Five developments at the intersection of social media, technology and journalism for the week ending Nov. 23.
Most of the big 30 news sites see drops
Editor & Publisher produced a list showing unique visitor numbers year-over-year for the top 30 newspaper Web sites. It wasn't a pretty picture: more than two out of three of the Web sites lost unique users. Of course, a year ago, papers such as the Washington Post were flush with visitors during a historic presidential election. E&P also measured the "average number of sessions per person." Coming out best in that metric was the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with 5.7 sessions per person. As expected, Newsday, which dropped behind a paywall, lost unique users at a 25 percent clip. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, which started charging for some of its Vikings coverage, saw uniques go down 16 percent.
All the news that's fit to link
After a year of experimenting with an alternate home page on NYTimes.com, the Times is pulling the plug on Times Extra. The NYT says that this does not mean it's the end of aggregation efforts in the Times (the company owns and plans to use Blogrunner more). The Times took a somewhat bold step with Times Extra, which linked out to third-party stories. I say "somewhat" because the aggregation wasn't done within the normal home page — readers had to click on a tab to see an alternate home page with the curated links. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Times were to aggregate right on its home page, perhaps using blogrunner.
Just don't call it a "paywall"
Zachary M. Seward is using the Nieman Journalism Lab blog to keep Steve Brill's feet to the fire over the pay-for-news concept. Brill launched Journalism Online in April with Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery, with the aim of changing the business model for news publications from ad-supported to subscription-supported. Brill has changed the way he talks about his business (he no longer uses the word "paywall"), and even has changed his ideas on how the models will work, as Seward details in the blog post. As the economy has leveled out some, newspapers have seemed less keen to go to a full paywall, which might have something to do with the changing tone and models. Brill commented on the post, saying that changing the model shows that his company is learning as it goes. "We’re trying to create a whole new busines model, so we’d better be prepared to learn," Brill wrote.
Google News' advice to publishers
Google lands in this roundup column a lot because, for better or worse, Google is important to the news business. When you have time, I suggest you take a look at this long interview with Josh Cohen of Google News, who talked to Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland.com. Cohen bluntly tells publishers to stop thinking about their online arms as just an extension of print, and he reiterated that Google is a technology company, not a publishing company, so Google is not looking to become the Hulu of news. He offers advice on linking, story writing and engagement. Cohen says newspapers should experiment with storytelling structure that is similar to Wikipedia, where stories reside on a single page that's constantly updated. Coincidentally, Steve Myers interviewed Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for Poynter (also worth a read) about whether Wikipedia competes with news organizations.
What social media editors are up to
Craig Silverman interviewed four social media managers, a very new position in the industry, at four big media outlets for PBS's Mediashift. Silverman interviewed The Globe and Mail's Matthew Ingram, BusinessWeek's Shirley Brady, NPR's Andy Carvin and The New York Times' Jennifer Preston. All four offered lessons learned and challenges ahead as they push their organizations into unchartered territory.
Bonus this week: A giggle
I don't usually add a sixth item to the roundup, but this should make you smile.
