Clare Cook

Dijonscope: regional journalism is worth paying for

In a truly inpsirational interview, I had the enormous pleasure of talking to Sabine Torres today - founder and director of Dijonscope: Europe's only subscription-only regional online news site, based in Dijon, France.

The strategy as of four months ago is clear - remove any advertising from the site and put the content behind a subscription making readers foot the bill.Users now have to pay five euros a month, 50 for a year or 90 for two years.

Why is she utterly convinced this is the only, and imperative way, of securing the future of regional journalism? Because it unequivically takes away any bias, any hint of other motif, and keeps all journalists free to focus on top-quality journalism which is the core USP of the site.

The site has taken on the French legal system and won. Sabine had to face the Tribunal de Grand Instance against a print regional newspaper who accused them of unfair reporting and business.

The site has also taken on the French registration system. In France, all reporters who want to be seen as professionals have to be registered with the CPPAP. They also have to face large set up costs and different tax incentvies. This means that most regionals stay firmly in the 'unoffical blog' category, unlike Dijonscope, the first of its kind. Sabine takes great pride in her team of 10 journalists.

Dijonscope: carving out new territory in the regional press

DijOnscOpe, was launched in 2009 with advertising as the business model. It is a LLC, but took the strategic decision in December 2011 to remove all advertising including classified.

Dijonscope is a regional online news site with a strong identity for independent journalism. It is the first online daily regional to be officially recognised as a press organisation under French authorities. The mission statement representing the work of the journalists on the site is impassioned: Inform, investigate, and criticize.

The team of Dijon-based journalists focus on quality rather than quantity, with editorial decisions being more about cutting-edge investigative or informative reporting than following the day to day highlights from institutes - formerly the fodder of regional printed press. Their value for readers is in creating ' a rigorous and independent range of information, drawn and filtered by journalists and correspondents whose intellectual integrity is uncompromising'.

The site stands for clarity, and offering more understanding and even more media freedom. The editorial is not meant to be consensual but honest and fair, respecting the dignity of our audience, your dignity.

What drives you?

The main ethos is ' we will not be a public service media but media serving the public'. It is this feisty drive for editorial independence and respect for journalists as a profession that has prompted Dijonscope to become Europe’s only online regional website behind a subscription, ditching advertising from December 2011.

Beating the beurocracy

Having all the editorial team be officially registered and trained journalists is a key aspect of the business. There are six full time and the equivalent of ten all together, freelance paid or paid part time. In France, having all professional staff and no ‘citizen’ journalists is very important to Dijonscope’s identity and business model.

A structural coup

In France, most regional and local sites are blogs which means they are not registered as official press organisations. To have the right to be called a registered press agent you have to be registered with the CPPAP – the publications and press agency commission. To be recognised as a regional news provider, you have to be registered appropriately, yet most people want to make the most of the democratisation of the press and start news sites. In France these remain firmly in the ‘blog’ camp and cannot officially employ people. In the regional landscape, start-ups have been restricted to either younger people starting sites but running them more unofficially, or older generations with enough money to be registered but who bring all the old elements of ‘doing news’ to the table.  That is why Dijonscope is so pioneering. registered card. Sabine was just 28 when it launched. <

Taking on the courts and old skool journalism

In May 2010 she own a court case against the traditional ‘print’ regional who accused the site of unfair competition. Dijonscope won. We want the same rights and transparency as our print legacy. The press is very opaque in France yet we want to make the relationship transparent again.

Why is journalistic transparency so key?
If you go to a restaurant you pay for the food, not the chairs and the lighting. And I want to put that back. If you want great food you pay for it. If you want great journalism you pay for it. We put information of super richness, politics economy and details - we don’t do the rubbish. Therein lies the value of what we are selling. It is our information. It is our journalists. It is our skill. I believe in them and what they are doing. I also believe in the readership. There is so much value and worth in regional Regional has too long been thought of as something trashy, devalued, sensationalised and that everything online has to be free. I fundamentally do not believe that to be true. Regional journalism is the backbone of liberty or political justice – and there is a wealth of good reporting to be done if it is done properly. This is a mission. It’s also about echoing what we believe in that mission in our business model, which is why we have changed our strategy to remove any advertising. I cannot stand advertorial. I have always said there would never be any on this site. You should not be able to buy the opinion of a reporter.<

 

What is the one key thing to being sustainable?

  >It has to be to gain the confidence of the public. Readership isn’t falling because people don’t want to read it or because they are more stupid now than they were. It’s because they don’t have any faith in journalists or media products. It’s all got to stop.  We have to work to re-establish discretion rigour and quality. We have to prove we merit the profession of journalist. We have to show humility and that we are capable of being neutral, and that neutrality as a fundamental trading ethic of what it means to be a journalist and produce journalistic content.

Who are the social media winners and has beens?

Martyn Bryant #smc_mcr

It is amazing how fast social web services move on and we move on to the next thing. key themes from this evening's presentation:

EVOLVE but people don't like change
innovations must be SIMPLE to use
UNDERSTAND level of collaboration your audience want
PODS rather than monalythical social networks seems to be where the trend is
NEED good launch but Google + could cope with slow burn as it is layered so far
CROWD and adopters needed for it to get going

Myspace: it had a music focus it was an amazing place to find music and you could customise your page to load music whenever you open it. 2005 580million dollars news international 2008 over run by Facebook 2010 October attempted a rebrand with my- a media thing where off loaded it to specific media for 35 million dollar. It is now going to be for social tv and panasonic....
What did they do wrong?
It was aimed too young in demographic. Too horrific to use. It worked great in 2004 but very quickly they should have learned that you have to constantly innovating, new ideas, moving forward what Facebook is, if you stay the same service you are going to struggle , more a space for spam and malware,

Bebo launched 2005 module style social network, could add different bits. I logged on and it as mainly young kids and never seemed to break out of it. Ws acquired by aol 850 million and offloaded for less than 10million. Run by criterion now. It did not have a strong enough image. There was an image associated with it: chavs and scallies.

Friends reuinted: it was the precursor to Facebook as you could find out about your old mates. as acquired by itv. Sold two years later and terminal decline. They charged you for pretty much anything. It s really a dating platform and slag gong off teachers. Now with dc Thomas early examples of digging up dirt on social sites. Finding people by an association you already had: so setting the precedent for lots of models that are successful. Monetizing every transaction is very wrong. Only time you can charge per transaction is dating.

Google wave: 2009 was supposed to be the future of collaboration you could throw in polls and video. But you had to wait for an invite and then people left it. Great idea terribly managed . It s amazing technology tha tis now open sourced and the tech is open to be incorporated into other things. It wasn't right it was too broad. Wave should not have been mass and should not have been free. Google Buzz was a social network created from your email listings. Really mismanaged.

Plurk: like twitter but horizontal. Had different verbs But you gained points through your usage. Still very big in Taiwan. Hiring worldwide finds a home somewhere else. Made sense to people there.

Identi.ca open source alternative to Facebook. There is always a pay between power of the network and what is best for us as a society. massive inertia to move communities.

Diaspara. Too early to say if the initial inertia will pay off? It is an open version of Facebook. Ideas of pod is the future rather than the monolythical decentralised version, micro networks are stronger. Prototype of what is to come.

JiQ short messages between little groups rather than public version of twitter but it never found much traction but google bought it and then never did anything with it. Never got passed beta.

12seconds: of video and post it because it was comedy messages. Video for twitter but never broke out of early adopter crowd. Closed 2010

Seismic in it's first form was video discussion and threaded video. People don't like talking into webcams... But already a massive audience in YouTube. YouTube is just missing the ability to link with friends. A gap in skills? Flickr has 90 secs video constrained video there must be something there

Chat roulette as the video online chat of 2010. It was created by russian developer had a bit of a relaunch. Who uses it now? There is a pro option. Randomly chatting to people on video...

Colour: only launched last year 41 million dollars of funding before it had launched anything. Spur if the moment networks of people and put them together in real time photo albums of people who didn't even know each other. Interesting technology like a microphone to work out how close you were, location, angles of phone, but it never took off. It has relaunched live video streaming crossed with 30 seconds live video but no sound.

French tools and sites

Having spent a couple of days here in Aix it has been great to get a feel for some of the cool tools and sites normalised over the Channel beyond Rue89 and OWNI

Wix.com is a great platform to do student blogs
Le spiil a great news feed site
Slate.fr a great news creator
3wdoc.com studio
Observatoires DES Medias Gilles Bruno
Webullition.info student projects
7minutes.tv
Dijonscope
Telelibre

Apologies for no links

Cable TV-style bundling will save online publishers, says Piano Media

Users are happy to pay for journalism online as long as the payment is capped at an impulse buy and publishers re-think their content as services.

Business developer of Piano Media, Jan Cifra, says cable tv-style bundling will prove a lucrative way for publishers - who are prepared to work together to pool content - to secure revenues on digital platforms.

Piano media is an online subscription-based content payment model. Its initial project is in Slovakia where nine publishers, newspapers, TV and multimedia, agreed to put some of their online content behind a joint subscription model in May 2011. Since then traffic to the sites has remained stable.

But the start-up, which was recently backed with a further 300,000 euro investment from Monogram Ventures seem to be on to something. They are working with ISP providers, book stores and other payment touch points to bundle the price of journalism with other services. It currently costs 2.90 euros a month for users.

Talking money

The model currently works on a 70:30 share, where publishers in the model take 70% and Piano Media taking 30% a la Apple. What is interesting, though, is the breakdown of the other 70%. Publishers get 40% of the revenues if the subscription is made on their site. But the remaining 30% is divided on time spent on the sites and services, thus incentivising the publishers to keep hot on the competition between one another. Users who spend longer on long form articles and quality content will generate more money for the publisher.

Jan told me: 'We did studies to look at usability of payment methods as it has to be as easy as possible and the amount that people are willing to pay. The pricing by cost is not very good business. We wanted spontaneous buying so make it as cheap as possible and go for the mass. We compared it to what people buy daily, a drink in a bar and a cup of coffee. It is low enough that people even pay for access to the free stuff for the peace of mind that they can be spontaneous or some people just pay by mistake. They also understand that our goal is not to rip people off but that you need to pay for good journalism to survive online. It has proven to us that people are not against paying for content just against messing around with lots of different payements to different people. One of our co-founders had tried a paywall and it was a disaster when he was CEO a disaster.

'Cable tv uses a bundle. They are more and more mature in this field as there are more complex bundling options available but the basic idea is the same. This is cable tv for publishing. One payment and everything is much more easy on the customer.'

Content with added value

'We have realized that publishers have to realise they are offering services not just content. We have 40 services from different publishes. People are not prepared to pay for breaking news, it is not exclusive the fact that it is happening is available everywhere, everyone has it. But long form people are willing to read and pay for opinion pices from certain publishers or for in depth. Video and reading news, or tomorrow’s newspaper today. Some publishers are offering editions of the whole paper. Some have closed off comments unless you pay: some platforms are heavy on discussions and passionate about that and good quality so people are willing to pay for  -even celebrities go on - and publishers perceive it as a way of cleaning up the discussions. You would have to pay two and three times if you wanted different accounts to use as spam. It is very important that the publisher understands their users and their content just uploading is not an option. That is why we call them services. Each of the publishers has the freedom to offer services that no one else has.

'Customisation and video are key - you have to go above and beyond which is why we have services not products. It has to be  exclusive and what you can't get elsewhere. What we are learning from this every day so each publishers can do bespoke for each and it can be very different from what your competitor to do. So we have to give feedvack to everyone individually. So we are bundling for the customer for a bespoke service but bespoke to the publisher too.

Other countries, other bundles

'We have great technology but other competitors could do it. We spent one year developing the solution but other companies don’t have the experience now is the know how of what works online. We have data now on which url and which user and what they browsed before and why what decided to make them pay and we want to bring that knowledge to other countries as soon as we are ready. Fundamental for journalism online is that customers perceive it as a value service'.

With sincere thanks for Jan's interview. Piano Media will feature in my book Social Media for Journalists in a chapter on business models, forthcoming. Feedback always welcome.

Van earthquake and social media

I had the pleasure today of listening to Dr Suat Gezgin school of communication Istanbul university on the Van earthquake 2011 and the power of social media. It offers insights into how journalists and citizens leveraged power over companies to support the relief effort as well as mobilising aid among the people.

The Van earthquake in Turkey was the biggest earthquake in Turkish history October 23 2011. Despite suffering earthquakes in the past the Republic had an uncoordinated response to the disaster so the citizens started the social responsibility for the campaigns over traditional media.
500000 messages were sent on Facebook to spread the news about the social responsibility to collect aid
Turkey has a high penetration and high use if social media Facebook penetration is 40%.
google commissioned it's person finder system in response to the earthquake. It was also used in Haiti and Japan earthquake.
twitter was actively used after the earthquake, by citizens and journalists
It can help appeals to corporate companies - and they organised and announced their responses
News was being disseminated across platforms from Tv and twitter
Journalist Ahmet Tezcan started his my home is your home campaign and subsequently won government support. 17,000 people supported the campaign - providing shelter for those people who had lost their homes.
There was also information pollution on twitter as news was spread so fast. Onur airlines exploited the situation and there was a backlash on Facebook.
Cuneyst- Ozdemir one of the best known journalists in turkey and he had 302,000 followers - when he communicated with his followers these were spread virally on other platforms. So he acted like a bridge
Journalist Sinan Dirlik started a popular campaign that targeted the power of consumerism. His first trucks then shopping movement. So consumers only agreed to re-consumer their products once they had confirmed trucks of their products to help with the recovery effort.
Global stars such as Rihanna informed her followers of the disaster. So she started the 'we are praying for all of you'.
AKUT search and rescue association used twitter to locate victims who were stuck urn buildings. in this way it acted like a lifesaver and a crisis centre for the earthquake.
All the phone lines collapsed during the first few days as everyone saturated the network

Do you follow a journalist on Twitter? If so, why? Is it because they are funny or the place to be for exclusive content?

I am trying to source some evidence about journalists existing in networks. A really simple two question survey is here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3LLN667

I would be every so grateful if you could respond! I think the shortest response time so far is six seconds!!

Open leaks: the role scope and influence

Herbert snorrason from open leaks presenting on digital whistle blowing: first steps

An amazingly insightful talk about the role of leak sites in their accountability and scope....

Leak sites are a fairly new phenomenon
Wikileaks is probably the first real one
Solid roots in deeply paranoid communities - they spring from people who are really paranoid and this has influenced the mode of operation in a way that most people don't realise
They have raised a storm of controversy even in their infancy.
Wikileaks managed to gain major media attention and there is no major movement behind either wikileaks and open leaks and we need to build a mass movement behind it.
Common presentation of julian assange and his bad of gorillas. They would it have the impact that mass movements have. Ad that is what social Medis can do by supporting the objectives of these movements.

Open leaks split as we are a platform not a product . We are not trying be a brand, not in the publication game. We dont want to analyse, but how to get at information, how to leak it and how to get it out.

The problem with leak sites is that it is s lot of work, because most of what you go through is rubbish and one organisation could never do it as it takes too long. The party doing the mining also needs to be trusted and seen as objective.
People need to trust us, believe that we are not lying, trust we know what we are doing. We need to verify information and the people we work with need to be worthy of trusting. And how do we make sure people are not tring to work against us or get us put in prison.
There is also the issue of competing values. Source protection is an issue and privacy. How do we protect people's sources and equally state security. And personal safety.

Wikileaks unwittingly released a file about the names of state. Would it have been the right thing to release it? We need to extend a professional identity.

'Open leaks is going to focus on the reception of documents. We will be working with organisations like newspapers, social media hubs or NGO. We are trying to find raw material for those who are interested to work with.'

Journalism will be focussed on analysis of the information, professional journalists are good at understanding. 'The only place now that you can develop skills and have the time to do the analysis and get paid for it is in newsrooms.'

What can be accomplished: we are trying to raise awareness and make it hard for organisations to keep secrets
'Media economics has been changing so why not blow it up entirely!!!'
Journalism funded by subsidies. Herman and Chomsky analysis of the advertising influence on the content in newspapers.
This is a Conscious attack on current Media economics

'Accountability is a problem. There is no concrete mechanism. I don't know that it is even possible for this kind of organisation to be accountable.'

How do you prevent another Bradley manning? We cannot do anything to help sources

The power of social media in social change

Mohamed mo el fatatry talking about thepwer of social media in social change at Mindtrek

http://muxlim.com/

Collective audience is usually smarter than the producers
Fundamentally social media is changing our society
Consumers are on the cutting edge of using social media so are ahead of some governments and companies
We can also see the pulse of what people are feeling in real time with google insights
The most critical thinking is accessible on TED we d not have to wait for Internet adopton they are using those technologies intuitively
Black swans are events that may seem single but they have the power to shape history
The black swans happen in the long tail where single contributors
Chris Hughes making Obama president is a good example of the new level of connectivity

Some key changes which brings leverage in the present landscape:
Collaboration versus the institution
Intrinsic versus extrinsic = people are increasingly being motivated by autonomy, the classic motivators of carrots and sticks do not work
Many to many versus one to many - not one guy thinking and everyone following it is everyone leading in their own field
Problem solving means creative versus simple

Social change is global, no offline and online, we cannot box it ad how it fundamentally changes our behaviour is key
The future of our world is a few decades of disruption and chaos and new power structures that will come to the fore.
Loosely organised groups will come to the fore

Bittorent and illegal game downloads: early research

Distrubution on Bit torrent
Anders Drachen presented at Mindtrek on the distribution of digital games on bit torrent bringing into focus how little real evidence there is on illegal downloads - and even less on how that impacts on sales.

Pirates think corporations are evil, trying to control the flow of information
The exchange on the Internet is huge
Debates between mature industry and pirates = warfare!
Companies own various forms of content and it's worth money
Very much a mix of fact and fiction with few people knowing what really is going on
Corporates claim it's s big problem ( 120 billion pounds lost in the uk alone claim) but piracy supporters say it is a good way of promoting content and freedom of information flow
There is very little unbiased knowledge on illegal downloads
Torrent freak is one valid source

This study has focussed on games to provide a smaller component than music or games in an attempt to produce some unbiased data to inform the debate.

Roughly 40%Internet traffic runs through bit torrent - there is some evidence it is massive but we do not know compared to what....

Piracy channels: physical copying, file transferring protocols and selling access to the server, file hosting services and peer to peer networks

We do not know the volume of piracy happening in these channels. The rate and speed of piracy seems to mirror anderson's theory of the long tail with a spike around the initial launch and then tailing off.
There is a direct correlation between positive reviews and the number of downloads, with shooter games not being the most popular, rather RPG

How illegal downloads affect sales is also still unknown
There needs to be a lot more work done on cultural studies to see why illegal downloading is happening.
It is the second tier counties that are the most engaged with research on this topic.

Microsoft on launching new businesses : think big

Microsoft: how to make ideas break through the noise
Joe Wilson at Microsoft talking at Mindtrek. One part of his job is looking after entrepreneurs and students. he has dabbled with starting companies including fixit, pyramid logistics group, anark, tactical marketing and Princeton masters international.

Talking about three key aspects:
Audience versus product
where do you get ideas
Reaching millions

Audience versus product
Audience focus what do they want or product focus on content and tech. The big mac is audience focussed not product focussed. The gun is a form and function type product.
You have to start thinking from early on which one you are. Listening to an audience and thinking beyond where they are is a key way of keeping a business going long term.
Microsoft office is so product focussed that there are too many features for people to use!
Have to have listening systems - a way to really hear to what people are saying . Listen but don't d everything they say and think past that.
Obsess on user comments and forums. That is better than the formal mechanisms.
Design through trends not to a trend. Think ahead. How do you get out in front of the crowd

Where do you get ideas
One good idea is not going to cut it. You need to have ideas coming your way.
Culture or strategy? Culture is the way to pay attention. Having someone assigned to answering the phone is key. Imagine cup has been a way to encourage students through a product design competition
Let failure into the company . You have to screw things up to get things right
Demolish hierarchy. It works against creativity. Closed doors don't work in creative companies
Schedule big bang sessions monthly. Ideas and solve problems is the only way to get answers through the collective consciousness of the team
Let people feel good in the organisation

Millions
there is a lot of noise. You have to have a way of cutting through the noise. Reaching millions needs to be thought of within the product not just on a top level for marketing.
only accept millions . Thinking less gets you less.
Scale is a design point not something on top or a promotion
Find a cause that makes sense to your audience
Choose quantity over quality (in certain times)