12 Apps of Christmas: newspapers adopt live blogging to provide up-to-the-minute reporting of breaking news

The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from Christmas Day to the evening of January 5th, or Twelfth Night. But TNM's 12 Apps of Christmas, which began on Tuesday, will look at significant media apps (or trends) released this year. We look at May today, continuing the series through New Year's Eve.

May was a month where the news was dominated by news from the newspaper industry, and none of its seemed to be good, whether here in the U.S., or overseas.

All month News International was in the news as its executives faced grilling in hearings named after the lead investigator, the Leveson Inquiry. During May Rebekah Brooks, the former head of News International, the U.K. division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was charged with obstruction of justice.

In the U.S., the big news in May for the newspaper industry was the decision by Advance Publications to cut back the frequency of its daily newspapers in the South, including the well-respected New Orleans daily, The Times-Picayune. On May 24 Advance said that it would create a new company that would be "digitally focused" – though no new digital initiatives were announced at the time.

Atlantic Media said in May that it would launch a new online business brand, Quartz. Atlantic Media immediately began recruiting for the new digital property and so far the results seem to be good.

Early in the month the editor in chief of Technology Review, Jason Pontin, made news by posting his experiences with creating and launch an app for the title. Some tech writers, who already were skeptical of native tablet editions, jumped on the post as proof that native apps were a dead-end.

Mike Haney of Mag+ responded with a blog post of his own which appeared on TNM that begged to differ:

"I would argue," Haney wrote, "that many existing print publications will not find a way to make a profitable business by delivering the exact same package of content they do in print—however enhanced or redesigned—and certainly not until there’s a real advertising ecosystem in place.

The next week TNM posted a response from Erik Schut, president of WoodWing Software, also refuting the editor's post. Schut admitted that creating engaging new tablet editions involved additional work, but he warned that "if publishers don’t bring an engaging tablet experience they can be sure new players will step in and disrupt the market."

With all that, I think the thing I will remember May for, however, is that way newspaper websites began to use live blogging as a regular part of online news experience.

On May 10 I pointed out to two live blogs: The Guardian's live blog of the Leveson inquiry which featured the testimony of Andy Coulseon, the former editor of the News of the World and the former communications director for the Tories; and the live blog being authored by Damian Mac Con Uladh for The Athens News, which is chronicling the efforts of the political parties to form a government and avoid a second round of elections.

Later the New York Times created a brand for its live blogging efforts called The Lede which has been used most recently, we're sad to say, to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

12 Apps of Christmas: Adobe takes CS 6 to the Cloud

The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from Christmas Day to the evening of January 5th, or Twelfth Night. But TNM's 12 Apps of Christmas, which began on Tuesday, will look at significant media apps released this year – one per month. We look at April today, continuing the series through New Year's Eve.

Is April always so busy? It sure seemed that way this year, with new product launches, execs moving about, mergers and acquisitions, you name it.

The month began with a bit of a shocker as Instagram said it would accept a billion dollar offer from Facebook. The deal was depressing news for Instagram fans, though I have a feeling that those who think Instagram is a bit silly, probably feel the same way about Facebook, so maybe it was a good match. But Instagram users are not very happy today, now that Facebook introduced a new Terms of Service that say, among other things, that the company can use the photos in Instagram for advertising purposes without compensating the Instagram user.

A couple days later the U.S. Justice Department filed suit against Apple and some major book publishers over the agency model, as well as clauses in Apple contracts. The publishers involved included Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, while other publishers were left out of the suit because they had already settled.

The lawsuit split both the book publishing and book reading public as it seemed to seriously favor Amazon.

One week later news came down that Gregg Hano had left Bonnier for Mag+, the digital platform company launched by the Swedish magazine publisher. The next week TNM featured a long interview with Hano in which the new Mag+ CEO said "The biggest challenges that we are faced with right now is probably one of making certain that advertisers can get their interactive creative on the different platforms in a way that is efficient for our agency partners."

TNM also featured in April an interview with the MPA's outgoing President and CEO Nina Link where the magazine association executive talked about the organization's new voluntary guidelines of tablet magazines.

On April 12 Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia released a new tablet edition for Whole Living, completing the task of making sure there were digital editions for all the titles published by the company.

Unfortunately, the year will not end well for the title and its employees as later in the year the word was leaked that the company wanted to sell off the title. Unable to find a buyer, the company said it would shutter it.

As the new year comes it is still possible that Whole Living will find a buyer, as often companies swoop in after a title has been closed to see if it can acquire the assets of the brand at a discount.

For many media app developers, though, April will be remembered for the month that Adobe launched its Creative Suite 6, and its new subscription-based Creative Cloud.

At the time of the release I wrote that as "a former publisher I can not overstate the problems this upgrade may cause with those in the publishing community which have delayed or cancelled outright much of their investment in technology over the past decade."

Talking to both publishers and would-be publishers, this remains an issue and the search for an inexpensive production solution continues. But Adobe has, assuming you are invested in InDesign, attempted to create some inexpensive app publishing solutions, such as Single Edition. But the number cost of producing a native tablet edition remains the costs of the design software.

Media app updates: The Magazine, now with an animation (gasp!); Installation Magazine goes universal, using the Mag+ platform to create a native iPhone magazine edition

Apple needed to clear the decks before they shut down iTunes Connect, so a lot of app updates have appeared this week. This morning Marco Arment's The Magazine received an update but it looks, based on the app description that another might be right around the corner.

"There's an animation glitch in this version affecting some subscribers that usually goes away after a minute or two. I'm looking into it. Sorry about that," wrote Arment.

An animation? In the stripped down digital magazine? Well, good for Arment. There is no reason why a developer, or an art director, shouldn't use what the platform allows. As a publisher, if asked what bells and whistles an app should employ, my answer would always be the same: tell the story, don't worry about bells and whistles, use whatever features and effects will best tell the story – inform the reader, don't try to impress them.

Digital design can sometimes be like the golfer who is so concerned with his swing that he fails to notice that he is aiming at the clubhouse instead of the flag.

The Canadian publisher Rogers Publishing Limited updated several of its apps including the B2B title Canadian Grocer. Of the titles I currently have Marketing Magazine was also updated, but it looks like a large number of their apps received the same update.

According to the app description this is what is new:

• Enhancements to videos, images and interactive elements.
• Access back issues easier and faster using the improved store view.
• Downloading issues is now more stable and reliable.
• Improvements to the At A Glance panel.
• Multiple minor bug fixes.

Several other media apps such as the International Herald Tribune for iPad, and NowThisNews were also updated, though the updates were minor and generally centered around fixing bugs or refining features.

Probably the biggest media app update of the day belongs to Installation Magazine. The first post on the new digital art magazine appeared here in March. The app uses the Mag+ platform to create its digital issues and the app.

Now the app update has made the app universal, using the digital publishing platform's relatively new ability to create native mobile design solutions.

"Installation Magazine is not only new and improved, we're now on the iPhone!!" the app description proclaims.

"With the launch of Installation Magazine in March 2012, we have been met with an overwhelmingly positive response," the copy continues. "We’ve been listening to your feedback and are excited to announce big developments, starting right now. Launching with this update and new issue, we’ve redesigned our contemporary art and lifestyle magazine specifically for the iPhone in stunning retina display. We also present our best iPad reader to date: bringing you high quality media and faster downloads. Current iPad subscribers will be able to continue their subscription on both devices, as well as benefit from continued support on first and second generation iPads."

Understanding where your readers are coming from meanings adding it all up

It used to be so easy, wasn't it? In print days all one needed was that paper audit in your hands to have an intelligent conversation about how many readers were accessing your newspaper or magazine. Today, some think it is just as easy, then quote numbers that are either completely made up but someone in some other department, or are wildly inaccurate because of the increasingly complex nature of digital publishing.

One would think it would be easy thanks to things such as Google Analytics. Take this website, for instance. Do you want to know what operating system is being used by readers it seems to be all there.

As you can see at right, Windows is basically down to 50 percent of the traffic reaching this website. What you don't see, the small percentage of readers coming from Android, for instance, is what tells you that this is an incomplete picture.

What the numbers here really say is that 50 percent of a certain subset of the total readership uses Windows. An ever growing percentage are Mac users. But what about those shown to be iOS users? Well, because TNM has both a mobile website and an iPhone app, this number is exclusively those using an iPad.

In order to see the rest of the picture one would need to include figures from the mobile website and the RSS feeds that bring content to the app.

It is this complexity that makes it difficult to sell display advertising across digital product lines – yet another reason why the digital ad war is being run by Google and other pure plays.

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Now is as good a time as any to thank the readers of Talking New Media for hanging in there this year. I had no idea, when I created this website for digital media professionals, that I would still be at it after three years.

Twice I have shut down this site thinking that it was time to move on. In 2012, traffic to TNM has increased 56 percent to a point where six times more readers access TNM than read the industry leading trade magazine. This is either a statement of what has been accomplished here at TNM or of the failure of B2B print magazines (I fear it is that latter).

Over the course of the last two weeks of this year I will continue looking back at each month, posting one story on each month every day through New Year's Eve except on Sundays. So look for the post on May tomorrow.

Morning Brief: The world is still here, better get shopping; Bernstein takes media to task; thoughts on 'Snow Fall'

Those who, thinking that the Mayans had correctly predicted the end of the world, woke today to discover that they had lost their bet. Because of this, there will no doubt me a large number of people rushing to malls today, quickly shopping for Christmas gifts they did not think they would have to give. Can't win them all.

While out, those same people might take along a tablet or smartphone and read Carl Bernstein's take down of both Rupert Murdoch and his empire, and the media, in general.

Bernstein, the former Washington Post reporter of Watergate fame, posted a column on The Guardian's website late yesterday afternoon entitled Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency.

In the column, Bernstein recaps his former colleague Bob Woodward's Washington Post story about efforts by Murdoch and crew to enlist General David Petraeus to run for president. In case you were not aware, Petraeus turned Murdoch down and Obama went on to win a second term (I hope this isn't news to you).

Bernstein is not exactly happy with the way this story was played in the WaPo, or taken up by the rest of the U.S. media world. He thinks its a big story that a media organization would try to manipulate the political system in such a brazen way and wonders why the rest of the media world doesn't think so, as well (or why the WaPo, itself, would downplay the story by running it in the Style section).

Yesterday much of the Twitter world, or at least the media part, were glowing in their praise for the amazing feature posted on the home page of The New York Times.

Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek is a brilliantly design and executed example modern web design. If you have not seen the feature you really need to do yourself a favor and take a look.

But while most media observers and journalists themselves gushed over the feature I was saddened to see that once again that the ad side had been left out.

According to the Poynter piece on the feature, there was close collaboration between the writer, John Branch, and the sports and graphics editors. Great. But stuck in the middle of each segment of the feature were ugly, traditional web ads – banners and medium rectangles.

So let's all make a New Year's resolution right here and now, let's resolve to try and fix the one problem in the newspaper industry that is paramount. It is not how to create great web feature, or how to do tablet editions. It is how we make this industry pay, how we generate digital advertising revenue, and turn a profit.

You can revolutionize the art of story telling online, but if you can not create a revolution in newspaper advertising you are out of business.

It is time to bring in the ad department and let them be part be part of the team again. Believe me, no one on the ad side wants to interfere with your editorial judgments, or insert a plug for their clients – if they do you kick them out of the room, and straight out of the building. No, what they want to do is be part of the future, a future where newspapers are once again attracting a healthy share of the advertising. To do this, they will need to be able to present their clients with something other than buttons and banners.

Journal Register Company has its sales process approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York today approved the bid procedures, sale process and timeline for Journal Register Company's auction and sale process. The Journal Register Company is part of Digital First Media.

"We are pleased that the Court has approved the dates for competing bids and the auction and that Journal Register Company has now received the full support and cooperation in the sales process with the Official Creditors Committee," John Paton, Chief Executive Officer of Digital First Media said in the company's statement.

Now it is one to the public auction which is scheduled to conclude on or before February 15, 2013. The bankruptcy court will then announce the winning bid on February 21.

The newspaper company is currently owned by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital, and no doubt the company will remain a playing card in the PE game. A "stalking horse" bid by 21st CMH Acquisition Co., an affiliate of funds managed by Alden Global Capital LLC has already been filed.