How local newspapers could reinvent themselves using information that is available for everyone to use and republish will be discussed at a digital editors meet-up next month.
The Digital Editors’ Network will host Social, Local and Mobile Innovation at Media City in Manchester on 23 February, exploring ideas on how the regional media should develop in the digital age.
Speakers will include Greg Hadfield, former head of digital development at the Daily Telegraph and founder of Schoolsnet and Soccernet, Online Journalism Blog founder Paul Bradshaw and Sarah Hartley of the Guardian.
Greg, who is now strategic director with digital agency Cogapp, will look at how open data could give local newspapers a chance to re-invent themselves – and why it could be their last lifeline.
Other speakers will include Paul Bradshaw, author of the Online Journalism Handbook and Sarah Hartley, managing director of TalkAboutLocal and community strategist for GMG.
Sarah will explain how the Guardian Media Group’s nOtice.com platform for local content can be used by the regional media.
Francois Nel, digital media business researcher and director of the Journalism Leaders Programme at the University of Central Lancashire, will report on his research which has highlighted how local newspapers are in danger of making some grave errors with their mobile strategies.
François will also briefly explain the award winning Media And Digital Enterprise (MADE) project which aims to equip digital innovators with the cutting-edge knowledge and skills required to start up and sustain innovative new journalistic enterprises in the public interest.
The discussion will be chaired by Nick Turner, head of digital content for the CN Group who founded DEN with Francois to link media website managers to other innovators inside and outside the traditional industry.
To register for a place click here.
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Thanks for the DEN article – is the link going though to the event page? When I followed it the link went to eventbrite home page
Nick
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http://solomoden-autohome.eventbrite.com/
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Publishing free stuff you find online isn’t journalism – and doesn’t really require many (any?) journalists.It may be the future given the dying off of revenue streams but it’s not gonna be much cop for readers, assuming there are any.
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I look forward to a jargon-free and analytical account of each speaker’s heroic strategy to save local newspapers.
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The trouble with the internet is that it struggles to be a meaningful revenue stream for any media group, just an add on to the service that is provided by the journalists whose products make the money. The online versions certianly wouldn’t exist without the newspaper’s established brtands behind them. If the newspapers go, then the online “journalists” might have to find a news-gathering job which pays and that won’t be online.
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@PaulWarren I think part of the problem is that a lot of print journalists still see the internet as an ‘add on’ and they don’t treat multimedia with the respect it deserves in its own right, nor do they understand it’s potential. As underlined by your disdain for online ‘journalists’
Maybe the uncomfortable truth of the matter is that news content has never been the profitable part of the equation, not even for print and that now jobs, motors and property advertising is migrating to the internet, that is hurting the newspapers far more than the fact that people are reading their news content online for free.
With more newspapers going weekly, I think the scramble for jobs will be the other way with print journalists scrambling to try and find jobs in digital media as the format for their work changes.
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I sort of agree with Paul Warren. Internet has failed to create content independently. Untrained laymen come to internet and blast it with their half baked comments and opinions. The result is unedited content. Few are interested in reading what comes from millions of netizens. They rely on the brands that made their names through printed versions.
Mistake that the printed brands make is that they put the content free on net and make the printed version irrelevant. As a result they compete with millions of similar sites and also lose the ad revenue. If they refuse to give the content on net, people will have to go for print version.
Delivery may be a problem for print versions but if pizza and burger can be delivered, why not a newspaper or magazine? Reader will pay and the advertiser will respect such delivered publications. What is needed is to change the minds of publishers that they do not look for short cuts.
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