Designers bristle at HuffPost contest

Bloggers aren't the only ones angry with The Huffington Post's policy of trying to get content for free.

The AOL-owned website earlier this month announced a contest to design its new Politics icon, and many designers responded with a simple message: We don't work for free. The winning logo would be used “all over the interwebs,” and the designer would be credited, but not paid, the contest stated. Designers came together, saying that a competition or something similar to get work done for free is unethical, AdWeek reported.

“To ask designers to work for nothing suggests that design has no value,” Richard Grefé, executive director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, told Poynter.

AntiSpec began a formal campaign against the HuffPo, announcing “Shame on them.”

“The Huffington Post was bought by AOL for a reported $315,000,000 back in February 2011.  Plenty of cash on the table to hire a designer to create a logo, right?” AntiSpec stated. “A logo is integral to a company’s branding and demands extensive thought and research.”

According to AdWeek, HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz responded to the news frenzy, saying that the contest was “a fun way of enabling them to express their passion for politics — and for HuffPost. As readers of our site know, we frequently engage our community with requests for feedback and suggestions. So while AOL Huffington Post Media Group employs an in-house team of more than 30 talented designers, we felt this would be a lighthearted way to encourage HuffPost Politics users to express another side of their talents. The post was in no way an attempt to solicit unpaid design services.”

MediaNews launches paywalls at 23 newspapers

MediaNews Group, the publisher of 57 U.S. daily newspapers, announced it will erect online paywalls for 23 of its smaller newspaper sites. The paywalls, which will ask online readers to pay for digital content access, also includes those who subscribe to the print edition, Media Post reported.

Under the new system, visitors to the MNG sites will be allowed to see up to five articles for free per month, and will need to pay for access after that.

Online readers who don’t subscribe to a print edition can choose to pay $5.99 per month or $59.99 for access for one year, while print subscribers only need to pay $1.99 per month or $19.99 annually.

Those adopting the new paywalls are only small and mid-sized newspapers - MGN's bigger titles, such as the Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Salt Lake City Tribune and Long Beach Press-Telegram, will remain free for online access.

According to a survey by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia, one-fourth of U.S. newspapers are already charging for some online content. The figure could increase to 60 percent in a few years, as publishers struggle to stabilise finances amid a continuing drop in print ad revenues, and only modest growth in online, Media Post reported.

The survey found that the proportion is even higher among smaller newspapers (circulation under 25,000) – 46 percent has some kind of online paywalls, compared to only 24 percent for newspapers with circulation over 25,000.

Image: Best Techie

Study: Too much TV associated with shorter lifespan

People who watch an average of six hours a day of television live an average of almost five years less than people who do not watch any TV, research from Australia has found, USA Today reported.

For every hour of TV watched after age 25, lifespan fell by 22 minutes, according to the study by Dr. J. Lennert Veerman of the University of Queensland. However, the TV watching itself isn't what leads to a shorter life; rather, longer time spent watching television is associated with an unhealthy lifestyle, such as eating poorly and less time spent exercising, other experts pointed out.

The report was published yesterday online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Researchers used data on 11,000 people ages 25 and up from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study, which included information about how much TV people in the study watched weekly.

Last year, another study, also out of Australia, found that watching television for an hour each day led to an 8 percent increase in the risk of early death, MediaGuardian reported.

Image: stevetaylor.fivefour's flickr photostream

BBC departs from magazine publishing

BBC Worldwide is selling its stake in an Indian publisher and its business that controls magazine Radio Times in order to focus more on digital services and international video, the BBC announced today.

The UK broadcaster's commercial arm has sold most of its magazines to Exponent private equity group, as well as its 50 percent stake in its Indian joint venture, Worldwide Media, to Bennett, Coleman and Co., which owns the Times of India, paidContent explained. The deals total £121 million, according to the Financial Times.

Magazine titles Top Gear, Lonely Planet, Good Food and Easy Cook will be retained by BBC Magazines, but they will be published under contract by Exponent, the BBC noted.

In all, 11 non-BBC branded magazines were sold outright to Exponent, while 18 BBC-branded titles, such as Garners' World, BBC Music and BBC Wildlife, will be licensed by Exponent.

“The deal announced today offers the best prospects for the magazines business to continue on this path of success, while BBC Worldwide pursues a strategy increasingly focused on international video and digital services,” said John Smith, CEO of BBC Worldwide.

News outlets make online football coverage deal

The United Kingdom's Premier League and Championship football governing bodies have made a deal with news organisations, enabling them to give live updates during matches, Journalism.co.uk reported today.

The previous deal, made for the 2003-04 season, restricted newsmedia outlets to giving updates only at certain times during a game and did not give any provisions for Twitter, which had not yet been created. Under the new deal, newsmedia outlets may report with a time delay of a few minutes, and journalists can update coverage throughout a game, including using social media. The practice of charging media outlets for “end user licenses” to publish content from news and photo agencies has also been ended.

Representing media in the deal is the News Media Coalition, made up of agencies such as newspaper publishers, including News International, as well as Reuters, Getty, Agence France-Presse and others.

“Friday's agreement will put news-gatherers back in the press boxes at football grounds following a week in which a dispute with the football authorities over accreditation terms and conditions saw the media unable to attend matches,” the News Media Coalition said in a statement, according to Press Gazette. “The previous agreement, signed in in 2004, was perceived as placing unreasonably restrictive constraints on how news organisations could use and distribute their copyright football content at home and abroad.”

Social media has completely changed the digital landscape since 2004, and has become integral to how news is disseminated.

The old agreement was not “fit for purpose in the digital age,” the Guardian's Mark Sweney wrote. Even though news organisations must still delay coverage for several minutes online, the amount of time it takes to upload new information means that the new agreement is workable, he reported.

Image: jbelluch's flickr photostream

IAB asks ICANN to end top-level domain name plans

The Internet Advertising Bureau is calling on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to stop its plan to create top-level domains, TechCrunch reported today.

Domains, such as .facebook, .newyork, .coke, etc., would be expensive for advertisers and publishers, and would also “provide the opportunity for cyber squatters to extort money from companies by registering domains in 'bad faith,'” the report explained.

“ICANN's potentially momentous change seems to have been made in a top-down star chamber. There appears to have been no economic impact research, no full and open stakeholder discussions, and little concern for the delicate balance of the Internet ecosystem,” Randall Rothenberg, CEO and president of IAB, stated in a press release. “This could be disastrous for the media brand owners we represent and the brand owners with which they work. We hope that ICANN will reconsider both this ill-considered decision and the process by which it was reached.”

The Association of National Advertisers has also called the plan “economically unsupportable,” and has stated that it could “cause irreparable harm and damage to its membership and the Internet business community in general” and “contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardizes the safety of consumers,” the press release stated.

ICANN has created a video to explain the top-level domain names, which it calls gTLDs (generic top-level domains).

Study: Yahoo! searches most effective in U.S.

Although Google still dominates the U.S. search market, Yahoo! and Bing were more effective in getting users to actually click through to another Web site, according to the latest data released by Experian Hitwise.

Google had 66.05 percent of the search market in July, while Yahoo made up 15.07 percent and Microsoft's Bing 12.98 percent. However, as Yahoo! and Microsoft had a search deal in 2009, Bing has officially started powering Yahoo's search results in U.S. and Canada since 2010, which made Bing-powered searches totally accounted for 28.05 percent in U.S., PCMag reported.

But which search engine can offer results users actually want? According to Hitwise, Yahoo! had the highest "success rate" – with 81.36 percent of its searches resulting in a visit to a Web site. Microsoft's Bing followed with 80.04 percent, while Google came in third with 67.56 percent.

"The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information," Hitwise noted.

The firm also found that one-word searches were still the most popular, accounting for 25.32 percent of all searches, while longer searches, or those with five to eight words, gained 3 percent between June and July, PCMag reported.

Image: Experian Hitwise

Axel Springer: Evolving from print to multimedia

By Tim Christiansen

Newspapers must become integrated media companies that use their brands effectively in order to survive, says Christoph Keese, president of public affairs at Axel Springer AG.

The German-based multimedia company has invested heavily in its digital media division and plans to erect paywalls for additional revenue streams in order to maintain high quality content.

With more than 11,500 employees and annual revenues of approximately €2.9 billion, Axel Springer is the leading newspaper publisher in Germany. The company is active in 36 countries, has more than 230 newspapers and magazines and 80 websites, and boasts holdings in television and radio stations. In 2009, Axel Springer was one of the most profitable publishing companies in Germany, with an EBITDA margin of 18.6 percent.

Circulation in Germany shrunk by 10 percent from 2007 to 2009 and advertising expenditure declined. But this didn't lead to a large decline in revenue for Germany´s publishing companies. Many have made up for revenue losses by charging higher prices. Although German publishing companies have experienced decrease in volume, the decline is moderate from a global perspective.

“Axel Springer´s core business is the provision of information and entertainment for different audiences,” Keese explains. To this end, Axel Springer has three primary strategic targets: the German market, the internationalisation of the model and the digitalisation of the business.

The newspaper business is the most lucrative segment of Axel Springer´s portfolio and subsidises the organisation’s online activities. But the primary goal for the future is to increase online revenues from 25 percent to 50 percent of total revenue. Axel Springer has also taken a decisive stance against the “free-of-cost” culture on the Internet.

“Journalism cannot be free of cost and high quality content needs a price tag,” Keese says. Currently, only search engines can appropriately price their product. Content contributors must participate more in order to generate adequate profits. “Content is not king, content is everything!”

Axel Springer’s high quality content and brand are of high strategic importance to the company. The consumer has the strong desire for orientation and curation. Due to the variety of products and competition in the digital age, strong brands are critical to the success of media companies.

Further, Axel Springer has quickly scaled internationally. Axel Springer AG and Ringier AG merged in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Serbia in 2010 to create a joint venture called the Ringier Axel Springer Media AG. To date, the new multimedia company has secured of €414 million in revenue and employs 4,800 people. It is already one of the leading media conglomerates in Eastern Europe, publishing more than 100 titles and managing over 70 websites. The goal is to have an IPO in three to five years.

Axel Springer has “evolved from an old fashioned newspaper publisher to a multimedia powerhouse!” Keese says.

This interview and more will be available in the World Newsmedia Network's upcoming World Newsmedia Innovation Study. To secure a free copy of the report, please take our survey, available in nine languages.