Thicker than water? Strengths and weaknesses of online newspapers
Introduction:
The New York Times (US) and Der Spiegel (Germany) are big publishers in their countries and their online appearance is strong. Where do these websites differ and why? How do they face the problem of earning money?
For companies online means unlimited space, easy and cheaper distribution, archives, multiple usages of one text, hypertextuality and new advertisement possibilities. Customers can read older articles again, find more information about their chosen topic, have worldwide easy access to their local newspaper and get often audio and video with the text. (Roche, 1996)
The New York Times – www.nyt.com
Founded in 1994 the website of the ‘most respected newspaper of the world’ (Avriel, 2007) gained more readers than the print alternative.
Every newspaper web site tries to keep readers as long and deep as possible on its page (Higgins, 2008). This is a strong reason for constantly uploading news (McCarthy, 2003) and letting the user highly participate. (Bainbridge, 2008, p. 341)
The owners decided in 2007 to stop charging users for accessing on most parts of their website. (Perez-Pena, 2007) The main reason is to gain more online readers and therefore customers for the advertisements. (Lischka, 2007)
The page itself holds a conservative look. Compared to ‘Der Spiegel’ it provides very few pictures and no automatically starting movies. Online news readers focus on texts not on pictures. (Stanford-Poynter, 2000) The approach of a serious look with much text and few pictures is a success for the NYT. The web page reflects exactly the image of its print product – Presenting serious quality journalism for the high and middle class.
Der Spiegel – www.spiegel.de
The German weekly newspaper ‘Der Spiegel’ made its first online appearance on the 25th October 1994, only one day before ‘The New York Times’ with their website (Bönisch, 2006, p.7) and included even an English section. Critics say, that the magazine and the web page became more and more entertaining in general and conservative in political matters. (Rosbach, 2005)
Spiegel Online is one of the very few German newspaper web sites, which actually makes profit – two million Euro in 2006. (Golz, 2007) Like ‘The New York Times Online’ and because of the same reasons Spiegel Online opened its achieve in 2008. (Spiegel Online, 2008)
The design of the page looks like a very long front page. Important actual news, followed by German news, International news, economy, sport, culture, entertainment etc. The order changes when something important happens in the category.
The site provides an larger amount of videos and picture galleries. Every article uses hypertext, pictures and links at the end to other articles on the same site. The first page appears slim and is easy to read because of the spartan design of the articles. (Patalong, 2008)
The publisher uses the site to distribute merchandise around the magazine and cooperates with Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft to gain users of different ages and different reading habits. (Kirst/Meier, 2009)
Conclusion:
Both Newspapers serve their particular audiences with unique web pages. They gain money nearly only from advertisements. They succeed because of building an online remake of their print products.
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References:
Eytan Avriel for the Newspaper ’Haaretz’. Interview with Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. (owner, chairman, publisher of NYT): Arthur Sulzberger on life in the Internet age. 6th February 2007 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/822558.html
Jason Bainbridge; N. Goc; L. Tynan (2008) Media & Journalism: New Approaches to Theory and Practice. Oxford University Press. Victoria. Australia
Julia Bönisch (2006): Meinungsführer oder Populärmedium? Das journalistische Profil von Spiegel Online. Lit Verlag. Berlin
Sandra Golz for the web site ‘Medien Mitweida’. Article: ‘Spiegel online ist das Maß aller Dinge’. 10th May 2007 http://www.medien-mittweida.de/aktuelles/artikel/1218.html
Nina Kirst and Christian Meier for the magazine ‘Kress Report’. Article: ‘Spiegel Online – Wir wollen uns neu erfinden!’ 20th February 2009
Konrad Lischka for the Newspaper ‘Der Spiegel’. Article: ‘New York Times’ macht Web-Archiv kostenlos. 18th September 2007 http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,506359,00.html
Kieren McCarthy for the web site ‘The Register’. Article: ‘This is the future of on line newspapers. Guardian creates a defining moment in the Paid-for-Web. 9th July 2003 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/09/this_is_the_future/
Frank Patalong for the website ‘Spiegel Online’. Article: ‘Online-Publishing – Zeitung öffne Dich!’ 28th May 2008 http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,555638,00.html
Richard Perez-Pena for the Newspaper ‘The New York Times’. Article: Times to stop charging for part of its web site. 18th September 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html?ex=1347768000&en=880b1ab05717fa9d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Lisa Riley Roche for the Newspaper ‘Deseret News’. Article: Online Newspaper puts future, past at your fingertips. 26th January 1996.
Jens P. Rosbach for the radio station ‘Deutschlandradio’. Interview with Oliver Gehrs (former employee): Vom ‘Sturmgeschütz der Demokratie’ zur ‘Spritzpistole der Angela Merkel’. 16th November 2005 http://www.dradio.de/dkultur/sendungen/thema/438829/
Spiegel Online. No author named. Article: ‘Finden statt suchen mit Spiegel Wissen’ 13th February 2008. http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,534775,00.html
The Stanford University & The Poynter Institute (2000) ‘Stanford & Poynter Project. Eye Tracking Online News’ www.poynterextra.org/et/i.htm
