New NPR.org Pushes Multi-Platform Business Model
A shiny new NPR.org revealed itself Monday with a simpler homepage design packed with multimedia features and customizable choices.
Like most major media websites still afloat, NPR.org aims to keep radio content its core but offer up multi-platform, all-purpose news.
The new site is a major improvement to its tightly-fonted, cramped and confusing predecessor. Now, homepage focuses on news, arts and the latest audio clips from the organization’s most popular shows.
National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller sat down with Newsweek to discuss the site’s re-launch and strategic steps for online media. Schiller, who was senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com just six months ago, has a unique perspective from the top of an industry struggling to survive.
One classic battle playing out in newsrooms and online offices across the country is the delicate balance of the traditional company and its online additions. Schiller says the relationship between the online newsroom and radio producers and reporters is symbiotic.
“In creating all this digital content, it’s not just to service NPR.org,” she said. “We’re giving them more digital content that they can pull down and use on their site.”
As a national public broadcasting institution, however, NPR is faced with a different set of challenges than private media groups in blending local public content with national news. Schiller feels local news stations are the ones suffering the most in the economic downturn, and says NPR.org is attempting to dissuade that trend.
“One of the major focuses of our digital initiative is to give stations the tools, the resources, the knowledge, and the infrastructure, so they can create a great experience in their communities,” she told Newsweek.
Local content, however, proves to be buried in national headlines and difficult to access on the new site, however. The site promotes its many blogs and includes local news in a few select places when relevant, but a strong push for promoting local content is a bit lost.
The new site may draw in new audiences, but its shift to multiplatform production indicates a core change in NPR’s business model that may be a tall order for an organization with such a strong production tradition.
USA Today vs. Washington Post vs. New York Times
Like many others, I occasionally use Compete and Alexa data to compare traffic of websites whose logs I don’t have access to. I know these services are imperfect, but a comparison I ran today of NYTimes.com vs. USAToday.com vs. WashingtonPost.com shows just how anecdotal the data from these services is.
Below are the results of a comparison of the three sites from Compete for the last year. According to Compete, USA Today gets more unique visitors than the New York Times. My gut tells me this is completely wrong. While I’ve read my share of issues of USA Today on airplanes and at hotels, it is unfathomable to me that its website is more popular than NYTimes.com.
So I went over to Alexa and did a similar comparison to dramatically different results. The New York Times is well ahead of both the Post and USA Today in terms of Daily Reach, with USA Today actually trailing the Post by a small margin. To put this in perspective, Compete is reporting that USA Today gets around twice the traffic as Alexa is reporting. So this discrepancy isn’t within any normally accepted margin of error.
To me, the Alexa result feels rights, and a look at the Nielsen data makes me semi confident that my gut instinct is more correct than Compete. However, the Nielsen data routinely comes under criticism itself, as does that of competing service Comscore.
The fact of the matter is that the only way to track site usage with any precision is through log files, which the firms providing these numbers don’t have access to. No one has truly figured out to track overall web usage accurately as of yet, so we should all remember to take these numbers with a huge grain of salt. Even when the the stats you get back match your working hypothesis, as the Alexa numbers do in my USA Today vs. NYTimes vs. WashingtonPost.com comparison.
NPR to Launch Redesigned Site on Monday
NPR will be launching a redesigned website on Monday, and they are providing a sneak preview of the homepage of the new site via a YouTube video. While the video only provides a brief glimpse of the new site, what is shown looks quite impressive. I look forward to taking a look on Monday.
New York City Courts Emerging Tech Development with New Incentives
Hoping to compete with emerging foreign markets and prevent another major industry collapse, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday the city’s launch of eight initiatives aimed and drawing and keeping new media technologies in the Big Apple.
“New York City is the media capital of the world, but, with the industry undergoing profound changes, it’s incumbent on us to take steps now to capitalize on growth opportunities and ensure we remain an industry leader,” Bloomberg said in a press conference, according to the New York Times.
Among the eight programs is the establishment of a media lab modeled after those at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
The lab will “issue a request for proposals from universities and other organizations interested in providing space for lectures, workshops and other events that would being together media professionals,” The Times reported.
Other initiatives include recruiting entrepreneurs from around outside of the city, seeking rising starts from emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, Silicon Valley and the Boston area, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In his press conference, Mayor Bloomberg estimated the city’s media industry makes up about 10 percent of its private sector, adding up to around 300,000 jobs. The new initiatives aim to create 8,000 new jobs over the next 10 years and will cost the city about $1.5 million.
A spokesman for the organization behind the initiatives, The New York City Economic Development Corporation, said a focus on new media companies will help curb the slow-down of traditional media development and the plan is based on past lessons learned.
“We know that 10 years ago, when you look at some of the media giants, many were not even incorporated yet, and is they were, many were just tiny entities,” NYCEDC Vice President of Public Affairs David Lombino told PRWeek.
The project follows a similar push in January to keep financial employees in the city, and after tacking media, NYCEDC will focus on curtailing slowing retail business.
Commenting on a Conference? Blog it? No, YouTube it.
I spent some time today going through a random selection of the videos of presentations, tweets and blog commentary about the Personal Democracy Forum conference held last week in New York City. Sort of goes from the insightful to the inane to the downright snarky. Kind of expected. But then I happen upon a little nugget, something different.
Here’s Natali, a conference attendee (and senior editor at CNET.com), who after the first day, and before dinner I presume, wants to provide a little of her own commentary on the conference. What’s unusual is that she admits to forgoing a blog post, saying that it’ll take too much time, and she won’t need to “obsess about content, wit, structure, grammar and all that stuff.” (Emphasis added.) And instead she does a video post “to throw it all out there.”
It’s engaging. Natali’s camera-friendly and thoughtful. The video post is part commentary, part confessional. Natali does another video post about the second day. In it, she admits to playing hookey, attending only the first half of the day, and going for an afternoon jog in Central Park. (BTW, it rained cats and dogs later in the afternoon.)
Is this the beginning of a new trend? Speaking is obviously easier than writing, especially after attending an event, when you just want to do a “brain dump” with friends. And with making a video post on YouTube so easy now, I’m wondering if we’re going to see more of this.