Saturday, February 19, 2011

Characteristics of online news

A number of print papers now have online news sites also.
Visitors, called "traffic", to online sites have become an important metric for publishers.
Fewer news services actually gather news. "New actors are i) news organisations which only provide news online (so-called pure-players), ii) search engines which are often also a form of news aggregation, iii) Internet portals with news services, iv) social networks or communication services such as Twitter, v) other news aggregators, vi) providers focused on mobile news alone, vii) new online advertising groups, viii) hardware and services providers."
"In the online context, the production and dissemination of news is much more interactive and multi-directional, rather than linear. News is constantly updated, with journalists and other news contributors monitoring, distilling and repackaging information."
News wires, freelance journalists, photographers, or camera-teams, who do gather news, may cut out "middlemen" - publishers, print newspapers - and go directly to online services willing to pay.
"Device or network service providers, which did not play any role in the past, also control access to end consumers and have a large degree of bargaining power with content providers. Similarly to other digital content industries, new types of intermediaries and standards are emerging. Users may also increasingly become diffusers, commentators and creators of news."
Revenues online may be small, but there are few fixed costs. Direct reader subscriptions and pay-per-item attempts have not been widely successful. Some news sites are using donor or trustee support.

Internet and News

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