Exploratory reflections departing from a case study analysi

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Why should we expect worlds to collide?-
Exploratory reflections departing from a case
study analysis of Jornal de Notícias (Portugal)

• Luís António Santos and Manuel Pinto(Universidade
  do Minho Portugal)

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JN in brief

• Portugals 2nd widest audience daily (average 08
  circulation of 101 thousand)
• traditionally stronger in the North / quality
  popular
• first on the webin PT (July 95)

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JN in brief
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JN in brief

• after the initial enthusiasm it never went beyond
  the shovelware phase / it got integrated into a
  portal
• 2005 bought by current owners
• 2007 renegotiation of agreement with host
  portaland new online strategy

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JN online

• new site was online on May 2008(2 days shy of
  120th anniversary)
• major changes
• No longer published all the paper content
• Lost generalist forums
• Option to depart from presenting a thematic
  distribution similar to that of the paper
• New user centred spaces Community, Blogs,
  Citizen Reporter, Multimedia

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JN online
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JN online
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JN online

• first 6 months
• 278 videos
• 29 infographics
• 309 photo-galleries
• 59 audios
• 11 multimedia special features
• (by the end of October) more than a thousand user
  blogs had been created

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JN online

• e-business (3 relevant operations)
• Sept 08 Deal with PowerSoccer for 2 soccer
  related games ( 20k users in the first month
  plus added revenue from ingame ad deals)
• Feb 09 Partnership with 4 other media groups to
  use shared contextual ad platform
• March 09 (the group) Exclusive commercial
  representatives fo CBS interactive

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JN online changing newsroom

• no full integration
• incremental digital awareness strategy
• online newsroom growth (from 3 to 8) in tandem
  with newsroom major shift creation of a
  non-thematic, flexible, news-desk (Actualidade)
  and followed by symbolic room change

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JN online - effects

• shift in perception of time and deadline
  rationale
• Shift in the perception of workload and in the
  what-is-expected-of-me-whilst-on-assignment
  framework
• Enhance awareness of users presence UGC /
  permanent access to stats

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JN online - work/skills

• 2007
• Adapt to 2 publishing platforms
• Average writting skills
• Sensible communication skills

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JN online - work/skills

• 2008 (all )
• Breaking news
• Press review
• UGC management
• Presence in editorial meetings
• Permanent linkage to Actualidade
• Production of new/ongoing multimedia work
• Expected to handle voice image recording
  equipment (N95s for BN) and to perform basic
  editing tasks

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JN online /death of newspapers debate

• Three broad ideas
• 1. The collapse of rigid business models
• 2. Breakdown of producer/user trust/loyalty
• 3. Failings of a self-centred and entrenched
  professional (the journo)

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Discussion

• 1.
• Editorial
• Changes in the site
• Integration of new user geared funcionalities
• creation of semi-autonomous micro-sites
• e-Businesspromotion of cross-product added
  value
• capture income from non-hard news related sites

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Discussion

• 2. Living in times where as Singer puts it
  no single message is discrete is not easy.
• Rethinking loyalty UGC spaces, promotion of
  event or theme-centred micro-sites, production of
  sense-making materials (infographics/multimedia),
  increased direct talk (e-mail, twitter), usage of
  conversation expansion tools (i.e. CoveritLive)

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Discussion

• 3. still unconfortable at times with the demise
  of the authenticator role, with pressures for
  greater transparency, with sheer volume of user
  activity, butmore used to- producing
  medium-neutral information
• - providing added accountability assurances

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JN online

• Far from full audience-centred-part-of-the-conver
  sation production yet
• Produced by a group of people with heightened
  social profile in the newsroom and less bound by
  incentives to standardize work practices.

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Thank you,

• lsantos_at_ics.uminho.pt
• mpinto_at_ics.uminho.pt