The Evolving Newsroom

This is worth a look if you're a news-hungry Twitter fan. It's a list of news organisations posting updates to Twitter. Thanks to the compiler, Carlos Granier-Phelps.

I'm not proud, but it's been taking me an awfully long time to get through my emails and feed aggregator lately so these tidbits have been kicking around a week or so.

1. Four US newspaper chains join forces to create combined ad group selling spots across all the companies' websites. The four, Hearst, NY Times, Tribune and Gannett, said it was the best way for them to compete against Google, AOL and others.

2. US media jobs fell to a 15-year low in December.

3. The NY Times is cutting 100 newsroom jobs in the coming year.

4. It's not just you, or me, it's Netscape founder Marc Andreesson too: when asked by Spiegel magazine if any aspect of the internet had become overwhelming he said, "Information. I certainly have too much information. It drives me bananas. that's why I have gone on an information diet."

He talked about newspapers and their efforts to move online (thanks to Adrian Monck for the link).

"Newspapers with declining circulations can complain all they want about their readers and even say they have no taste. But you will still go out of business over time. A newspaper is not a public trust - it has a business model that either works or it doesn't.

SPIEGEL: Well, it's not quite that simple. In truth, all the major media brands are on the Web, and many have far more readers and far greater revenues than a site like digg.com.

Andreessen: Take the New York Times. They are slow and they are in denial. After 15 years of the Internet, their online division - though it has been very aggressive and well run compared to its peers - still represents only about 10 percent of the company's total revenue. And it's not enough. The core of the business is collapsing.

"What's going to happen is that print subscriptions will decline to a point where it's no longer economically feasible to keep the printing plants operating. They will be shut down. So will the distribution networks. When that happens, the only thing left will be revenues from the online divisions. That won't be enough to cover newsroom costs. There is no way that they have a transition strategy from point A to point B.

SPIEGEL: What would you do differently?

Andreessen: Well, if the newspaper companies all self-destruct because they have failed to come to grips with this transition, then that's their problem. The people who made horse carriages were not the ones who started car companies.

"But here's the point: There is an enormous market demand for information. It just has to be fulfilled in a way that fits with the technology of our times. It is also going to open up a lot of opportunities for a new generation of media companies, usually born on the Internet.

"Right now they are popping up all over the place - like Talking Points Memo, a political blog from the left that is a bit of a throwback to pre-World War II journalism, when newspapers were expected to be partisan. None of them are huge, but that's how an industry gets created. We may be sitting here in 10 years and see major news organizations born out of experiments that are happening right now that have nothing to do with CNN."

I've been getting news feeds on Twitter from BBC, Radio NZ and a Netherlands based group called BreakingNewsOn for a couple of months. So far, I'd say Twitter works really well for delivering news.

From a user point of view it's great - news finds me instead of me having to find it, I can see just enough information to decide whether or not I want to read more, and I can click through to the source site to read more when I am interested.

From a publisher's point of view, it's also great - cheap, relatively easy to set up an automated feed, and another way of getting news out to audiences in their own environment rather than relying on them to make the effort to visit your website.

It's ideal for publishing breaking news (it's like a ticker that runs not just across your website but across your users' screens too). It also seems to work well for regular round-ups, provided the headlines are re-written to reflect the nature of the update. Twitter users have no way of knowing at a glance that the story's been updated if the headline looks the same as it did an hour ago.

There are a few limitations:

• You have to keep the character count to 140 and the link has to follow the headline/abstract. The headline can't act as a link. It would be great if Twitter could make the latter possible. It's a tight publishing space, so it really helps to keep your identifier short. BBC works well - it leaves plenty of room for text. BreakingNewsOn is way too long.
  

• The headline IS the story. I gather most news services are serving RSS feeds to Twitter which run headline: standfirst/intro and chop off once the character count runs out, leaving a dangling ellipsis (...) followed by the link. Here's an example:
  

BBC TV poll backs Berwick border move: According to a television poll, 60% of people in Berwick-upon-Tweed want t.. http://tinyurl.com/2v9obe 32 minutes ago from twitterfeed

This does the job, although to be honest I find the ... just as annoying as anywhere else I see it online. I'd prefer to see:

BBC TV poll backs Berwick border move: TV poll finds 60% of people in Berwick-upon-Tweed want to be part of Scotland. http://tinyurl.com/2v9obe 32 minutes ago from twitterfeed

Ultimately, it'd be great to see a Twitter headline and standfirst written somewhere in the story workflow that wouldn't break when published. This could also be used for mobile.

• There's a problem with overkill. Part of the fun of Twitter is seeing a stream of diverse posts and conversations. News gets in the way if the feeds take up too much room (there are only 20 posts per Twitter page, no one wants 16 of them to be news posts). One way around this is to break the feeds down to sections: politics, world, Auckland, business, technology, sport etc. Then people can choose just those feeds they're interested in and are less likely to get inundated.

9.30 this morning, NZ time:

News of a big fire in London's Camden Market reaches me on Twitter via a news feed from Netherlands-based BreakingNewsOn. They seemed to be getting information from Sky TV.

By 10am NZ time, the Guardian had a picture and good story up complete with eye witness reports. The Times had a smaller report and was asking readers to send in pictures. The Telegraph and Independent had nothing, nor did the Evening Standard.

By 11am, nzherald.co.nz was running the story and asking New Zealanders living in London to send in pictures. Using a combination of Reuters reports, their own staff and TV coverage,they had a pretty good outline of the story. Stuff.co.nz didn't have anything.

At 11.10am a couple of google searches brought up coverage by BBC, CBC in Canada, AFP, AP TV, Sky, Jerusalem Post (carrying an AP report) and plenty more. Conspiracy theories and other conversations were under way on Yahoo Answers, Neogaff, Suzy's photos and elsewhere.

The BBC, in inimitable style, had a full report, pictures, video of eye witnesses and the scene, links to related sites including the fire service, Camden Council and Camden market, and was asking readers for information, pictures and video. (Shame international viewers have to sit through an insurance ad before the video footage plays, kills the sense of immediacy somewhat).

By 11.45am, Guardian had really fleshed out the story, as had Sky and BBC. Times had added three pictures and NZ Herald one (all agency pics). Telegraph had nothing, Stuff was running Reuters copy and pic, the Independent had PA copy with no picture and the Evening Standard was running a headline on the ticker. TV3 was running APTN copy and video, TVNZ had Reuters copy with no footage.

Notably, search for 'fire', 'camden' and 'london' on YouTube brought up nothing. Am I missing something? No sign of ugc on any of the news sites yet, all agency footage and eye witness commentary gathered by reporters on the scene.