garciamedia

Aug. 28th Where the innovators are: one reader’s view

On our July 30th posting, we discussed why U.S. newspapers tend to lag behind their global counterparts. One of the examples mentioned was Dubai’s Gulf News. The posting was picked up by the Knight Foundation’s website (http://www.knightblog.org/mario-garcia-on-newspaper-innovation-in-us/). A reader of that site commented there and offered his view of what he considered to be innovations in the industry.

I am happy to include that reader’s comments, and his listing of four innovators. I welcome your comments as well.

Here is the text from Robert Ivan, as it appeared on the Knight Foundation blog, as well as a short commentary by Marc Fest, Vice President of Communications, at the Knight Foundation:

Robert Ivan Says:
August 27th, 2008 at 7:04 am
This http://www.gulfnews.com/ is not innovation mr. garcia. And as for the Tabloid section in the afore mentioned publication, it is eye candy and nothing more. Hey, maybe The New York Times should buy redtube.com It has twice the reach, 4 times the rank and 5 times the page views of NYT. Great journalism! Jeez. I have never heard of anyone stopping their newspaper subscription because there was not enough color in it, or because it was too confusing to navigate. I do hear people all the time saying they no longer subscribe because:

- They have “paper guilt”
- The printed product does not add value to their life
- The internet has all the same content for free

True innovation is not going to be accomplished by Site and Paper redesigns. Those are band aids. True innovation will happen when newspapers hire extremely creative editors, programmers, and developers who allow their reporters, photojournalists, and videographers to be better than they ever thought they could be.

Examples of people and/or applications that add value to readers lives:

- Rob Curley and The Las Vegas Sun
- Adrian Holovaty and Everyblock
- Alan Taylor and The BIg Picture
- The New York Times audio slide shows

Marc Fest Says:
August 28th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Robert, thanks for your comment. What is you like about the four innovators that you cite? How do they add value to their readers’ lives. By the way, Adrian Holovaty’s project is funded out of Knight new media innovation contest, the Knight News Challenge (http://www.newschallenge.org).

Dear readers, as I am not familiarized thoroughly with the innovators mentioned by Robert Ivan, I ask you to enter the dialog and contribute your comments on them, and what you think makes them special. I am sure we can learn tremendously if we profile these cases and benefit from their experience. All of us are interested in reviewing products that have encountered success via experimentation and it is my hope that we can profile these four innovators in future blogs. I need your help to do so! If those involved in these products wish to engage in dialog through this platform, I would appreciate that as well.

THE FOLLOWING IFRA EXECUTIVE NEWS SERVICE ITEMS ARE OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

IFRA Executive News Service for Friday 29 August 2008

 English:

- UK: Daily Mail sees signs of ad market recovery
http://www.hemscott.com/news/comment-archive/item.do?id=16288

  - USA: Reuters using mobile journalism for US political coverage
http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/532258.php

- USA: Clues emerge about LA project - Is LA getting a new paper called
The Free Daily?
http://free-daily.blogspot.com/2008/08/clues-emerge-about-la-project.html

- India: impact Roundtable on Compact Newspapers: Format lends to
content, and content matters
http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/news/newfullstory.asp?section_id=5&news_id=32286&tag=27201&pict=0

- Reaping success in Brazil - There are many reasons that can explain the
current success Brazilian newspapers are currently enjoying
http://www.readership.org/blog2/2008/08/reaping-success-in-brazil.html

TheMarioBlog posting #79

Posted by Dr. Mario R. Garcia on August 28, 2008