O'Reilly Media founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly joins Michael Gough, Adobe VP for Product Experience, discuss the future of publishing.
O’Reilly Media founder and CEO Tim O’Reilly joins Michael Gough, Adobe VP for Product Experience, for an in-depth discussion of the rise of electronic content distribution, and its impact on the traditional publishing industry. (30:21 minutes)
“Last month, near the end of a decade that’s seen most daily newspapers practically hurling reporters, designers, and editors out the windows, the quarterly literary magazine McSweeney’s morphed into a Sunday-sized newspaper for one issue.” – read the Onion AV Club interview with Dave Eggers
Related: Newspaper Industry Market Cap Year End 2008
2009 newspaper industry market cap
It’s a comscore commercial / 10th anniversary video, but they do a good job of showing The Internet: Past, Present and Future in 6minutes. The video includes soundbites by John Battelle, Andrew Braccia, Mark Cuban, Esther Dyson, Wenda Harris Millard, John Markoff, Dave Moore, Tina Sharkey and Fred Wilson. I was not available for comment at the time of this filming.
My tip for the next decade is get your business online and mobile ready – if you are not already (what the hell are you waiting for?). If you have money to invest, put it in the big usa internet stocks, they are the new USA blue chips.
Don Carli, Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for Sustainable Communications and EVP, SustainCommWorld, is reporting and blogging live from Copenhagen this week on areas not generally covered by the media. Below is a major piece for your review on deforestation.
COPENHAGEN ON MY MIND – REDUCING DIGITAL MEDIA TREE-WASH
Most people will tell you that they care about saving our forests, but they tend to be uninformed or misinformed when it comes to knowing the causes of deforestation or some of the places being affected most significantly by land use change that kills trees, pollutes rivers and contributes to climate change. Until recently the conventional wisdom has been to demonize paper and print media as the major culprit behind “killing trees” and to idealize digital media as “green and groovy” alternative without consideration for the full backstory or life cycle footprint of either.
Pixels Don’t Grow on Trees
Paper and print media supply chains are far from being sustainable, but may be far less of a threat to forests than the “Tree-Wash” claims about how digital media saves trees or how pixels are greener than pages. “Tree-Wash” is my term for a special class of “greenwash” making false, misleading or unsupported marketing claims that ignore the causes of deforestation associated with digital media, or that fail to identify the actual trees and forests allegedly being saved or planted.
However, the Copenhagen Climate Summit and technologies developed to verify land use are likely to play a major role in changing the status quo with regard to foot-printing forests, identifying trees and the calculating the climate impacts of coal-powered IT. Continue reading
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Gretchen Carlson Dumbs Down | ||||
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These companies probably have more money and talent at their disposal than your company so go ahead and ape their techniques, you will be better for it. View the slideshow to read about how they are using Facebook to grow profits. -from TheBigMoney
1. If your business is not on the web yet, or your site has not been redesigned in the last 2 years, you need to hop to it.
2. If you are not advertising your products and services online, then you are missing out on Billions of dollars of revenue.
“Online shopping sites offered deeper discounts and pushed new technology to connect with consumers on Cyber Monday, in what’s shaping up to be a strong post-Thanksgiving sales period for online retailers.” -read entire post at the Wall Street Journal.
Found via @ehelm on Twitter
“Censorship increases as killings become routine. “I don’t want to die young,” says one reporter.” – By Ioan Grillo – GlobalPost
Published: November 14, 2009 09:46 ET Read The entire story on their site.
As it pertains to media news, the following is a great way to learn more about consumer sentiment and economic trends. I tune in to better gauge how e-commerce can help my customers and where they should be directing their ad spending (print, web, mobile, direct mail, etc..).
Here are some prizes and continuing education programs at Columbia that I would like to alert you about.
1. When Veterans Come Home: A Workshop for Working Journalists
The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism is collaborating with the Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma and the Carter Center Mental Health Program to offer a workshop on “When Veterans Come Home: A Workshop for Working Journalists” on Jan. 7-9, 2010 at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga. The workshop will address the special challenges facing local and regional news organizations seeking to improve their coverage of critical issues facing returning veterans, with a special emphasis on journalists in communities with high concentrations of veterans or military families. Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter will be the opening speaker.
The workshop is underwritten by generous grants from the McCormick Foundation and the Carter Center Mental Health Program. All selected participants will receive a full scholarship to cover travel, hotel and workshop registration and materials.
Application Deadline: November 20, 2009
Application Information: http://dartcenter.org/content/workshop-when-veterans-return
2. Want to Get Smarter About Your Work? Become a Punch Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Fellow
The Columbia School of Journalism is seeking applicants from news organization leaders for the Punch Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Program fourth year, which starts January 25, 2010. (See http://www.sulzbergerleadership.com)
This program springs from a simple observation: Leaders in the news business grow as they themselves tackle their companies’ most critical business challenges. The program is offered to 20 high-ranking executives over a 12-month period. During that time, the participants learn to use strategy, innovation, and other critical approaches to undertake challenges confronting their companies. We spread classes over four sessions of 3-5 days at the Columbia campus. The program is augmented with peer learning, business advisors, specific assignments, and tailored content – all designed to achieve a project or workplace challenge that participants bring to the program. For more information, contact Associate Dean Arlene Morgan at am494@Columbia.edu or at 212-854-5377. She can put you in touch with editors from the Providence Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, ABC, the Associated Press as well as some start-up digital media leaders who have completed this unique leadership initiative. Application deadline is Nov. 20.
3. Seeking Entries for John H. Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting
The deadline for entries for the John H. Oakes Award has been extended to Nov. 20, 2009 and now includes original stand-alone online work and websites that accompany newsprint projects. The winner receives a $5,000 prize and trip to New York’s Columbia Graduate School of Journalism to appear on a panel on environmental reporting issues. The story can be a single topic or series, published between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009. A series must be designated as such by the publication when it is printed. A regular column may also be submitted as a series. An entry form and additional information are located at the Columbia Journalism School website at www.journalism.columbia.edu under Oakes Award. For more information, contact Lisa Redd, program director, at lsr21@Columbia.edu or 212-854-6468.
Columbia Journalism School presents a new webcast/call-in show on Thursday, noon-1 pm ET. You can listen live via phone or web; you can also catch the recording via the web and iTunes – details below and at http://bit.ly/columbiajdocs
see local time around the world: http://bit.ly/2cOTeG
Advanced Google Docs, Cloud Computing for Journalists: Get the latest tips and tricks about Google Docs, the suite of web-based, collaborative computing services that many journalists are using these days – http://docs.google.com. Learn best practices as well as new features. We will also address the questions that are central to the idea of cloud computing: how safe and private is my work? Please call-in/e-mail/Twitter with your questions and comments.
SPEAKERS:
* Marian Liu, the arts and entertainment reporter for the Seattle Times; leads the daily’s social networking committee; uses free collaborative web tools to run a special program at the Asian American Journalists Association convention – http://twitter.com/marianliu
* Christina Tynan-Wood, the author of “How to Be a Geek Goddess,” the owner of the popular blog GeekGirlfriends.com, a reader advocate on InfoWorld, and a contributing editor for Family Circle, among other outlets – http://twitter.com/xtinatynanwood
* Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager at Google’s NYC office; primarily responsible for the development of Google Docs and the Google Apps product suite (one of the companies he co-founded was responsible for the technology behind spreadsheets in Google Docs – http://twitter.com/jrochelle
* Jason Freidenfelds, a communications manager for Google’s collaborative web apps including Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, and others – http://twitter.com/jfreiden
MODERATOR: Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs and digital media professor, Columbia Journalism School – http://twitter.comsreenet
Thursday, Oct 15, 2009
Noon-1 pm ET, 9-10 am PT
see local time around the world: http://bit.ly/2cOTeG
Listen live, or later to a recording, here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ColumbiaJournalism/2009/10/15/Google-Docs-for-Journalists
Call in with your questions (or listen live): +1-646-915-9583 Continue reading
William Kamkwamba recounts his mission to overcome famine and poverty in his village by building a windmill from a picture in a library book.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| William Kamkwamba | ||||
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The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism presents a special webcast to talk about the Case Method, a powerful new tool available for journalism teachers, to help them train students to think like newsroom managers and industry leaders.
Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009
1-2 pm ET
(see local time around the world: http://bit.ly/wY15O )
Listen live, or later to a recording:
http://bit.ly/columbiajcm
(you can set an e-mail reminder for yourself at that link)
Or call-in to listen and/or talk to them at +1-646-915-9583
Send your questions/comments via e-mail to sree@sree.net (subject = webcast) of via Twitter @sreenet or #columbiaj. You can also use the chatroom that will be open at the link above to ask live questions.
Even if you miss the live version, you can listen to the archive at the link above or via the MP3 info below.
ABOUT THE CASE METHOD: The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism two years ago launched a new program, the Knight Case Studies Initiative. Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Initiative aims to give journalism educators a powerful new tool for the classroom. The Case Method–long familiar to students of business, medicine, law and other professions—is an interactive, discussion-based approach to learning which asks students to think for themselves by confronting them with real-life dilemmas of leadership, management and ethics. Continue reading
“Despite some tentative optimism from Washington, Wall Street and Madison Avenue, people who monitor the newspaper business for a living say it has not yet hit bottom.” 9/20/2009 -NYTimes.com (yeah that’s right, the FREE site)
“Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations.” 9/20/2009 -TheHill.com
So if going out of business and/or seeking a bailout from the Federal Government is not the bottom then hey, the Buggy Whip industry hasn’t hit bottom either. The Buggy Whip makers have seen a stabilization and even increase in sales in the last few years… yep, things are fine.
I’m sure the newspapers are hating Google Labs’ new Fast Flip user interface but at least they are sharing revenue . I like visualizations. The current user interface of search portals and websites in general are certainly in their nascent iterations. For Fast Flip, Google went for the grid user interface hey… it really works for tastespotting.
It remains to be seen if it works for Google. Here’s how Google explains the site:
“Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.”
Tewspaper pulls information from user contributions on social media websites and creates a topically sorted newspaper. At launch, the website has five local websites covering Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York City. Each local site also has national news coverage in a variety of subjects such as business, entertainment, and sports.
Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) August 25, 2009 — Tewspaper, an online newspaper without writers, has launched with coverage of five major metropolitan cities – Baltimore, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Tewspaper scours social media websites such as Twitter and filters messages down to breaking news. One of the local sites, Baltimore News, brings algorithmically filtered news to people in Tewspaper’s home town.
Tewspaper is neither endorsed nor sponsored by Twitter or other social media websites; the company uses publicly available APIs to connect with social media sites and find relevant data. One of Tewspaper’s innovations is a system of filtering through the obscure and finding the relevant news on social media sites. For example, Twitter alone has over 2 billion messages, and is growing by thousands of messages per minute. Tewspaper makes it easy to find out what is happening now, in an organized, succinct, and accessible fashion. It is an ideal way for the Internet generation, who text and tweet, to view the news at their rapidly moving pace.
“We began by limiting the news to trusted authorities on Twitter. From there, we are working on an algorithm that can find additional breaking news from anyone on Twitter and other websites as it happens,” said Jared Lamb, the creator of Tewspaper.
Another obstacle Tewspaper had to overcome was the limited content it could locate for each story. To solve this problem, the website automatically matches images to related stories. Tewspaper determines the optimal image to display for every story based upon the author, subject, headline text, date, links, and other context.
Other local editions are available for Chicago News, Los Angeles News, Dallas News, and New York City News.
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Contact Information
Jared Lamb
Tewspaper
http://www.tewspaper.com
443-857-4829
MEDIA ADVISORY:
NPR NEWS SPECIAL COVERAGE OF LIFE, CAREER
OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY
NPR OFFERING TWO HOUR-LONG SPECIALS TODAY AT 2PM AND 7PM,
CONTINUING COVERAGE THROUGHOUT THE DAY ON-AIR AND AT NPR.org
August 26, 2009; Washington, D.C. – NPR News will offer two special programs today looking at the life and career of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who died last night of complications related to a cancerous brain tumor. Both specials will be broadcast on NPR Member stations nationwide, and will be streamed live at NPR.org. For local stations and broadcast times, visit NPR.org/stations.
From 2:00PM to 3:00PM (ET), NPR congressional correspondent Andrea Seabrook will host an hour-long call-in special. Seabrook will interview guests about Kennedy’s life of service and influential career in the Senate, and invite questions from the audience. Guests include Congressman Barney Frank, former U.S. Senator John Sununu, professor and scholar Ronald Walters and Thomas Oliphant, who covered Kennedy for 40 years for the Boston Globe. Listeners may join the conversation by calling (800) 989-8255 or sending an email to talk@npr.org
Beginning at 7:00PM (ET), NPR will explore Kennedy’s life – his role as a legislative lion in the Senate; his focus on civil rights, and on fighting for the disenfranchised; and his personal life and struggles – in an hour-long program. Host Linda Wertheimer will be joined by a roundtable offering political analysis on the legacy Kennedy leaves behind, with legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, senior news analyst Juan Williams, health policy correspondent Julie Rovner and political editor Ken Rudin.
In addition to these specials, NPR will continue to cover the breaking news of Kennedy’s death throughout the day on all of its news programs, and online at NPR.org, where there is a complete obituary, a timeline of Kennedy’s life and archival interviews with the late senator.
-NPR-
Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing – Bill Wyman via SpliceToday
Bill Wyman is the former arts editor of Salon.com and NPR. This is an in-depth article on the demise of the newspaper industry. Bill can now be found blogging at Hitsville.org.
Twitter has been down and up and down all day… This made me nuts. And then I realized, I would pay for twitter. I have gone days without reading a newspaper, days without watching TV, and it never bothered me. But not having access to the serendipity engine that is Twitter today left me in the lurch.
In April of 2009 Techcrunch said Twitter has 200,000 active weekly users so if all of them paid $5 a month for 12 months 200,000x52x5=$52million dollars per year. That’s not bad considering they could use the money to pay back their Venture Capitalists in One Year. OR use that money to stabilize Twitter against Denial of Service (DOS) attacks like the one causing trouble today.
Hey Biz. Sign me up for a year. My $60 is waiting, otherwise i’m going to go outside and do stuff.
RELATED:
Metaprinter interviews Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone
Snarky WSJ front page article about Twitter DOS attack (the comments section is the best, people going off how useless twitter is but failing to realize that their commenting on a front page news article by the paper they subscribe too).
metaprinterRT @dshack One of those articles about #journalism in the age of twitter that doesn’t suck http://bit.ly/ZmG5u
speech by David Schlesinger, Editor-in-Chief Reuters News, to the International Olympics Committee Press Commission on June 23.
After receiving the following email Tip, I approached NYC.is founder Susannah Vila for an interview.
“…a friend of mine who’s a grad student at Columbia University launched a kind of localized New York City version of Digg. Rather than using the editor curator approach — like Huffington Post — all the users of the site are New Yorkers that submit NYC-related stories and vote up and down on them to get them to the front page. The site also allows users to publish their own blog posts into the news stream, so it’s also becoming a place for community journalism:
Anyway, I thought this was neat and interesting because this isn’t your typical VC-funded start-up, but rather a grad school student who’s working on all this stuff from scratch. And I think it’s a cool approach to more localized news. I thought you and your readers might find it interesting.
Thanks for the Tip! Keep them coming. The following interview took place in the form of an email Q&A between Susannah Vila and metaprinter founder Robert Ivan. Enjoy!
RI- Are you studying journalism at Columbia?
SV- I study political science and public policy.
RI- What got you interested in journalism?
SV- I became interested in how people get the information that allows them to be active citizens. I wanted to be a journalist because I wanted to inform and engage people. I want to work towards engaging more people with their government and their communities. I will probably be doing many different types of things with that goal in mind.
RI- Are students still clamoring to get jobs with traditional media outlets?…or is there something new to reach for?
SV- I think it depends on the student, and on the j school they came out of. CUNY and Medill are doing great things to foster innovation and an entrepreneurial attitudes. But while there are indeed many exciting new prospects for journalism in play right now, they do not offer a steady paycheck, so the understandable attitude among a lot of people my age is that they should do whatever they can do to get a full time job.
RI- What do you think of Jose Antonio Vargas leaving the Washington Post?
SV- I do think that it, at least to some extent, reflects larger trends in journalism. HuffPo is constantly innovating and adding new features; it mixes the work of paid, professional bloggers and reporters with unpaid and, not necessarily formally trained, ones. They’re growing while the Washington Post shrinks. And it’s because of this the Vargas will be able to start his own thing from scratch, which is always exciting. Continue reading
Washington, D.C., – July 27, 2009 – Today, NPR announced two major steps in the expansion of its digital services — the relaunch of its Web site today at www.NPR.org, which makes it easier to combine listening and reading, follow breaking news, comment on NPR’s work and share it and find programming from NPR Member stations — and the development of new NPR News mobile applications for smart phones.
The relaunched Web site – now live at www.NPR.org – is organized to highlight News, Arts & Life and Music, reflecting both NPR’s reporting strengths and the interests of the audience. The redesigned home page makes it easy to follow the news throughout the day, with the top stories updated regularly and featured prominently, and up-to-the-minute discussions of the day’s news easily accessible at NPR’s news blog “The Two-Way.” The site also offers a new search tool powered by Google that allows users to find their favorite program or topic faster. A video hosted by NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon demonstrates the features of the new site.
The site allows for enhanced visual storytelling, offering more photos, images and graphics, and better integration of text and audio content. Audio options are presented more prominently throughout the site and allow fans to organize the various ways to listen to NPR — through their favorite NPR station, live stream or via podcast. Visitors can localize their homepage to receive a mix of local and national news feeds, streams and podcasts in a convenient location near the top of each page. With the relaunch of the site, NPR has also elected to drop fees for transcripts; the public can now access free transcripts dating back to May 2005 on most programs and news stories.
“We’re making it easier for the public to find our stations, listen to NPR programs, and follow the news throughout the day,” said Vivian Schiller, NPR’s President and CEO. “With many traditional news outlets declining, listeners are depending more on NPR and our member stations to meet their information needs on every platform. The new NPR.org and our strong push into mobile applications will take public radio to the next level of audience service.”
The mobile apps being developed will rely on NPR’s open application programming interface (Open API) that launched in July 2008. The API allows users, developers and NPR stations full access to NPR’s current and archived content to create new ways to integrate and share NPR news and programs.
NPR Member station WBUR also relaunched its Web site today using NPR’s API. Sam Fleming, WBUR’s managing director of news and programming, noted, “I am so excited about the API system…our site is only possible because of NPR.”
The NPR News App currently under development for the iTunes App Store will offer iPhone and iPod touch users the opportunity to both read and listen to NPR’s news coverage; curate their own audio playlists; tune in and bookmark a favorite station for its live and on-demand streams; and listen to the most recent stories from NPR’s newsmagazine, talk and cultural programs. NPR serves more mobile web pages to the iPhone than to any other device.
These announcements coincide with near record on-air, online, mobile and social media audience growth over the past year with 27.5 million listeners tuning in each week to NPR programs, podcast downloads up 34% year over year, nine million unique visitors accessing NPR.org each month and the NPR Politics Twitter account reaching one million followers in June.
More NPR announcements will be made in the upcoming weeks and months as each application becomes available to the public.
###
About NPR:
NPR is an award-winning, multimedia news organization and an influential force in American life. In collaboration with more than 880 independent public radio stations nationwide, NPR strives to create a more informed public – one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures. With more than 90 podcasts, NPR is the most successful podcaster among American media companies. Its 24/7 NPR Worldwide program stream reaches listeners in more than 100 countries. NPR Music, in partnership with leading music stations, is a free music discovery web site that offers live performances, studio sessions, first listens to new albums, blogs and features spanning all music genres. Since its launch in 1970, NPR has become a leader in representation and technology development in the public media community, assuring that the unique mission of nonprofit public media is preserved and grows.
I want to pass along a good article from Daring Fireball’s own John Gruber. In Pay Walls, Gruber dissects ex-Baltimore Sun journalist and The Wire creator David Simon‘s call for newspapers to collude on a Newspaper Paywall.
I couldn’t agree with Gruber more. Pre-internet, general interest newspapers made money because they were effective advertising solutions on a cheap and convenient distribution platform, not because they won Pulitzer Prizes. As soon as internet access became ubiquitous, newspapers didn’t look so cheap and convenient.
Newspapers need to adapt to the new information paradigm by exploring NEW revenue streams. The Washington Post or NY Times should have bought Avenue A/ Razorfish a long ago. There is the future. There is the new advertising solution. There is the new revenue.
Can you imagine NYT and WPO and Gannett and Advance and MNI each offering this type of advertising solution to their new and existing advertisers? Cox Ohio publishers, via their AD Studio, are the only ones I know that do it, and they consider it their most important revenue stream going forward.
RELATED:
OH… just google “newspaper paywall”
NYTimes.com design director and Subtraction’s own Khoi Vinh published a great little piece on two recent attempts at Newspaper comics remaining alive via newsprint. Read the article on Subtraction’s site.
My favorite quote, “…Wednesday Comics ships as a free insert to the mid-week edition of USA Today, though I don’t know anyone who reads that paper unless they’re staying at a Holiday Inn…”
Fast Company thinks they know – News Flash From the Future: What Will Journalism Look Like?
I’m thinking anyone’s predictions will be as accurate as Ebony Magazine’s 1985 prognostications on Michael Jackson’s looks.
We at Metaprinter feel that in the year 3000 the Elites will have all the latest gadgetry to notify them of news before it happens. Meanwhile the rest of mankind will have to get by on their wits alone, living day to day, moment to moment, not caring about the news because they will be unable to affect it. oh and my readership will have grown tenfold by the year 3000.
by Steve Greenberg
Artist, illustrator, cartoonist and visual communication graphics
Web site: http://www.greenberg-art.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenbgreenberg
NPR CEO VIVIAN SCHILLER ISSUES STATEMENT REGARDING THE PASSING OF WALTER CRONKITE
July 18, 2009
Walter Cronkite’s passing today marks the loss of the ultimate reliable source, the nation’s narrator and the standard by which all other TV news anchors are judged. It also marks the loss of a special friend to NPR. For six years, in a series of occasional essays for NPR, Walter Cronkite offered his unique perspective on news events he reported on over the past century that still resonate today. Beginning on December 7, 2001, on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Cronkite reflected on the lone dissenter in the Congressional vote to declare war — political pioneer Jeanette Rankin — and how another lone dissenting vote granting President Bush added powers to hunt Osama bin Laden echoes Rankin’s own vote. In another essay, Cronkite told the story behind his initial experience as a TV network anchorman. It happened in 1952 in Chicago, Ill., at the first-ever nationally televised political convention for the Republican Party. Later that summer, Cronkite handled the same chore at the Democratic session. Although he’d never attended a political convention — or done national TV — he was a hit. Walter Cronkite always used history to provide context and understanding and NPR was proud and honored to offer this distinguished veteran journalist an outlet for his work late in his career and to introduce him to a new generation of news consumers who were grateful for his wisdom and perspective from such a remarkable career covering the world.
You can hear all of Walter Cronkite’s unique essays on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/cronkite/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6711860
Book Smarts? E-Texts Receive Mixed Reviews From Students – From WSJ.com
An interesting article on the student usage of eReaders like the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle. Long story short, these devices are not great for students who want to flip through pages, take notes whereever, view videos, do tutorials, and resell their texts when done using them…
We want a ‘new media’ approach to the Vancouver Olympics so that people can have a ‘behind the scenes’ view of the Olympics as an experience not just a standard audience view point because people are demanding greater and greater access that we are able to deliver.
—Mission Statement
Read all about their efforts at the Vancouver Project blog.
Dear friends and colleagues:
Next weekend, we are hosting the SAJA 15th Anniversary Convention & Career Expo (July 10-11) in NYC. If you join SAJA for $20 (you don’t have to be South Asian!), you can attend all the workshops, panels, the job fair, three receptions and gala dinner for just $50.
Details below and at http://www.saja.org/convention
The South Asian Journalists Association, SAJA, is celebrating its 15th
year with a convention July 10-11, in New York City.
The kick-off event is a reception at Bloomberg News on July 10, followed by a full day of programming at CUNY and a gala reception at Columbia University on July 11.
To attend the reception at Bloomberg News on July 10, you MUST
register by Monday, July 6.
Register today for this special convention at http://www.saja.org/convention
Professional members of SAJA or an affiliated group pay only $50.
Other attendees pay $100.
(or you can sign up for SAJA membership to avail of the discount: $20 for journalists, $40 for non-journos, $10 for students)
Despite the low registration fees, you will still have access to a loaded program, including workshops, panels, two receptions and the Awards Dinner at Columbia (Dr. Reza Aslan, one of the world’s leading experts on religion and author of “How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror” is going to be our gala dinner keynote on Saturday, July 11 – see his appearance last week on The Daily Show here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=231561&title=reza-aslan ).
Meet recruiters from The Wall Street Journal, NY1 News, Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones Newswires, Bloomberg News and more at the Career Expo at CUNY on July 11 between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
For additional details and to register, go to SAJA’s home page http://www.saja.org/convention
How many times have you heard the phrase “content is king”? Perhaps hundreds or thousands of times in the last 10 to 15 years. This has been uttered all those times as a justification for the dominance of publishers of all types—audio, video, text, and images—in the digital age. If it were true, the content kings would not always be whining about profits, downsizing, or restructuring. They’d be riding a wave of successes that emanate from their kingly dominance.
(from yesterday)
HP today unveiled the world’s first web-connected home printer: The HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web.
HP is bringing the power of the web directly to the printer and combining it with HP’s TouchSmart technology to give people quick, easy, touchscreen access to popular digital content.
Designed for the digital generation and connected households, the HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web features an entirely new web-based printing platform with HP applications (apps). Similar to other Internet-connected devices, these apps, which are viewable on an extra-large, intuitive-to-use TouchSmart panel, allow people to connect instantly with fun, informative and personal content.
Dave Eggers, philanthropist, teacher-at-large, and author of You Shall Know Our Velocity among other things is pretty confident about the future of print. So much so that he will return anyone’s email if they have doubts about print media’s viability. Here is an Excerpt from an email Gawker published:
“As long as newspapers offer less each day- less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos- then they’re giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself. With our prototype, we aim to make the physical object so beautiful and luxurious that it will seem a bargain at $1. The web obviously presents all kinds of advantages for breaking news, but the printed newspaper does and will always have a slew of advantages, too. It’s our admittedly unorthodox opinion that the two can coexist, and in fact should coexist. But they need to do different things. To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web. Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page. Give people something to fight for, and they will fight for it. Give something to pay for, and they’ll pay for it.
We’ll keep you posted throughout the summer about our progress with this newspaper prototype, and any other good news we come across.” Read The Whole Email
Video below, Dave accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools.
Bing.com is a new search engine that advertises itself as a “decision engine” becuase it helps you make decisions I guess. The site is not up and running yet but they have a video you can watch to see what they’re offering. I always like to try new offerings which may make my web experience more enjoyable, like Wolfram Alpha’s comparison feature, anyway so I sat through the Bing video.
…they need to redo the video. Why? Because right as the following is being said, “…instead of spitting out search results by popularity we break them into logical categories and bring the best match to the top… and show related searches right there in the results page” The picture below is being shown.
See that? In the search history. Colbert Report… what the hell does that have to do with anything? Nothing! It’s distracting. The running search example in the video is Home Depot, so colbert? Take it out! I’m still looking forward to seeing how Bing will actually work though. Will it help me realize self actualization? It better because that is how high the bar is set.
UPDATE:
Bing is now up and running. I did a simple search comparison for “NJ Boater Safety Course” on Google and Bing and Bing came out on top. It came back with the most relevant sites.
Google – Results 1 – 10 of about 1,130,000 for nj boater safety course. (0.17 seconds)
Bing – 1-10 of 80,500 results
As the title of above Reddit thread implies many newspaper news sites spread their longer articles over several pages. It’s my opinion that they do it to drive up pageviews and advertising impressions, but in the process annoy the hell out of the reader. While the Newspaper Association of America continues to triumphantly announce record pageviews on newspaper sites, the newspapers themselves are going bankrupt. Hmmm… It’s time for a new strategy fellas.
My suggestion to these newspaper sites is put the articles on ONE page and increase CPM’s by reducing the total number of advertising spots on their webpages. In other words, don’t have 12 ad spots on every damn page. Look at Kottke.org he has ONE ad on that site (via The Deck) and it generates something like $80k year!
In the meantime people are developing workarounds for crappy user experiences by:
1. reading the article in print page view which usually puts the article on one continuous scrolling screen.
2. using the Auto Pager firefox plugin which automatically loads the next page at the bottom of the screen to create one continuous scrolling screen.
3. using ARC 90 Labs Readability tool which eliminates all ads from the screen
4. using Ad Block Plus to eliminate ALL on site advertising
5. using this GreaseMonkey Script make a multi column page
The online experience is totally different then the print reading experience. Newspapers need to get it in their heads that what works in print does not work online. Print best serves a Geographic Community. The web best serves Communities of Interest. If newspapers are selling “brand awareness” type ads, they won’t sell enough to become economically sustainable. If they sell ads that result in conversions (sales) then they will realize higher CPM’s. Newspapers however, must dismantle their behemoth catch all news sites and create community of interest news sites to best position such conversion ads. The advertiser and newspaper will both benefit. The current online advertising and user experience strategies cannot go on.
NAA sent me a letter with this month’s Presstime magazine letting me know that this is the last print edition I will be receiving. They are moving online only. Truth be told, it was probably the last print edition I would be getting anyway you see I graduated from NYU in January and NAA wants proof that I still qualify for their student rate. I do, but you know what NAA, I’m not wasting my time to send you the appropriate paperwork.
Why is NAA, the NEWSPAPER Association of America, eliminating their print publication and moving online only? The reason they cite in the letter is “to adapt our organization to the realities of today’s newspaper business”. I’m calling bullshit on their reasoning. The real reason I suspect is because NAA is too big a coward to try something innovative and instead is hoping to just hang in there a little longer like everyone else and hope for the best.
According to NAA’s website, here is the association’s purpose:
Today, NAA serves the newspaper industry in strategic efforts to:
. Serve as a catalyst for industry growth
. Identify and disseminate examples of industry innovation
. Provide tools to exchange information and ideas
. Advocate and communicate industry views and interests to the Federal Government and to third-party standards and measurement bodies
. Communicate the vitality of newspaper media to external constituencies including the advertising community, Wall Street and the news media.
Did you read the first and last bullet points? What an awful message eliminating print sends to NAA’s advertisers, NAA’s members, and to the advertisers who spent roughly 34 Billion dollars in PRINT advertising last year. Continue reading
South Asian Journalists Association
The Earth Institute at Columbia University
The John Oakes Prize for Environmental Journalism
present a conversation with one of the world’s leading experts on the environment and climate change…
Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri
- received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which he leads)
- in July 2009 becomes director of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute
TALK & Q&A: “Saving the World: Forging an International Consensus on Development and Climate Change”
Tuesday, May 19
6:45-8 pm
Columbia Journalism School
Stabile Student Center (lobby floor)
116th St & Broadway (#1 train to 116th St stop)
Free and open to the public; no RSVP required
Free open wifi available
NOTE: A recording of the conversation will be webcast later in the week. Feel free to send questions for Dr. Pachauri to saja@columbia.edu (subject = Questions for Dr. Pachauri)
BIO: Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007 Continue reading
The 2009 Commencement ceremony will be held on Wednesday, May 13th beginning at 9:30 AM. Friends and family who are not present at graduation can still join in the celebration by returning to this page Commencement day for the simultaneous Webcast.
http://www.nyu.edu/commencement/webcast.html
Thanks for all your support! I officially graduated from NYU this January with my MA degree in Graphic Communications Management and Technology.
For immediate release
Portland, 1st of May, 2009
Irwin Hodson Press Announces Their Climate Neutral Printing Certification.
How does it feel to print climate neutrally? Innovative and responsible
Irwin Hodson Press can now offer its clients climate neutral print products. Hereby, all CO2-emissions evolving in the course of a print job will be calculated and neutralized by emission certificates from acknowledged climate protection projects. For Irwin Hodson Press, the possibility to print climate neutrally was yet another step in a broad sustainability strategy. Thereby the focus will continue to be on additional long-term development of the company’s internal environment philosophy and the diminution of the impacts on the climate.
From the carbon footprint to a climate neutral print product
Due to a large sense of responsibility, it is important for Irwin Hodson Press to keep the entry of environmentally relevant greenhouse gases as low as possible. In a printing plant CO2-emissions evolve in the course of the usage of energy, transports, paper, inks, coatings and other factors. The ClimatePartner California Inc. has calculated all the emerging CO2-emissions for the whole company [carbon footprint] and presents guidance for the reduction of emissions by means of the results. With an individualized emission calculator Irwin Hodson Press can report to their client the amount of emissions produced per print project. As an additional service, the emissions can be neutralized by investing in high quality emission-reduction-certificates from acknowledged climate protection projects. Therefore every brochure, catalog, poster, etc can be printed climate neutrally. Continue reading
BBC’s News website BBC’s News website
http://www.bbc.com/news – BBC Worldwide
BBC’s News website BBC’s News website
http://www.bbc.com/news – BBC Worldwide
BBC’s News website BBC’s News website
http://www.bbc.com/news - BBC Worldwide
Salon.com Salon.com
http://www.salon.com - Salon Media Group, Inc.
Spectra Visual Newsreader | msnbc.com Spectra Visual Newsreader | msnbc.com
http://www.spectramsnbc.com - SS+K / Fluid
The Daily Beast The Daily Beast
http://thedailybeast.com - Code and Theory
The Huffington Post The Huffington Post
http://huffingtonpost.com - The Huffington Post
guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ – guardian.co.uk
NYTimes.com NYTimes.com
http://NYTimes.com – The New York Times
guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ - guardian.co.uk
NYTimes.com NYTimes.com
http://NYTimes.com - The New York Times
Observer.com Observer.com
http://www.observer.com - Observer Media Group
The Independent The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk - The Independent
Times On Line Times On Line
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/ – SAPIENT INTERACTIVE
I remember writing about this a while ago, but can’t find it and now the issue has come up again. United Parcel Service UPS saves millions of dollars a year on fuel costs by avoiding left hand turns and idling. Here are the details.
In 2007, UPS route planning technology, which minimizes left hand turns:
- shaved nearly 30 million miles off already streamlined delivery routes;
- saved 3 million gallons of gas; and
- reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons of CO2 – the equivalent of removing 5,300 passenger cars off the road for an entire year.
Perhaps newspapers can follow suit? It won’t save the industry, but if physical distribution is part of their business model, they must implement these policies.
NPR TOPS ALL OTHER MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS WITH SEVEN WEBBY AWARDS
NPR HONORED BY WEBBY MEMBERSHIP FOR NPR.org, NPR MUSIC, NPR MOBILE
AND VIDEO DOCUMENTARY SERIES “PROJECT SONG”;
NPR.org, NPR MUSIC AND NPR PODCASTS WIN PUBLIC COMPETITION
May 5, 2009; Washington, D.C. – NPR has been honored with seven awards in the 13th annual Webby Awards – more than any other news organization – for NPR.org, NPR Music, mobile and podcasts, it was announced today. NPR was chosen as “Best Radio Site,” “Best Music Site,” “Best Mobile News” and “Best Music Online Video” among the Webby’s digital media membership, and “Best Radio Site,” “Best Music Site” and “Best Podcasts” in the Webby’s public competition.
Amazon plans big screen Kindle: Textbook margins are the real aim not saving newspapers -from ZDnet
Editor in Chief of ZDNet, Larry Dignan convincingly writes that the new Big Screen Kindle’s are designed and marketed to serve the $8.6 Billion college textbook market.
Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press -from NYTimes
“…it is Amazon, maker of the Kindle, that appears to be first in line to try throwing an electronic life preserver to old-media companies.”
Will Anybody Buy The New Large-Format Kindle? -from wired
Wired is owned by Conde Nast who is owned by Advance who owns many newspapers like the Staten Island Advance and Newark Star-Ledger so this is an interesting take on the situation. Where’s the market demand?
EveryBlock’s iPhone app -from Everyblock
If you live in an EveryBlock city and have an iPhone you can now have more news access than you ever thought you needed. The app is available for free at the App Store.
Here’s how Everyblock explains the features of the app: The EveryBlock iPhone app lets you explore news that’s happened recently in your immediate area. We publish dozens of different categories of local news, drawing from hundreds of sources. Much of it is updated every single day. Examples of the information we publish: Continue reading
A number of people have asked me to write some reflections on running The Metaprinter Giveaway this past week.
4Gig iPod – Jeff Emsweller. Jeff spent 22 year in the journalism field, starting as a photographer for the Rushville (IN) Republican newspaper. At Rushville he served as sports editor, assistant editor and then was named editor of the Batesville (IN) Herald Tribune. Jeff also served as editor of the Greensburg (IN) Daily News and then as Publisher of Greensburg, Rushville and Batesville.
1Gig iPod - H. J. Mann. H. J. is the Vice President of Financial services sales Firethorn LLC, a Qualcomm company. H. J. has 15 years of experience in technology and business development. He has held leadership roles in leading organizations such as Acxiom, Epsilon, and DoubleClick. H. J. lives in Dallas with his wife and daughter. Thank you Robert! www.firethornmobile.com
$20 Amazon.com Gift Certificate – Maikel Neris. Maikel is a 27 years old Brazilian web designer and WordPress developer. Thanks for the prize! www.maikelneris.com.br
Over the course of the 4 days we ran our giveaway there were 39 on site entries (and a total of 108 entries via twitter, linkedin, and email. But those don’t count. Sorry). RSS subscriber numbers remained unchanged over the week (in a normal week it goes up by a handful) however site visits were up ~5%. Pageviews up ~10%. Pages per visit up ~5%. and Bounce rate fell ~11%.
The week wasn’t a massive success in terms of driving traffic – however that wasn’t my overall goal. The main thing that I wanted to do over the week was to add to the sense of community on the site – to have some fun – to get a few lurkers participating and to thank readers for being a part of Metaprinter. In this regard the week was a big success with many first time comments and a lot of thank you emails from readers who seemed to enjoy it.
Thanks again! Any Ideas for the Next Giveaway?
Alan Rusbridger at the Institut für Medienpolitik in Berlin on April 22, speaking on the future of journalism and explaining how the Guardian opened up its site to a wider pool of contributors.
Alan Rusbridger on the Future of Journalism from Carta on Vimeo.
Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s (@arusbridger) sharing some thoughts.