Newspaper websites' traffic continues to gain

In other news, newspaper websites continue to show impressive traffic gains -- up 21% in September, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Perhaps more significant were increases in unique visitors, total page views and amount spent on sites. Almost two-thirds of all Internet users visited newspaper sites, the trade group reported.

To paraphrase the Realtor's slogan, it's "Content, Content, Content" that attracts visitors. And trusted content.

Washington Post eschews paywall -- for now

Despite reports of success with the New York Times' paywall, the nation's other elite newspaper (Murdoch papers needn't apply as long as partisan fingers are on the throttle), the Washington Post indicated that it isn't considering a paywall.

Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth was quoted on Politico as saying: “For us, we believe at the moment it doesn’t make sense. We are making a bet for the long term. We want to be around as The Washington Post for a long time and many generations to come, and at the moment, we think that the best way to do that is to have a free website that is open to everybody and attract as many people as we can to spend as much time as they can with our journalism, and assume that that will bring them back for more.”

The story on Politico delves deeply into the current economics of the Post, indicating that the newspaper may opt for a paywall in the future, quoting Weymouth as saying it charges for editions on a Kindle and plans to charge for its iPad app.

Tablets whet appetite for news, study finds

Tablet users -- no surprise here -- are more active consumers of news than they were using other forms of content delivery (I hate calling stories content and newspapers a delivery system, but that's what they are), according to a Poynter report.

Findings include:

• 63 percent of people said tablets lead them to rely more on traditional news providers and less on news aggregators.
• Tablets enhance the appetite for news. Fifty-nine percent said they access national or local news more often since they got a tablet. Seventy-eight percent said they follow a larger volume of news stories, and a greater variety of topics than before.

It, along with the earlier Times' report, indicates that the public doesn't really care how they get their news. They just want it. I've also felt for some time that exposure to news in any form whets the appetite for more. This is proof, I believe.

Despite paywall, Times' readership rises

Despite setting up a paywall, the New York Times reports that Internet readership actually rose 2.3% as measured by unique visitors. Page views have head steady in the U.S. although they have dropped overseas, according to Jim Roberts, Times assistant managing editor for digital.

Look for this to increase the pressure for paywalls. Rumor has it that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will move that way soon.

Facebook officials say new design helps advertisers

For a long time I've been waiting for evidence that online branding advertising works. Click-troughs work, although evidence is spotty on that, but I've not seen any evidence that branding work.

Facebook officials are claiming that their new design will "boost sharing activity and create new opportunities for advertisers." The idea is that the timeline will allow advertisers to link to products my friends "like" and are purchasing. We assume that will push me to buy (in fact, Facebook officials said a friend's "liking" a product increased the chances I will use it by 51 percent). Still no hard evidence.

Wall Street protesters turn to dead-tree technology

Interesting choice for the Wall Street protesters who felt their story wasn't getting told. They started a print newspaper. Certainly they've had plenty of new media "ink," lots of videos on YouTube, blogs and other electronic publicity.

But, when it came to generating buzz, they turned back to print.

70% of Americans read or visit newspaper sites weekly

A couple of years ago Marquette's Communication College sponsored a visit from a media "futurist" who said that newspapers had something valuable going for them that other media missed. It was, she said, the trust of their audience.

I remembered her comment while reading of the latest National Newspaper Association survey that indicated 70 percent of American had read either a printed newspaper or its online version in the past week. That's a pretty high number, but believable because it supports data passed along by individual newspaper companies.

The NNA said the high reader/viewership is "because newspapers still represent the most trusted source of news in America"

The survey also supported by observation -- go into any coffee shop and look at the people reading newspapers and scanning online news sites.

Some clues to newspaper success

Some studies are more valuable than others. Results from a 50-state tour of newspapers, I think, is very valuable. Husband and wife journalists Paul Steinle and Sara Brown took the tour, and reported their findings at a panel at the recent SPJ conference.

“Print is not dead,” Brown said. “We didn’t talk to anybody who believed that newspapers would be dead in the next 10-15 years.”

They didn't come away with any grand plan to insure success, but noted some qualities that work. Among them: Market size matters. Local news and watchdog reporting are indispensable assets.

Brown said that among the more successful smaller papers, the couple found several key characteristics that included a strong emphasis on local news, an ongoing commitment to watchdog reporting, fostering community dialogue and being a good organizational citizen through public service initiatives.

Suddenly, e-books are hot items

Newspapers have been incredibly slow in adapting to the digital age, but we're beginning to see progress. One application that shows potential is for newspapers and other media publications to adapt their content into virtually instantaneous (and inexpensive) e-books.

It clearly makes sense for news organizations that are generating a lot of content to compile them into e-books, which are generally shorter, cheaper and quicker to produce. Recent e-books have been produced by Huffington Post, The New Yorker, ABC News, The Boston Globe, Politico and Vanity Fair.

Let's see if the Journal Sentinel produces one celebrating the Brewers' climb toward a pennant.

PolitiFact franchises growing

Let's give the Journal Sentinel its due: it was ahead of the curve with its adopting the controversial PolitiFact ratings. The system was created by the St. Petersburg Times, which franchised it to the Milwaukee newspaper and four others.

Although its ratings have been attacked by virtually everyone (it's too easy on Republicans was one charge; now some Republicans say it's too hard on them with Democrats criticizing claiming that now that the recall elections are over, it tells the truth -- once again proving that the media can't win), it's been so popular that the system is now expanding its franchisees nationwide. It's a good idea, and I'm glad to see it growing.

Media companies -- but not advertisers -- embrace mobile technology

Several years ago I was at a conference where one of the new media types dominating the speaking roles was extolling his newest toy -- an early version of the smart phone. "This is the future," I remember him saying, holding up a phone with a tiny stream of text. I don't want to read my news on that tiny screen; it'll take all day to read a story, I remember thinking.

Flash forward and here I was sitting in a doctor's office reading the Guardian newspaper's lead story on a tiny screen. It still was slow and inefficient, but mobile has made it's place in the new media world in which we live.

A new report by Online Media Daily indicates that publishers are quickly adapting with more than a quarter of them offering mobile applications -- a doubling in the last year. The problem, as it is with all digital media, is advertising presence.

Online Media says that ad presence remains very low, which makes sense giving the small screen. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offers tiny ads at the bottom of the screen, but tiny is the operative word. They barely show up, and still are offensive giving the small amount of real estate available.

It's an evolving technology (and the smart phone is vastly inferior to the tablet as a vehicle for media), but where I once disdained the very thought of trying to make sense of such limited text options, I now use it. So who knows what the future might bring.

Newspaper industry shrinkage expected to continue

Continued consolidation. Fewer reporters. Fewer papers. Fewer owners. More money. That's a forecast for the newspaper industry from Dean Singleton, NewsMedia executive chairman who has long predicted extreme industry consolidation.

In an interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, Singleton said he had that vision 15 years ago when his company wasn't in the top 10 nationally in circulation. Today, it's number two.

Singleton said he didn't expect the industry to die -- just continue consolidation.