Global users who share everything or most things online

To put social engagement in even broader perspective, Mary Meeker’s 2013 report measured engagement from self-reported online sharing statistics across a broader
swath of countries than even the GlobalWebIndex study. Meeker’s report found that the percent of Brazil residents who felt they shared online was right on the edge of the world average of 24 percent, and China residents were near 35 percent, whereas the number of people in Saudi Arabia, India and Indonesia who felt they shared everything or most things online exceeded Brazil and China considerably, with each country’s percent near or above 50 percent.

The invariable question would be, what compels people to share all of their personal and professional triumphs and failures; their interests and dreams; their personal and family statuses; their political and religious affiliations; their pictures and videos; their brand and product preferences and beyond?

GlobalWebIndex looks at these statistics in a more complete way, with the degrees to which Internet users in these countries are engaged in social media, based on the number of activities each person is involved in.

The GlobalWebIndex defines social engagement through a variety of social media activities such as participation in a social network, micro-blogging on Twitter, forum, commenting on story, uploading a photo or video, writing a story or blog and liking a product or brand. China ranks highest for the number of activities performed, followed by other socially active countries, including Indonesia, India, Malaysia and Brazil. Countries not as immersed in multiple social media activities include Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States.

The data set is a part of a collection of 500 revenue and usership trends in mobile, social, Internet, tablet, video and other digital categories, published in the 200-page Global Digital Media Trendbook 2013. GDMT, in its eight year, is to be published by World Newsmedia Network, a not-for-profit media research company, in September 2013. To subscribe to the PDF report and/or the tablet edition, go to www.wnmn.org, or contact mstone@wnmn.org.

How has the economy affected your company’s revenues over the last fiscal year?

Cost reduction is a key strategy for most media companies in the time after the economic downturn. On the top of the list of cost reductions is production, with 44.2 percent of the respondents saying so; followed by office space, 37.5 percent; printing, 35.8 percent; administration, 35 percent; materials, 30 percent; distribution, 29.2 percent; and content generation, including journalist positions, at 26.7 percent.

The economy has affected respondents’ companies in significantly different ways. Compared to the years immediately following the economic crisis, it appears many media companies are experiencing a slow but steady recovery. More than half have reported either no change or an increase in overall revenue. However, more than half report declines in both print circulation and print advertising revenues. Meanwhile, almost three-quarters of the respondents report an increase in website revenues, while more than half report an increase in e-commerce sales in the last fiscal year.

The data set is a part of a collection of 500 revenue and usership trends in mobile, social, Internet, tablet, video and other digital categories, published in the 200-page Global Digital Media Trendbook 2013. GDMT, in its eight year, is to be published by World Newsmedia Network, a not-for-profit media research company, in September 2013. To subscribe to the PDF report and/or the tablet edition, go to www.wnmn.org, or contact mstone@wnmn.org.

The Newspaper Works Australia Releases New Quarterly Newspaper Industry Report

The Newspaper Works Australia, a leading industrial nodal body for newspapers has recently released a quarterly report that analyses the length and breadth of newspaper audiences across platforms. These efforts are in a bid to counter what it calls the “uninformed comment” in the industry.

The latest figures from the Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA) survey show that the overall readership for 13 key mastheads rose by 2.4 per cent from March 2013 to February 2014, Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Through ‘The Works’ report, Mark Hollands, Chief Executive Officer of the Newspaper Works aims to offer further evidence alongside circulation data by encouraging advertisers to turn to print advertising. Hollands is further of a view that audiences who engage with the newspaper and digital data are massively huge.

He further adds, “At least five media agencies bosses have said this year, the decline is ad spend in print is an over-reaction, out of synch with reality and needs to change to better reflect the potential of advertisers’ profitable engagement with newspaper audiences. The quarterly report supports that contention with data from Emma and Nielsen Online Ratings,” Ad News Australia reports.

This report was created with the help of data from Emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) which highlights the fact that newspaper journalism in print and web continues to attract audiences.

Hollands added, “I believe the report provides sufficient evidence to justify either greater commitment or validation on the part of advertisers, or it should at least provoke re-consideration by those who remain open to the potential of all marketing channels.”

The Emma survey tracks readership across print, desktop, mobile and tablet formats and according to the latest survey, The Sydney Morning Herald has retained its crown as Australia's best-read publication in February, with readership edging up to be more than 500,000. The Herald had 4.79 million readers, followed by Sydney's The Daily Telegraph with 4.26 million readers. Following them was Melbourne's The Herald Sun with 4.1 million readers, down slightly on the previous survey.

According to the latest results, as reported by B&T.com, the online readership of The Daily Telegraph has increased from 1.066 million in EMMA’s first set of monthly data from July 2012 to June 2013 to 1.473 million currently. As in comparison to the first lot of the Emma Data, The Sydney Morning Herald also saw an increase from 2.488 million to 2.824 million.

Overall, according to The Newspaper Works, the digital audiences for newspapers have jumped by 13.5% with continued upward trend indicated, while the print has witnessed a decline in the recent past by 5.2% according to the latest data.

By: Savita V Jayaram

Chicago Sun Times Eliminates Comment Section on Its Website Temporarily

The Chicago Sun-Times and other titles of the Sun Media Group has temporarily eliminated commenting on its website, until it can come up with a system that will “foster a productive discussion rather than an embarrassing mishmash of fringe ranting and ill-informed, shrill bomb-throwing,” managingeditor Craig Newman announced.

While commenting on the Internet offers a marvelous opportunity for discussion and exchange of ideas, but anyone who has ventured into comment thread can attest that these forums often turn into a morass of negativity, racism, hate speech and general trollish behaviors that detract from the content.

Newman further adds, “To that end, we are working on development of a new commenting system we hope will not only allow for free discussion, but encourage increased quality of the commentary and help us better police the worst elements of these threads. We’ll have more in the weeks to come on this development.”

However patrons of the Sun are encouraged to connect on Facebook and Twitter to post in their comments and suggestions. Reassuring the fact that The Sun Media Group is not doing away with comments by implementing such measures, the group aims to take some time off to work on the qualitative aspects of comment monitoring to foster a productive discussion forum.

According to an opinion by TechCrunch, switching onto Facebook comments is effective for silencing trolls – but with a disadvantage of silencing productive commenter in the process as well. However studies suggest otherwise, which says that anonymous comments that are less civil, also promote for better engagement.

By: Savita V Jayaram

Guardian’s Robot-Generated Print Edition to Hit the Stands Soon

The Guardian has fortified its digital-only presence in the U.S. and now plans to experiment with a robot-generated print edition for the U.S market starting this Wednesday. This new robot-generated newspaper will be called '#Open001'. This will be distributed free every month across U.S. media and ad agency offices to include Mindshare, Horizon Media and Digitas. The number of copies that will be circulated post its launch is pegged at 5,000 every month.

To produce this technology-driven print edition, the Guardian uses a homegrown algorithm (which is a robot) that combs through the paper's content to find the best long reads and the decision is taken based on the social media metrics such as Facebook shares, tweets and comments. The good long reads are then later fed onto essay-style templates and then beamed to a printer.

The first stories selected for the U.S. media audience include “Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg: Who are you calling bossy,” ”Kurt Cobain: An icon of alienation,” and “Robots and sex: Creepy or cool?” Digiday reported.

'#Open001' started as an experiment in the U.K. for online readers by the Guardian, which was later turned into a print edition, The Good Long Read in December. The Good Long Read is distributed free at the Guardian Coffee Shop in London, that's called #Guardian Coffee.

While this robot-generated print newspaper is an overt pitch to media buyers; in its own unique sense this experimentation by the newspaper is all thanks to the ownership of the Scott Trust. The Trust frees the newspaper from most part of the commercial pressures, which allows room for experimentation and thus helps make a room for difference with innovation at the forefront at Guardian.

Talking about this innovative technological medium to introduce Guardian's content to the U.S. media community, Gennady Kolker, spokesman for the Guardian in the U.S. said, “We’re on mobile, on tablets and online in the U.S. This is a way to get people to lean back and enjoy the long-form content. Some of our stories are more conducive to that print feel. It’s a way to show that audience, here’s what Guardian content is.”

The Guardian also promotes the open journalism approach, inviting the public to review public record documents. Also one of it native ad product was built stressing on the fundamentals of open journalism, which welcomes readers to comment on the ad content and suggest scope for improvisation of the same.

Undoubtedly, this robot-print edition '#Open001' acts as a torch bearer to the other publishers who are eagerly looking forward to meet informative needs of consumers by optimizing technology to its fullest. It also ensures efficiency to producing news by letting robots do, what human editors did.

This is an ode to the slow news movement, especially hindered and affected greatly by the evolution of Internet as a medium, with print slowly losing ground. Will this robot produced print edition help revival of the newspaper industry in print?

This experiment is slowly finding ways to bring life to the old content, which other publishers have done using compilation and effective segregation with appropriate topics, to make the features more relevant to the end user.

By: Savita V Jayaram