NewsBeat

July 2017 NewsBeat 3 couple of years ago, at the fall publisher's conference, a speaker from Ohio introduced us to a content sharing strategy that had been employed by seven metropolitan dailies in that state, to include papers in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and others. Their strategy among papers that shared a lot of the same issues but largely didn't compete with one another, was to band together to improve content and coverage in all the papers, to increase the effectiveness of their editorial voice, and to ensure comprehensive coverage of certain issues in the face of declining newsroom budgets. Importantly, these efforts were driven not by the publishers, but by the editors in each of these markets, who developed a loose working relationship with each other, discussed topics of statewide interest and planned out how each would share in the responsibility of providing coverage. Stories were planned and executed, and each newspaper localized the content for their market and packaged the stories independently to ensure that a regional story maintained the local flavor of the paper it was published in. In some cases, it allowed newspapers to expand what they were offering to readers. In others, it allowed them to redeploy their limited resources to more local content. An example these editors provided was coverage of pro football, where in the past each paper would send a columnist, reporter and photographer to games in Cincinnati and Cleveland. Now, they could band together on the game story, which is more universal, and send only the columnist to provide the local voice that their readers demanded. Following that discussion, the New York Press Association board began discussing how we could provide our membership with a limited content-sharing mechanism that would achieve some of the same goals. What we decided to embark on was a platform that would provide editors with an opportunity to quickly and easily upload and download content that would have a regional or statewide appeal, and put protections in place to ensure that competing newspapers were not scooping themselves by making their content available to others. Last year, the board allocated a small amount of money to move the ball forward, and now, in conjunction with our partners at AdForce and the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, NewsToShare.org is up and going. To make this as user-friendly as possible, we've created a list of content categories that are pretty universal in each of our newsrooms: government, education, business, healthcare, sports, etc. We've also put categories in to help bolster special section content like home & garden, rec & travel, real estate, and others. For ease of use, we chose a WordPress platform, which is both simple to operate and already employed in many of the newsrooms across the state. We knew that if the process was difficult, it wouldn't be used, so we streamlined the upload and download process in any way that we could. The goal was to make it so a story could be uploaded in a couple of minutes or less. As a publisher and former editor, I'm sympathetic to competition concerns, so we've employed a list of embargoes and rules. This is your content – you've worked hard to create it – and you should have control over who, where and when it is republished. If you don't want that content available to a competing publication, you can make that clear when the copy is uploaded. You can also dictate the attribution for your work. The goal is not to make our papers more homogenous, but to make them better. The download functions are similarly easy. It is a simple copy and paste to download a story, and a right click and save as to download a photo. From there, you can bring the content into your publishing software and utilize it locally. As we get this ramped up, users will receive email alerts with the latest content that has been uploaded to the site. This newsfeed will likely start as a weekly email, but as usage of the site grows, we hope it will become a daily endeavor. I believe the benefits of this platform are self explanatory: to bolster our publications and sites with additional content and to provide greater audience and impact for your work. As you work through this, if you have questions or concerns, you can email the nypa offices or me and we will try to work through those issues with you. David Tyler is the president of the NYPA board of directors and the publisher of Eagle Newspapers in Syracuse. He can be reached at dtyler@eaglenewsonline.com A Newstoshare.org, NYPA's content sharing platform, is up and running By DAVE TYLER — NYPA President Foundation Contributions Donations Received From Amount Adirondack Publishing Co..................200.00 West Winfield Star................................25.00 Litmor Publications...............................50.00 Thousand Island Printing...................100.00 Wallkill Valley Publishing.....................50.00 Sag Harbor............................................50.00 Sullivan County Democrat...................50.00 Southampton Press............................100.00 Sun & Record Newspaper..................100.00 Straus News.....................................1,000.00 Smithtown News................................500.00 The Batavian.........................................50.00 Patchogue Advance..............................50.00 Linda Loomis.........................................50.00 Grant Hamilton...................................500.00 Total................................................$2,875.00 T he New York Press Association Foundation extends its sincere appreciation to the following news organizations and publishers who contributed to the Foundation this year. — Many thanks!!!

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