The Atlanta Journal Constitution has announced they are cutting their print circulation area and focusing on growing digital. This is similar to the same steps taken in the past year by the Dallas Morning News and Gannett.

Copy editors and designers for newspapers try to write catchy headlines for their print editions, but when those headlines are shoveled on to the web as a link to a story they become misleading to the reader and and even harder for a search engine to understand. Many newspapers depend on search engine traffic to help boost their websites bottom line and one important way to attract more web traffic is to write summary headlines. A recent article on ZDNet describes how the Boston Globe’s copy editors rewrite their newspaper headlines for the web before the stories are exported to the web every night making their website Boston.com the fourth most trafficked US newspaper site on the web (even though they are ranked 15th in circulation).

The Washington Post launched On Being this week. Is this the new product that Rob Curley was talking about last week when discussed the Naples Daily News Studio 55? Howard Owens has some questions about it, too. And I guess that I don’t completely get it, either.

Even though the video is cool (even available in HD) and production values are high, I have yet to watch a whole profile of anyone. I just get bored before it is over (normally about a minute in) and click on something else. I plan on trying to make myself watch a whole segment to see if I am missing something. So far they all look like a highly edited first-person, personal profile, a this is my life in my own words story.

At the NAA Marketing Conference Tom Mohr breeched the idea this week that “local is no longer an organizing principle in the interactive world.” Seeing that this is a newspaper conference and newspapers are locally oriented, this statement is like another nail in the newspaper coffin.

In his presentation (pdf link) on whether newspapers and their websites are allies or competitors Mohr presented a couple of interesting facts (of course we lose context reading these points from his presentation handout):

• The medium age of newspapers.com is 42.
• Only 5.5% of newspaper revenue is online revenue.
• Technology innovation will shape human experience through increased bandwidth, location aware mobile devices, smarter search, ubiquitous computing and usability.
• Mohr’s solution is partnering and national networks, but says getting newspapers to cooperate is like “herding cats.”

Thanks to Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits for pointing out this bit.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette launched a much needed redesign today. The site had some small enhancements over the past year, but desperately needed some major help. I’m sure their web staff is glad to get the redesign monkey off their back and out the door (I’ve experienced that kind of relief many times before), but there are a major standards compliance issues, some programming bugs, design mishaps and an overall flawed approach to what a local newspaper website should be

First, Standards Compliance: It’s 2007 folks, not 2001. Tables are out. Using divs as tables is out. We are now in the days of the semantic web where your html and styles describe and contribute to your content creating accessibility across browsers, platforms and devices. (I won’t even mention the using line breaks and special characters to build lists instead of unordered lists and list items). Unfortunately with circa 2001 coding, your site design will start to break in the next round of new web browsers that will start to enforce standards. If you are interested in this learning more on Standard Compliant HTML start out with Eric Meyer’s CSS Web Site Design and once you have a handle on Eric’s concept move on to Dave Clarke’s Transcending CSS: the Fine Art of Web Design.

Second, The Bug: The second time I visited the website it said “Welcome Charles Munkberg” and gave me the typical “Not Charles Munkberg? Click here” option. Well, I’m not Charles Munkberg and nor has he ever used my computer. He must be the default/test user in their sql recordset or some random cookie problem. Thankfully, this is normally an easy bug to fix in less than five minutes, lets see how long it persists.

Third, Design Mishaps: First let me say there are some good things about their design and it is 300 times better than their old design. I really like the flash photos and headlines in the top left. Most major metro newspapers are using that format now and it really works for them. I also like the design of the video section on the right especially the inclusion of the THV video (good job working that partnership out). For some reason, the scrolling headlines between the flash photos and the videos really get to me under the latest news heading on their page. I think there are too many headlines in that section and they are scrolling way too fast. The search bar is next as you scroll down the page and it is just out of place in that location. The rest of the page proceeds with a three column layout that is nice, but could use some more photos or graphics. The inside section pages work out ok design wise, I like the fact they included at least one photo on each of those pages. The main thing that I don’t see is the ads. There are no external ads above the scroll on the home page, the section pages or the story pages. I guess they will add those later.

Fourth, a flawed online approach: The Democrat-Gazette’s online strategy has two big flaws.

• A failure to focus on being the home page for Arkansas/Metro Little Rock. The inclusion of so much AP national news and video on their home page makes it look like the Demazette is competing with CNN and MSNBC. For national news, people will visit those websites. For local information (much, more than just news) people visit local websites.
• Many newspaper companies have decided they are no longer “newspaper” companies, but information companies that publish their news in print, online and where ever they find readers and advertisers (Former Arkansas Gazette owners, Gannett are the largest company embracing this philosophy, but many other newspapers are running down the same path). However, the Democrat-Gazette is following the dual newsroom approach. One set of designers, reporters, photographers for print and one set for the web (and so far the web has one videographer, one online editor and few part-time web assistants). Their reasoning behind this is that they don’t want the online product to harm the reputation of the print product– which admittedly the Demazette has a good reputation resulting in the highest circulation penetration for a newspaper its size. However, the dual newsroom philosophy vastly under powers your web and actually harms the reputation of the associated newspaper for it’s failures in coverage and design. Additionally, it fails to plan for the future of the newspaper with an overall decline in newspaper circulation and the virtual abandonment of newspapers by readers under 35.
• To protect their circulation of their newspaper, the Democrat-Gazette requires paid subscriptions for their website. Only publications with highly cherished information are successful this route (like the Wall-Street Journal, college sports websites or pornography). Many newspapers require registration so that they have more demographic information about their readers to sale ads with, but few require a paid subscription. Again, the Demazette’s argument to paid subscribers is they can include and visitors to their website under a paid subscription model in their official circulation numbers. Unfortunately, allowing only paid subscribers to access your web site ruins advertising sales and any special up sales you can make via online classified sales (even if online classifieds are accessible to everyone). This is especially ridiculous in the Democrat-Gazette’s case because virtually the whole newspaper they want you to pay to access on their website is available for free on their Northwest Arkansas edition’s web site.

Finally, a couple of disclaimers. I am sure their web staff worked really hard on this redesign and despite my criticisms it is a huge step forward and actually brings the site in the 21st century. I know for a fact that they have a tiny staff devoted to the web with a couple of other departments helping out (IT and design) and for what they are given they have done a great job launching the redesign. Also, as you can probably read in my general criticisms of their approach to a newspaper website that I was once privy to some inside information as I had some discussions with their newsroom leaders when they were redefining their website a year ago. I did my Master’s thesis on newspaper’s websites uses of technology, so I am pretty well versed in that area.

Online media guru Rob Curley is sharing the details that went into the Naples Daily News Studio 55 Vodcast. He covers where the idea came from,how they implemented and why it worked. It’s the way newspapers should try convergence.

Jim Romenkso’s MediaNews column on Poynter Online had three interesting and I believe related stories this morning. We’ll start with the bad news and move to the good.

• After cutting their circulation area in April to a 200 mile radius, the Dallas Morning News reports that they are cutting it back to a 100 mile radius. This comes after cutting 10 percent of their newsroom staff a few months ago.
• The San Jose Mercury news cut 35 employees (10 being newsroom employees) in an effort to cut costs.
• The New York Times announced they expect to see 30 percent growth in Internet revenue in 2007.

All of these stories hitting at once bring to mind a couple of questions.

First, does this mark the beginning of the end of the printed newspapers? I would say possibly, but this definitely is a warning bell for regional newspapers and publicly owned newspapers. For far too long public investors have expected 20 plus percent profit margins from newspapers and with falling circulation and falling advertising revenue margins of that size can no longer be expected. It is evident with the recent disappareance of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain and the Tribune newspaper chain looking for a buyer. Rick Edmonds discusses the disappearance of publicly held newspapers in Poynter Online’s centerpiece today.

Second, is the Internet going to save everyone’s bacon? Well, maybe. The News industry will make a lot of money off of the Internet, but I’m not sure the newspaper industry is at that point yet. Many newspapers see the writing on the wall and are moving that way, but mass change of attitude from being a newspaper to a news provider can only be seen in a couple of places (like Gannett’s information center initiative).

I’ve been focusing a lot on how convergence in the newsroom is affecting photographers as I worked on my lesson on displaying photographs on the screen for my Introduction to Photography class. As I’ve been surfing around looking at different newspaper websites, I’ve been amazed by the differences in quality and subject of the different papers multimedia and videography efforts. Some newspapers’ photo staffs like the San Jose Mercury News are posting video and slide shows everyday. Other papers like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette have hired a videographer to enhance the multimedia offerings on their website. The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis is also publishing some excellent feature video packages.

But, above them all sits the Naples Daily News. The Naples Daily News Studio 55 daily newscast /podcast and PrepZone Playbook go all out. In a market that is not locally served by a TV station, the Naples Daily News has filled the gap and gathered up their advertisers as they went. Just think how many local markets that are not served or under served by TV that could be filled in with online newscasts

In a memo sent out yesterday and posted on Romensko today, Craig Dubox, the CEO of Gannett, makes plans to turn all of Gannett’s newsrooms into a platform agnostic information center that ensures that the right news and information will be delivered to the right media. After piloting the project in 11 locations over the past year, the information centers will be built around seven areas: digital; public service; community conversation; local; custom content; data; and multimedia.

In the issue of Digital Content Producer that I received yesterday there is a great article about newspaper newsroom convergence with many photographers producing multimedia slideshows and video. Of particular interest to me was Dallas Morning News Photographer David Leeson exclusively shooting high definition video and then pulling frames for the video for the newspaper. The newspaper is not just running small inside photos, but enlarging the frames to four or five column photos. Last June Photo District News addressed the topic of whether video frames grabs are fit to print and said that besides the Dallas Morning News, the San Jose Mercury News and the Detroit Free Press were also printing stills grabbed from high definition video.