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August 27, 2008
Online Ideas Gallery: Alphabet City
St. Louis Post Dispatch Creates Local Landmark Quiz
We just put yet another new idea into the Online Ideas Gallery, NAA’s database of best practices and innovative ideas.
 Alphabet City, a quiz on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Web site, is a local landmark-recognition game spearheaded by the photo department. Although the Post-Dispatch didn’t incorporate advertising into their quiz, other newspapers could easily make this a revenue-generating idea. Lynden Steele, a photo editor at the newspaper who worked on the project, said most letters came from local businesses.
Read about it here in the Online Ideas Gallery!
(Thanks to Steve Yelvington for the pointer and Lynden Steele for giving us information about the project.)
August 26, 2008
Idea Log: Newspapers Ramp Up Digital Media for Convention
Newspapers – especially the Denver newspapers and a few national outlets known for politics – are putting out some fabulous digital media-based coverage of this week’s Democratic National Convention. Here’s a short round-up! Please add to this list by telling us what your newspaper is doing in the comments section below!
Denver Post: The Denver Post is feeding a stream of Twitter-like updates from reporters covering the convention, and readers can sign up to get the messages on their mobile phones. Streams range from news updates (Obama Heading to Montana) to celeb sightings (Steven Spielberg just walked into Peet's Coffee on the 16th St Mall…). Also, see the Denver Post’s prominent convention cover on the Web site with links to video, breaking news updates and reader-participation opportunities.
Rocky Mountain News: The Rocky Mountain News has a Twitter feed box on the main page of the site! Also see the newspaper’s video blogs from local hangouts (including the humorous Sam-ulcast), a political trivia quiz, a Google Maps traffic updates section that focuses a lot on the convention area and a lot more.
The Washington Post: The newspaper’s Web site goes live again with Post Politics TV – this time from Denver. Last year, the newspaper lauched Post Politics TV with primary election coverage from the washingtonpost.com newsroom in Arlington, Va. This time, Washington Post and Newsweek stffers are using mobile devices and a cell phone app from Comet Technologies to live stream from the floor. Also new: The Post Politics TV page has an interactive chat module, allowing viewers to interact with reporters on the floor. (Learn about the newspaper’s initial efforts with live Web streaming here.)
In addition, washingtonpost.com has a video going behind the scenes of their online news operation at the convention center in Denver. It's not as glamorous there as you might think.
C-SPAN: The government channel breaks free from the walls of Congress – and its own site. C-SPAN’s DNC site has prominent links to its Qik streaming video, its YouTube page and blog entries from newspapers all over the country. C-SPAN is doing a healthy amount of multimedia coverage of the DNC, but its willingness to send site visitors elsewhere on the Web is also impressive.
More:
To fuel the round-the-clock coverage, the hometown papers have beefed up on their new-media tools. The Denver Post bought dozens of staffers BlackBerrys so they can update the Web site from the convention floor. The Rocky Mountain News has been training staffers how to take digital photos with cell phones and use the instant-messaging service Twitter for quick updates during the convention.
Bloggers Bloggers Stake Convention Claim in "Big Tent" (Poynter)
The Democratic National Convention Committee issued credentials to 124 bloggers this year -- a record number, but still just a fraction of the estimated 10,000 or so media camped out in four enormous tents in the parking lot of the Pepsi Center.
Gadgetry at the Democratic National Convention (Wired)
Bloggers and journalists are descending upon Denver, the site of the 2008 convention, like a cloud of locusts: And they're bringing their gear.
Convention Coverage a Story of Innovation Amid Cutbacks (Poynter)
As more than 10,000 news media representatives converge here for the Democratic National Convention, financial pressures have forced companies to scale back, team up and load up online. Blogging is not optional -- and may be done from a BlackBerry. Newspaper reporters are Twittering and shooting video. And some of the coverage is coming from the subjects of coverage -- delegates who blog and take photos.
August 21, 2008
Growing Mobile Revenue: Take-Aways from the Guide
To help me in editing the Online Publishing Update,* my RSS reader is filled with subscriptions to feeds from eMarketer, Mobile Insider, comScore, Nielsen and a boatload of other trend-tracking sources. One common thread: Mobile revenue is going up.
Mobile is not the magic (or silver) bullet for the current general downturn in revenue at newspaper companies, but it’s an important part of the revenue picture.
Think of it in personal finance terms: Smart investors know it’s important to have a diverse range of investments. For newspapers, mobile is a great way to diversify, and this investment will definitely pay off in the long term.
With that in mind, I wanted to give you the Cliffs Notes version of the revenue article from our latest development and growth guide, Moving to Mobile. The entire article – plus information on mobile local search and more – is available at www.naa.org/mobile.
Here are a few takeaways:
Mobile advertising, frankly, is in an awkward spot right now. Advertisers know that mobile is going to be an important part of the advertising mix, but statistically solid ways to measure mobile advertising effectiveness just don’t exist (yet).
In addition, consumers are mostly still wary of getting ads on their mobile phone (especially because many people pay for each text message they receive. But the theoretical usefulness of mobile geotargeted ads can’t be denied.
At first glance, migrating advertising to the mobile platform looks easy – just plot a newspaper’s banner ad on the newspaper’s mobile site, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Here are some considerations: screen resolution, file size, processor speed, the phone’s OS (Windows, Palm, etc.), functionality… the list goes on.
Fortunately, 91 percent of the handsets fall into four very simple, standard display widths. And the Mobile Marketing Association has some great resources to help navigate those.
Other mobile advertising options include CSCs (common short codes), which are related to text-messaging; QR (quick response) codes – a.k.a. 2-D barcodes – which allow camera-phone owners to take a photo of a code that brings them to a Web site; coupons; image-recognition ads; classified ad models that incorporate any or all of the above options; social-mobile ads and video.
We’ve got information and advice on all these formats and more in the revenue section of Moving to Mobile. Click here.
* The Online Publishing Update is a thrice-weekly e-mail newsletter that is available with Digital Media Federation membership. To learn more about the federation, click here.
August 20, 2008
NAA Webinars Next Week: Local Search, Social Media Revenue
 The Newspaper Association of America has scheduled two new Webinars focusing on digital media revenues.
Local Search: Strategies for Audience and Revenue Growth
Tuesday, August 26, 2 p.m. ET
After much experimentation, newspapers are finding new ways to serve smaller advertisers online, some through enhanced local search capabilities, some through SEO services and others through interactive business directories. This Webinar will explore two successful models for capturing non-traditional advertisers, one from a small-market newspaper and one from a larger market organization. Register here.
More on local search is avaiable through NAA's recent Digital Edge report, also called "Local Search: Strategies for Audience and Revenue Growth."
Social Media: Grow Revenue Profitability Online with an Audience-Focused Business Model
Wednesday, August 27, 2 p.m. ET
Social media is a hot topic right now, with media companies experimenting with their own social media tools, and partnering with companies like LinkedIn and Twitter. With so many outlets for social engagement, most media companies are left wondering “Where do I begin and what's the best strategy?” A leading expert in the field will help you understand how to grow revenue profitability with an online audience-focused strategy. Register here.
August 19, 2008
Drudge Holds No. 1 Spot in Sessions per User; Pittsburgh, Buffalo Join List
Data from Nielsen Online - July 2008
The Drudge Report held onto the No. 1 spot in July in monthly sessions per user among Nielsen Online’s Top 30 Current Events & Global News Destinations, slipping just slightly from last month to 20.5 sessions per user from 21.2 last month.
In the top 10, Daily Kos slipped a few places, leaving room for Fox News Digital Network to jump into the No. 2 spot. The Deseret Morning News dropped a few notches as well.
Nielsen Online provides these numbers to the Newspaper Association of America on a monthly basis, showing traffic and sessions per person* to the top 30 sites in the “News” category based on July 2008 numbers. It takes into account U.S. home and work Internet usage, and it shows both unique visitors to each brand or channel and sessions per person.
Newspapers
This month, 12 of the top 30 from Nielsen are newspaper companies, up from 10 last month. New newspaper additions to the top 30 were The Buffalo News (3.9 sessions per user) and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (4.0 sessions per user).
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel made the biggest move this month, jumping from 23rd place to 15th. Nielsen Online reported the newspaper now has an average of 5.1 sessions per user.
Other newspaper moves on the list from last month to this month:
- Gannett’s Newspaper Division moved down just slightly, from 13th place to 15th.
- The Star Tribune moved up to 14th place from 15th.
- The New York Times moved to 20th place, down four spots.
- Media General moved up spots to 16th.
- USAToday.com moved down to 28th from 24th.
- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Cox Newspapers remained in 28th and 30th place, respectively.
* Note on the following numbers: Auto-refresh features on Web sites (i.e. when a Web site page reloads automatically) does not increase the number of sessions. For more information about the metrics, go to www.netratings.com
^ Indicates Home and Work audience duplication projections did not meet minimum sample size standards. Combined home and work audience estimates for these sites may exhibit increased variability month-to-month as a result.
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| Brand or Channel |
Sessions per Person |
Unique Audience (000) |
| 1. DrudgeReport.com |
20.5 |
3,254 |
| 2. Fox News Channel |
8.2 |
11,540 |
| 3. CNN Digital Network |
8.1 |
32,977 |
| 4. AOL News |
7.9 |
22,010 |
| 5. Daily Kos ^ |
7.7 |
875 |
| 6. Yahoo! News |
7.2 |
35,225 |
| 7. ksl.com ^ |
6.9 |
973 |
| 8. Google News |
6.3 |
10,776 |
| 9. Netscape |
6.0 |
1,617 |
| 10. MSNBC Digital Network |
5.7 |
37,516 |
| 11. Deseret Morning News ^ |
5.6 |
931 |
| 12. Star Tribune |
5.5 |
1,536 |
| 13. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ^ |
5.1 |
1,311 |
| 14. Media General Newspapers |
5.1 |
1,699 |
| 15. Gannett Newspapers/Newspaper Division |
5.0 |
13,254 |
| 16. TWC News Web Sites ^ |
4.8 |
975 |
| 17. Breitbart.com |
4.3 |
2,743 |
| 18. NYTimes.com |
4.3 |
19,513 |
| 19. Hearst Newspapers Digital |
4.3 |
8,225 |
| 20. Townhall.com |
4.1 |
1,035 |
| 21. WorldNow |
4.1 |
9,070 |
| 22. Newsmax.com |
4.1 |
3,192 |
| 23. Real Clear Politics |
4.1 |
1,033 |
| 24. IB Web Sites |
4.0 |
5,633 |
| 25. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |
4.0 |
1,027 |
| 26. USAToday.com |
3.9 |
10,404 |
| 27. Gannett Broadcasting |
3.9 |
5,010 |
| 28. St. Louis Post-Dispatch ^ |
3.9 |
1,014 |
| 29. The Buffalo News |
3.9 |
417 |
| 30. Cox Newspapers |
3.6 |
5,842 |
NAA Launches MediaXChange Conference
Premier industry event to focus on multiplatform strategies and revenue-generating ideas
 As newspapers refocus their business models toward multiple platforms, the Newspaper Association of America today announced it would hold the first annual NAA mediaXchange, a new conference for industry professionals to share audience and revenue development strategies that have generated growth in print and online. The inaugural conference, a single event that will replace both NAA’s Marketing and NEXPO, marks an increased focus on emerging digital platforms. The event is scheduled for March 9-11, 2009, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.
“NAA’s mediaXchange will offer newspaper professionals a chance to capitalize on results-oriented programming as the industry drives toward multiplatform success,” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. “Speakers from both inside and outside the industry will join attendees to form a marketplace of ideas and strategies to grow advertising, increase audience and generate revenue. This exchange will spread to the show floor as companies serving all facets of the industry – from production and digital platforms to advertising solutions – will offer innovative products and services to help newspapers excel in today’s environment.”
More information on mediaXchange is available in today’s NAA press release.
Related links:
mediaXchange FAQs
mediaXchange site
August 14, 2008
Billboards Yield Page Views in Detroit
A Story from NAA's Circulation Update
This story was included in the Newspaper Association of America’s Circulation Update, a weekly e-newsletter sent to circulation executives.
The Detroit News and the Free-Press used electronic billboards, like the one below, to provide (and promote) breaking news of a story about Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick....
NAA’s New Development & Growth Guide Focuses on Mobile for Newspapers
Today, the Newspaper Association of America's Digital Edge released a new development and growth guide for newspapers – this time focusing on mobile. The guide is available now at www.naa.org/mobile.
August 12, 2008
More Newspapers Twittering
I’ve been out of the country without my computer (or any Web access!) for the past week, and found this in my flooded e-mail inbox when I returned:
This entry from Erica Smith’s graphicdesignr.net shows the June 2008 numbers from newspapers that use the micro-blogging service Twitter to post breaking news or sports updates or otherwise communicate with the audience.
When I wrote about newspapers using Twitter more than a year ago (click here), only a handful of newspapers had jumped in, including The New York Times, The Oregonian, and The (Nashua, N.H.) Telegraph, to name a few. Now, the list is at more than 300 and growing.
With any subscription service, as newspaper people know, there’s “churn.” This seems to be the case with Twitter, too. Similar to text-message alerts, it’s possible that people stop “following” a newspaper’s feed because there are too many messages or just because of the frequently noted Twitter downtimes.
Regardless, it’s encouraging to see that so many newspapers have adopted Twitter because it shows that newspaper digital media executives are really paying attention to whatever might be the “next hot thing”.
Some of the more notable statistics from Smith’s entry (as of early August):
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The number of known newspapers on Twitter, according to Smith, is 303.
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The average number of followers for those 303 newspapers Smith is following on Twitter was 131.85, slightly lower than the month before.
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The New York Times had the most followers with 5,199. USA Today’s Pop Candy had 2,088, and The Wall Street Journal had 1,230. (These are for the main NYT and WSJ feeds; more people have subscribed to topic-specific feeds such as business or politics or breaking news.)
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