@DNA2008: Ifra vertical search engine for news publishers launches

Posted by Martin Stabe on 3 March 2008 at 12:42
Tags: DNA2008, Ifra, Journalism, Newspapers

Ifra’s vertical search engine for the newspaper industry launched last week.

The service, announced late last year, provides news and information relevant to the news publishing industry, including Ifra’s own reports as well as partners’ and other news sources.

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@Beyond the Printed Word: Archant geotagging project delayed 9 months

Posted by Martin Stabe on 8 November 2007 at 17:50
Tags: Archant, Ifra, World Digital Publishing Conference, geotagging

The planned geotagging-based relaunch at Archant’s stable of regional newspapers will not go ahead for several months, the according the Norwich-based group’s development director.

Archant’s plan for its newspaper sites was first revealed in May, was originally scheduled to launch late this year, but will now probably only go ahead in the middle of 2008, Ian Davies told the World Digital Publishing conference in Dublin.

Davies told Press Gazette the delays were caused by switching to a new content management system supplier.

Under the company’s plans, all 80 of Archant’s newspaper and magazine titles will operate their print and web operations from a central database.

Journalists will add geographical metadata to the online version of the story, allowing users who enter a postcode to personalise the site to focus on events that occur in a radius around their location.

In addition to facilitating this geographical personalisation, the geotagging approach will allow Archant to rapidly develop new, highly-targeted online-only publications for readers who live in areas just beyond its print distribution footprint.

In his presentation, Davies showed a number of news organisations using Google Maps mashups to put their stories in geographical context, including the crime map produced by Sky News and the “Garden Gobbler” heron-tracking map produced by the Grantham Journal in Lincolnshire.

He demonstrated the web site of the Norwegian newspaper Budstikka as an example of an advanced geotagging-based regional newspaper web site. Another site that have similar functionality is the London-based community news site London SE1.

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@Beyond the Printed Word: The rise of the ‘prosumer’

Posted by Martin Stabe on 8 November 2007 at 13:24
Tags: Ifra, Journalism, World Digital Publishing Conference

Press Gazette is at Ifra’s World Digital Publishing Conference, “Beyond the Printed Word” in Dublin. Some quick notes from this morning’s session:

The future of media

The traditional media will probably survive in a very different type of constellation,” says Prof Dr Jo Groebel, director of the German Digital Institute. Some highlights from his talk:

• The age of uni-media focus is over, especially among the young. People want all type of content on all different platforms. The will key quesion for media companies in the future is will consumers be able to receive essentially the same content on all types of devices? This means mobile, in particular.
• Technology is no replacement for creative talent, which remains rare, but the sheer numbers of people producing user generated content means that a lot of high-quality material will be created. The key professional challenge for established media is to identify the talented UGC creators and integrate them into professionally-produced products.
• Contrary to the widely-held beliefs of journaliists (and expressed repeatedly earlier this week at the Society of Editors conference), consumers do not trust professionally-produced news more than other material on the web. In fact, research shows that they trust it less because they assume professional communicators, including journalists, have an agenda. Community is the most trusted source of infomraiton among young consumers.
• Groebel closes by pointing out that the mobile space is where people are willing to pay for digital content. He says mobile television news might well be a competitor too. He gives the example of Germany’s leading news bulletin, Tagesshau.de, which is now available as a continuously-updated 100-second show, specially edited for mobile with large graphics and tight shots. Sounds a lot like ITN’s continuous mobile news bulletin.

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