

Mary Meeker used to work for Morgan Stanley. Her annual presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit continues to draw a lot of attention.  The presentation inserted above is from this year’s summit.

A few points that I have noted:

• The top global players are still mostly US companies with a couple of Chinese services as the only exceptions
• Still China now has almost twice as many Internet users as USA. And half of them been added during the last four years.
• Smartphone usage is exploding  - but still has tremendous potential for further growth
• iPad is growing at much faster rate after launch than iPhone did
• Social media is moving mobile big time: 55 % of Twitter usage and 33 % of Facebook usage is now from mobile platforms
• The next “big thing” is online sound
• Mobile commerce is finally lifting off
• There is a big discrepancy between the time spent on different media and where advertising dollars are spent. For instance: 8 % of media time in the USA is spent on mobile, while only 0,5 % of the advertising budgets
• In hardware tablets and smartphones outshipped PCs in Q4 of 2010

Related articles

• Mary Meeker’s 2011 Web 2.0 Summit Presentation (readwriteweb.com)
• The global state of the mobile industry (rossdawsonblog.com)
• Mary Meeker’s state of the Internet report (digitaltrends.com)
• The global state of the mobile industry (rossdawsonblog.com)

Norway’s largest newspaper Aftenposten published nude pictures of the national hero Fridtjof Nansen. That was too much for Facebook – and references to the photos were removed from Aftenposten’s Facebook page.

Facsimile of Aftenposten October 15th, 2011

No nudity, please!, asks Facebook. And photos from 1929 of the Norwegian national hero Fridtjof Nansen were removed from Aftenposten’s Facebook page, which has almost 70.000 fans. In addition the newspaper received a warning that its Facebook page might be removed if new violations of Facebook’s policy were discovered.

Disclaimer: I work for Media Norge, which is the company owning Aftenposten.

The clash between Facebook and Aftenposten raises some interesting principal questions, especially to what extent it is fair that Facebook restricts what a media company (or any other company or person for that matter) publishes on its Facebook page.

Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian national hero, well known both for his Arctic expeditions as well as his work to help refugees after the first world war.

Aftenposten tells the story of how Nansen at the age of 67 fell in love with the 30 year younger journalist Brenda Ueland, an American feminist and journalist.

In a new book letters Nansen wrote to Ueland are published, including nude photos Nansen took of himself and sent to his love hoping that whe would returns photos of herself without clothes.

Aftenposten published two of the photos in its article about the book – and also shared the link to the article to the 70.000 friends on its Facebook page. The article received a number of reactions from readers.

The link to the controversial article was shared on Aftenposten's Facebook page

And then Facebook stepped in.

Within a few hours the link had been removed by Facebook from Aftenposten’s Facebook page.

Aftenposten also received a message warning that this photo was violating Facebook’s regulations, and that Aftenposten would risk being thrown out of Facebook if more violations were discovered.

“This message is a warning. Further violations may lead to your account being closed. Please read carefully through the declaration of duties and rights, and refrain from publishing offensive content in the future”, Facebook wrote.

Aftenposten’s editor-in-chief, Hilde Haugsgjerd, argues that Nansen is one of Norway’s biggest national heroes, and that it is known that he had relationships to many women. “Now there is a book on the market with this as the main topic, and we found it in order to cover this editorially”, she says to her own news site.

The photos in question are all from 1929.

So what do you think? Is it OK that Facebook censors this type of content? Or should the social network give media organizations some flexibility to decide for themselves what is proper content to be published under its bran?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

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GUEST BLOG POST: Developers from Poland create an easy Do-It-Yourself tool for publishers to prepare tablet apps on their own.

Rafal Oracz from Spoti.pl explains their HTML5 tool for publishers

By Marek Miller, guest blogger:  Marek Miller is the regional consultant of Innovation Media Consulting for Poland and Eastern Europe. You can read a number of his coverages of different INMA and WAN events on Forum4Editors.com. He also blogs in Polish on www.em-jak-media.blogspot.com.

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While the tablet market is still quite an unknown territory to many publishers, all they agree upon is the need of experimenting. And experimenting in this area is not easy. There are a number of questions still to be answered before newsmedia companies will actually be able to estimate real growth possibilities.

Those questions are, for example:
- how many tablets are really used in my country? (only estimates are possible)
- will Apple change its regulations again?
- should we focus on iPad only, and how will the market of other tablets develop?
- will people really enjoy one’s content on tablets?
- what kind of business model should be implemented and why the hell do we need to pay the share?

Waiting for these questions to be answered is suicidal. When you look only 12 months back, you will notice there is not a month to be wasted if you want to innovate and protect your place in the tablet market without making the same mistakes as the publishing industry did some years ago with the rise of the internet. And because tablets are here to stay, you need to experiment on as many levels as your budget allows.

Until recently there were basically two possibilities for publishers in the Polish market that wanted to make products for tablets. The first, as probably many publishers around the globe do, was to outsource this service, hire a professional consultant who would guide the editorial offices through the process of filling a prepared application with the content. This is the most expensive possibility when publishers develop a native app specifically designed for their own needs and with no similar apps in the market.

The second option is white label applications. There are companies around Poland offering the same kind of application for different publishers. They can be customized to (some) needs, but the core difference between those are usually colours, graphics, and maybe the order of the sections. Those applications look similar to one another, yet still are a bit expensive (somewhat mid-market price).

For about one month so far, a new tool has been available on the Polish market. The tool called Spoti Kreator uses HTML-5 technology, and makes applications available on diverse platforms: not only on iPad, but on all existing Android platforms as well.

Spoti is a simple do-it-yourself tool, where publishers can insert their content: text, images, videos and audio. They have about 30 different layouts of the application pages at their disposal. The entire code of the publication is open for the user, so when he is a developer with a basic HTML knowledge, he will be able to build his own layouts as well. Someexamples of how a page within the application can look like are listed on the picture below.

Spoti Kreator lets you choose many different layout templates for each page in the app

The process of creating the application is very easy and intuitive, and is done online. First you have to pick a template for your publication. Then you choose how your table of content should look like. Next comes the articles, which of course are linked with the table of content. Each article can be shown in one of 30 layouts. They can be either articles or galleries or simple pictures or videos or infographics. After choosing “publish” you will be able to enjoy your tablet application.

Spoti Kreator, just like all other tools, has its pros and cons. The great advantage is definitely its price. For now, creation of a single application costs about 125 Euros, but the developers of Spoti say they are considering an offer that would allow publishers to use their tool as much as they wish within a certain amount of time (weekly, monthly, we’ll see).

Due to the fact it is based on HTML-5 technology, the application is not distributed via AppStore or Android Market. Instead the final version of the application built in Spoti is given in the form of a link you can save on your tablet’s home screen.

Another advantage is the time needed for such work. In a 3 hour trial I managed to turn a 24 page publication (text and pictures) into the fully operational application. You can view it by opening the following link from your tablet: http://spoti.pl/e-dokument/5810/Raport (the publication is in Polish). It may not look astonishing, but given the fact it took me three hours only to prepare it makes me consider Spoti an interesting tool.

Apps built in Spoti Editor can be both sold or distributed for free, whereas in both situations the user can sell his own advertisements within the app.

Despite the fact that Spoti Editor is no longer in the development stage, it is still going to be improved. So far the applications work only when the device is online. At first this can be treated as a huge disadvantage, but being able to use different Wi-fi zones around the country or simply 3G connection, the user can actually be satisfied he does not have to wait for 200-300 MB to be downloaded.

Despite that fact, the developers of Spoti work on the possibility to allow users to download entire publication to their tablets. When they manage to do so, the publications will have to be distributed through AppStore or Android Market, what again has its pros and cons. Luckily, Spoti Editor’s users will have a choice whether they want the publication to be downloadable or to be accessed online only.

The idea of this post is not to promote Spoti Editor as the ideal tool for publishers. It is however a tool that allows publishers to experiment with applications, their content, learn about their readers and users, and to do this all without risking their entire budget.

Spoti Editor is so far available in only in Poland (one of the biggest media monthlies in Poland – “Press” has already chosen Spoti tool as their solution). Again, the developers are interested in expanding outside of Poland, so the english version of Spoti Editor can be expected soon.

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This is just one example of a company trying to build tools to help publishers use HTML5 to distribute their content. Do you know of other interesting examples? Let us know in the comments field.

It is used in lots of board rooms these days – as an expression of the danger newspaper companies are in. But in fact the executives would be wiser to ban the word. What word? Read on.

Publishers' worry about print revenues may harm their potential in developing good business models for digital media

I have heard it used so many times in different media contexts. We are afraid of it and try to avoid the effect of it. It is a word that makes media executives sleep less at night.

It is called “cannibalization”.

Yes, we would love to build new digital revenue streams. We dream about how users will pay tons of money for our excellent and unique content. But it better not have any harmful effect on print revenues!

So the thinking goes.

To put it in another way: Digital revenues are fine as long as they do not “cannibalize” print revenues!

This line of thought influences product development, pricing strategy, marketing and editorial workflows in many media companies.

It is a dangerous way of thinking.

In fact the word “cannibalization” should be banned in media companies. Using it will only cause harm to media’s chances of surviving the massive digital transformation we are witnessing.

Did you hear me?

Ban the word “cannibalization”!

Yes, I really mean it.  Don’t allow the executives or other employees to even use it!

Why should the word be banned?

Let us start with the basic statement that I keep repeating here at BetaTales:

What can become digital, will be come digital.

Now, then: What does this mean?

It means at least two things:

• Print newspapers will at some stage be extint. We can argue about when it will happen, but the trend is very clear
• This being said, the major strategic challenge for media companies is not how to save print revenues, but how to build a successful business model for digital content

Why should using the word “cannibalization” be a problem?

Because even using the word implies a mental context that will in fact be counter-productive in producing the efficient future business models of digital media.

Let me ask you a question, all CEOs of media companies:

What do you think is the most strategic important issue to focus on for the next five year?

• Saving as much as you can of your print revenue?
• Or: Building digital revenues as fast as you can?

I have already given you my answer: You need to have full mental focus on buiding future digital business models.

I know many of you will answer that you will be able to balance both.

I don’t believe you.

In fact I think many media executives still underestimate the major challenges facing our industry. They think they can transform a business model of the past to the digital future. If that is the way you think, managing “cannibalization” makes a lot of sense.

But they will be proven wrong.

Instead I believe the winners will be those who have been liberated from their past business models. They focus primarily on how they can build a digital future, and less on how to save the print business a few more years.

I am not saying that media companies should ignore the print business, which is still the biggest revenue stream. Continue to develop the product, increase quality, lower costs and make distribution more efficient! The printed paper will be an important platform for media content for many years still.

But do not let considerations for the print product limit product development in the digital area!

Stop worrying about cannibalization!

Instead you should set your digital products free to compete in their own markets – without considerations for effects on the printed products.

There is an interesting success story to study within the media group I work for myself: Schibsted Media Group.  More than ten years ago visionaries within the corporation realized that classified ads inevitably would move from print to online.

Instead of saying that all efforts should be put into protecting the lucrative print ad revenues, they suggested to start a new company that would try to be the leading digital market place for classified ads.

A company – finn.no – was indeed started in March 2000. It set out to be the market leader in online classified ads in Norway. Prices were only a portion of prices in the newspaper. The newspapers were instructed to market the new online classified ads brand.

It is no secret that there was a lot of discussion within Schibsted about this strategy. Yet it proved to be one of the big success stories.  Finn has for years operated with an extremely high profit margin, driven by its position as market leader in online classifieds. And how did Finn become market leader? By aggresively seeing the opportunity early, before the market had developed and matured.

Today Schibsted is No. 3 globally in online classified ads, according to Businessweek. That’s not bad for a company from a small Scandinavian country.

Market dynamics in the news business are different from the classified ads – and the same rules may not necessarily apply. Yet the main lesson is the same: Make sure to focus on what will be the future!

Many media companies try to offer print and digital products in bundled subscriptions. That may very well be a smart strategy, provided that it is done in a way that will lead to a future business model for the digital media. But if the main purpose is to slow down the fall in newspaper readership without any clear plan for the digital future, such a strategy probably will fail.

I believe the mental focus in the organization is extremely important for media companies that are in the middle of a radical digital transformation.

The losers will be those who put all their energy into slowing down the digital transformation and saving the past. The winners will adapt a digital-first strategy to rush forward to build a new, smart and sustainable digital business model.

I don’t think you can win by doing both.

Therefore: Start by banning the word “cannibalization” in your company.

Here are some of the important trends shaping digital media now – as I presented them at the Media Trendy conference in Warsaw, Poland recently.

John Einar Sandvand presents digital media trends at Media Trendy 2011 in Warsaw

I was invited as a keynote speaker at the annual Media Trendy conference in Warsaw, Poland on April 14th, 2011.  The speech was about current digital media trends for about 300 media and advertising professionals and executives.

Here is a video of the presentation, filmed by the Polish media consultant Marek Miller, who was my host.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize many of the thoughts. In fact the presentation is largely based on a previous blog post I wrote about digital media trends.

You may also check out this article: How a speech for 70 people reached an audience of 4500.

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What is most important? Publishers copyright or the best user experience for readers? A fight over the iPad app Zite poses an interesting dilemma.

I have for the  last few weeks fallen in love with Zite, a personalized news magazine for iPad. Zite promises to learn from my reading habits – and serves stories that should fit my special area of interest.

To be honest I have been amazed about the accuracy of Zite. I now use it every day to follow developments in digital media, my particular area of interest. And Zite really is able to serve up the most interesting stories to me, whatever source they may come from.

Add to this that the user experience is very elegant. Ads are stripped away and I am left with the core content: Text and photos. It even allows me to share the stories on Twitter or in other social media without leaving the application.

Within a few weeks Zite has become my most common way to catch up with developments within my area of interest.

But then arrive the publishers! Time, Washington Post, National Geographic and Associated Press are among media companies protesting against how Zite uses their content. Alltogether 10 major media companies require Zite to stop using their content immediately. With good reason, it seems.

Working in the media industry myself (I am editor in Media Norway Digital) as the same time as I love the user experience of the Zite app, I find the conflict intriguing. Apparently it is an example of the media industry’s formal rights clashing with what is the best solution for their readers.

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The front page of Zite personalized magazine

Let us look at the interests of the two parties:

The user experience

Zite lets users pick topical sections that are of interest to them and then serves relevant stories from all over the web. The stories are presented in a neatly designed magazine layout. Over time Zite will learn what the users find particularly interesting and serve more of these stories. Users are also encouraged to tell Zite whether they liked a particularly story or not – and whether they like more stories from a particular source, thus assisting how the app becomes even more personalized.

To kickstart the selection of stories a user can link her Twitter or Google Reader account with Zite, giving a great personalized experience from day one.

Zite is based on web crawling – and not just aggregating RSS feeds. As default stories are presented in “reading mode” and not as the web page where it originated. This means that ads and a lot of other visual noise is eliminated, making it better for in-depth reading.

For me as a reader it is a very nice user experience. I am presented with a good selection of fresh articles from different sources and in a way that makes them very comfortable to read. I don’t have to move back and forth between many web sites, but get all the content presented in the same, elegant user interface.

I simply love it!

A note: In response to the letters from the publishers, Zite now displays the content from these media companies in “web mode” instead of “reading mode”, thus displaying all the ads as they appear on the web sites. While the media companies may be happy, this makes the user experience significantly worse.

The default article view on the Zite personalized news magazine

The publishers’ perspective

Publishers make money by either selling content to readers or by selling ads that are presented together with the content.

An app like Zite omits both those two possibilities to make money. The full content is presented to readers with ads stripped away – and the infringement on the publishers’ right is quite clear.

This is how the publishers describe their position in the letter to Zite:

By systematically reformatting, republishing and redistributing our original content on a mass commercial scale without our permission in your iPad application, Zite directly and adversely impacts our businesses. Your application takes the intelletual property of our companies, as well as the hard and sometimes dangerous work of tens of thousands of people. It depreives our websites of traffic and advertising revenue. We do not know your intentions, but your actions harm our companies and the broader media and news industry on which your application relies for its content.

For publishers it is extremely important to be in control of their own content and how it is being distributed. Most publishers depend on a model where they prefer users to come to their web site to read their content, either after having paid for it or to be the targets of commercial offers by way of ads.

Aggregation services like Googe News, Pulse, Flipboard and now Zite thus have been of great concern for many publishers, who think they should get a cut of the cake when other commercial players are making money on their content.

The dilemma: Publishers’ rights or the best user experience?

The conflict poses a real dilemma, as I see it:

• First: Services like Zite and Flipboard offer real benefits and a great user experience to readers.
• Second: Media companies are not able to offer the same user experience to the readers themselves
• Third: There is no good business model in place for media companies to make money on third parties offering services like Zite and Flipboard.

A service like Zite does not only redistribute content from media companies, but adds new value for the readers in term of selecting content in a particularly useful way. This is a different process of selection that the traditional editorial packaging:

• An editorial package will typically provide content only from one or very few sources. It will provide more or less the same package to all its readers.
• A personalized and automatic service like Zite will pick content from numerous sources and the package will be fully personalized for each individual user.

We now see how the best automated services offer a quality in selection that in many situations fit users’ need better than what can be achieved with human editorial editing.

The dilemma is quite clear: Some of the best user experiences offer no way for the content providers to make money.

What should media companies do?

There seem to be two approaches the media industry can take. They are not outruling each other:

• Protect your rights. Use legal means to stop unauthorized use of your content. Set up regulations, such as ACAP restricting distribution of content.
• Build new and universal content models allowing revenue share for innovative companies like Zite, Flipboard and others that build great content services.

One thing I am quite sure about: A strategy that only is based on fighting readers’ option to have the best user experience possible will fail!

That means that media companies either must be able to provide the best user experience themselves or partner in some way with those that can do it.

There is an obvious user need for smart and reader-friendly aggregation of content from numerous sources. Stopping people’s access to these kind of services will therefore not work. It will just make people find the content in illegal ways.  Just look at how the music industry for a long time failed to provide efficient ways for users to download music easily in a legal way, paving the way for massive illegal downloading.

In my opinion it will be an illusion to think that the media industry itself will be able to provide the best user experience in all areas.

So we need to find ways to work together with innovative companies like Zite, providing models where publishers get paid and the innovators can develop new products quickly without having to negotiate thousands of copyright agreements ahead of launching.

How can this be done?

It is a hard question – and I don’t really have any good anwers myself.

However, I do recommend that you read this blog post from Damon Kiesow at Poynter.  He identifies three possible winning strategies for media companies:

• Develop their own innovative apps
• Collaborate with developers like Flipboard and Zite to display and monetize content
• Implement robust application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow for controlled distribution of content for use on external sites and apps

The road to getting there is bumpy and whether it is possible at all is still not clear. But at least we need to find ways that will allow other parties to innovate with our content.

To conclude: Whatever the media industry does, the best option is to contribute in making sure users have the best content experience possible! Because in the long run the best user experience will always win.

What do you think?

Related articles from other blogs

• The Consumer In Me Likes Zite; The Producer? (paidcontent.org)
• Major Media Companies Unite to Serve Cease-and-Desist Against iPad News Aggregator Zite (mashable.com)
• When Media Giants Attack! Cease-and-Desist Letter to News Reader Zite Claims All Kinds of Copyright Damage (kara.allthingsd.com)
• The iPad App That Went Too Far: Media Says Cease & Desist to Personalized Magazine Zite (readwriteweb.com)
• Personalized iPad Magazine Zite Responds to Cease-and-Desist Letter From Time Inc., Washington Post (fastcompany.com)
• Publishing Heavyweights Target iPad Media App ‘Zite’ (wired.com)
• AP, WaPo, Other Big Media Companies Send Cease & Desist Over Zite App (paidcontent.org)
• Zite faces wrath of media companies (cbc.ca)

So you got stuck, working for the printed newspaper all these years? And now you realize your future is with digital media? Here is your digital makeover plan!

Many of my journalist colleagues these days find themselves in the same trap: They realize that the future holds limited demand for print journalist experience alone and that the brightest career potential in the business is within digital media.

The only problem is: They have no experience with digital media whatsoever!

What should you do? Is there a digital makeover plan you can follow?

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One thing is for sure: It will require hard work on your part. But if you want to stay in the media business, you better get on with it! And please don’t wait for your employer to fix it for you. Your competence is your own responsibility.

Also I think you can be sure of the following: Career opportunities in the media business will be fewer and fewer every year for people with only print experience. Especially that applies to any kind of management position.

Why is that?

Because most media companies will realize they have a digital competence deficit in their staff. As digital media takes a stronger position in the media houses, top managers realize it will be foolish to hire editors and managers with only print experience. Rather they should look for people who know how digital platforms work.

To put it even more clearly: Your print experience will be in less and less demand over the next years! If you look at it in a perspective of 5 – 10 years, changes will be dramatic. As a print journalist you are indeed naive if you don’t believe that this will affect you professionally in a big way.

• Read also: How print journalists can fall into the typographers’ trap

So you got to do something, don’t you?

Yes, you do! And you better get on with it!

Here is my suggestion for a one-year first-step digital makeover plan for journalists:

Step 1: Get yourself on social networks

If you are not on Facebook yet, you better register now. Understanding social media is essential for digital journalists and there is really no other way to do this than to participate yourself. Therefore your first step will be to get active on some of the most common social networks. As a minimum I suggest  you start using actively Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Also familiarize yourself with YouTube and at least one location based social network, like Foursquare or Gowalla. And if you are really dedicated to the task, you might consider starting your own blog. Really, there is no better way of learning digital media than maintaining an active blog.

Let us not forget an important aspect of this step: Start interacting with your readers! Respond to their comments, ask for tips to stories, use readers’ expertise in your articles, follow all discussions about your own content.

Step 2: Get experience in online journalism

If you work in a media company, start talking to the web people in your organization. The best alternative is to ask if you can work for the web site for a while, gaining useful experience. If that is not possible, show active interest in writing exclusive stories for the web site, including special versions of the print stories that you write. Your main purpose at this point is to gain as much experience as possible and to learn from your online colleagues. Study their writing style and what makes stories work on the web as opposed in the newspaper. Experiment with different headlines and see which ones make readers click. And especially: Take good note of which print stories that do not work on the web site! There will be more of them than you probably thought ahead.

Too many technical terms the online people expect you to know? Check out this digital survival guide for journalists!

Step 3: Learn basic photo editing

In big print organizations specialists often take care of the photo editing. So far, at least.  Hardly any web site editorial organization can afford that luxury. Instead it is expected that all journalists know how to crop and photo shop an image. And I tell you: There are hardly any journalists under the age of 30 that do not know photo shopping today at some level.

The most used software is Photo Shop. You may decide to start with Photo Shop Elements, which is a simpler version.

How to learn it? There are numerous online courses!  A great place to learn is Lynda.com, which has easy-to-follow videos for self-study of any type of software.

Step 4: Start making short video clips

Video is an essential and growing part of the web. As digital journalist you might as well start to learn using video at once. The best starting point is making small video clips, for instance with your iPhone. This can be short clips from the interview you are writing about, like what I have done in this story about the social media strategy of 20minutos.es in Spain.

Using video can be incredibly sophisticated or amazingly simple. At this stage you should start with the simple solutions. You will realize they can still create great value for the reader.

Digital journalists should of course learn more sophisticated video recording and editing as well, but I suggest you start with the shorter and unedited clips and then move on as your confidence grows.

Step 5: Start experimenting with interactive elements, like maps and time lines

Digital journalism opens up for many new story telling techniques, such as sound slides and time lines. Until recently many of these techniques required a lot of technical knowledge to use. Not any more. Today there are lots of sites offering to help you make your story telling more interactive.

Here are three tools you can start playing with:

Time lines:  http://www.dipity.com/ Create exciting time lines to illustrate how the topic of your story has developed over time

Maps: http://www.umapper.com Make maps that users can click on for more information.

Live log: http://www.coveritlive.com A great tool for live events, allowing you to live log and communicate with readers as the events pass.

After finishing your work, all services provide you with a code that you embed into the story. You will probably need some help from an experienced web journalist for this part. But I tell you: Learning how to embed external elements like maps, time lines and Youtube videos gives you unlimited creative possibilities in digital journalism.

A great blog for getting tips on interactive multimedia journalism is 10.0oo Words.

Step 6: Start analyzing traffic data for your site

Almost all news sites will have some analytics system installed. Many use more than one system, depending on the purpose of the analysis. Live logging of traffic is for instance often a separate system.

Ask for access to the analytics of your news site and try to learn the basics of the service, whether it be Google Analytics, Xiti or another system. Try to understand the traffic pattern. Where do users come from? What stories are most popular?

The easiest and most fun software to learn using will typically be the live log, where you can see which stories people click on right now. By following the live log regurlarly you will learn a lot about what actually works and what does not in driving traffic to a web site.

Step 7: Get yourself a smart phone – and use it to its full potential

A significant shift in platforms is taking place – and it will have major influence over the media industry over the next years. It is driven by the growth in smart phones, but also tablets like iPad is pushing the development.

If you don’t have it already, hurry up to get a smart phone. Whether it is an iPhone or an Android-run phone is not that important. What matters is that you get a smart phone with lots of apps, GPS and all other features that are part of a modern phone.

Try to use it to its full potential. It will revolutionize your media consumption, and give you a new perspective of where journalism might be headed.

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My suggestion is that you make this list of 7 steps your plan for this first year of a digital makeover – although not necessarily in the same order.

If you spend time on all these steps – and try to learn as much as possible – you will be much better positioned in a year from now than you are today.

However, let me tell you: It is not enough! There are many more things you need to learn. But it is a starting step, putting you in the right direction.

But do not be fooled: It requires hard work! And you have to do it yourself. Don’t sit around and wait for your employer to come around with a course or two. Only you can be the manager of your own professional future.

And please, please, dear print colleagues: Do not fall into the typographers’ trap!

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Bonus:

After this article was written I was made aware of an excellent guide to become a good multimedia journalist:

Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency

It is written by journalism professor Mindy McAdams at University of Florida.  I really recommend that you read it! It is highly useful and very instructional.  (thanks to Blue Lady Blog for giving me the link)

Do you need to catch up on the latest mobile internet trends? Check this excellent presentation from the highly respected analyst Mary Meeker.

Few analysts receive as much attention when presenting the future internet trends as Mary Meeker. Until recently she was with Morgan Stanley. She is now a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

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The presentation was given together with partner Matt Murphy at Google’s Thinkmobile conference in New York this week.

I really recommend that you flip through it. They elaborates on several mobile internet trends that are taking place at the moment:

• Mobile platforms hit critical mass
• Mobile is global
• Social networking accelerating growth of mobile
• Time shifting to mobile usage
• Mobile advertising – growing pains, but huge promise
• mCommerce – changing shopping behavior
• Emergence of virtual goods and in-app commerce
• Not all platforms are created equal
• Change will accelerate, new players emerging rapidly

You can download the presentation from Slideshare.

Can the story of traffic accidents be told in a new way?  Journalists and programmers in the Norwegian media house Bergens Tidende joined forces to push local journalism to a new level.

Watch multimedia journalists Lasse Lambrechts explain how they worked with “Killing Roads”

Bergens Tidende is the major newspaper in Bergen, Norway’s second largest and most beautiful city. It’s web site has seen remarkable growth during the last year – and now has around 500.000 unique visitors every week. The number is amazing in a city of 260.000 inhabitants.

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The western part of Norway is full of narrow and winding roads, and traffic accidents are common news items. However, the journalists at Bergens Tidende wanted to dig deeper into this issue, and asked themselves not only who got killed, but why. Would there be any data that could help them understand this issue?

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration was approached, and after persistent use of the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act, the journalists got access to a database of all road accidents in the country.

• Killing Roads: Find bt.no’s main page for the editorial project here

The database turned out to be a journalistic goldmine: It contained details about 11.400 traffic accidents all over the country, all neatly arranged in an Excel file. Not only did the database give the exact position of each accident, but it also included numerous details, such as how many were killed and injured, the seriousness of injuries, driving conditions, type of vehicle, type of street, speed limit, time of the day, etc.

Still, most journalists would at this point probably have been happy to take a look at the database, extract some of the relevant accidents and made a couple of news stories based on them. In Bergens Tidende, though, the journalists instead were teamed up with programmers. Within a few weeks all the traffic accidents in the country had been put on a big Google map with endless ways to search the database.

Here is the smaller version of the map:

The data from The Norwegian Public Roads Administration did not give the names of any victims. But good journalism is always about people, and the journalists spent a lot of time over several weeks to identify victims. Relatives were asked for permission to use photos of the victims in the newspaper and on the web site. Many of them were interviewed at length about their experiences.

“Killing Roads” has been one of the biggest editorial projects at Bergens Tidende over the last few years, and resulted in a large number of newspaper articles, numerous stories on the web site as well as many video reports.

This video report (in Norwegian) tells the story of a couple who was killed in one of the traffic accidents.

The online part of this project is innovative and some of the best we have seen. It demonstrates how successful you can be with mixing the experience of programmers and journalists.

Here are some of the stories:

• Interactive graphic of the young traffic victims in the local province
• Interactive and searchable map of all traffic accidents in Norway
• The road strech with most accidents
• Test drive the most dangerous road – and see exactly where the accidents happened
• Readers marked more than 500 dangerous road stretches in Norway
• … and many other stories here

What is the most important things they have learned?

Lasse Lambrechts, a programmer who now works as multimedia journalist, says:

- It is always more work than you imagine. And it is extremely important to have a good structure, which I have learned in my years as programmer.

Lambrechts thinks they are the first team doing something like this in Norwegian journalism, and he believes the project is rather unique also globally.

Lasse Lambrechts is one one of many in a large team that has worked on “Killing Roads” at Bergens Tidende. Other team members include developer Håkon Ferstad, journalist Øivind L. Eidsvik,  video journalist Sonja Ystaas and journalist Erlend Langeland Haugen.

Bergens Tidende has decided to make the map of traffic accidents available to any other news media or blog in Norway that might be interested. All it takes is a couple of code lines – and a localized version of the accident map may be embeddedon any web site, as displayed above.

Personally I was very impressed with their work. I think it is an superb example of how different professions in the media, such as journalists, video journalists and programmers, by working together can a world-class editorial experience.

We need more of this type of journalism if the media companies shall survive in the future!

Bring it on, my fellow colleagues!

Bring it on!

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Disclaimer: I work as editor at Media Norway, which is the company owning Bergens Tidende. However, I have not been involved in this editorial project in any way.