Representatives from the New York Times, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group (WSJ), and the Washington Post are here. We're hearing from the Times guy first.

Change is daunting for the "Grey Lady" but they are moving in new directions. Users want customization, they want to interact and comment, and they want exposure to diverse views. They began in 1996 with a very simple home page. Eleven years later, they've made some progress albeit probably not as rapid as the critics would think necessary. Initial years were fraught with battles; would the print side or the electronic side of the divided news staff predominate? Editors loathe to free up resources from print for the sake of digital enhancement. This divide has however diminished in size. Journalism online can be fun and perhaps even invigorating. The most immediate and compelling news in a 24/7 digital environment is demanding and has its own rules.

The Times launched six months ago a mobile site which is up to 7 million views (per month?). Other adversaries outside the standard news environment include CraigsList and Wikipedia as well as the now more generally accepted news bloggers. The Times has therefore partnered with outside providers to enhance the content they offer whether dealing with illness or dealing with leisure travel. He can't foresee the nature of the next five to ten years but he ends on a highnote with regard to the "aircraft carrier" that is the Times should be well positioned to respond.

Simon Alterman of Dow Jones is next up. They have of course just been acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which is supposed to be finalised by years end. An Evolving Concept of Information Usage is where he is beginning. Information got stored, users had to go somewhere to find it and access it but at present exponential growth of the digital information is making discovery of relevant information increasingly different. One used to search headlines for customer news, but of course, there significant issues with that approach. But nobody has that has their sole job. They seek information within a specific context. Access needs to be in the place where that information is needed in the workflow. Currently, we think of information more in the sense of "Is one of my clients in the news?" or "Might that company in the news be interested in my services?" How can I apply the news to the goal I need to achieve for my organization. PR professionals want to use text mining and visualization to display themes of interest and drill down to underlying content. So the current focus is to put the news where it is needed. How can Dow Jones use new technologies to create new value? Of course, you don't want the user to have to do all the work, particularly as customization and personalization add huge value. That's how he sees his organization surviving and thriving.

Jonathan Krim from the Washington Post is the third speaker. All the parrots within the Beltway community have mastered the same phrase which is "To the best of my knowledge" which is a light way of saying that they too are in the midst of change and have no hard answers or guaranteed paths to success. There are 3 things they try to be (#1 in providing local news, they want to be the main reference source for information on what's happening locally and the third is that they want to be the main hub for community exchange and debate).

They offer a service known as Local Explorer. First thing that you get is a map thathighlights local services but then you can also move into local home sales which offers the sale price, details about the property and then they direct you to the Wash Post real estate section. Local Explorer is something of a research tool that newspapers are positioned to offer. They can also point you to local crime reports, particularly difficults as jurisdictions frequently try to sit on this type of data. If a particular form of data lends itself to mapping, then the journalists want to provide the platform that will serve the community as a reference tool. It's a legitimate approach for a news organization to provide to its community. Get outside of just the data you're used to working with and try to add value through maximizing the depth of the data offered to the community you serve. The Post will add a local Blog directory because citizens see them as a reference source. Recently updated blogs, new blogs that have been created -- the Post will be giving publicity to the blogosphere. The Post will drive traffic to them and eventually the traffic will then be returned to the Post.

The Post will be working in the hyper-local space by offering in-depth coverage by local individual who actually lives in a particularly suburb or county (he shows the Loudoun country segment of their site which is particularly successful). That individual covers restaurants, places of worship, and school systems with depth of understanding previously not possible by low-level reporters (the most junior on staff usually) who were never really committed to the local community. He references the pain of trying to offer personalization to the individual; they've been banging their heads against this wall for years. However, he believes that this is the area that will offer the most opportunity for the news industry and they do have to figure it out. It just makes perfect sense.

Now we have the question and answer period; this year's format has allowed far more time for open discussion than others. One question is whether the local coverage that's done by individual local talent is getting much in the way of editorial oversight. Krim admits that the level of editorial input isn't as great for that local service as it might be for something that was actually going into the print edition. The guy from the Times admits that it is a problem for them as well (which was why he asked the question). Perhaps (and this is my own editorializing) we have to recognize that levels of editorial quality will fluctuate and will not necessarily be considered a value-laden activity?

Quickest engine of revenue is Internet advertising says the Washington Post representative when queried about monetization and economic models. You can't however get the same rates for Internet ads that you get for print ads and that's an issue. The Times representative agrees that they're growing revenue through that advertising stream but still about 86% of the Times' revenue is derived from the print advertisements. As internal budgets shift within the organization, that is going to be increasingly an issue as units have to compete. The Dow Jones representative mentions that they are likely to be testing whether ads in an online subscription product will be an acceptable revenue option for them. For all of these gentlemen, they have to combat the perception that the public has that news on the Web should be given out for free.

Now someone is inquiring about how newspapers drive usage in an online environment. What strategies are used in order to build the ad revenue necessary? If the little e-alerts are the only thing users are seeing (as opposed to scanning a printed front page), then what's the answer? One guy on the dais quips "Send out more of the little alerts". Another speaker indicates that they are working actively on building the interest fed to them through the blogosphere; additionally, he admits that they are looking into learning from experts in search engine optimization. He also talks about targeted behavioral marketing which he admits is a little creepy but it's definitely going to be part of the overall equation.

What's the role of email? The Times representative says it's a big one; they've been successful with the Times Today email which highlights the day's stories in a particular email format. It is hugely valuable to them, but resources devoted to it are inc omparison rather small. Pushing the news to people is important.

Someone asks about whether the brand identity is changing, noting that the Post talks about becoming a reference source-type site rather than talking about being primarily a news source. That may be happening to some extent but the paper doesn't want to lose either.

Hugely more costly to produce a print paper than it is to run a web site, says the guy from the Times. Much of what a print product requires is labor intensive (truck delivery as an example) but gauging the costs of producing the Web site are perhaps under-estimated if you consider the value of human contribution. Lots of people programming the code and that makes a difference; people used to print have to adjust to the idea that the code creation and technical elements of putting up the paper online is not necessarily immediate. Sometimes the coding takes alot of time and alot of money although the impression is that you're just moving around pixels.

Steve Abram asks about generational shifts; have we yet reached the tipping point where the digital is the primary vehicle as opposed to the supplement that one of the speakers suggested it might be. The speaker asks for the next question [laughter erupts]. The revenue lines are approaching each other much more rapidly than the readership lines apparently; they know it's coming but no one knows when. He believes in the utility of the print product but the younger generation will use the digital as their primary feed source. A little later, Abrams notes that none of the speakers referenced the importance of non-traditional news sources such as The Colbert Report or the Daily Show as a source of information for the younger generation.

What about multi-media in this environment? Are the papers hiring people with the specific skills necessary to produce high-quality multi-media content. Video, flash, other formats need to be incorporated into the systems but the training of the rising generation is lagging just a bit. We produce new journalists trained in silos (print, web, multi-media) and the cross skill set building isn't occurring as rapidly as perhaps might be necessary. Training on the job is taking place to help navigate them through the transition. Saying "I only type" or "I only do Web stuff" is not going to be an adequate response from their staff. A certain amount of partnering between newspapers and broadcasting organizations goes on to exchange content for online purposes.

Geoffrey Bildur follows up with a question about establishing authority or credibility in creating content. Again, "Next question, please?". What is the balance between authoritative and authenticity? This is a really difficult question for the panel. Point of view journalism is more valued than perhaps the professional journalistic community has previously been willing to grant. As the gentleman from the Post indicates, "This is going to be interesting to work out."
Another discussion erupts about the value contributed by the bloggers as opposed to the work of the professional journalist.