Nicomedia

Innovations in Newspapers is a blog written by Juan Antonio Giner (fouder and director of Innovation International Media). Giner clearly stills get excited about print – a rare spark of hope amongst current media commentary – and in his blog lauds innovation caviar while remonstrating with those responsible for what he considers rubbish.

Giner is a prolific poster. While his posts are brief – often photos with a comment or material quoted from other sources – he manages to post numerous times daily.

Giner has a sharp eye for design, and plenty of his posts highlight good front covers and pages, and at times he is not afraid to be critical.

The US Election kept Giner busy – understandably considering what a major media event it was. Lots of posts at Innovations in Newspapers showed Obama front pages from around the world and photos illustrating the spike in demand for newspapers following Obama’s win. This huge interest in election newspapers Giner followed keenly. It was a boost to those arguing for newspapers continued relevance – The Australian reported that Nov 5 editions were selling for upwards of $600 on Ebay.

So what would Giner say about innovation in Australia’s newspapers? While The Age has some great slideshows and multimedia (like the Art Deco piece) and The Australian makes the occasional video, our best broadsheet papers seem to treat innovative content as an aside. The multimedia sections of the the papers’ websites are not adequately signposted. 

Giner uses photos to good effect in his blog – illustrating for example voter turn-out at the election. This photo I think is great (see here for the original post).

While Singapore’s The Strait Times online operation is comparable to any of Australia’s newspapers web presence, Stomp is less concerned with serious news coverage and more focused on capturing the youth demographic. It is not a traditional news service; much of its ‘citizen journalism’ content in the Singapore Seen section is reminiscent of the sort of stories you might see on A Current Affair or Today Tonight  in Australia.

Stomp is moving towards social networking and Club Stomp, its social networking site, is one of the most popular sections of the website. While being sensationalist in tone and content, it is arguable that Stomp is contributing to creating community in Singapore, with its commitment to publishing user-generated content, plus Club Stomp and the popular talkback forums.

Australian newspapers have also developed new sites in an attempt to engage young audiences. One of the regularly cited contributing factors to the demise of the newspaper in modern society is that young people just don’t read them – something of which I was sceptical until I heard a young Triple J talkback caller recently tell Youth Minister Kate Ellis that if the government want to communicate with kids these days it has to be online. Forget newspapers! It struck me perhaps because throughout my youth the Saturday paper has been something of a ritual.

The absence of a young audience spurred Fairfax to develop The Vine. While its focus is on entertainment – music, fashion, films etc. – it does have a News section and invites readers to send in newsworthy content. The Vine’s Community section publishes user-generated content – blogs, photos, video etc. – and seeks to give regular contributors exposure for their work through pages such as Featured Citizen (today it’s The JamTeam but their profile looks a bit thin) and Top Contributors. There is also Vine TV and Vine Radio.

It is a comprehensive site, but I suspect it hasn’t secured as much youth traffic as it would have liked. That could be partly due to a lack of publicity.

It is clear that convergence is the way of the future. The Internet, considered apart from commercial considerations (if that is possible), is the most exciting thing to happen to the media since the printing press. I find it a shame, albeit a necessary one, that the biggest dilemma media companies face is how to make money from this new medium.

Newspaper websites are perfectly placed to cater to an audience that wants ‘convenient news’. While it is true that audiences are fragmenting, it doesn’t have to be at newspapers expense. People value the credibility that comes with established mastheads such as The Australian and The Age, and are likely to go to these sites when they want information they can trust. Those who want media – television, radio and newspapers – to exist just as they did before the World Wide Web are going to be disappointed however. There has to be change, and flexible newsrooms will be the most successful at adapting to the new technology on offer.

These issues and more were discussed by a panel – The Australian’s Campbell Reid, ABC’s Mark Scott, Max Uechtritz and Roy Greenslade, moderated by Sky News’ Helen Dalley – at the Walkley Foundation’s “Future of Journalism” conference earlier in the year, aired on ABC Radio National’s Media Report.

One solution put forward on how to fund quality journalism is commercial diversification – The Guardian and the  Washington Post are examples of publications – the premier mastheads of the companies behind them – that do not run at a significant profit and are subsidised by other investments. Max Uechtritz also suggests that video could become a big earner for media organisations once they learn how to utilise it fully (like the BBC is endeavouring to do).