This is one of the messages NAA has been trying to get across for the past few years, and it’s nice to hear someone else say it.

Acknowledging a really unpleasant June for the hundreds of newspaper employees who have been laid off while noting the online success and overall importance of newspapers, The New York Times Outpost blogger Timothy Egen wrote:

What started as layoffs and buyouts is edging toward closures and bankruptcies.

And here’s the great paradox: All of this bad news is coming at a time when the audience and reach of many newspapers has never been greater. The Internet may kill the daily newspaper as we know it, but it’s allowed some papers to increase their readership by tenfold.

Those who revel in the life-threatening trauma that newspapers are going through, saying they brought it upon themselves by being too liberal, too sensationalistic, too banal — choose your insult — miss the point. People are not deserting these complex and contradictory summaries of our collective existence. Not by any stretch.

Measured purely by number of readers in all formats, many newspapers have never been more successful.

The rest of the blog entry is here.

The possibilities for user-generated copy are as wide open as the editors and newspaper executives contemplating its use allow. While it must be acknowledged that there are stories, photos and reporting that only a professional can perform, it should also be recognized there are countless stories and photos out there a seasoned professional would ignore or choose not to report, but the consumer of a newspaper would find interesting and relevant to their daily lives.

…

The obvious, near-term use for user-generated copy for mainstream media will be to produce copy easily and at low cost that is relevant to their readers. It is important to note that user-generated copy must be treated just as any other copy in the newspaper environment, which means it may not be the staff-cutting tool accountants envision.

 

Editors still need to fact check and copy edit, and indeed need to be more diligent with copy coming from people they do not know and trust. There can be cost savings, but more importantly, by making readers part of the news gathering community there will be more feet on the ground finding significant stories as well as heart warming community features.

Late last week, MediaShift blogger Mark Glaser wrote a solid piece on the state of online video advertising and ideas with promise, such as making ads useful and relevant.

Glaser wrote:

Local news sites also have an opportunity to sell and shoot videos in their communities to kick-start video ads. Eric Janssen, director of online for the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, ticked off the various video ad formats his site had tried: remnant ads with banner positions, sponsorships with pre-roll ads, customized content sponsorships, advertorial gift guides and content, pre-rolls, post-rolls and overlays. But what had worked the best?

The advertorial formats….

Find out why on MediaShift.

Want more information on online video advertising?

NAA is hosting a webinar about this subject with experts from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Borrell Associates. More below:

Online Video Advertising: Where, When and How to Maximize Revenue
Thursday, July 17, 3 p.m. Eastern

Online video advertising is growing and changing – that much is clear. What’s less clear for newspaper companies is how to leverage this new medium to increase revenue. According to a 2008 Borrell Associates local online revenue survey, which studied more than 3,000 local Web operations, video is the fastest growing segment of local online advertising. Many newspapers are commanding this space in their local market, but there is plenty of room to grow. This event will include the latest information from Borrell Associates on the projections for online video advertising growth. You’ll also hear about some of the best practices in newspaper online video advertising that will help you maximize revenue at your own newspaper. Online registration will be available shortly.

Speakers:
Peter Conti, Senior Vice President, Borrell Associates, Inc.
Jeremy Fain, Senior Director of Industry Initiatives & Services, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)

 Periodically, we publish the Online Publishing Update here on the Digital Edge Blog. The Online Publishing Update is a thrice-weekly e-mail newsletter that is delivered to members of the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Media Federation. It contains information about the latest in digital media that may be of interest to newspaper executives. It also includes announcements on new NAA products and services.  

The blogging has been light, admittedly, the past week or two because I’ve been working on this.

Yes, another report from the Edge – this time on user-generated content and a few Web 2.0 tools. Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo Inc. conducted a study for the Newspaper Association of America that looked at several types of UGC through the eyes of consumers in five U.S. markets: Atlanta, Denver, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Tampa.

The study looks at current UGC and Web 2.0 tool usage in those markets, and – more importantly – identifies they type of UGC of most interest to consumers and the enhancements that will have the most impact on driving usage.

Unfortunately, featuring these UGC and Web 2.0 tools (and the enhancements that drive usage) aren’t enough. It’s the opposite of “If you build it, they will come.”  This study found that if you build it and your site visitors don’t know about it, then they’re not going to use it.

With every type of UGC and with every Web 2.0 tool in this study, there was one central conclusion: Awareness of UGC features on a newspaper’s Web site has a definite, positive impact on future intent to use those features. This underscores the importance of involving the marketing department – and anyone who touches house ads, promos, photo captions, the newspaper site home page or any other bit of the site – in an awareness and outreach campaign.

The study is available at www.naa.org/ugcopportunities.

P.S.  Next week, I’ll be excerpting from the opinion pieces we asked a few media gurus to write in connection with our report on UGC. We asked these people to write a page or two about where they believe the opportunities are for newspapers with UGC.

P.P.S.  Tomorrow’s Online Publishing Update will be here on the Digital Edge blog.

The Northwest News Group’s McHenryCountySports.com has done very well connecting teenagers to the newspaper company through a subject that interests them. The local prep sports site includes articles, comprehensive statistics and a lot of unique video, and it has has grown steadily more popular since it launched in 2004. Learn more about the site in this Audience Building Initiative report (available through Growing Audience).

Before you go grocery shopping this weekend, play with this innovative online feature from washingtonpost.com.

The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com set about covering the topic of childhood obesity in new ways that would help readers not only understand the issue, but help them tackle the problem head-on. A key part of this was the Virtual Grocery Store. The site features allows people to choose among similar products at a virtual store to see how careful shopping can make a significant dent in the volume of unhealthy ingredients brought home.

Learn more about this project in the latest Snapshot from the Edge, guest written by washingtonpost.com Lifestyles Editor Stacey Palosky.

And, last but certainly not least, take a look at our new report on user-generated content opportunities fof newspapers.

Awareness and familiarity are the main stumbling blocks to growing usage of user-generated content (UGC) and Web 2.0 tools on newspaper sites. As familiarity and awareness increase – through aggressive promotion – so will Web site visitors’ contributions and usage of newspaper UGC features.

These are the conclusions of a new report from NAA outlining specific opportunities for newspaper Web sites in these areas. The report is based on detailed surveys conducted in five U.S. markets about people’s familiarity with and usage of UGC features and Web 2.0 tools. (We'll have more about the report in a blog entry soon.)

The full report is available at www.naa.org/ugcopportunities.

The sites got ratings of “A” through “F” based on:  1) strength of content, 2) ease of use and navigation, 3) use of new web technology including comments sections, message boards, and multimedia, 4) lay-out 5) presence of a strong set of current advertisers, and 6) the size of their audiences based on measurements from the Compete website visitor database for April.

The most important conclusion from this review of online newspaper sites is how uneven the quality is from property to property. Some of the smaller papers which probably have modest resources have done an extremely good job of engaging readers, using the best tools of the internet, and putting up content which adds to the experience of the subscriber to the physical newspaper. Some of these sites are likely to draw multiple visits from the same person throughout the day, the Holy Grail of online content behavior. Other sites seem to be designed to keep readers away. There is clearly not much benchmarking going on in the online part of the newspaper industry, and with the increasing risk that more newspapers will fail, not using a standardized measurement of excellence for improvement is a real shame.

• 43.81 pages per person
• 39:51 time per person
• 7.91 visits per person