Print media

Google to sell newspaper advertising

Google, which has been criticised by newspapers for exploiting their content on Google News, wants to partner with newspapers to sell print advertising.

As Saul Hansell reports on nytimes.com, Google will test the scheme for three months with 50 major papers and 100 advertisers in the United States.

Using the same technology that drives its AdWords online advertising programme, Google will offer newspapers the chance to sell unbooked advertising spaces that would otherwise be filled with the publisher’s own “house ads”.

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Publishing chain to ‘crowdsource’ news

US publishing chain Gannett will no longer have “newsrooms” at its papers. Instead: “Information Centres”.

Among other changes, the company will turn increasingly to its customers as sources of information – an approach known as “crowdsourcing”.

Jeff Howe on Wired News reports that the changes began two days ago.

The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.

Gannett is the largest US newspaper publisher by circulation. The company owns 90 daily papers including the country’s largest newspaper, USA Today, as well as nearly 1000 daily publications plus TV stations and websites.

CEO Craig Dubow, in a memo to staff, said the concept had been tested in 11 Gannett locations, including three full scale implementations. Other sites tested different aspects of information gathering such as crowdsourcing and multimedia. He described the results as “remarkable”:

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Can I misquote you on that?

In its review of a soon-to-be released book about popular misquotations, Britain’s Guardian newspaper managed to misquote the name of the book.

From the Guardian’s daily list of corrections:

A report headed Beam me up Scotty – and misquote me for better effect, page 4, October 25, misquoted the title of the book from which it was quoting. It is not They Never Said That. It is What They Didn’t Say.

Hat tip: Regret the Error

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Thesaurus needed

Sunday View is the name of a magazine included with APN’s Herald on Sunday.

My Sunday ViewBut My Sunday View is a new website set up by rival publisher Fairfax to solicit opinions from the public to help improve its Sunday Star-Times (an initiative rather like the Herald’s long-running reader panel).

Is there a such a shortage of words in the English language that we now have to have two Sunday Views?

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