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WAN Amsterdam: Newspapers must experiment with online journalism and accept failures, says Guardian advisor

Posted: 15/10/08 By: Judith Townend

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Newspapers should experiment with journalism online and not be afraid to fail, said Caroline Little, in her keynote speech at the WAN Digital Revenue Goldmine in Amsterdam today.

Experimentation is required as part of a rethink of the industry as a whole, in particular of business models, said the former Washington Post and Newsweek Interactive CEO, who is an advisor to Guardian.co.uk on its move into the US market.

"[The] web provides all sorts of journalistic opportunities. By embracing all these opportunities there is the chance to gain revenue," she said.

"[It] requires trying new things and sometimes going down in flames. Fear of failure can be debilitating. All we have to lose by being too conservative is everything."

The full audio of Little's speech can be listened to here:

Little split her strategies for online journalism into four: multimedia story-telling, database journalism, reader engagement and distribution.

However, Little was adamant that newspapers should not become social networks and said despite the success of titles such as the Washington Post, whose political widget on Facebook attracted 400,000 downloads in one week, this was a marketing rather than journalistic exercise.

<#advert specific="3"#>"It's hard to imagine a newspaper becoming a social application like Facebook," she said. Newspapers will 'never have that reach' as it's a 'completely different model'.

While digital revenues have not yet caught up with their print counterparts, Little said addressing this problem 'doesn't mean creating more content about Britney Spears or Madonna and Guy Ritchie'.

Online business models must focus on advertising, she said, adding that digital ad revenues 'are not nearly enough to sustain newsgathering operations', but the 'fundamentals of business [are] being primarily supported by advertising revenues'.

Little said she was not convinced by the subscription model, as introduced by the Wall Street Journal, though admitted it had been successful for the paper. If implemented by other titles, 'another news site is only another click away'.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk about her work with the Guardian, Little said the focus was on search engine optimisation.

The Guardian is local at a world level making it a very different challenge to that faced by the Washington Post, which is local at a country level, she explained.

"They're similar but different. Multimedia has a very high uptake in the US," she said. Most US users are finding the Guardian through Google and may never have seen the Guardian newspaper in print, she added.

Little, who was appointed as special advisor in August, said she could not comment on specific strategies in place at the Guardian.

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