Comments on: Elan Lohmann takes over Avusa’s online team

By: Gill

Gill — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:20:13 +0000

Hey Renee. Folk…folk… folk.

By: Renee

Renee — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:54:56 +0000

IOL has the oldest CMS around I think. But we are panel-beating it to do things we want it to do. It comes down to quality people and creativity really… but money also helps. For us, also, a new CMS would put us in a different league.

And who are you calling an old folks? I don’t mind the old, I just hate folk. If anyone is ever misguided enough to make me the editor of a newspaper, I’m going to ban that word as my first act!

By: gillm

gillm — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:22:57 +0000

Very mature and measured responses, Renee, Ray and Andrew to which I can only reply: you need those CMS systems … like yesterday, old folks.

By: David Bullard

David Bullard — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:13:39 +0000

Gregor and Elan both fine and capable chaps. The problem arises when Mike Robertson shuffles in and tells them that \there is no budget\. Frustrating hey? That’s been happening these past ten years at least when anyone wants to spend money that could otherwise be spent on paying management bonuses (boni?) Why did Colin Daniels leave? And Laurice Taitz? And…and….and?
And as for content….well it’s the same old dross that’s in the paper. The only advantage is that I don’t have to buy the paper and get ink on my fingers.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:08:58 +0000

I agree with Ray and Renee. Our current CMS is incredibly hard to use to do powerful online presentation of good journalism which is why at the Dispatch we do a lot of this kind of presentation of our work using wordpress which drives our blogs.
But I know that our new CMS is going to change the game incredibly in terms of allowing us to really start to produce online news with real impact.
I also agree with Renee in terms of the challenges of feeding the endless appetite of the Great Internet Audience for more and more content. I think Renee touches on the challenge of changing newsroom culture into a 24/7 constant news cycle instead of the traditional single deadline-publish once model of print newsrooms.
I see positive signs that this is starting to happen in many newsrooms around the country. The online news environment is getting more competitive by the day, not only as the big media players gear up but also as newcomers (like Grubstreet) start to make waves.
It is interesting to look at the top 20 blogs ranked by Amatomu and to see how few of them come from the traditonal media companies.
Now off to conference for me!

By: Ray H

Ray H — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:33:50 +0000

Gill,
I hear your criticisms and I think we must listen to them and take them very seriously. I even share some of them. But like Andrew, I must also file a defence. The Times online has done very well as a site in terms of traffic growth and uniques, so much so that we are now the third ranked news site in the country and number six overall. We are publishing to around 700 000 uniques. Considering we are still operating with a clunky CMS that is to be upgraded soon, a more than doubling of uniques over two years is not bad going.
We have just conducted some research which shows that the relationship between the site and newspapers is very strong and we are building a unique audience that spans the two mediums.
But, as I said earlier, if we are not making someone like you (whom I would consider to be very firmly in our target market) happy, we must ask ourselves why. We have improved, but there is much work to do.

By: Renee

Renee — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:24:46 +0000

Hmm. Can someone from IOL enter the fray? (Disclaimer: Gill is my sister… and what I say below is my personal view, not necessarily that of IOL).

First, thank you for the kind comments about IOL.

But.. I think the debate is more complicated than just who has the better website. I like The Times site very much, and multimedia is the cool wave of the future, but the SA marked lags in terms of bandwidth and connected users. So all of us big sites have some critical questions and issues to grapple with:

is being cool enough? If not, what else is needed?

We need a high volume of news, pumped out fast, and with good quality editing: that is very, very hard to do. I don’t think any of us get it right all the time.

How do we meet the needs of our market? Who is our market?

These are testing times for online in SA – making comparisons might not be the most useful way to go?

By: Gill

Gill — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:49:02 +0000

Seems I must defend my sweeping statement so here goes (sorry, Mr Grubstreet) but the Times Online, Avusa’s flagship integrated newsroom, disappoints me as a user. When it was launched (rather bombastically I seem to recall), it promised great things but I don’t think it ever achieves much more than IOL or News24.

I don’t know much about how News24 is set up but IOL is fast off the draw with loads of content and a busy design that gives the user loads of entry points — and this is achieved by what is essentially a separate divsion of sub-editors set apart from the newsrooms. The Times, on the other hand, had millions pumped into it to create an “integrated newsroom” and can’t produce one exclusive interestingly presented online story a day (let alone a week). A lone video with almost no context or a podcast with a reporter blathering on about the news event of the day (e.g. interviews with their polictical staff or the Sunday Times editor) just doesn’t pump my nads. And the videos are often such big files that you have to sit around and wait for the buffering to complete.

It just seems to me that The Times approaches new media with the old print mindset and adds a few bells and whistles. I do, however, think the Dispatch is much better — lively and fast on breaking stories and the Somalian package you guys did online a few months back was absolutely excellent and compelling. A good example of what online can do that print can’t.

As for revenue, well it’s hard to say how The Times is doing as the results say that 23% of revenue comes from its “digital” business — of which The Times is a part. I’m not sure what they’re up to with other parts of the business digitally such as with Exclusives Books but the last time I visited Exclusives, the search engine was so poor I couldn’t even locate recently published (and quite popular) titles.

Broadly speaking, I don’t think you can even compare Naspers and Avusa’s respective leaps into the digital age. Naspers is now an R80-billion company through its ventures into all sorts of media throughout the emerging markets of the world while Avusa is a R5-billion company that good on big talk but not muhc action. About 15 years ago the two companies (Naspers and the then TML) were similar traditional newspaper houses and look at where they are now. The difference is simply staggering.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:44:51 +0000

Even though I am married to the gorgeous Grubstreet Gal I am also an Avusa man and have to point out: DispatchOnline and Sowetan Sunday World – fastest growing sites in SA in 2008, according to Nielsen’s.

By: Alan Hammond

Alan Hammond — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:16:37 +0000

Disagree with you about Avusa’s online activities. Thetimes.co.za is pretty impressive. Integrating newsrooms with print and online, including exclusive video content, podcasts etc.
Apparently they have had problems dealing with their traffic and they’ve signed up to a fancy content management system to try to sort things out.
There’s no mention in this news of of BDFM which I believe is half owned by Avusa. Their digital activites are an embarrassment and a wasted opportunity. Hope they let Elan explain the basics to them.