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The State of the News Media 2011

The State of the News Media 2011

http://www.journalism.org/packages/state-of-the-news-media-2014/

Huffington Post Doubles Down on Social Media: Tech News and Analysis « The Huffington Post gets a lot of criticism for the way it runs its digital content business, including its “crowdsourcing” of free content, which has led to a class-action lawsuit by a number of bloggers who now want to be paid in the wake of the site’s $315-million acquisition by AOL. But if there’s one thing that The Huffington Post has consistently done better than just about any other traditional or new-media entity, it is to take advantage of social media tools in order to boost its reach and engage with readers in new ways, and the site has just rolled out some new features that take that effort to a new level. In a nutshell, the new features — which have been in beta testing for the past week or two, but were officially announced on Tuesday in a blog post by Huffington Post social-media editor Rob Fishman — allow users to “fan,” “like” and “follow” individual reporters and bloggers for the site, both on the site itself and via Twitter and Facebook.

Who says paper is dead? business model innovation in the newspaper industry The newspaper industry is suffering these days. Besides the economic crisis that leads to less advertising spending the traditional business model is under attack by the Internet. The large papers have reacted with large Internet activities that attract a lot of traffic. But the revenues of the online ventures are not sufficient to compensate for the decline in print. Publishing 2.0 How will native advertising scale? That’s the question on the mind of every brand advertiser, ad agency, and publisher. Native advertising has emerged as a great hope for the future of advertising, to capture the billions of brand ad dollars expected to shift from TV, where mass audiences are finally collapsing, and from online display advertising, where already rock bottom prices, consumer attention, and effectiveness continue to plummet. Native advertising is also a great hope for monetizing mobile, where display ads aren’t just dying but DOA and digital dimes have turned into pennies at best.

Everything to Teach Your Employees About Social Media Who needs an expensive social media consultant when you can train your employees in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn best practices yourself? This Mindflash infographic breaks down the types of social media users you'll find in your company — the digital native, savvy technologist, reluctant user, digital newby and digital contrarian — and how to approach training each of them. This guide also highlights an important fact: 76% of companies do not have a clearly defined social media policy. Whether or not you have an explicit policy, make sure you're aware of the way everyone in your company represents your brand. What do you think its most important for companies to teach their employees about social media?

Rob Fishman: Follow Topics, Bloggers and Reporters: A New HuffPost Feature These days, even the most diligent newsreader can have trouble keeping up. Between newspapers, blogs, apps, RSS, Twitter and Facebook, the options can seem endless. And yet, frustratingly, it's the story we most care about that so often slips through the cracks. That's why HuffPost is now allowing readers to follow topics, reporters and bloggers on the site and across social platforms. Want a tweet every time Arianna blogs? HOW TO: Deal With Negative Online Sentiment About Your Brand Maria Ogneva is the Head of Community at Yammer, where she is in charge of social media and community programs, and internal education and engagement. You can follow her on Twitter, her blog, and via Yammer's Twitter account and company blog. Brands try to inspire excitement among their communities so that their fans and supporters will do the selling for them. That’s called advocacy, and it's much more powerful than self-promotion.

Freedom of information: my monstrous idea will keep corporate tyrants at bay Modern government could be interpreted as a device for projecting corporate power. Since the 1980s, in Britain, the US and other nations, the primary mission of governments has been to grant their sponsors in the private sector ever greater access to public money and public life. There are several means by which they do so: the privatisation and outsourcing of public services; the stuffing of public committees with corporate executives; and the reshaping of laws and regulations to favour big business. In the UK, the Health and Social Care Act extends the corporate domain in ways unimaginable even five years ago. With these increasing powers come diminishing obligations.

Zuckerberg 'Likes' App That Turns Facebook Into Pinterest An app that takes the photos from your Facebook News Feed and puts them in a layout strikingly similar to Pinterest got the seal of approval from Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday. The Facebook CEO pushed the “Like” button on the Friendsheet Facebook app, which launched in January but is now likely to gain plenty of traction from Zuckerberg’s thumbs-up. Nearly 12 million Facebook accounts subscribe to his Facebook Timeline. The app displays public Facebook photos in small panels, just like popular social bookmarking site Pinterest showcases images on Pinboards. Although Friendsheet resembles Pinterest at first glance, the mastermind behind the app said it was also inspired by Facebook Timeline.

Twitter Feed Evolves Into a News Wire About Egypt While people debated whether Web sites like Twitter were important in organizing protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Andy Carvin was organizing information about the protests in an innovative way. Andy Carvin of NPR used Twitter as a news wire about Egypt. Mr. Carvin’s Twitter account was transformed into a personal news wire about Egypt and was widely praised in news media circles. Who’s Driving the Most Traffic To News Sites? No surprises here, Google scores high as the biggest single driver of traffic to top news sites with both Google Search and Google News, according to Journalizm.com. I use Google when I am searching for information regarding news or topics, and have never thought otherwise. Looks like I’m not the only one. The study says on the average 40% of news traffic comes to top news sites from outside referrals.

Business - Jordan Weissmann - Why Porn and Journalism Have the Same Big Problem Nobody wants to pay for their products. Reuters The smut business just isn't what it used to be. The early days of the Internet were a bonanza for major pornography studios, as the web transformed adult entertainment into an instant, unlimited, and completely private experience -- always just a credit card charge and a cable modem away. But what the Internet giveth, the Internet taketh away.

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