Yahoo announces digital newsstand for tablets and mobile

By Chris Hogg

Publishers seek to extend their reach with new technologies, and Yahoo has announced it is also getting in the game with the launch of Livestand, a digital newsstand designed for tablets and smartphones.

In an announcement made Thursday, Yahoo said Livestand will offer a steady stream of new content to consumers based on their interests. Livestand will be designed specifically for new tablets and mobile phones so articles, images, video and ads are optimized for the screen.

“Adoption of tablets and mobile phones is exploding, and digital media isn’t keeping up,” Blake Irving, executive vice president and chief product officer for Yahoo, said in a news release. “Consumers can’t find the publications they buy off the newsstand, and publishers and advertisers can’t reach the audiences they want to serve. We’re in a position to meet all of these needs. Livestand is an immersive environment that provides a dynamic and personalized experience for consumers, and a pipeline of fresh and active content for publishers and advertisers.”

Yahoo says content will be published from its vast content library, including Sports, News, Finance, Flickr, omg!, and the Yahoo Contributor Network.

“Livestand from Yahoo leverages Yahoo’s strengths in content and personalization and re-imagines them into a new kind of experience for the rapidly growing tablet and mobile phone categories,” a company press release touts.

Yahoo’s move to mobile and tablets comes on the heels its of research that showed 86 percent of people use mobile devices while watching TV. By bringing content to mobile and tablets, Yahoo hopes to capitalize on this expanding audience.

Yahoo says Livestand is designed to help people cut through the noise on the Web by personalizing content. Users can select content from specific sources and and factors such as time of day, location and a user’s personal interests will also be taken into consideration when content is published.

Speculation about a personalized news mobile experience surfaced earlier this week, as Yahoo already shows different content to visitors to Yahoo’s home page depending on what the company knows about their interests.

From a design perspective, Livestand promises to offer touch interaction, a sleek design and a “singular focus on content.” The platform will also leverage social interactions. From an advertising standpoint, the digital newsstand will offer targeting capabilities to specific devices and offer an interactive canvas that “brings magazine-style ads to the tablet.”

Livestand will be available for iPad and Android tablets in the first half of this year and mobile phones and browser experiences will follow after.

Why an Austrian male editorial cartoonist pretended to be a woman

by David Silverberg

In Austria, the journalism community is buzzing over Rachel Gold. She draws editorial cartoons for the national Wiener Zeitung and Tiroler Tageszeitung newspapers. But what’s remarkable about Rachel is not her cartooning but her identity – she isn’t real, but instead the creation of cartoonist Markus Szyzkowitz. 

As MSNBC’s Cartoon Blog explains, “Rachel got a job, and a paycheck, as a cartoonist at the Wiener Zeitung, replacing Markus, who was forced to leave his editorial cartooning job under pressure from his editor, because his cartoons had offended a politician who would later become Austria’s chancellor.”

So why did Markus create her? Her cartoons tended to more left-leaning and biting than Markus feels he can get away with, and her gender also played a role: editors find female cartoonist to be a rare bunch, since male cartoonists seem to dominate the editorial pages. Their voices might be heard more in the niche industry.

Markus also told MSNBC Rachel might be a favourite because he made her to be Jewish. Austria’s harsh history might encourage executives to be open-minded to Jewish staffers, Markus believes.

When Markus/Rachel began working at Kronen Zeitung, he began arousing suspicion. His editor hired an off-duty policeman to tail him and eventually the gig was up. Markus was fired, and now works at Wiener Zeitung and Tiroler Tageszeitung.

MSNBC reports Rachel’s identity, although not a secret, “isn’t known outside of a small community of Austrian cartoonists and journalists. Readers have no idea that Rachel is actually Markus.”

Save the date: Future of Media event scheduled for April 6 in Toronto

The first Future of Media event for 2011 is scheduled to take place at the Drake Hotel in Toronto on April 6. Doors open at 7:30 and the event starts at 8 p.m.

We’ll be announcing more details about speakers, prizes and sponsors in the coming weeks, so save the date. As always, Future of Media events are free of charge and dedicated to following the evolution of journalism, news and media.

If you’re not familiar with Future of Media events, you can learn more on our About Us page, check out past speakers, or watch videos from past events here.

Based on very high demand we’ll be announcing details on how to RSVP for a guaranteed spot on our schedule page. You can bookmark that page, follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook to be notified when this page is updated.

See you April 6th!

CNN’s new Android app lets citizen journalists file stories from tablets

At a press event designed to show off the new features of Google’s Android 3.0 OS, the world got to see various features of CNN’s new Android app. The app carries hundreds of stories, different categories, live video and interestingly, citizen journalism.

Here is a video demo courtesy of Venture Beat:

Everything you need to know about ‘The Daily’

By Chris Hogg

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch unveiled his company’s vision for the future news publication today and it’s called “The Daily.” The publication is available only on the Apple iPad and represents News Corp.’s vision for the future of digital media.

Speaking at a press conference at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, Rupert Murdoch unveiled The Daily along with Eddy Cue, vice president of Internet Services for Apple.

“New times demand new journalism,” said Murdoch. “The devices that modern engineering have put in our hands demand a new service edited and designed for them. Our challenge was to take the best of journalism and combine it with the best of contemporary technology.”

During the press conference, News Corp. showed off some of the app’s unique features: 360-degree photos let readers see everything from a specific location; high-definition video; graphics that respond to touch; full customization with the ability to pull-in custom content that matters to a reader; and the ability to share content via email, Twitter or Facebook.

“There’s a growing segment of the population that is educated and sophisticated that does not read national newspapers or watch television news,” said Murdoch. “But they do consume media, and they expect content to be available to them any time and anywhere.”

From a business standpoint, Murdoch said The Daily has cost $30 million to get to where it is and operating costs will be less than $500,000 per week. Murdoch said profitability is easier to achieve because costs are much lower than those associated with traditional news publications.

“We can and we must make the business of news-gathering and editing viable again,” said Murdoch. “Our aim is for The Daily to be the indispensable source for news, information and entertainment. [There is] no paper, no multimillion-dollar process, no trucks,” said Murdoch. “We’re passing on these savings to the reader.”

The Daily will cost 14 cents per day, or 99 cents per week. Yearly subscriptions are available for $39.99.

Murdoch said The Daily is not a legacy brand moving from the print to the digital world so the company will have license to experiment, a commitment to innovation and “a responsibility to evolve and respond to customer’s need.”

App details, features and content

News Corp. Chief Digital Officer, Jon Miller, said The Daily will produce up to 100 pages of content per day using all types of media. When viewing content, readers can zoom out and view stories in a carousel view or shuffle through content they haven’t read yet. Voice overs offer readers the chance to hear content and a video anchor will host some stories similar to how a TV news anchor reads news.

Readers can clip articles, save text, record audio comments or email content. Content within the app will hyperlink to the outside Web and Twitter feeds will be imported to stories. For example, an article about a particular athlete or celebrity will offer a direct, embedded Twitter feed so readers can hear the latest news from that individual within the app.

Customization is also a big part of The Daily: In the sports section, for example, readers can select schedules, scores, stories, photos, etc. and individual teams. The section then shows them up-to-date news and Twitter feeds for their favourite teams and individuals rather than one big generic sports feed. The Daily publishes each morning and content is updated throughout the day, including breaking news.

News Corp. says a mirror-image of The Daily content will be available online but many features will be iPad-only. Content can be shared via social networks so friends can consume individual stories or photos for free, but readers who go directly to the website will hit a paywall and be prompted to pay for content.

According to reports, The Daily boasts a dedicated staff of 100 people. The app is designed to be aesthetically unique, offering news, content, visuals and video in new ways.

Murdoch was originally planning to announce The Daily in mid January with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, but the launch was delayed and Jobs has since taken a medical leave of absence.

Murdoch has reportedly been showing off The Daily to potential advertisers and friends in recent weeks, including guests at a cocktail party at his apartment last night.

Yesterday, News Corp. announced John McKinley has been appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and President of Technology for the organization’s digital media group. McKinley previously served as the CTO of AOL.

Apple introduces new subscription model for App Store

The Daily has been talked about widely in media circles, as journalists, pundits, analysts and observers watch to see how a digital-only publication is received by the public. Some believe apps will hurt print subscriptions in the future, so News Corp. is pushing to establish a digital audience.

The launch of The Daily is being marked as a significant event in media circles because it brings with it a new subscription option from Apple to allow publishers to get the digital equivalent of recurring magazine or newspaper subscription revenue.

Prior to the launch of The Daily, an iOS user could pay for an app and download it to their iPod, iPhone or iPad but it was a one-time charge only. There have been “in-app” purchase options, but that feature was not designed with publishers in mind. With the exception of the Wall Street Journal, Apple has not allowed media organizations to sell more than one issue via the App Store.

“We’ve included a whole new subscription billing that’s as easy as one click,” said Apple’s Eddy Cue. “We think iPad customers are really going to embrace this.”

Apple said The Daily is the first publication to take advantage of this new subscription option and that other publishers will be able to in the near future. Cue declined to say when that will happen.

Apple has sold more than 15 million iPads the company says iPad customers are huge consumers of news, downloading more than 200 million news apps to date.

When asked if News Corp. plans to make The Daily available on other tablets, Murdoch confirmed the company plans to, but he did not specify when. “As other tablets get established, we will develop [The Daily] to go on them,” he said. “We believe last year, this year and maybe next year belong to Apple.”