I was brought up in a household where newspapers were bought and read regularly. Nowadays I usually buy at least one Sunday newspaper, while I read a certain amount of news online.
Whenever there is a big news story you can expect bloggers to reference “authorative” sources, such as newspapers, be they Irish or international. However the reverse is not true. Irish newspapers do not seem to care about the blogging community.
Earlier today I came across a post on Frank Michlick’s blog which referenced the Washington Post. The Washington Post, in turn, embeds a little box into the article:
Not only do they track which blogs are talking about the article they also encourage you to bookmark it using delicio.us
Now why can’t Irish newspapers do the same thing?
Considering that most of them sell advertising space on their sites, wouldn’t it be a good thing if they were able to generate more traffic?
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
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It’s Ireland Michele, the fact that I can read Irish newspapers online is a miracle. They don’t even use their own names for domains – Unison.ie for the Indo and Ireland.com for the Times.
It’s terrible but I’m grateful enough fo the service they do provide … no matter how minimal it is.
Maybe so, but considering the losses that the online versions of the media have suffered I would have thought that any mechanism that could improve their earnings would have been welcomed..
True. But I’d wager they have very little understanding of what they can achieve.
I’d have to agree with you 🙂
I know that they hadn’t really considered the copyright issues when they initially republished journalists’ work online.. At least one case was taken by the NUJ about this
The “typical Ireland” argument plays only a small part here I believe. I think the problem is with the traditional media in general. I’m very impressed to see the Washington Post’s efforts at embracing the way we use the web today. But the word we is important here because the majority of web users still use it as we did a couple of years ago. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, feeds and tags are all foreign to folks outside the loop. People like my parents and even most of my friends don’t care about these things and have no interest in them. And neither do those that run the likes of the Irish Times or the Indo.
Eoghan – I know what you are saying 🙂
My mother, for example, uses the web on a regular basis, but she is highly unlikely to ever blog
And also, Michele, I wonder if those losses have made the media hesitant about investing much more in the web? Just look at the Unison site. It’s layout or style hasn’t been updated in God knows how long! 🙂
PS: I really like the new style. Is it an off-the-shelf template? I haven’t seen it anywhere else.
Eoghan – integrating technorati etc., wouldn’t break the bank…
The style is “off the shelf” – found it the other day and decided to “run with it” 🙂
I may need to tweak it a small bit, but overall it does what I want
Eoghan – the unison site has looked pretty much the same since 2001 😉
http://web.archive.org/web/20010202162400/http://www.unison.ie/
And I’m not talking only from a design point of view … but by services available.
I seriously think it just needs somebody to explain the possibilities to the powers that be at these places.
Yeah, the template is nice and clean and lightweight.
You’ve touched on such an interesting topic I think. So many issues here.
Like which comes first, the adoption of feeds, tags, etc. by the masses or by the services these people use? If RTÉ, the Times and others started promoting such technologies and concepts, they could really take-off. Fair play to Newstalk for their podcasting efforts.
Also, is Ireland really a late-adopter like gpshewan suggests? The “typical Ireland” sentiment is endemic here. But does it make any sense? Maybe it does. I’d love to see some Irish organisations stick their neck out and embrace what’s going on on the web.
Anyway, cheers for bringing the Washington Post example to our attention.
gpshewan – the Unison site is gas, isn’t it? 🙂 Weren’t they involved with some sort of web-TV service at some point? Those were the days.
The Ireland.com (ridiculous domain for “The Irish Times”, if you ask me) site is similar, as is RTE.ie. RTÉ does feeds though.
As you mention Ireland.com .. How many actual paid subscribers do they have? I refuse to pay for their content, so I’m either missing out or making use of the other non-paid content that’s available..
Unison is really ugly !!
Speaking from experience with some of the “old Media” in this country I would have to say that a few of the companies got burned during the dot com boom making them a little hesitant about investing again.
Old Media doesn’t have the money it once had either, you only have to look at the thickness or rather the thinness of the print Irish Times to see how little advertising revenue they meke these days.
The significant investment that it takes to get an enterprise level website up and running (when you have no in-house expertise for this) and the huge support staff that it requires is daunting.
Another factor is that if all “old media” in this country are slow on the pickup then where is the competitive reason for any of them to get up-to-speed?
I think that a few of the well established newspapers in this country looking down the barallel at the minute and don’t seem to realise it.
I’m pretty sure that both the Independent and the Irish times were previously independent.ie and irish-times.ie. I recall the Irish Times launching ireland.com seven or eight years ago. They had very grand plans for it as a portal for Ireland sight which certainly don’t appear to really have come to fruition.
That being said, the Independent is probably hamstrung by Anthony O’Reilly’s views on new media – I seem to recall him making a speech sometime on the last year which suggested a certain amount of luddism as far as the web and newspapers are concerned. I loathe their site; I haven’t yet worked out whether disappearing menu items are related to firefox or not). Their layout doesn’t appeal to me much either.
I won’t subscribe to ireland.com although I’ve paid for Le Monde and am considering the FT. The main reason for this is that I don’t think it’s worth the money.
I knew about the Washington Post because strangely enough, I turned up on their links as a result of their checking who’s blogging about the stories they’re carrying. I thought it was a neat idea.
RTE’s site is fairly simple and pretty easy to read. I also find that although they do it with very, very little fanfare, there are incremental improvements happening on an ongoing basis, such as the provision of playlists on some of Lyric’s pages, for example.
I’m not really sure if implementing technorati is really hugely in their interest though Michele, and although I’ll bow to your superior knowledge in this respect, I have to say that I’m not overwhelmed by technorati either in terms of the amount of traffic it drives in or in terms of the stuff I find if I’m looking for things there. They could go with a little more blogging in much the same way as the BBC, Guardian, Times (UK) and Le Monde do though; it might be a nice start.
Winds – Yes – both papers had (probably still have) the IE domains.
With regard to technorati I’d look at it in simple terms – if bloggers are taking about your articles and sending traffic to you, then why shouldn’t you send some traffic back?
I see what you’re saying – it’s just that I find technorati to be increasingly full of noise. It’s driving very little traffic into me – I get far, far more from the Irish aggregators as a general rule – and if I try to find something in it, I generally don’t succeed.
I suppose that depends on your tags. I get quite a lot of quality traffic from technorati onto my various blogs, whereas a lot of the Irish aggregators would not be pushing that much traffic my way. In reality I would guess that this is related in no little part to the topics I post about – the majority of them are not related to Ireland specifically