Yesterday, 1.2 million copies of a “special edition” of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of volunteers. The papers, dated July 4th of next year, were headlined with long-awaited news: “IRAQ WAR ENDS”. Surprised commuters happily accepted the free copies, thinking they were legitimate.
The edition, which bears the same look and feel as the real New York Times, includes stories describing what the future could hold: national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for CEOs and more. There is also a spoof site, at http://www.nytimes-se.com/.
Steve Lambert, one of the project’s organizers and an editor of the paper said: “We wanted to experience what it would look like, and feel like, to read headlines we really want to read. It’s about what’s possible, if we think big and act collectively,”
In response to the spoof, Catherine J. Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, said: “This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it.”
This elaborate hoax was 6 months in the making by a diverse range of groups, including The Yes Men, the Anti-Advertising Agency, CODEPINK, United for Peace and Justice, Not An Alternative, May First/People Link, Improv Everywhere, Evil Twin, and Cultures of Resistance.
The Fake Paper Edition:
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Written on October 24, 2008 – 5:07 pm Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
When will we see foldable e-paper on the street? Will advanced algorithms and Internet eventually put publishers out of business? – Nobody knows… But we do witness a devastating momentum for traditional publishers, how can these companies reinvent themselves? Are they doomed?
Chosun media, showing off newspaper 2.0
Doomed? Not by a long shot! at least, if we have to believe the marketing manager of Chosun. Chosun is a Korean newspaper giant, based in the heart of Seoul. I have to admit, I never heard of the company before I visited them today. But like many unknown Asian companies, Chosun is a prominent player with amazing proportions, newspaper circulation surpasses that of well-known newspapers like the USA today. The marketing manager believes that businesspeople will always appreciate an edited and selected overview on the daily hot topics. And if it isn’t on paper, it would be on a different medium. And as much as I like to argue the contrary, he might have a point. Financial Times recently announced that their amount of online (paying) subscribers is increasing fast. We got a tour at the HQ, and they actually got excited of the Nintendo Wii again! (has been a long time)
Epic 2015
But if you ask me; newspaper publishers are biased towards their believe that a good paper requires manual work, something that will seize to exist in the future. This three-year-old videoclip made by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson try to sketch that situation. Skip to 6:40:
Its not a question whether newspapers are depended of their online services anymore. It seems that newspapers are making the switch to digital, and that income can be found in advertisements rather then subscription based income. An example is English business paper Financial Times, that recently reached an important tipping point – The newspaper currently have more online then printed readers.
According to Financial Times owner Pearson the daily circulation of the business newspaper has been 350.000 readers for a long time now, but the site ’s online visitors have tripled to half-a-million in just one year.
The increase in online users is the result of a successful digital strategy of the media company; the news company introduced a policy that enforces the frequent readers, that read more then five articles to subscribe to the site. Income from online visitors is generated with advertisements. The digital subscriptions and online advertisement counted for 20% eight years ago but increased to 63% of turnover this year.
I read the Financial Times almost everyday, and I really like to read the paper on my way to work, like many others I actually like to read from paper. But I guess that the Kindle, iPhone and other E-paper gizmo’s will be making digital newspaper reading more convenient in the future. You’ll never know, soon you might be asked: “Mommy/Daddy, can you tell me again about the time when you were reading printed newspapers?”
Written on June 13, 2008 – 4:18 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
British quality newspaper The Times have opened up their dusty but valuable archives of the past 200 years by officially launching The Times Archive today. Every newspaper published between 1785 and 1985 has been scanned and made fully searchable through an OCR program.
Nineteen months ago, Times Media’s digital publisher Zach Leonard told Journalism.co.uk that the company was looking at the possibility of building an archive of all its content. Turns out that Leonard wasn’t just trying to gain some goodwill but actually planned on digitalizing the archive. The beta version was launched only last month, so apparently the company has different guidelines than most web start-ups - who often seem to stay in beta mode forever.
For a limited period of time, the whole archive will be free. So enjoy it while you can. Read about the original Live Aid for example, or the Titanic or the assassination of Lincoln.
Written on May 13, 2008 – 4:21 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
During Web 2.0 Expo, Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobscalled upon all media companies to look at the bright side of the digital revolution: “Media business are focusing on the destruction of their business and therefore lose sight.” I couldn’t agree more with this man. So I was happily surprised when David Petherick mailed me an example of a newspaper that seems to get what’s going on in their industry. The Liverpool Daily Post, a regional newspaper, is using CoveritLive to live blog the production of tomorrow’s paper:
Over the next 17 hours, members of our team will be logging on to this blog to talk about what they doing, and how the Liverpool Daily Post is put together.
Editor Mark Thomas, deputy editor Alison Gow, news editor Andy Kelly, sports editor Richard Williamson, business editor Bill Gleeson and features editor Emma Johnson are involved with this unique experiment and will write a story for the paper about their experiences as well. So why are they doing this?
It’s an attempt to get our online readers more involved in what we do on a daily basis.
Sounds good and daring. And I must say, I’m impressed by the amount of messages they have been posting. The number of comments is also pretty high, yet the news editors might need some more time to answer them. As one of the most important parts of the digital revolution is the growing need of people to interact with media professionals.
All in all, this initiative of the Liverpool Daily Post is a good example of the attitude media companies should have. Some optimism in this business doesn’t hurt anybody, in fact, it’s exactly what it needs. Especially now The Guardian Journalist Nick Davies has pointed out with his book Flat Earth News that British newspapers basically just copy/paste from the newswire of the Press Association. A bit of transparency is the least that newspapers can do to win back their audience’s trust.
Written on November 13, 2008 – 11:16 am
Yesterday, 1.2 million copies of a “special edition” of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of volunteers. The papers, dated July 4th of next year, were headlined with long-awaited news: “IRAQ WAR ENDS”. Surprised commuters happily accepted the free copies, thinking they were legitimate.
Written on October 24, 2008 – 5:07 pm
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Written on June 13, 2008 – 4:18 pm
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