Some interesting tips: A history site that mixes staff and user copy. Or an interactive CJ app for the iPhone with a newsroom culture that has reporters call the submitters right back to expand the citizen copy into a larger story. (Rough notes, not verbatim.)
What are the latest trends and advancements in online news and information abroad? Representatives from Web sites and media companies in Europe, Latin America and Asia discuss new and innovative ways to reach audiences, how specific projects were developed and executed, what’s on the horizon.
Panelists:
Daryl Lindsey, Spiegel Online International
James Breiner, Director, Center for Digital Journalism, University of Guadalajara
Borja Echevarria, Director, SOITU.ES
Cilene Guedes, Mobile News Coordinator, O Globo
Lindsey, Der Spiegel: Founded by occupying British after WWII, given editorial freedom after a year. Was modeled on Life Magazine, weekly illustrated news magazine. Have put the entire magazine on a Web site with daily updates, so we have effectively become the daily newspaper of Der Spiegel, updating every day. It is the younger version of Der Spiegel, attraction younger demographic (5.5 million monthly visitors). Have 100 editorial staffers.
Provide stories behind the news. We are not an online-first newsroom nor are we print first. Have deepened our relationship to the print magazine. All Siegel journalists have been asked to write online and last year there were 1,000 stories online written by print staffers. Put breaking news online. We go for the place that does the best journalistic job. Flip side is if a story from the online side is not date sensitive, we hold it for the Monday print edition.
Spiegel is a unique cultural phenomenon. It is the common homepage on German computers. People read it at lunch, on the bus, while relaxing. As a result, very few of our visits come via search engines. It is almost all direct connect. One key to our stickiness is we are entertaining (showed a video about surfing on a raging river).
Have an editorial-driven online community based on shared history. It is an online history archive site for Germany. Half the stories are written by staff, the other submitted. Hugely successful. People like history. Did a story about a museum show on German soldiers in WWII; people went into their attics and sent hundreds of old photos. Then set up a third-party system so people could have photos scanned and uploaded to the site.
(His advice: If you want to connect with your readers, set up a history site. Our experience on MyMissourian backs that. Our major issue was generating interest in history among our student editors.)
I had a long discussion with Lindsey after the session. He is very interested in our experimental Blogging the World class and its site, http://eurokulture.missouri.edu. I team teach it with a professor from the German/Russian department, mixing journalism and language students to prowl the European Web/Blogosphere for pop culture stores. My students love Der Spiegel online and get a lot of stories from it. He is very interested in a video link with the students.
Note the size of his newsroom – 100 journalists. It is a mix of German, European, English and American. The cultural integration of the operation is in itself amazing. He said the training challenges are almost overwhelming. Bio:
Daryl Lindsey has run Speigel Online International, the English-language version of Germany’s largest quality news Web site and Europe’s largest newsweekly, since its launch in 2004. A long-term resident of Germany, he has also worked for the respected broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and on the Web site of international broadcaster Deutsche Welle. He has worked in online media since 1994, including long stints at Salon.com and HotWired/Wired News during the 1990s. At SPIEGEL, he is currently establishing a network of English-language European news sites.
Guerdes: Mobile site has a million page views. iPhone is big in Brazil – a third of the visits. The difference is the interactivity provided. Make it easy to submit comments, etc. Break down their mobile effort to several applications.
EU-Reporter is an incredible app for citizen journalism. Use the application to take the photo and write the text. Upload it and a reporter calls or emails you back to verify and expand it. Is popular, people all over the city are sharing information via iPhone.
We try not position ourselves as a newspaper. We are a content provider. Our reporters provide content in all formats, Web, mobile and print.
This is a brief report on Guerdes, but she is obviously one of the leading innovators in journalism via mobile. For her operation, mobile is normalized. The paper’s readers use it with great regularity. Her CJ app is incredible – mostly for the newsroom culture of immediately calling back the submitter to expand on the story. A deeper look at the O Globo operation is more than warranted.
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