I have a bunch of searches set up to track the evolution of online news job postings. In particular I am looking for job postings that mention the words “real time”, “monitor site traffic”, “story placement”, “story trends” and other word combinations that capture the convergence of editor, web producer and stats geek.
Similar to the portadista job role I posted and reviewed last year, this one for a site manager at the TheStreet.com just popped up. I have highlighted the interesting chunk.
It is good to see big media sites starting to realize the value of using data and real time metrics to provide content decision support. We are big believers of this growing trend, which is why we are building a business around delivering real time analysis and insight to online news publishers via our service publishflow™.
This is the most interesting video I have seen yet of all of the iPad magazine concept videos. It is a stellar mock-up of a tablet based magazine from Bonnier R&D presented by BERG.
Some interesting gesture movements to activate advanced content interaction features. Big challenge to do so in a way that does not compromise the reading/viewing experience.
I found this video via our friends over at specle.net. They operate a real time ad spec engine for publishers and advertisers. I had occasion to meet up with their founder a year ago and I am big fan of their service.
It is one of the first semi-mainstream articles I have come across that deconstructs an article into a collection of assembled words. And in the authors opinion, all too often articles have way too many words that do not add any value to the story at hand.
The value of a word, a collection of words, an article and even a publication is in the eye of the beholder, so I am not going to rehash this authors take on things. You can read the article and see some interesting examples he uses of wasted words.
What I would like to highlight is the last passage of the article, which in my opinion addresses the actual business case of deconstructing stories using the “cost of words” (measurable) versus the “value of words” (subjective).
“On the first day of my first real job in journalism—on the copy desk at the Royal Oak Daily Tribune in Royal Oak, Michigan—the chief copy editor said, “Remember, every word you cut saves the publisher money.” At the time, saving the publisher money didn’t strike me as the world’s noblest ideal. These days, for anyone in journalism, it’s more compelling.”
It is interesting (for me at least) to think of news publishers as speculators whose job is to invest in words. Sometimes you go long and sometimes you go short. The trick is to be long or short on the right things. Whether investor or publisher, that challenge remains.
Most of the newsrooms we work with are using traditional web analytics services like Omniture, Webtrends and Google Analytics to quantify their traffic and page impression stats on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Nothing shocking here, pretty much par for the course.
But it is rare that we see newsrooms really studying their analytics data on an hourly or daily basis to uncover new insight about visitor behaviour, story preferences and overall engagement with authors. There is a ton of information trapped in traditional web analytics packages that can help newsrooms become more efficient and make more money.
It has long been our vision at Kontexto, that newsrooms will need to start using traditional ‘return on investment’ business metrics for every story they create. Like every other business that makes decisions based on future returns, newsrooms can be no different if they wish to survive.
Companies like Demand Media, Huff Post and others are onto this, but AOL is the first big media brand embracing this approach and you can get up to speed on it in a brief, but timely article from Businessweek ‘AOL Moves to Build Tech ‘Newsroom of the Future’… CEO Tim Armstrong deploys software that helps journalists collaborate on articles readers seem to want, then reports the traffic they generate.
They are using stats, stats and more stats to determine what topics, stories and authors are successful over time. But more importantly, it uncovers what is not working over time so adjustments can be made.
“ROI”, “efficient allocation of resources” and “market driven story creation” may seem cold and dry, but I want as many newsrooms as possible to be around 3, 5, 20 years from now and using stats to help make sure this happens is something we (and AOL and a growing list) believe in.
Watch out for a big transition to data driven reporting in the coming years. Can’t wait.
Some positive market stats on the international news front released this week by comScore.
Some highlight on Indian online news growth…
-Online news is a fast-growing market segment among the increasingly technology-oriented Indian population.
-The number of online news and information consumers in India surged 37 percent in the past year, more than double the rate of growth of the total online audience in India.
-A look at the most visited news destinations in India revealed that local brands make up a significant portion of the top news sites.
-Multi-national brands Yahoo! and New York Times ranked as the most visited destinations in the news category
-In October, an average visitor to the news/information category spent 22 minutes on news sites and consumed 38 pages of content.
Slowly, the winds of change are blowing into newsrooms around the globe.
20minutos.es, a popular Spanish language news website has just hired a full time home page editor “Portadista” that is responsible for the performance of the home page and tracking the most popular stories in each column, using their own software to show real time performance stats.
It may seem like a mundane role, but one that will become the most coveted job in newsrooms around the world in the next few years. The one person that is making decisions in real time about which content gets high visibility and using click data to verify those decisions.
In our discussions with newsrooms of all sizes over the past 12 months, it is clear there is a large market demand for real time data that can direct editorial choices, optimal link placement and measure real time story performance metrics.
The only thing that has been slowing adoption down is the lack of software to do this at scale (this is where our real time web analytics service buzzflow™ comes in) and hiring the proper staff to manage real time editorial management on websites. Both of these things are changing quickly.
I managed to find a fuzzy screen cap of what seems to be a one hour view of link performance on the home page of 20minutos.es. You can see the head and long tail of links and images that were clicked on and in what amount over the course of 60 minutes.
Real time data driven newsrooms are here to stay and this is going to be a very exciting space to play in for content and analytics freaks such as ourselves. Plus, who wouldn’t want the job title of “Portadista” on their business card, way cooler than mine.
I was meeting with the folks at The Guardian a few days ago and an interesting question was thrown out on the table asking if the presentation of online news can provide a competitive advantage over time. This could be quantified in several ways including attracting new users, longer time spent on site, more click throughs on articles or higher ad payouts for new layouts.
The main concern was that even if money and time is invested in coming up with new and innovative ways to present online news, it is so easy to copy, that the advantage would be short lived. What is more valuable investing in content creation or content display?
They are one in the same in my opinion and both have to be brilliant to win.
My feeling is that innovative news displays are mandatory to differentiate content and engage users. Good ideas will always be nabbed, copied and most of the time improved upon. But that is the nature of service innovation and not doing something new for fear of it being copied means you will just miss out on delivering new readership opportunities. Some that will suck and some that will work.
I am going to use the New York Times Skimmer service as an example of an offering that attempts to display the same underlying article set in different ways. Although there are 7 unique displays for the Skimmer service, three somewhat unique ones are shown below using the Dealbook blog content:
OK, so 8 hours later from the last blog post 80% of US Consumers Won’t Pay For Online News The Boston Consulting Group has entered the ring to declare that “Most” are willing to pay for online news.
“Most” = sub 50% of Brits and Yanks, but as a standard unit of measurement “Most” is open for interpretation of course. But, we have to throw all the data possible on the table.
At this point I have only one question to put me at ease, would Rupert Murdoch pay for online news?
Will they pay? Won’t they pay? The back and forth ping pong ball debate over whether or not US consumers will pay for online news continues to draw media attention.
Regardless of what side of the net you jump to in this debate, Forrester Research has just published some findings that on first glance seem overwhelmingly in favour of the “Won’t Pay” team.
Why won’t users pay for online news? Well, 20% say they would. So there are some conditions that will lead to “paid for” online news working. Whether that is enough or a meaningful amount in the aggregate remains to be seen. However, type of news, delivery of news, ease of payment etc… can all lead to people paying for online news. I know they have all worked on us at Kontexto. And for the 80% that say they won’t pay for online news, maybe they just have not had the right conditions yet to do so.
You can see more information on the report at this link below:
