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?

Here are five don’ts and five dos for how media companies should use social media, as suggested by Media Helping Media.

This post has been republished from Media Helping Media under Creative Common Licence. Media Helping Media is an excellent site dedicated to offer free training resources for media in transition states. It is run by David Brewer, an experienced journalist and media strategist.

Traditional media’s attitude to social networking is evolving with varying results. Some harness the opportunities offered, while others refer to ‘social media’ with a condescending ‘and finally’ tone that suggests they are out of touch with their audience.

The five don’ts

1: Don’t appear out of touch

Never refer to social networking as a new phenomenon in your copy, bulletins, studio discussions or in a piece-to-camera and live radio spots. A large part of your audience is using Twitter and Facebook and increasingly turning to them and other sites as their primary sources of information. Your failure to grasp this will lose you credibility.

• Your failure to grasp this will lose you credibility

2: Don’t call it new media or new technology

It’s not new. Using terms such as ‘new media’ makes it sound as though you are ‘old media’ and lagging behind. The term was okay towards the end of the last century, but you should be part of a converged news operation delivering content to whatever platform/device the user turns to in order to access information. If you are, then it is part and parcel of that. If you are not, then you should be.

• If you keep calling it new you will come across as old

3: Don’t leave it to your online team

Or worse still a junior member of staff to manage and monitor. Twitter, Facebook and other social networks should be an integral part of your newsgathering and news dissemination strategy. All your journalists should be using tools such as TweetDeck to monitor what people are saying and to discover stories. Take it seriously or you may soon find you are no longer taken seriously.

• Twitter, Facebook and other social networks should be an integral part of your newsgathering and news dissemination

4: Don’t snigger

Never let presenters refer to stories that involve social networking with that ‘and finally’ tone or that condescending, knowing nod and smile, as if it is all a bit of a joke. It could come across as patronising or (even worse) disconnected, distant and judgemental. Get some of your more connected correspondents (and there are loads around) to educate the studio presenters and some of the less connected producers. Those in the field often get it because they are rubbing shoulders with the audience on a daily basis and understand the significance of the changing audience behaviour; they also know, first hand, how your news organisation is being perceived.

• Don’t take pride in adopting a patronising, disconnected, distant and judgemental tone

5: Don’t miss the story

Remember that the number and speed of tweets on an issue is a story in itself, and you can run that story even before you have been able to verify what is being said with the usual two independent sources. Simply reflecting the activity and taking the time to follow a few tweets in order to sample the diversity of perspectives and opinions will enrich your news coverage. If you ignore this phenomenon you will be ignoring news.

• If you ignore this phenomenon you will be ignoring news

The five dos

1: Tweet your own news as soon as it is verified

Remember you can tweet facts, you don’t need long, complex concepts. Tweet about things that your news organisation can confirm have happened as soon as the confirmation is in. You just need the facts in a short sentence. Subject, verb, object – send. The social network audience feeds off facts (and other stuff), and it is taking those facts to another place (their preferred social networks) where they add their own context and analysis by interacting with their friends (rather than sitting in front of a TV or radio or clicking through your webpages or thumbing through your newspaper/magazine pages). Always add a short URL if the story is supported by an article or audio & video online.

• Tweet your own news as soon as it is verified

2: Take a gift with you

If you are going to gatecrash the social network party offer something that those who tweet will value. Your best offering is facts from stories where you are ‘digging where others don’t’ or in the category of ‘had it not been for you the world would never have known’. They won’t thank you for regurgitating the wires and throwing up a slightly modified version of what is running on 100 sites, broadcast networks or newspapers. Originality is the key. Tweet facts that they can’t get elsewhere. Automate your feeds through to Facebook and Twitter to provide a steady stream of content for social networks to feed off.

• They won’t thank you for regurgitating the wires and throwing up a slightly modified version of what is running on 100 sites

3: Change your tools

Think differently about the way you set up the desktop for your journalists. If they can only surf the net and browse the wires some may limit themselves to that window on the world – and your news offering will reflect that limitation. You need to observer, evaluate and, where appropriate, integrate the social network chatter and make sense of it in a way that informs the public debate and broadens perspectives. Also encourage your journalists to engage in conversations when they find a story, rather than just feed off what is already there.

• You need to integrate the social network chatter into the tools your journalists use

4: Widen your contacts

Start to build up a new contacts file of those hundreds of thousands of (free) stringers who are filing copy (that’s the stuff of headlines) free of charge 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. (Imagine organising a rota for that — the work flow implications are mind blowing, let alone the staff costs). So enlist those who are tweeting, and don’t always turn to the known voices who may no longer have the connection with changing audience behaviour.

• Enlist those who are tweeting, and don’t always turn to the known and overused experts

5: Embrace, hug and welcome back

Find ways of bringing the social network experience back into your news production process, and not just as a token nod and wink, but as a serious reflection of how both you and the audience are changing. Those tweeting may have taken your facts away with them to their preferred social networking space to discuss with their friends, but in doing so, they and their contacts will add their own value to the growing story. Be sure to invite them back, and find ways of sharing that enhanced understanding and feeding it back into the system so the richness of knowledge and experience and the diversity of perspectives is available for all.

• Social networking is a reflection of how the audience is changing – ignore it at your peril

See how others are doing it

Check out the Facebook sites for CNN, BBC News, the Wall Street Journal and other leading news organisations.
Look at how many followers they have. Check the number of times stories are commented on and discussed in the Facebook environment.

And look at all the automated links offering a direct route back to the media organisation. Next, check their presence on Twitter.

Free social networking tools offer viral dissemination, engage the audience where they want to be engaged, and providing return traffic; it’s a no brainer.

• Free social networking tools offer viral dissemination, engage the audience where they want to be engaged, and providing return traffic.

The ‘broadcast/publish at’ model died years ago. The ‘engage with on our terms’ model is in its death throes. Now it’s about ‘participate in’ and empowerment. Those traditional media organisations that move to this model qucikly may have more chance of surviving.

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Check also out the following resources from Media Helping Media:

• Social media kitbag for journalists
• Top sites for journalists

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This post has been republished from Media Helping Media under Creative Common Licence. Media Helping Media is an excellent site dedicated to offer free training resources for media in transition states. It is run byDavid Brewer, an experienced journalist and media strategist.

Do you dream of being the digital journalists with lot of interactive story telling techniques? It is easier than ever to impress your colleagues and readers. Here are ten very simple tools.

Many journalists think they need to be able to program to use advanced interactive story telling techniques in their online stories.

That is no longer so.

Instead you need to learn to embed something into your online stories. Once you have learned that, you have access to unlimited creative possibilities.

Embedding simply means that you incorporate an element from a different web site into your own. This is usually done by pasting a few lines of code into your article.

The most common element to embed is YouTube videos. But if you start looking, you will find thousands of other services that can be used to enrich your online journalism.

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Here are ten tools that can be useful for journalists. All tools presented here are free to use at the basic level. However, several of them also offer a premium level, typically with more options and opportunities for customized branding.

Consider it just a starting point. I would love if you contribute other tools in the comments below!

1.Embed videos: YouTube.com

Whatever you write about, chances are high that someone has uploaded a great and relevant video to YouTube, vimeo.com or other video sites.  Choose “embed” under the video you like, select the size of the video and copy the code you are given to paste into your site.

As an example: Here is a video from YouTube made for a previous blog post about an interesting example of innovative journalism:

2. Create timelines:  Dipity.com

Timelines is a great way of illustrating how a story has developed over time. One easy-to-use tool for creating elegant timelines is Dipity.com. Timelines can be created manually – or by incorporating RSS feeds or by importing content from services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google, etc.

Just for illustration: Here is a quick timeline I put together displaying a few of the BetaTales articles in 2010.

[easyembed field="Dipity_BetaTales"]

3. Use interactive maps:  Umapper.com

Maps can be used to illustrate articles in many ways. The most common is to use Google Maps directly.  But there are also a number of excellent third party services that give you even more creative possibilities. Personally I like the service from Umapper.com.

One cool functionality is to make a geo game map, such as the one below:

More to read about using maps: Five ways to take your map mashups to a new level (10.000 words)

4. Include any document in your story: Scribd.com

Journalists often need to quote reports and documents in their stories. Sometimes the whole article can be about the content of a specific document. Many journalists then choose to include a link to the document. But wouldn’t it be even better if you could include the document in your own article?

You can! Scribd.com is a great service for embedding any kind of documents. The process is very simple: Create an account, upload the document you want to embed and then grab the embed code.

As an example: Here is the digital media handbook of Society of Professional Journalists:

There is a similar great service for sharing Powerpoint presentations: Slideshare.net. These presentations can also easily be embedded into any article.

5. Live blogging: Coveritlive.com

Coveritlive is a fantastic tool for live events and it is being used regurlarly by thousands of media sites as well as numerous bloggers.  It can be used for simple live blogging or as a platform for sharing video, sound and interacting with readers.

Many news sites used Coveritlive as part of their coverage of the recent earth quake in Japan. See one example from Belgium here.

6.Put social media content together: Storify.com

Another tool that can work out very well when news happen fast is Storify. This service is particularly good when you quickly need to incorporate selected content from social media into an article.

See an example here:

[easyembed field="Storify"]

7. Slideshow: Flickr.com

For creating a simple slideshow with several photos you can use Flickr.com.  It is very easy: Upload your photos, put them together as a set, view them as slideshow and then choose “Share” and “Grab the embed HTML”.

Here is an example of a set of photos I took on Stung Meanchey, a huge garbage dump in Phnom Penh, Cambodia:

There are many more tools to make slideshows, some of them quite advanced. Several let you make soundslides as well, adding audio to your presentation. Here are some of the options:

• Soundslides: A premium product to make soundslides
• Animoto: Another premium service to let you make videos mixing images and audio

Do you want to live broadcast from a news scene? It is actually not that difficult if you use your smartphone. A very useful service for this is Qik.com.

To use qik you need to download an application to your smartphone. They support a large number of different models.

On the news scene you can use Qik to record a video. Immediately the video is streamed to your qik account, from where you can embed it into any story.

This is a very convenient way to bring short news clips to your readers. There is no need to upload a video anywhere. By using qik the video is immedieately stored on your account – live as you record.

Here is an example of a video recorded by qik:

Another, and more sophisticated service for live video is Livestream. You may want to check out the Procaster service, which for instance enables you to make a broadcast of going through different web pages live.

9. Add a word cloud: Wordle.net

Say you have to write about the speech of your prime minister. Or you cover a new government report. And then you run into the typical challenge: How to illustrate the article in a good way?

Have you considered using a word cloud? Wordle.net is a fascinating service that lets you take any word input, for instance the entire speech of the prime minister, and make a colorful word cloud. In this cloud words that are most frequently used will be bigger than others.

Here is a word cloud I created on the basis of the RSS feed of this blog:

10. Include a poll: PollDaddy.com

Engage your readers! One way is by including a poll where you ask them to vote on a question.

PollDaddy is one of many services offering you to create a poll easily and without any technical skills.

And now: As you are at the end of this article, you might as well let me know how useful you found this posting to be. Please vote below!
[easyembed field="Poll"]

Added bonus 1: Tool list

Here is a great list of tools for journalists, picked by David Brewer: Social Media Kitbag for Journalists.

Brewer is running the great website Media Helping Media, a site dedicated to helping journalists where media is still developing.

One of the tools suggested in his list is Thinglink.  It allowes you to share links inside any photos on your site, making them interactive elements of stories. I have tagged the first photo of this post using this tool.  Move your mouse over it to see how it works.  To me it seems like a tool with great editorial potensial.

Added bonus 2:  Use 360 degrees panorama photos

Microsoft just launched its Photosynth app for iPhone – and with this you have a simple tool to easily take and include 360 degrees panorama photos into any story.

Here is an example I took at the Akershus fortress in Oslo, Norway:
[easyembed field="Photosynth_Akershus"]

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)

Less than a year after iPad was launched, media products for the device flourish in the Scandinavian market. Here are six media approaches to the new platform.

Scandinavia is one of the most technologically advanced markets in the world. People are quick to adopt new devices and media companies love to be in the global forefront in offering superb solutions when new technologies emerge.

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Long before the tablet was officially launched in the Scandinavian market, the first local media apps were ready. By now, just four months after the introduction, most newspapers of any significance is on the iPad in some form or another.

INMA – International Newsmedia Marketing Association - recently gathered 55 media executives for a roundtable discussion in London about tablet subscriptions. The roundtable was inspired by Apple’s change in policy over subscriptions services and what media companies might be permitted to do in their apps.

I was invited to the roundtable to give a snapshot of how media companies have approached iPad in the Scandinavian market.

In my presentation I pointed out that there are basically six different approaches:

I would think these approaches are typical for many other markets as well. Here is an elaboration and a Scandinavian example for each approach.

1. E-paper apps

The most common approach, both in Scandinavia and other parts of the world, is to make a replica of the printed newspaper.

This is done with a number of different vendors, such as Solidam, Visiolink or Newspaper Direct. Typically you can flip through the newspapers and then zoom in on articles you find interesting. In some of the apps users are given the choice of reading the articles in text view.

It seems to be a widespread understanding in the media industry that this approach will not be sufficient in the long run. Still it is considered to be the smartest first move for many media companies. It provides a product readers are familiar with, and the investment for getting in to the market is relatively low.

2. Native apps with premium content

Some media companies conclude that e-paper apps are not sufficient even in the short run. Instead the media houses should try to use the iPad platform to its fullest potential. To do so, these media houses argue, one would need to develop a native app.

In Scandinavia the Norwegian news company VG is a prominent example of this line of thinking.

Another example is the widely discussed News+ platform of the Bonnier group. This native application has been used by both Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Industri and Sydvenskan.

Tor Jacobsen, who is head of mobile products at VG, says their native application now has been downloaded 54.000 times. About half of these people use the application during a week.

- The peak hours for using the application are from 6 to 11 PM during the week and from 8 AM to 1 PM during weekends, Jacobsen says.

Average session time is around 10-12 minutes, which is significantly longer than on other digital platforms.

- What is your main philosophy behind what you try to do on iPad?

- Our philosophy is to make a third editorial product specifically designed for the tablet platform. We still have a long way to go in order to make full use of the tablet, though. For instance photos and videos work very well in storytelling on iPad. We want to improve on being even more iPad relevant and in creating new user habits for consuming content on this platform.

Jacobsen says that VG defines this first iPad year very much as a time for learning. However, he believes that they will be able to charge users for content on this platform if it is done right.

3. Multi-purpose apps

There are different philosophies about what concepts actually work for iPad.

Some argue that apps should be specific and targeted specifically at a clearly defined purpose. Others claim that it would be better if the app includes a number of different needs in one.

In Norway one of the biggest media companies, A-pressen, has decided to build a socalled multi-purpose app. The pilot newspaper is Nordlys in the northern city of Tromsø. A-pressen plans to launch a similar app for a further 17 local newspapers in Norway.

The Nordlys app includes a number of different functionalities:

• E-paper, which is a replica of the printed paper
• Touch screen version of the latest stories from the web site
• Local TV
• Weather
• News overview: Aggregating stories from both local, national and international news stories

About 2000 people have downloaded the app – and one in four of these use it every day, says Anders Opdahl, chief editor at Nordlys.

- For us it is important to deliver on our promise to the readers through our 109 years history: Nordlys shall be useful! That’s why we have decided to build many more functionalities in to the app. We believe that if we can be useful and make people stay long in the app, they will also be willing to pay, says Opdahl.

He says user sessions are almost as long as for the printed paper.

- Let us not forget one thing: Many experts talk about the iPad as a sofa device, and says this should influence how we design our products. It may be so. Still, for us the killer functionality of the iPad is that it is connected to the web. And with that follows expectations from users who have been online for almost 20 years. You have to fullfill those expectations first before trying to impress in other areas. In our opinion many media companies don’t get this, Opdahl says.

4. Web content apps

Some news apps take the content from a web site and present it in a more touch-screen friendly way. One example in the Norwegian market is Nettavisen.no.

Nettavisen is an online newspaper, with no printed version. It has always been a free product.

The app presents stories from the web site. In between the stories on the front page ads are inserted.

Head of Nettavisen, Gunnar Stavrum, tells us that 21.000 people have downloaded the app for iPad. 6000 of them use it daily.

- When it comes to user patterns, we see a small peak in the morning. Then it is relatively quiet between 11 AM and 3 PM. About 70 % of our traffic is between 5 PM and midnight. The highest peak is between 9 and 11 PM, says Stavrum.

He tells us that the ads in the app receives a 5 times higher click rate than on the web site, while average user sessions are 50 % longer.

- What is your main philosophy on iPad?

- Not to fall in love with any hypothesis we might have. We want to launch early and observe what the market and competitors do. Our task is not to prove that we are right about hypothesises, but to adjust quickly to to the market.

Nettavisen believes in HTML5 as a technological platform that can keep the door open to competing tablets.

5. Tablet adjusted browser version

The most basic product for iPad is to adjust the regular web site for tablet use. This includes removing ads and editorial content in Flash, which is not supported by Apple.

Aftenposten.no is one of many web sites that have taken this first step to make sure their products can be used on iPad without any major challenges.

6. Special purpose apps

Some media executives argue that while general news subscriptions are nice, the real value is in creating niche apps serving particular needs for the users.

One example of such a special purpose app is the TV Guide from the Norwegian news site VG.

A similar example: In Denmark the newspaper Berlingske Tidende has launched an app for business news.

The philosophy behind these apps is to take out a part of the general news product and create a product that serves a specific need among users.

Many experts argue that this is in fact the area where media companies may create the most value. General news bundles have less value in the digital world than in the analogue world. But new value can be created by using the expertise of the media company to serve specific needs in the audience. In fact media companies should move from being single-purpose companies – offering one general news product – to becoming multi-purpose companies, wide a wide offering of different specialized content offerings.


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Here are some of the slides I used in my presentation about this topic at the INMA Roundtable:

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!

———————————————————

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.

It was time to cut the crap: The Spanish news site 20minutos.es decided to make a sincere effort to increase the quality of readers’ contributions. Here is how.

The Schibsted-owned free newspaper 20 Minutos in Spain also has the third largest news site in the country, 20minutos.es.  Now it has launched a major program to increase readers’ contribution on the site. The program is called Eco and is an innovative self-developed framework for integrating readers’ commments and social media into the news stories.

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I recently visited Madrid and met with deputy editor-in-chief for 20minutos.es, Virginia Perez Alonso. She explained to me the philosophy behind Eco, that was launched on November 26th.

- 20minutos.es has a long tradition collaborating with our readers, especially when you compare us to the biggest news sites in Spain, like El Pais and El Mundo, she said.

Watch a short interview with Virginia Perez Alonso in the video above!

- In fact this is an area where we really wish to make a huge difference. We want to show that we understand our readers.

But as many news sites have experienced, building quality in readers’ participation takes a lot of work. Too much of comments are just crap that create noise rather than making real contributions.

20minutos.es set out to change this. They wanted to increase both the amount and quality of readers’ contributions, thinking this would differentiate the site in a positive way for its bigger competitors.

The answer was called Eco.

What is Eco, then?

It is a platform aggregating all readers’ contributions to a story, whether it is on 20minutos.es itself or in social media like Twitter and Facebook.

The total activity around a story is calculated into a Eco measurement. Stories with the most reader activity will then be given visible symbols on the front page of the news site.

Here is how it works:

On the front page

The number of comments each story has received is clearly marked in connection with the subtitle.

Then, if a story reaches a sufficient “ecco”, a measurement for readers’ activity, a special symbol is placed on the story image, indicating that this is a “hot story”.

It looks like what you see on the left. The eco symbol will take on a stronger color the more reader activity is associated with the story. Over time, the editors hope, readers will get used to the meaning of this symbol and look for the stories creating the most readers’ activity.

What happens, then, when readers click on the story?

In the actual article page a set of symbols appear after the lead paragraph.

It looks like this:

The bar both gives the proprietory “eco value” as well as number of comments, Tweets and Facebook likes.

Below the story are the comments and other contributions from readers:

Notice the tab for corrections. Readers are encouraged to report any factual error they might find in the story – and there even is a tab for the responses from the editorial staff.

An essential part of the eco system is that the most liked comments are displayed on the top. That is one of several measures to encourage readers to provide quality contributions.

- For sure this will not be used by every reader. These functions are for the most important of our readers, explains Virginia Perez Alonso.

They currently receive about 300.000 comments each month and expect this number to increase as readers get used to the new eco system.

A major challenge is to get all the journalists to participate. Each journalists gets his/her own user page in the eco system, but to succeed it is also necessary that they in fact participate actively. Convincing all journalists that this is worthwhile will still takes some time, admits Virginia Perez Alonso.

It is still too early to say how the eco system will work out. Yet I was impressed by the massive effort in making readers’ engagement the differentiator from competing sites. 20minutos.es has spent most of its limited development resources for several months on this project and is betting on this making a significant impact on its success.

I hope they will succeed.

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But is the assumption valid?

I would argue not.

And I am quite sure that all the experiments in user payment will prove the assumption wrong! Many attempts at selling content or introducing user payment will fail. Sales will be minimal – and that will make media executives question what they did wrong.

The reason for this is that many editors overestimate the Unique Content aspect of their product, and tend to ignore how important Unique Convenience is in making people pay for a newspaper product. Also, the real value of a newspaper is not necessarily the individual pieces of content, but how they have been put together into a package.

Espen Egil Hansen, chief editor of the hugely successful Norwegian news site VG.no, recently in a publice debate described  a surprising challenge when the newspaper prepared its soon-to-be-launched iPad app: Many newspaper articles were just too short to work well on iPad!  He pointed out how in fact many web site articles were much longer and deeper than the print articles. Since VG based its Pad app primarily on the printed paper content, this turned out to be a practical challenge.

Why do most media executives equal premium content with newspaper content? The answer in fact is simple: They assume that the same rules for valuation that they were used to from the print business also are valid in the digital businesz.

Do not ever assume that! The rules of the game are entirely different!

Did you hear me?

I will repeat: The rules of the game in the digital business are entirely different!

What will happen then?

I am sure there will be a lot of success stories. A number of them will be big surprises to all those of us who try to follow media trends carefully. However, there will also be a lot of failuresl. Many media companies will be forced to realize that people just don’t want to buy their products. And the media executives will realize two important truths:

Truth number One: Willingness to pay for content comes from much more than the content itself! If you base your user-paid digital offerings on the content alone, like many do when they just offer a PDF version of their papier, chances are that you will fail.

Truth number Two: We have to think in new ways about what constitutes Unique Value when it comes to content! Of course Unique Content is important, but primarily as one of several elements in a broader offering to the public.

And here is the big revelation for senior editors at the big media companies: They need to rethink their content strategy to fit with the new digital reality.

Now we come to the core of why I think failed attempts at introducing user payment will indeed improve the quality of journalism

The reason is this: Editors will be surprised to discover that people were not willing to pay for their content when it was disaggregated into its individual content pieces.

After this realization comes a painful examination into what readers really value.

And this is exactly the moment when new value and opportunities are being created!

Editors will realize that much of what they considered premium only had value as part of a specific content bundle in print. Once it was disaggregated and repackaged, the content lost its value. Readers had valued the convenience of having a nice content bundle delivered to their door in the format of a printed paper for breakfast. But suddenly they now had many different options to choose from in the same user situation.

If you ever thought you had unique content: Think again! Are you really sure?

What, then, constitutes unique content?

This is the really tough question. Providing good answers is hard. Yet, that is what we need to do. Realizing (as we will) that our traditional content is not sufficient to make users pay, we must try to identify the content and associated user situations that will trigger users to pay.

And here is the important understanding: What used to be perceived as having value in the printed world, suddenly may no longer have value in the digital world. Also important parts of the “free” content on the web may have great value if it is repackaged and distributed in specific ways.

The rules of the game have changed!

Depressing, isn’t it?

Maybe, but there is also a window of opportunity. The major challenge is that you need to identify content that people will be willing to pay for.

And here lies promising future for the next phase of journalism. As editors realize that readers do not automatically want to pay for their content when it is digitalized and disaggragated, they will start to search for content with unique value for readers. That will not be abundant news , which will still be financed solely by ads, but rather content that is difficult to find anywhere else.

The creative process of identifying this content will be good for journalism. It will go to the core of what readers really value and force journalists and editors to rethink how they look at their role.

It will also bring new types of content from the media companies. It might be longer, deeper or richer.  In many cases it will be extremely well structured to make it easier to distribute quickly and smartly. Probably it will to a larger extent tend to answer questions like why and how. For sure it will involve multimedia and other new story telling techniques. And it will be “made-for-share” in social networks. Much creativity will be invested in how the content is packaged and in what situations it is distributed to the users.

We will see completely new formats, set free from the physical limitations of the newspaper. Some of the formats will be longer than newspaper companies ever made before. And we will see sophisticated integration of interactive multimedia elements. In short: Journalism might be taken to a new level!

Maybe we will see journalism going in two different directions:

• One format for free journalism. This is the event based news journalism that is designed to draw massive traffic to news sites. This journalism will be short, snappy and financed by ads.
• Another format for premium journalism. This will be longer and more structured formats and they will be trying to answer questions like why and how. Much emphasis will be based on how to package and distribute the content to specific user situations. For this content there need to be a very strong USP – Unique Selling Point.

As the market develops, media companies probably will move resources from free to paid journalism, especially if strategies for bringing in user payment are successful. And that reallocation of resources will bring about better journalism, I think.

One thing I am sure about, though: Premium journalism in the digital future will not be the same as newspaper journalism in the past.

But I think it will bring even more value to the users.

What are your thought on this?

What creates the greatest value for users?  Professional editors’ careful selection of content from one source or sophisticated aggregation services picking relevant content from numerous sources?

It may sound like a rethoric question, but it is not. Rather the question goes to the core of the discussion of what provides unique value to users when it comes to news content, exemplified by the very different paths taken by the UK media houses The Times and The Guardian.

There are two trends worth noticing:

Trend 1: News are being disaggregated. In the old world news was always a part of an editorial package, be it in the newspaper, a radio show or a TV program. But in the digital world the content has been split up into its individual units. Just like music now is sold by the individual tunes, and not necessarily by the record itself, news do not depend on editorial packages to be distributed to readers. Each news story has value in itself.

Trend 2: News are also being reaggregated. After having been split up, news are being repackaged and consumed in different ways. This happens by social sharing, automatic aggregation and search services picking up content from numerous sources and presenting them according to topical or other interests.

Where do these trends leave the media companies?

There seems to be two very distinct perspectives on this question. Which you believe in has a strong bearing on how you think about the value of content.

Let us examine the two different perspectives on content:

Perspective 1: The core value proposition of a media company is to offer a carefully selected and edited package of quality content

Many media managers emphasize how news companies have always offered an edited package. One of the most important qualities of a newspaper, for instance, is the physical limitations of the product and how content has been nicely laid out within those limits to provide a unique experience to the reader.

In the newspaper world publishers controlled distribution completely, in fact much of the media power was based on a something near a monopoly position. Readers would have no other place to go for the content than to select the edited package of the newspaper.

All this has changed radically in the digital world of course as content has become abundant.

Yet most media managers still argue that the quality of editorial selection is one of the most important elements differentiating media companies from any other content provider. And there is much truth to that, as media brands have been developed on this value proposition for decades.

Many media managers, like Rupert Murdoch, take the argument even one step further: They try to stop aggregators, like Google News, from using their content, arguing that the media company itself should control all use of its content.

There has been a number of industry initiatives inspired by this line of thought, including the attempt to establish the ACAP protocol as a standard for administering copyright standards.

Professor Eric Clemmons at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania illustrates this way of thinking in his article “We need to change copyright laws to save newspapers”. He argues that copyright laws should be changed so that no part of newspaper articles, not even the lead paragraph, should be picked up by aggregators for the first 24 hours after publication.

From this perspective all aggregator services are perceived as competitors to the news media. Media companies argue that Google News and other aggregators should in fact pay a fee to the news media for the right to aggregate headlines and lead paragraphs.

The main goal is to make media sites the sole portals for their own content, increasing traffic and  opportunities for monetizing the users.

For a very strong critique of this perspective I suggest you read the Danish blogger Thomas Baekdal’s article “We Can Save Newspapers by Destroying the Web”.

Perspective 2: The core value of media companies is as a source of quality content. Stories should be shared wherever readers want them to go.

Users no longer need to go each individual media site to check for interesting content. Instead there are numerous increasingly sophisticated services around that will automatically aggregate and select content for you, often based on your personal preferences or suggestions from your friens.

A recent study from the UK showed how social networking sites now compete with news publishers as sources of breaking news and information.

Let me use myself as example: I am a dedicated user of Google Reader – and currently have about 100 RSS feeds included. Most of them are content sources specializing in topics of particular interest to me. There is no way I would have visited all these sites on a regular basis; at the most I would have dropped by 4 or 5 of them. Aggregation makes it possible to follow new content from multiple number of sources.

The same with Twitter. I use it mostly professionally, sharing interesting links about digital media trends (you can follow me at twitter.com/johnei) Through Twitter I also pick up lots of interesting articles. Only very few of them would I even know was written were it not for other professionals in my fields sharing them on Twitter.

Recently I have started using another sophisticated aggregation service called Flipboard, which has been described as  a “social magazine” built for iPad.

Are all these services thieves stealing content from media companies? Not according to those who believe in sharing and the value of links. Rather they would argue that these services indeed offer real value to users, by sifting through enormous amount of content and presenting it in a relevant context in a way no human editor would be capable of. No media company would be even near to offer this value to their readers.

Also, followers of this perspective would argue, these services bring million of visitors to media sites that would otherwise not be there. In an English language market it is not uncommon that more than half of the visitors to a news site do not go through the front page at all, but rather arrives directly at an individual article. Even in a small language market like Norway almost a third of the weekly visitors to major news sites do not drop by the front page.

Because of this, the thinking goes, the real value of media sites is as a source of quality content. That is where the media site should put its effort. The Guardian is an example of a media company following this path – trying to spread its content wherever interested readers may be.

Back to the question: What creates the greatest value for users?

That depends, of course – both on the brand, the user and the user situation. I strongly believe that editorial packaging still has value, especially when brands are strong. And many readers visit their favorite news site on a daily basis because they appreciate how stories are being selected and put together. But this can no longer be the only way publishers offer their content to readers. The reason is simple: Sophisticated aggregation offers as high value to many readers in many situations.

Aggregation and social media sharing thus should not be perceived as enemies of the media, but rather as opportunities to distribute the content further. Yes, some aggregation services make money without producing any content at all. But they also add value to the content by offering users better ways to find and consume it.

How this will play out in the long term, is difficult to say. As aggregation services and semantics technology improve, there is a fair chance that the front pages of the media sites will be less important to many users, at least in bigger markets.  This development is being accelerated by people’s dependence on friends’ recommendations in social networks in finding news and interesting content.

I believe successful media companies will both have strong enough brands to attract readers to their edited packages as well as an attitude of openness towards aggregation, linking and sharing.

What do you think?

You may also want to read:

• From Distribution To The Link Economy (baekdal.com)
• How Metadata Can Eliminate the Need for Paywalls (Mediashift)
• How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream (mashable.com)

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