Newspapers Looking for Solutions Online

Opinion: bloggers are not just a cheap news source

Local newspapers might benefit more from having healthy relationships with citizen journalists and bloggers, instead of seeing them as cheaper sources, according to Guardian.co.uk's Dave Hill.

 "Good local media are important to the neighbourhoods they serve and could be great innovators, showing the way forward for journalism. In an age of rapid change in every corner of Britain they have the potential to tell grassroots stories that are not only significant in their own right but may have wider implications that national counterparts are unlikely to find or tell so well," he wrote.

He condemns the way that local British papers (namely London's Hackney Gazette) use bloggers' material to write up some articles. He mentioned that newspapers like the Gazette are allowed to refrain from mentioning the source of material (which may be a blog) but that blogs may not be "worthy of this courtesy."

Tips on "citizen" photography

Non-professional photography gets a boost, as the motto "right place, right time" becomes the guideline. Guardian.co.uk blogger Ravi Somaiyahas shown that it doesn't take much to snap photos of celebrities, relating back to the Getty Images-Flickr deal that might turn the everyday person into a photo source for publications.

"Because the imagery is not shot for commercial services, there is more authenticity. Advertisers are looking for authenticity," said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and chief executive of Getty Images.

"Citizen journalism" such as including yourself alongside a celebrity may "work" better because it shows interaction, said Rob Bennet, a New York Times photographer and Photojournalism professor at Columbia University...

US: New York Times and USA Today site visitors increased since June 2007

More than 80% of top US newspaper sites experienced increased unique visitors since year-on-year since June 2007. Nielsen published a report on the average times that users spend on newspaper sites. 

Time that users spent online grew for sites like the New York Times, USA Today, Newsday and Ottoway Newspapers. Time spent online nearly doubled for the Houston Chronicle,  the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 

However, a decrease was seen on the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Furthemore, nearly half of the top 30 sites reported a decline in time spent on their sites. 

Below is the list of the time that users spent in June 2008, compared to June 2007, taken from Editor & Publisher:

NYTimes.com -- 0:29:00 -- 0:27:34
USATODAY.com -- 0:14:38 -- 0:12:45
washingtonpost.com -- 0:14:45 -- 0:18:34
Wall Street Journal Online -- 0:09:41 -- 0:15:57
LA Times -- 0:08:59 -- 0:10:24

Boston.com -- 0:08:24 -- 0:18:47
Chicago Tribune -- 0:07:30 -- 0:18:38
New York Post -- 0:06:45 -- 0:07:14
Daily News Online Edition -- 0:07:01 -- 0:05:34
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 0:15:37 -- 0:12:18

Newsday -- 0:04:03 -- 0:03:46
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 0:12:48 -- 0:21:12
Chicago Sun-Times -- 0:08:11 -- 0:07:20
International Herald Tribune -- 0:04:00 -- 0:02:12
The Politico -- 0:09:40 -- 0:05:04

Village Voice Media -- 0:03:45 -- 0:04:16
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 0:05:18 -- 0:04:55
The Houston Chronicle -- 0:29:50 -- 0:16:00
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 0:11:02 -- 0:06:01
The Seattle Times -- 0:09:10 -- 0:11:33

Star Tribune -- 0:30:18 -- 0:31:00
MercuryNews.com -- 0:04:03 -- 0:07:21
Azcentral.com -- 0:23:07 -- 0:26:28
tampabay.com -- 0:06:48 -- 0:09:39
MLive.com -- 0:05:27 -- 0:14:01

The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 0:04:08 -- 0:06:58
NJ.com -- 0:10:24 -- 0:07:25
Ottaway Newspapers -- 0:05:22 -- 0:04:41
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- 0:30:27 -- 0:17:54

KansasCity.com -- 0:07:39 -- 0:10:51

US: Massive job cuts continue

Dubbed "the Midsummer Massacre," in the past two months nearly 4,000 jobs have been lost in the US newspaper industry...