Digital Trend Day

Bright future for web TV

Tue, 08 May 2007 16:40:23 CST

"I think web TV in the future may overtake regular TV because users can choose what they want to watch when they want to watch it," says Ričardas Baltaduonis, IT director for Lietuvos Rytas, Lithuania's national daily. "I see a bright future for web TV," he adds.

Baltaduonis says his newspaper, which is the national daily of Lithuania (circulation: 60,000), has four journalists doing local video news online in addition to using AP videos.

Where's the money?

Tue, 08 May 2007 17:43:15 CST

“I think it's very troubling that no one is making any money at this, and I don’t see how we are going to in two or three years," says participant Martha Riemsma, manager of multimedia at Wegener Dagbladen Multimedia in the Netherlands. "I think newspapers will still make money for the next five or 10 years, but then what?”

Creating content

Tue, 08 May 2007 17:02:03 CST

Clarence St. Chang, senior correspondent and executive content producer for The Straits Times Interactive, Singapore, discusses the multiple changes that his company has gone through in the past couple of years, including switching their website from free to a paid-for model.

The Straits Times runs four or five self-generated, self-packaged local vodcasts that vary in length from 1.5 to 4 minutes. They are doing this with six reporters-turned-video-editors and two cameramen.

User-generated journalism?

Tue, 08 May 2007 16:33:25 CST

Moderator Melanie Shah asks Ant�nio Torres Pereira about user-generated content. “We have to be careful," he says. "A common citizen is not able to do journalism. They are able to send us information – if there’s a car crash or whatever, but that’s not journalism. Journalism is something more.”

Torres Pereira presentation

Tue, 08 May 2007 16:18:48 CST

The presentation by Ant�nio Torres Pereira, head of research and new products at Impresa, Lisbon, is available for downloading as a non-printable PDF file (935kb). Conference participants will be given access to printable versions of the presentations soon after the conference concludes.

How long does it take?

Tue, 08 May 2007 16:25:21 CST

"How much time do your people spend making a clip of 3-4 minutes?" participant Ralf Ressmann, head of Internet operations at Switzerland-based Coop Presse, asks speaker Ant�nio Torres Pereira.

"It depends on the type of clip. If it's from an interview, it could take half an hour to an hour. If it's about a car crash, it could be done much quicker," says Torres Pereira. "It depends on the content. If you want to make a really good story, you might take three to four hours. It really depends on what you are trying to do. I can’t say five minutes or 10 or an hour."

Distributing video

Tue, 08 May 2007 16:16:23 CST

Ant�nio Torres Pereia of Impresa, Lisbon, Portugal, discusses video distribution through multiple platforms and how his company has done this.

Preparing summaries

Tue, 08 May 2007 15:28:01 CST

Laurel Brunner, a newspaper techniques contributor and the publisher of Spindrift, is writing summaries of today's presentations. The summaries will be available on this multiblog later this week.

Motivating contributors

Tue, 08 May 2007 15:23:56 CST

Carl Rauch, executive project manager at Styria Medien AG, Graz, Austria, asks speaker Jakob Andersson how Aftonbladet motivates users to contribute content. Andersson says this isn’t really a problem because people like contributing videos.

Content provider

Tue, 08 May 2007 14:43:16 CST

Ola Scholander, head of content, for Stockholm, Sweden-based Kamera Content AB, is in Amsterdam to demonstrate his company's video content services for newspapers.

Likes video focus

Tue, 08 May 2007 14:38:26 CST

Participant Sanda Loncar, content and production manager for Vecernji List, Croatia, says she likes the conference so far. "I haven't heard anything revolutionary, but I like the focus on video because my company is also trying to widen our video offering and there are have been some small but useful tips."

Reports of my death

Tue, 08 May 2007 12:45:30 CST

Speaker Jonathan Landman shows a sampling of some video clips that The New York Times has created, including excerpts from their video obituary of well-known columnist Art Buchwald. Buchwald's death had been expected for several months, and here the humourist announces his own death via video.

Market overview

Tue, 08 May 2007 13:10:06 CST

Speaker Tomasz J�sefacki, head of the internet Division, Agora, Poland, gives an overview of the Polish market, which shows why his company has an obvious interest in this market:

There are 13.4 million users (which represents 39 percent market penetration). The online ad market had a 4.5 percent share of the ad pie in 2006, which was US$ 93 million in 2006 (48 percent year-on-year growth). The estimate for 2007 is US$ 124 million (33 percent year-on-year growth). And 49.9 percent of all advertising spending goes to TV.

Managing expectations

Tue, 08 May 2007 12:51:10 CST

Moderator Michael Nederlof asks speaker Jonathan Landman of The New York Times, "What are your biggest challenges?"

Landman replies:
1) Scaling this as it grows;
2) The same economic concerns as everyone else; and
3) Managing expectations in the newsroom -- getting people excited about something and then having to tell them we’re sorry, but we don’t have enough resources to help them, is a problem.

Coffee break

Tue, 08 May 2007 12:00:18 CST

Participants enjoy a coffee break and time to talk with colleagues.

Questions continue

Tue, 08 May 2007 11:54:44 CST

Speaker Bas Broekhuizen continues to field questions from several interested participants during the coffee break.

The business case

Tue, 08 May 2007 10:49:40 CST

Speaker Randy Covington, director of Newsplex Training Centre South Carolina, citing Piper Jaffray, makes the business case for taking concrete steps towards video on the web:
- Online advertising is projected to grow 21 percent per year over the next four years.
- Global revenue to reach $81 billion by 2011.
- Video ads will drive the next major growth.

Today's moderators

Tue, 08 May 2007 10:34:25 CST

Michael Nederlof, founder of Skoeps of the Netherlands, and Melanie Shah, business development manager at Ifra, the moderators for Digital Trend Day, welcome the participants at the start of today's event.

Few empty seats

Tue, 08 May 2007 10:32:25 CST

More than 100 participants from 26 countries are in Amsterdam to take part in Digital Trend Day.

Co-organisers

Tue, 08 May 2007 10:21:07 CST

Tom Corbett, INMA project manager, and Inge van Gaal, European coordinator for INMA. INMA co-organised today's conference with Ifra.

Coffee and conversation

Tue, 08 May 2007 09:54:33 CST

Participants enjoy coffee and time to talk with colleagues this morning before the start of Digital Trend Day.

Multiblogger

Tue, 08 May 2007 09:50:14 CST

Brian Veseling, senior editor of Ifra's magazine "newspaper techniques," is covering today's event using a digital camera and a Nokia N-90 cellphone equipped with a 2-megapixel camera.

Registration

Tue, 08 May 2007 09:37:21 CST

Participants begin arriving for today's conference.

Expert advice

Tue, 08 May 2007 10:50:17 CST

Step-by-step advice for newspapers planning to offer video on the web is contained in this article by conference speaker Randy Covington, director of Ifra Newsplex (USA) and a veteran TV news director. Download the article from the December 2005 issue of Ifra's "newspaper techniques" magazine.

The article is also available in German and French by contacting Anton Jolkovski, Ifra digital publishing manager, at ajolkovski@ifra.com.

Mobile publishing

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:23:55 CST

This is not your average weblog. Web logs are a kind of online diary or journal increasingly popular with individuals as an outlet for personal expression. There are an estimated 1.8 million currently active on the Internet, according to Blogcensus.net, Blogcount and other sources. The typical web log, or blog as they are called in Internet speak, consists of postings in chronological order, the most recent first, about whatever topic or person the site focuses on. Blogs are typically updated from several times a day to once every few days. Posting are usually made from a computer using software that does not require much if any technical skill. People browsing through blogs often are able to insert their own comments in response to the blogger's.

Multiblogs are a particular type of blog designed to work with mobile phones, especially phones with cameras. Instead of using a computer, postings are created by sending a multimedia message or email from the phone to an online address tied to the blog. When the email arrives at a service such as TextAmerica, its subject line is automatically turned into a headline for the new posting and the message text becomes the posting itself. Any attached picture is inserted into the posting as a thumbnail linked to the full-size image.

A bit more expertise is required for multiblogging than regular blogging because text has to be input using the phone's 9-digit keypad. This is a skill increasingly common since the advent of SMS text messaging. The process is also aided by predictive text technology built into many phones.

The advantage of multiblogging is that posts can be made from anywhere at anytime and often within moments after a picture is taken or an event happens. Multiblog popularity is growing in line with skyrocketing mobile phone sales, reaching a record 516 million handsets in 2003, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. One in five mobile phones sold today is a camera phone, double the ratio a year ago. The second-generation of camera phones now available can also record video with audio. Most mobile phone networks around the world have or are being upgraded to higher bandwidths to accommodate the fact that mobiles phones are being adopted as a tool for more than just conversing. News organizations are taking notice of this trend. And Ifra, through its Newsplex research initiative, has pioneered the use of multiblogs as a professional publishing environment with the application of mainstream editorial standards and workflows.

There is a complete team of editors and journalists behind this Ifra multiblog. A newsflow editor manages the overall process, directing the reporting team toward the ultimate goal of providing a distinctively comprehensive and engaging presentation of this event. Storybuilders edit and categorize the constant flow of submissions from the mobile journalists all the while taking additional information from them over the same phones being used for newsgathering and delivery. And a new type of hybrid informatics journalist called a newsresourcer augments the multiblog submissions with research and online links adding even greater depth and breadth to the presentation.

Individually, each entry in this multiblog documents a single aspect of this conference -- an attendee's comment, a speaker's summary, an exhibitor's explanation, busy aisles, quiet corners, people energized, tired, talking, planning, confused, informed. Each entry stands alone as a piece of micro-journalism. Collectively, however, the entries accumulate to eventually form an intricate mosaic revealing the larger trends and tones of this intricately multifaceted occasion. Both on-site and remote visitors can interact with the multiblog by browsing it online, downloading the pictures, adding their own comments and even submitting their own entries via mobile or email.

Overall, Ifra's multiblog process melds some of the best attributes of in-depth, wide-ranging, detail-oriented newspaper reporting and real-time, putting-you-at-the-scene, visually engaging television coverage, leveraging the capabilities and reach of online with the latest advances in mobile. It is a thoroughly convergent media experience. – Kerry J. Northrup
Director of Publications, Ifra

Taking first steps

Tue, 08 May 2007 12:02:33 CST

Participant Nick Turner, head of digital content development for CN New Media in the U.K., says his organisation is just taking the first steps into video and has begun training for some of its photographers.

He says his company has been buying video footage from a company hired by the local rugby club to record all its matches. CN can then post about five minutes of video from each match, which is more than the local TV channel has time to show, and this has been very popular with viewers.

Monetizing web TV

Tue, 08 May 2007 15:17:07 CST

"If you want viewers to pay, you have to add something that the TV world hasn’t seen before, something that is very, very specific," says speaker Jakob Andersson, head of programmes, Aftonbladet, Sweden. "They won’t pay for things they can see elsewhere."

Summing up

Tue, 08 May 2007 18:13:49 CST

Co-moderator Melanie Shah, business development manager at Ifra, who also helped organise today's conference, offers her thoughts about today's key points.

The venue

Tue, 08 May 2007 09:33:38 CST

Today's event is taking place at the Mercure Hotel Amsterdam aan de Amstel in the Netherlands, where more than 100 participants from 26 countries are gathered for Digital Trend Day.

Moving to the web

Fri, 04 May 2007 11:56:56 CST

Get an overview of the rapid expansion of video content on the internet in this article by Ifra "newspaper techniques" Senior Editor Brian Veseling. Download the article from the November 2006 issue as a PDF file.

The article is also available in German by contacting Anton Jolkovski, Ifra digital publishing manager, at ajolkovski@ifra.com.

Building credibility

Tue, 08 May 2007 11:06:14 CST

"Put your best journalists in front of the camera – not behind it," says Bas Broekhuizen, head of the video department at de Volkskrant, the Netherlands, who adds that their name recognition with your readers will give your web presentations added credibility.

Innovative video models

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:30:34 CST

Ifra Events Business Development Manager Melanie Shah says, "Video on the web has boomed over the last year and many news sites have started incorporating video. For this conference, we've selected publishing companies who have developed innovative video models, and it's going to be very interesting to hear their experiences." Shah is in charge of the programme for the event, which has drawn more than 80 registrations.

Multiblog of 2006 event

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:11:56 CST

The multiblog of Digital Trend Day 2006, held 9 May in Amsterdam, is still online.

Strong demand for video

Tue, 08 May 2007 12:42:44 CST

Speaker Jonathan Landman, deputy managing editor of The New York Times, discusses "Getting the staff on board," and how the paper has developed its video programme, which has become extremely popular with the newsroom. Many journalists now want video possibilities with their stories.

"Demand for video currently outstrips supply," says Landman, adding, "If you have to have a problem, that’s a pretty nice one to have."

For free?

Tue, 08 May 2007 11:30:34 CST

Clarence St. Chang, senior correspondent and executive content producer for Straits Times Interactive in Singapore, asks speaker Bas Broekhuizen of de Volkskrant, "Do you charge people to access your content or is it offered for free?"

Broekhuizen replies: "All of our content is free. We feel that reach is important, and you can reach a wider audience if the content is free."