Participatory Journalism

Opinion Paper
Participatory Journalism
Risks and Opportunities for newspaper companies

to grow with user-generated content
2010 / 05
We make ICT strategies work

Participatory Journalism / UGC
Table of Contents
1 Executive Summary............................................................................................. 3
2 Current challenges for news corporations ........................................................... 5
2.1 Complete overhaul of the information value chain....................................... 5
2.2 Decline in newspaper circulation ................................................................. 6
2.3 UGC development in Germany and the US ................................................ 7
3 Risks and opportunities to implement citizen journalism ................................... 9
3.1 Production processes and technology......................................................... 9
3.2 Financials .................................................................................................. 11
3.3 Marketing................................................................................................... 13
4 So, what should media (news) companies do? ................................................. 16
5 Recommended reading ..................................................................................... 18
6 The Author......................................................................................................... 19
7 The Company .................................................................................................... 20
Opinion Paper 2 Detecon International GmbH

1 Executive Summary
Media companies are desperately searching new ways to drive profits. Traditional
distribution platforms such as print, and now also increasingly broadcasting, have come
under serious pressure from the new digital media paradigm. The demise of city newspapers
in the US is taking on alarming proportions. Last year the “The Ann Arbor News” closed
down after more than 150 years in publication and was subsequently reborn as the Internet
site AnnArbor.com. Recently, publishers have placed great expectations in new distribution
platforms such as Apple’s iPad and the associated eBook store.
User-generated content (UGC) can play an important role in professional journalism and in
the new era of publishing news. Recent examples, such as coverage of the elections in Iran,
have already demonstrated its impact. Participatory journalism – either in its pure-play
internet-based or a hybrid “click-and-mortar” variety, has been pointed out by many as the
future of the news media industry. It allows direct citizen participation in the collection and
dissemination of information. Some see it as a disruptive force, making traditional journalism
obsolete, others see it as a way to transform and revive the news industry.
This opinion paper analyzes the concept of participatory journalism, based on a study of
German and US based news corporations we have conducted. Our research shows that
participatory journalism is a powerful tool to attract users. More importantly, participatory
journalism has the potential to generate real business value for traditional media houses, if
care is taken regarding implementation.
Participatory Journalism
The audience is invited to gather, select, write, comment, edit, publish and discuss
information and news. This form of user-generated content allows citizens to become
users and producers at the same time. Synonyms like “grassroots journalism”, “open-
source journalism” and “citizen journalism” are all commonly used as well.
Based on our extensive analysis it can be shown that:

Q Most of news companies in the US and Germany are well on their way to take
advantage of online potential and have expanded upon their traditional
approaches with state-of-the art Web 2.0 features (e.g. RSS feeds, Wiki,
Blogs).
Q For traditional newspaper companies in both countries, user-generated content
is still limited, mainly consisting of comments and rating of information. Some
news corporations allow user-submitted pictures and videos.
Q TV-based companies like CNN and BBC have more extensively embraced
user-submitted content and made them part of their unique selling proposition
(being the first to publish global breaking news) in a highly competitive news
environment.
Q However, to maintain credibility and reliability of the brand, media companies
have to spend additional resources to substantiate the professional quality of
their content.

In summary, participative journalism has become a critical success factor for major news
corporations because:
Q It builds a symbiotic partnership with users and attracts readers to participate in
the news room thereby creating interest among readers, increasing total sales
and penetration,
Q It leverages the advertising-based business model,
Q It provides “unlimited” news sources both for local events and across national
boundaries.
However, participative journalism also has its own challenges:

Q Assuring credibility and authenticity of the information that is created by users,
Q Additional resources in terms of cost, time and human resources need to be
implemented to comply with professional, legal and regulatory guidelines,
Q New communication technologies/platforms have to be implemented and
maintained to support participative journalism.
Our findings suggest that user-generated content and traditional journalism are strongest
when joining forces, especially on a local level. To embrace opportunities, news
organizations need to decide which citizen contributions are the most valuable and most
appealing to their audience. They should then incorporate them into their (local) news
coverage; not censored, but controlled and put into context.

2 Current challenges for news corporations
2.1 Complete overhaul of the information value chain
With the advent of Web 2.0 the online world has finally reached the original vision of Web-
founder Tim Berners-Lee, where people are more and more eager to produce content at the
same extent as they consume it.1 People not only write about themselves to the extent of
providing even detailed information on their habits, their family and their pets, but they also
write about events and topics traditionally considered the domain of news media. However,
traditionally, weblogs, wikis or any other user-generated content (UGC) have not been
considered legitimate, reliable and qualitative sources of information. As a result, news
organizations simply adapted their traditional path of producing content to the internet and
hired professional journalists to write and monitor (online) columns and articles. But is the
right approach to respond to the information society?
Wikipedia
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference
Websites attracting at least 68 millions visitors monthly as of 2010. There are more than
91,000 active contributors working on more than 15,000,000 articles in more than 270
languages.
The era of digitalization has dramatically affected the media industry transforming their value
chain and traditional business models. In the first phase of the internet (roughly coinciding
with the dot-com bubble of the late nineties), media distribution was transformed with
electronic web sites appearing next to printed media and TV screens. Most news
organizations reacted to this phase by setting up their own portals, generally securing their
position as successful and relevant. High-quality content from own sources and aggregation
of external content attracted visitors and – sometimes – subscribers. However, most only
ventures struggled from a business perspective as revenues were not high enough to cover
the costs of professional content creation.
The success of Wikipedia and the struggles of traditional encyclopedias such as German
Brockhaus demonstrated that user-edited content has the capacity of significantly competing
against professionally created content in terms of quality and relevance. Wikis, blogs and
other Web 2.0 creatures suddenly opened the door to news sites with purely internet-based
value chains. For instance, South Korea’s wiki newspaper OhmyNews, a hybrid organization
of 65 full-time journalists and 44,000 citizen contributors, generated revenues of US$ 6.5
million in 2008. From this, one would expect that traditional publishing houses could also
take advantage of user-generated content to reduce their content production and acquisition
costs. Traditionally, the first two activities of a media company’s value chain, creation and
bundling of original content (see figure 1), are characteristically expensive. Those first
activities depended on various entities selecting and developing content often at great
expense. For digital media the subsequent activities can be performed at low marginal cost.
1
Technocrati.com alone counts 1.5 mn new blog entries every day according to its website.

In other words, more than two third of media companies’ creation costs occurred in
the production and bundling process of content.
However today, users can play the role of content producers, moderators and readers at the
same time. These so called “produsers” actively take part in the very first stage of the value
chain by creating content and by contributing to the creation activities of publishing houses
and by consuming the end-product (e.g. articles) at the same time. So, the web 2.0 era
enables users to influence all levels of a companies’ value chain: generation,
aggregation/processing and dissemination or presentation of information.
To analyze the role and value contribution of user-generated content Detecon has developed
a value chain model tailored to the information age. It describes value creation and
production process of information-based companies like media or newspaper corporations.
The information value chain is a simple yet powerful method to analyze information-based
business models, applications and value propositions.
The application to Spiegel Online’s UGC site “Eines Tages”2 is shown below:
Storage/ Aggregation/
Generation Integration Analysis Presentation
Archiving Processing
User User data Combination Integration of text Professional Presentation

Spiegel: Eines Tages
-generated warehouse site of user and pictures in vetting of on Spiegel

content information Coverage news room Online website
(“co-creation”) (user as
“produser” )
Figure 1: User-generated content within organization’s information value chain
It is now up to media corporations to stay with the traditional (costly) way of content
production or let users take an active part within their information value chain and save First-
Copy-Costs.
2.2 Decline in newspaper circulation
Looking beyond user-generated content it is critical to understand the ongoing

transformation within the newspaper industry. Our analysis of recent newspaper market
developments together with the progress of participatory forms of journalism in the US and in
Germany provided interesting insights.
As figure 2 shows, the newspaper industry has experienced a steady decline in circulation
and readership for more than ten years: daily average newspaper circulation in GER was
31.4 mn in 1997 compared to 25.3 mn in 2009, and in the US: 105 mn in 1997 to 44mn in
2009, mainly because of changing media consumption behavior towards online media.
2
http://einestages.spiegel.de/page/Home.html

In the past year this has been exacerbated by the economic crisis, which has led to
reductions in both the number of readers and advertisement revenues. The recent news that
The Wall Street Journal has become the largest US daily underscores this dramatic
development.
1997
31 2009
Germany -19%
25
105
USA -58%
44
Figure 2: Daily circulation of newspapers in million in the US and in GER
2.3 UGC development in Germany and the US
Germany
After World War II, the Allies installed a strong public service broadcasting system, which
allowed only a few large media publishing houses (such as Bertelsmann/Gruner & Jahr,
Springer, Burda, the Waz group, etc.) to influence and push German journalism and media
market developments. Most of the country’s newspapers serve only local and regional
markets and fulfill a community function, so it is not surprising that in this local and traditional
environment the discussion on public journalism in the US virtually had no effect on
Germany. In fact, user participation in Germany was not adopted until late 2006 when
newspapers started to embrace their readers in the news-making process and released
online platforms separated from their core brand. Examples are Süddeutsche Zeitung
(jetzt.de), Tagesspiegel (Sensation!) and Rheinische Post (Opinio). Probably the two most
prominent citizen media sites are ‘reader reporters’ introduced by Germany’s largest tabloid
BILD, where users are able to upload pictures and sell them to the newspaper for a minimal
fee, and ‘Reader’s Edition’ developed by the “Netzzeitung”.

USA
In the US the advent of user-generated news sites was not driven by traditional media but by
Web sites like Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us that enabled participants very early (e.g. Digg in
2004) to share online news and to create new content on these websites through
bookmarking links of news websites. However, more advanced3 citizen journalism websites
like Newsvine.com have become increasingly common over the last few years.
Today, more than 1,000 – rapidly approaching 1,500 – citizen journalism websites exist in
the U.S. according to an estimation of Jan Schaffer, executive director of the University of
Maryland’s Institute of Interactive Journalism. Main drivers of this ongoing development are
predominantly non-profit organizations like the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, the
Sunlight Foundation and the non-profit Center for Citizen Media. These foundations are
committed to actively support participative journalism on websites in the US by providing
tools, resources and education to both citizen and professional journalists.
In summary, while the discussion about user-generated media has just started in Germany,
in 2006 37% of all (online) Americans had already created different forms of content such as
uploaded videos or photos, blogs or posted comments to an online news website (Lenhart,
2007)4. And this phenomenon is likely to grow. The website techcrunch.com projects that by
2013 more than half (51.8%) of American internet users will contribute content online.5
3
In terms of the user participation rate
4
Lenhart,A. et al. (2007): Teens and Social Media. Pew Internet & American, Life Project. December 19, 2007. Cf.
also Madden, M. / Fox, S. (2006): Riding the Waves of “Web 2.0. Pew Internet & American Life Project,October
5, 2006.
5
http://techcrunchies.com/growth-of-user-generated-content-contributors-in-usa/

3 Risks and opportunities to implement citizen

journalism
In the following we discuss potential resistance and success factors to implement
participative journalism. It also gives best-practice examples and some recommendations on
what media companies should consider when implementing user-generated content.
3.1 Production processes and technology
One set of arguments against the introduction of user-generated content is centered on risks
to the production process and on a possible immaturity of technological systems and/or the
lack of technical resources within a company. To achieve a certain level of control and
quality classification standards, evaluation systems and an appropriate infrastructure have to
be set up first, and relations, structures and boundaries need to be anticipated. This requires
that a state-of-the-art technical environment has to be set up within media organizations to
allow cost-effective management of UGC.
Main risks in the production process:

Q Vandalism and Threats: Participative journalism can still produce side-effects
and risks, such as violation on companies’ websites. A good example in this
case is the German newspaper site sueddeutsche.de, where originally the
UGC section was not monitored, so user-submitted articles were published
instantly, without any control. Eventually, however, users used the message
board to distribute death treats against the CEO of the Bild newspaper. As a
result, the company had to change its monitoring approach and now vets all
submitted articles manually before they get published.
Q Legal issues: Another risk is, for instance, that media companies have to
ensure that UGC on companies’ websites does not violate laws and other
people’s rights. Tools for “anonymization” make it difficult, though, to track
creators of illegal published content for prosecution. Companies that “offer”
illegal content on their websites are under certain circumstances6 criminally
and civilly liable for this content and risk severe consequences. A recent media
example is the Italian conglomerate Mediaset Group that sued UGC site
YouTube for € 500 million ($780 million), claiming that the video-sharing site of
Google hosts thousands of video clips without the permission of Mediaset. It is
to be expected that news organization will in the future rely not only on text
contributions from their readers but also on pictures and videos. As soon as
they start doing this, copyrights and intellectual properties will become very
relevant even for posted user-generated content.
This part introduces the author/s and provides to the reader the background of the author
as well as his contact data (phone, mail).
6
Companies are liable, if they do not delete illegal content immediately after notification

Best-practice examples how to mitigate UGC-related risks
Ohmynews offers an UGC platform for news based in South Korea. More than 41,000
registered participants including more than 3,000 international citizen reporters in over 110
countries are responsible for 70 percent of the company’s news stories. On “Ohmynews E”
platform, which is a relatively new Digg-like technical tool, citizens can post links to articles,
including their comments, and get ranked by other readers according their quality and
correctness of articles.
Company facts Ohmynews
Revenue: 6,5 mio US$ (2008)
Business model: advertising
Traffic: on average 2.5 million page views a day
URL: http://www.ohmynews.com
Slogan: Every Citizen is a Reporter
Available languages: Korean, English
Launched: February 22, 2000
The site relies on social vetting and innovative use of new technologies: content with high
accuracy and credibility is ranked consistently higher, ensuring respected citizen
journalists network with each other more intensely, and showing comparatively high quality
articles on the top of the page.
As an additional administrative safeguard, Ohmynews requires every Korean citizen to

register with his or her national identification number before they can write stories or
comment on articles. Only comments by registered users are permitted after each article,
calling attention to missing citations (i.e. assertions), misleading information, or the like,
increasing the qualitative aspect even further.
Besides safeguards against deliberate fraud, it is also important to provide users with easy-
to-use tools, so that they can easily create attractive content. Ohmynews provides a
specially-developed content management tool, which shows written articles, monitors the
editorial process and reports views and comments in real time to its creator.
At Ohmynews the following technical mechanisms apply:
1. During the upload process, the special designed tool informs users that they may not
upload content that infringes on their terms of use, and that, by uploading content, they
affirm that such uploading complies with the UGC Service's terms of use.
2. Through effective content identification technology (“Identification Technology”) all

infringing user-uploaded content with Copyright will be removed immediately or blocked.

Recommendations:
To date, there are no sophisticated technical algorithms that help achieve quality and
correctness of user-driven content in an economic way. Especially when it comes to quality
aspects, media companies try to hinder vandalism and incorrect information on their
websites through automated technical tools but also through social and administrative
processes. Ohmynews and Sueddeutsche assure the quality and legal correctness of their
UGC manually, through a decent professional news room, where professional journalists
reserve the right to edit and publish anything users have written.
Problems regarding authenticity, quality and legacy of user-generated content remain and
cannot be appropriately and sufficiently resolved by technical tools. Therefore it is
recommended to maintain an (online) news room of professional journalists, who
screen, edit, and fact-check stories from ordinary folks to filter out inaccuracies and
potentially libelous claims in addition.
3.2 Financials
With the financial situation under stress at most media companies, investment decisions into
UGC ventures have to be made in the light of scarce resources. We have looked at costs
aspects and revenue potentials.
On the cost side
Setting up the infrastructure for participatory processes and workflows typically requires
modest investments. Off-the shelf entry-level tools for basic platforms such as for online
editing blogging, review and ratings platforms are readily available on the market. More effort
is required in integrating these into existing Websites and back-office systems for, e.g.
content management. Additional costs are to be expected for integrating the new workflows
into the overall news-related process landscape. In addition setting-up a special news room
for vetting and validating the content – as shown in the examples above – is required.
However, these people can be part of the regular online newsroom.
Potential revenues
Our research conducted with major news corporations reveals that all interviewed media
companies based their business model on an advertising model that is quite usual for
internet pages. This model has been proven to be the only business model that generates
revenues online especially when the viewer traffic is large and highly specialized. That was
probably also the reason why 80% of respondents perceived the investment in UGC not as a
risky or uncertain decision, but more as an investment into the organizations’ overall online
strategy. UGC generates traffic, which is responsible for higher advertising margins and
helps to maintain audiences on news websites. Research institute eMarketer7 even
anticipates that US user-generated content advertising revenue will reach $824 million in
2012, up from $162 million in 2007. If media companies are able to utilize content from an
appropriate UGC platform, where users can publish regional/local stories, it can help to
reduce first copy costs and also enlarges news coverage (online and offline).
7
Can User-Generated Content Generate Revenue?, APRIL 17, 2008

+409%
824
162
USA
Figure 3: US user-generated content advertising revenue
Norway’s largest daily newspaper with over 1.4 million daily print and online readers, for
example, succeeded despite a decline in readership by 20% to increase its profits by 10
EUR million, due to “continuous product diversification and improving production efficiency”.
Among the most successful features of its diversification strategy, its website VG Nett has
soared in traffic, thanks partly to Lesernes VG (the Readers VG), an online area that invites
readers into the production of news.
Recommendation
If one looks at UGC from a financial point of view, it is quite reasonable to question the return
of investment during tough economic times, especially as advertising is the single direct
source of revenue for user-generated content. But to make that work, media corporations
have to find ways to attract enough readers and contributors to their UGC sections,
generating valuable traffic and page views (the key measure in advertising). Although, the
above mentioned eMarketer report projects that the number of UGC creators will rise to 108
million in 2012 from 77 million in 2007, media companies need to address specific groups of
readers to create maximum value for the advertising industry. Spiegel Online’s UGC section
“EinesTages”, for instance, generates the necessary high volume of traffic (60 million clicks
in 12 months in 2008), but faces more and more difficulties in finding advertising agencies
that are willing to support a section where it is difficult to identify who is reading the content.
One possible solution could be to offer additional services built around the existing UGC
portal. That could be for instance mobile applications where users can upload pictures,
videos and articles in the moment they happen and can read news in real-time. Axel
Springer for instance just introduced iPhone apps for its newspapers “Welt” and “Bild”, where
users can pay 2,99 Euro per month (1,59 Euro for BILD) to get individualized news on their
mobile phone.

Another way could be the implementation of UGC sections through partnership in social
networks like Facebook and MySpace to give users the possibility to write articles and posts
within users’ social communities under the publishers’ brand.
Both ways (mobile services and partnerships with social networks) could be a good
possibility to increase readership and enhance revenue through new business models.
3.3 Marketing
From a marketing point of view, a successful strategy for introduction of UGC has to be
taken in consideration as well. Users trust in value, previous experience and reputation upon
consumption, which is in general expressed by a reliable and consistent media brand. As an
intelligent company survives by its brand, it is a success factor for media organizations to
build up trust and a reputation for its media product and maintain customers’ loyalty
throughout a company’s life cycle.
Three steps to achieve readers trust and loyalty
1. Relevance: it is important to secure quality and consistency on a website through

relevant topics and tools
2. Reach: Covering sufficient readers
3. Revenue: through enough traffic for merchandise advertisement
Risks in introducing UGC from a marketing perspective
By introducing user-generated content under a company’s own brand, media organizations

enter unfamiliar terrain, where customers’ acceptance and their reactions are not
predictable. Long-built reliability and trust in the media brand could be damaged though
vandalism and legal issues (see 3.1) and companies could loose their valuable reputations
among loyal customers. In the following we shall discuss the successful and the negative
side of how to use user-generated content for your marketing purposes.
Successful user-generated content marketing campaign
First, we start with an example of a successful user-generated marketing campaign. When

Hurricane Katrina hit the US, bombs went off in London in 2005 and during the ongoing
debate about the outcome of the elections in Iran, innovative news-making companies like
BBC received hundreds of stories, photos and videos from citizens and implemented themas
part of their coverage of the events. Cellcast CEO Pankaj Thakar says, "During the London
bombings the content on news channels was skewed to almost 30 per cent broadcast news
and 70 percent people generated content.” So, companies like BBC not only use their UGC
as a “cheap” source for their news coverage, but also to leverage their marketing position, as
the fastest and most comprehensive delivery of news compared to competitors.

There is also great potential for user generated content in local news markets. People love
their local coffee bar, or their local newspaper vendor, or the local car dealership, or their
local sports team. There are tremendous opportunities for those local brands to advertise
especially as people get local media easier and easier (for instance through mobile
applications).
Negative UGC
There is also the chance that negative comments and articles appear through user
generated content as research shows. In a report by Juniper Research8 the subject of
negative user generated content is analyzed and a profile of a typical creator of negative
buzz is given. They are predominantly male (60% are male), use social networks heavily and
are into technology (40% are influential in this area and 23% are considered "early
adopters"). 49% of them tend to act as brand advocates – which mean they tend to have the
ability to influence their social ecosystem by spreading the word online.
Recommendation
There are many examples where UGC campaigns failed, but in most cases it was because
media companies did not tell their users the rules of the game upfront. It has to be
communicated how people can contribute and how it will be monitored.
It is recommended to introduce UGC for marketing purposes, because media companies are
able to resolve issues, build an effective brand image and create positive relationships with
their readers (as in the BBC example). It definitely appears to be a way to get unbiased
opinions on news coverage (or products) and brands and to involve users in the news
making process. By building up the best community of users to post news stories, not only
traffic and readership can be increased, but also news coverage and time to market of
stories. Media corporations should use this channel to keep ahead of their competition and
to be the first publishing breaking news. One thing is clear: a lot of newspapers are about to
hit their breaking point. While there was already a trend towards online publications, the
current economic climate and the rise of mobile broadband apps are only accelerating this
process.
8
"When Good Social Marketing Goes Bad", January 10, 2008, Jupiter Research

The future of the industry clearly includes a UGC offer in a product mix of:
1. traditional newspapers off the shelf for an exclusive reading and information experience,
2. an online web offer for the latest news and
3. mobile applications for news on the move and for a fast upload possibility for readers to
generate (local) UGC and participate in (local) news coverage. Local advertising space
will offer media corporations a huge potential for monetizing user generated content in
the future if effectively distributed.
4. use of new distribution channels like the iPad: WELT is the first German newspaper that
offers its readers (paid) content on Apple’s new device. Subscription starts at 7.99
EUR/month for the Sunday issue of the newspaper.
Newspaper Online Mobile app eReader (iPad)
Figure 4: Product mix of Welt

4 So, what should media (news) companies do?
In summary, there are many obstacles but also great opportunities to implement user-
generated content/participatory journalism. It can act as a catalyst for consumers to spend
more time on news websites and therefore offers promising uses cases especially in the
areas of advertising and mobile services (applications). User-generated content can offer
benefits without major investments in infrastructure or technology. So, in the following
section some recommendations for media news companies shall be given:
Target your UGC: Create a regional, local platform where consumers can upload pictures,
videos and text about their home, their neighborhoods, their friends and their other personal
items. A good example is given by “iTowns”, a website launched in 2008 that brings citizen
journalists in Connecticut, USA, to the paper’s website as well as the print edition. The idea
is to aggregate and disseminate local articles, photos, videos, event calendars and other
information submitted by readers in one of six regions around Hartford. Six local reporters –
one for each region – blog about their area and add content to reader postings. Each
Sunday, a printed edition of iTowns is delivered to readers in the area. The cover of this
Sunday issue is provided by local artists giving them opportunity to some exposure in their
region. This environment creates ideal opportunities for selling advertisement space to local
companies thus monetizing user-generated content. By linking local news and local ads to
mobile location-based applications its reach can be extended even further.
Local content (news)
Local advertising
Figure 5: In App-Adverting example
Build a symbiotic (but vetted) relationship with your readers: The whole media industry
operates in a peer-to-peer (online) network - being transformed from a pure content supplier
into an information intermediary with a symbiotic relationship to its users. Accompanied by
the recent developments of blogging and other social media, publishers should increasingly
implement and expose participative forms of content production, optimizing their business
model and finding their role within these new participatory environments.

However, it is highly recommended that participative content has to be controlled, or at least

vetted by professional journalists in order to keep trust and reliability in a media company’s
brand and news coverage. User participation in journalism has existed before, but user-
driven creation of media content gained more substance with the beginning of digitization.
This has and created a new style of journalism based on almost real-time aggregation and
interpretation. Evading the censors in Iran and communicating from the earthquake in Haiti
have shown that active social media users are able to mobilize citizens through powerful
social media tools like twitter. However, participative journalism, user-generated content and
other social media (like twitter) do not imply the end for traditional news corporations. UGC
should never be treated as representative as only a small, select group submit their content.
A UGC study conducted by BBC shows that great differences were seen across classes:
16% of higher management would take a photo of a local news event, with all saying they
would submit it to a news organization, but in other groups (middle-management to manual
laborers) only between 4 - 5% would take such a photo. The challenge is for each news
organization to figure out what citizen contributions are the most valuable as well as the most
appealing to its audiences. So, symbiotic partnerships and tools with key contributors should
be established to disseminate information in new ways and to mobilize own readership
effectively.
In multimedia competition, media companies should focus on their traditional strengths –

beyond quality. These include providing users with an individual reading and information
experience. Therefore traditional news corporations should acknowledge the importance of
user-generated content and implement social media in their business model and (ad-hoc)
news coverage – however vetted and targeted to local needs and readership. New ways of
publishing, distributing and uploading content (for instance uploading postings through
smartphone apps or being available on eReader devices like the Kindle or iPad) should be
considered as valuable instrument to stay in contact with readers/contributors.
Ultimately, organizations can only retain their readers by giving them the deliberate choice to
either participate or to set aside quality time in their busy schedules.

5 Recommended reading
Q Bruns, A. (2007): Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led
Content Creation. In: Proceedings Creativity & Cognition, Vol. 6, Washington,
DC.
Q Gillmor, D. (2004): We the media. Grassroots journalism by the people, for the
people. Sebastopol.
Q Hess, T./Walther von B. (2006): Toward Content Intermediation: Shedding New
Light on the Media Sector. In: Hess, T. (2007): Ubiquitaet, Interaktivitaet,
Konvergenz und die Medienbranche. Goettingen.
Q Kops, M. (2007): User Driven Publishing – Technology Push vs. Market Pull.
In: Presentation for the German-Japanese Symposium 2007.
Q Schweiger, W./Quiring, O. (2006): User-Generated Content auf
massenmedialen Websites: eine Spielart der Interaktivität oder etwas völlig
anderes? In: Friedchisen, M./Muehl-Benninghaus, W./Schweiger, W. (Ed.):
Neue Technik, neue Medien, neue Gesellschaft? Ökonomische
Herausforderungen der Onlinekommunikation, Munich. PP. 87 – 109.
Q n.s. (2009): The State of the News Media 2009. Project of Excellence in
Journalism. http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/index.htm

6 The Author
Maximilian Lehmann is Business Analyst in Detecon’s Competence Practice Information

Technology where he works for the Technology Portfolio Strategies group. He currently is
assigned on a six-month expatriate visa to Detecon Inc.’s Strategy and Innovation
department in San Francisco. He has concluded various national and international projects
at Detecon since 2008, where he gained experience in worldwide ICT markets, user-
generated content and fixed-mobile convergence products and services. The focal point of
his work is on the analysis of markets and innovative technology portfolio strategies.
He can be reached at: +49 160 905 233 95 (Germany), +1 415 373 7783 (USA) or
Maximilian.Lehmann@detecon.com

7 The Company
We make ICT strategies work
Detecon is a consulting company which unites classic management consulting with a high
level of technology expertise.
Our company's history is proof of this: Detecon International is the product of the merger of
the management and IT consulting company Diebold, founded in 1954, and the
telecommunications consultancy Detecon, founded in 1977. Our services focus on
consulting and implementation solutions which are derived from the use of information and
communications technology (ICT). All around the globe, clients from virtually all industries
profit from our holistic know-how in questions of strategy and organizational design and in
the use of state-of-the-art technologies.
Detecon’s know-how bundles the knowledge from the successful conclusion of management
and ICT projects in more than 160 countries. We are represented globally by subsidiaries,
affiliates, and project offices. Detecon is a subsidiary of T-Systems International, the
business customer brand of Deutsche Telekom. In our capacity as consultants, we are able
to benefit from the infrastructure of a global player spanning our planet.
Know-how and hands-on expertise
The rapid development of information and telecommunications technologies has an

increasingly significant influence on the strategies of companies as well as on the processes
within an organization. The subsequent complex adaptations affect business models and
corporate structures, not only technological applications.
Our services for ICT management encompass classic strategy and organization consulting
as well as the planning and implementation of highly complex, technological ICT
architectures and applications. We are independent of manufacturers and obligated solely to
our client's success.
Detecon International GmbH

Oberkasselerstr. 2
53227 Bonn
Telefon: +49 228 700 0
E-Mail: info@detecon.com
Internet: www.detecon.com

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Opinion Paper

Risks and Opportunities for newspaper companies

We make ICT strategies work

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Based on our extensive analysis it can be shown that:

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However, participative journalism also has its own challenges:

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2 Current challenges for news corporations

2.1 Complete overhaul of the information value chain

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User User data Combination Integration of text Professional Presentation

-generated warehouse site of user and pictures in vetting of on Spiegel

Figure 1: User-generated content within organization’s information value chain

2.2 Decline in newspaper circulation

Looking beyond user-generated content it is critical to understand the ongoing

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Figure 2: Daily circulation of newspapers in million in the US and in GER

2.3 UGC development in Germany and the US

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3 Risks and opportunities to implement citizen

3.1 Production processes and technology

Main risks in the production process:

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Best-practice examples how to mitigate UGC-related risks

Company facts Ohmynews

Revenue: 6,5 mio US$ (2008)

Business model: advertising

Traffic: on average 2.5 million page views a day

Slogan: Every Citizen is a Reporter

Available languages: Korean, English

Launched: February 22, 2000

As an additional administrative safeguard, Ohmynews requires every Korean citizen to

At Ohmynews the following technical mechanisms apply:

2. Through effective content identification technology (“Identification Technology”) all

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On the cost side

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Figure 3: US user-generated content advertising revenue

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Three steps to achieve readers trust and loyalty

1. Relevance: it is important to secure quality and consistency on a website through

2. Reach: Covering sufficient readers

3. Revenue: through enough traffic for merchandise advertisement

Risks in introducing UGC from a marketing perspective

By introducing user-generated content under a company’s own brand, media organizations

Successful user-generated content marketing campaign

First, we start with an example of a successful user-generated marketing campaign. When

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2. an online web offer for the latest news and

Newspaper Online Mobile app eReader (iPad)

Figure 4: Product mix of Welt

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4 So, what should media (news) companies do?

Local content (news)

Figure 5: In App-Adverting example

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However, it is highly recommended that participative content has to be controlled, or at least

In multimedia competition, media companies should focus on their traditional strengths –

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Maximilian Lehmann is Business Analyst in Detecon’s Competence Practice Information