Tag Archives: New Media

Visualizing the World Cup – explorations in html 5, css3, jQery and more

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world cup visualization html 5 css3

click image above to experience the World Cup Visualization…

Some of you have asked for more info about the World Cup Visualization I recreated. Honestly, go read the overview of how robby macdonell did it, that’s what I did.

All my data came from wikipedia.  I’m still adding data to this little by little as time permits.

As an aside, I’m pretty comfortable using flash and actionscript and I feel that I could have done this in flash in half the time and with the emergence of things like Smokescreen and other things not yet created I would not discount the ubiquity of Flash for the near future.

Advertisers and Readers Return to Newspaper Industry – Profits Up

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In a stunning turn of events for the newspaper industry Q1 2010 numbers show that readers and advertisers have returned to this medium.   Experts suggest the return is real and that long-term the outlook for newspapers and newspaper revenues look strong.  One ratings analyst with April Capital Management was quoted as saying, “look, where else are people going to raise awareness for their brand or read the news? Newspapers seem the best option for both customers”.

No comment from the Google Topeka executives who are now scrambling to unload their digital advertising and data mining enterprises.

Not Exactly the 4th Estate

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A TechCrunch intern( under the age of 18) was found to have accepted a MacBook Air in exchange for a blog post – He got fired.

Here’s TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington, “On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.”

1.  I’m stunned that TechCrunch, one of the most influential and widely read blogs in the world would allow someone so young to create content for the site.

2.  I’m glad they fired him and deleted his content.

3.  One of the comments tips you off  to the fired intern’s  identity but he’s a minor so I’ll let you figure it out on your own.

4.  Another commentor links to an insightful article by Mark Cuban who breaks down the legality of “unpaid” internships. (tl;dr they’re illegal if your work benefits the company in any way).

5.  I’m now much more skeptical of some blog content. If there is more than one author on a blog site, I want to be directed to the bio of the author when I click on the author’s name, not to a list of all their other blog posts.  Seeking Alpha is one example of a good author link (for full disclosure I am a contributor to that site).

When I interview Don Carli about sustainability in news media a while back we had the following exchange, which is relevant.

RI- Will people still care where they get their news from?

DC- I don’t think people care so much about where their news comes from, but journalism… yes I believe they still care. Anyone can make news and anyone can report it, but journalism is different and that difference matters. For example, Twitter is fast becoming one the most important source of breaking news, but it isn’t journalism. I think a robust Fourth Estate capable of independent investigative journalism is essential. The first tenet of sustainability is having a political system that secures effective participation of its citizens in decision making. That is the role served by journalists and the media channels that deliver and store their content. …full article

Anyone can make news. ps i could use a new car ; )

Covering the News from Haiti via Blogs and Twitter and Alt. Sources

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Person Finder:

Person Finder: Haiti Earthquake – from Google Crisis Response

Haiti News Articles and Sources:

Twitter Helps in Haiti Quake Coverage, Aid – WSJ.com JANUARY 14, 2010, 5:03 PM ET

Viewing Haiti Through Social Media - Huffington Post January 15, 2010 03:04 PM

Google News results for Twitter + Haiti

Google News results for Blog + Haiti

Technorati is currently tracking 29,040 blog posts tagged “haiti” January 17, 2010 2:38pm ET

Haiti News filtered through Yahoo Pipes

Donate:

Google Crisis Response – Haiti news, video, free Google Voice, unicef, care, and more – Google.com

#Haiti Twitter hashtags:

#haiti
#help
#emergency

Haiti results and info from WThashtag.com

Haiti results from hashtags.org

*Readers, If you know of any more good ones, please comment and i’ll add them to the main post.

Tim Oreilly and Micheal Gough Discuss the Future of Publishing

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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, 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)

Comscore presents The Internet: Past, Present and Future

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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.

Tewspaper: Crowdsourced News Via Twitter and Social Media

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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.

###

Contact Information
Jared Lamb
Tewspaper
http://www.tewspaper.com
443-857-4829

DOS Attack? I would pay for Twitter and I think You Would Too

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Twitter Fail Whale - Over Capacity

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).

the Vancouver Project shoots for New Media Coverage of 2010 Olympics

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the Vancouver Project

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.

NPR Wins Seven Webby Awards For Radio, Music, Mobile and Podcasts

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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.

Continue reading →

Interview With Alan Jacobson – TweenTribune News Site

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This interview took place between TweenTribune‘s managing editor Alan Jacobson and I at this year’s America East Newspaper Operations and Technology conference.  If Alan’s name sounds familiar it is because he is the president of BrassTacksDesign, which has provided editorial, advertising and technical support to newspapers from New England to New Zealand for almost 20 years.

RI- What is TweenTribune and how did your idea for it come about?
AJ- Lets go all the way back to 1996 when I wrote an article for Brass Tacks Design entitled Online newspapers: Where’s the revenue? In that article I emphasize the importance for websites to build on a “community of interest” rather than a geographic community such as newspapers have traditionally served.   The points being, advertisers would be eager to advertise beside niche content rather than generic news on a website AND the internet is better suited at targeting “communities of interest” than printed newspapers.  Newspapers should have 1000 niche sites, not 1 mammoth site attempting to do everything.

I am the father of two tweens and being familiar with the Newspapers In Education (NIE) program it was clear to me that something better needed to be created for all parties involved.  The current NIE setup is a disaster.  The print product they are pushing not only costs publishers millions of dollars, it is attempting to get kids interested in a product that is going away and filled with adult content.  Their online solutions are equally bad.  Those sites are not designed with the kid’s best interests in mind.  The sites are poorly designed and have wacky logos and colors…  I actually did design testing with my kids and their friends, and my friends kids… you know what they like?  A well laid out, clean site just like the rest of us! Continue reading →

News Media Innovation, Convergence and Sustainability – Interview with Don Carli

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Interview with Don Carli Executive Vice President of SustainCommWorld LLC, and Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Communication.

Don has been a leading researcher, author, educator and speaker addressing the sustainability of media supply chains for the last decade, and for over 25 years has been a respected media technology and marketing strategy consultant to major advertisers, agencies and publishers.

RI- Why are newspapers and other traditional publishers pushing the issue of eReaders as a communications medium when something like less than one third of one percent of the reading population of the United States owns these products? Is it a paper sustainability issue? Is it a cost issue? What’s the justification?

DC- Other than pushing the “cool” factor, one of the main selling points being made by marketers of eReaders is that they are greener than print. It is little surprise that the common view held by consumers who don’t know the backstory is that going digital means going green and saving trees. Many are in for a rude awakening. When subjected to “cradle-to-cradle ” Lifecycle Analysis eReading is not nearly as green as many naively assume it is.

There is no question that print media could do a better job of managing the sustainability of its supply chains and waste streams, but it’s a misguided notion to assume that digital media is categorically greener. Computers, eReaders and cell phones don’t grow on trees and their spiraling requirement for energy is unsustainable. Continue reading →

Journalism Happening on Twitter

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I often see and hear the statement that Twitter is not journalism.  But when I see posts like the one below, I have to disagree.  Journalism is happening on Twitter.  The problem is that the filter for finding the good stuff isn’t yet what it will be.  But it will.  #journ

jayrosen_nyuI’d like to ask you, @JohnAByrne: do you think CNBC is losing legitimacy after Santelli’s rant and the aftershocks? Should it, in your view?
5 minutes ago from web

——————-

Jay Rosen has been on the NYU Journalism Institute’s faculty since 1986, and from 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department.  He also writes at PressThink, The Huffington Post, is quite active on Twitter, and on and on.

John A. Byrne is executive editor of BusinessWeek. Previously, Byrne was editor-in-chief of Fast Company. Before that, he worked for BusinessWeek for nearly 18 years, rising to senior writer.

Readability Cleans Up The Clutter

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I’ve been guilty of reading the “print view” version of long interesting articles on news sites to remove all the noise and clutter of those sites. Sometimes I’ll even use the Web Designer’s Toolbar to disable javascript. Some smart people at arc90 labs have gone several steps further and created the above “browser bookmarklet on steroids” to improve the reading experience.

Purists will say I’m not supporting the site by avoiding their advertising, but you know what? In the 14 years I’ve been using the internet, I have never intentionally clicked on an advertisement. If in the last 14 years, the only thing those sites can come up with to grab my attention is a Pop Under ad, then they fail – not me. Continue reading →

Newsvine CEO Reflects as Seattle Post-Intelligencer Fails

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Mike Davidson is founder and CEO of Newsvine, which was recently acquired by msnbc.com, invented sIFR, a technology which has enabled tens of thousands of designers to beautify the web with tens of thousands of typefaces, led the redesign of the first major media site to support web standards, ESPN.com in 2003, has no tolerance for the intolerance of imperfection on the web, and went to school with Leonardo DiCaprio and appears adjacent to him in their 3rd grade yearbook!

That’s one hell of a resume.  In his blog, MikeIndustries, Mr. Davidson recently recounted the akward situation where, “while we were toiling away, our friends upstairs at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer received their unemployment orientation in advance of being laid off two weeks from now”.  Newsvine and the Seattle P-I apparantly shared the same building.  This interesting blog post also touches on Mr. Davidson’s personal belief that he’s “not super optimistic about the future of a lot of these newspaper companies, but I really would love to see them at least replaced with something better”.

Mr. Davidson also offers tips on saving, not newspapers, but long-form journalism and local reporting.  Check out the entire post entitled Last-Rites on his site.

Kindle 2 Review For Newspaper Readers

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Reading the New York Times on Kindle 2 -blog.reifman.org

I think switching to The Times on the Kindle 2 is a fantastic way to lessen your impact on the environment, reducing tremendous waste from paper, print, delivery and plastic bags. Perhaps saving a forest. However, it’s not for everyone. You’ll need to be willing to commit to the form factor and accept changes in the reading experience.

Overall, I give the Kindle 2 with the New York Times a B to B+. If Amazon makes the software updates I mentioned above, this would raise the experience to an A-.

I love my iPhone and I’ve used both the NetNewswire application and the New York Times application on it – but reading The Times on the Kindle is better in enough ways to make me carry both…before even considering the Kindle’s blog and book reading capabilities… continue

Thorough review of the kindle 2 for newspaper readers.  I’m still not convinced that it is cheap enough for the masses. The cost of reading the NYTimes.com site from home, office, laptop, or on my blackberry is free (right now). If the economics of this change, then the kindle 2 and others, will become more attractive.  Having said that, if the cost becomes prohibitively expensive or constrained (ie. you must buy our Hearst eReader to read Heast content) then quality free content will continue to grow in popularity.

Newspaper Industry Advice Via Smithsonian 2.0 Gathering

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Substitute the name “Smithsonian” below with the name of your favorite Print Newspaper and we may have something to work with towards effecting positive change in the newspaper industry.  *Note my hyperlinks and bolding added for emphasis.  Note also that not once do they whine about the destructive or disruptive nature of the internet on their business model, they embrace it and seek to leverage it for furthering their mission.

Smithsonian 2.0: A Gathering to Re-Imagine the Smithsonian in the Digital Age

Twenty-four million visitors come through the Smithsonian’s doors each year to view our collections and to learn about science, technology, history, art and culture. We host 175 million (more than seven times the number of our physical visitors) through the Web. As digital technology accelerates and the Web becomes an even more essential part of our everyday lives, that number will grow, possibly reaching billions.

As part of Secretary Wayne Clough’s strategic planning initiative, the Institution will host “Smithsonian 2.0: A Gathering to Re-Imagine the Smithsonian in the Digital Age”—a two-day conference on Jan. 23 and 24, supported by the Smithsonian National Board. Smithsonian 2.0 will bring more than 30 creative leaders from the Web, digital and new media worlds (chosen for their engagement of large audiences, including youth) to meet with a core group of Smithsonian staff to look at our vision, our challenges, and our current level of achievement in Web and new media. This group will try to identify how to move the Smithsonian forward toward a “Smithsonian 2.0.” Continue reading →

The Most Bizzare Video on The Future of News Media

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Epic 2014 The Video I wish i could embed this but I cannot.  The link opens a new window.  Hold on to your seat.

I’m pretty sure that’s Matt Thompson from Newsless.org narrating.

From the site:  “If you like EPIC, and the ideas in it, you’ll probably like my site (Robin Sloan), Matt’s, and our blog (snarkmarket). Come say hello!”

Hearst eReader Fallout

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Hearst’s E-Reader: The Last Stand of a Doomed Industry -Gawker

Dear media companies: Please stop trying to innovate. You’re lousy at it.  Hearst‘s supposed “Kindle killer,” an electronic reader for magazines, is just the latest in a series of debacles from the moribund print-media business.

Hearst Media Magazine Company Planning Their Very Own E-Book Reader -Gizmodo

If high costs of producing paper goods are hurting the media, I’m not sure it makes sense to get into the game of something more expensive to read from today — when such a device already exists from Amazon — even if it saves them a few bucks tomorrow. Oh yeah, and magazines are better in color (on LCD or paper).

Cosmo Publisher Plans an E-Reader of its Own -Wired

For Hearst, here’s one way to think about the problem. Can the company convince nail salons, probably the biggest subscribers to its Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire magazines, to buy e-readers instead of print subscriptions?

Hearst to launch wireless e-reader, potentially revolutionize print media -Engadget

I can wait for the future, when I will carry my cell phone, a netbook, a kindle for books, a hearst media reader for that companies articles and a newscorp media reader for the other articles I will need, that wont be available on the web.  its gonna be great! pffft. -from commenter Sim

Hearst developing e-reader, charging for e-news -Cnet News

“Our cost base is significantly out of line with the revenue available in our business today,” Hearst’s Swartz concluded, as he noted other advertising initiatives, such as partnering on advertising with real-estate site Zillow and Yahoo, and raising prices for print subscriptions and mobile-phone access to its content. “It is equally inescapable that during good times, our industry developed business practices that were, at best, inefficient.”

Hearst to Begin Charging for Digital News -WSJ.com

A top executive at Hearst, which publishes 16 newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said the company is mulling how much of its online offerings to keep free, while reserving some content exclusively for people who pay.

It seems that no one thinks this is a good idea except Hearst, which leads me to believe that something big is happening behind the scenes.  Perhaps the cost of paper is about to skyrocket?  I heard this scenario late last year, at an NYU sustainability discussion, where their is little to no domestically produced paper (paper and pulp mills moved out of the country a few years ago), compound this situation with the fact that the Obama administration is moving forward with their carbon cap and trade plan, making “dirty” industries and their products prohibitively expensive.   What follows is a situation where the only paper that will be plentiful is expensive eco-friendly paper for notebooks and direct mailers.

With no signs that our depressed economy is turning around, perhaps the publishers are using this as an excuse to think long-term to expand into eReaders?  Am I giving them too much credit for this move?  Does Hearst really think that a proprietary reader will be better medium than a printed magazine?  Personally I’m not sold on the idea of proprietary hardware as a business model for publishers.  I think they need to focus on content creation and let the hardware makers fight over how to best display it.

Q&A with Baristanet Co-Owner Liz George

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Baristanet.com is a leading independent news site in NJ. Many news media experts consider Baristanet to be a whopping success in a sea of general interist news site and blog failures (traditional and nontraditional). Business is good at Baristanet and they are enjoying a growing community presence. At O’RIELLY Tools of Change 2009 Future of News panel discussion, Jeff Jarvis went so far as to suggest that New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, enter into some kind of partnership with Baristanet to share resources.

Following the TOC 2009 event I wanted to learn more about this hyperlocal hero.  What follows is an email Q&A between metaprinter.com founder Robert Ivan and Baristanet.com Co-Owner Liz George. Enjoy!

RI- Introduce yourself and tell us what you do on a daily basis at Baristanet.

LG- I’m Liz George and I’m the co-owner and editor of Baristanet. My partner and the site’s founder Deb Galant started Baristanet in May 2004. Her initial partnership did not work out; we started working together in August 2004 and soon after became partners.

On any given day, I’m either writing for Baristanet, editing the stories from other writers and contributors, assigning stories, updating the site with breaking news, answering requests from readers, community organizations, businesses, etc., and working on developing new aspects and features of the site, new projects and alliances. Some days, Deb and I will meet, but typically we do most of our work virtually and fill in with phone calls and emails. Deb handles more of the ad sales end of things. Continue reading →

NPR NEWS CAPTURES 18 PRESTIGIOUS VISUAL JOURNALISM AWARDS

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npr

WHITE HOUSE NEWS PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSOCIATION BESTOWS “THE EYES OF HISTORY” AWARDS ON NPR JOURNALISTS

February 25, 2009; Washington, D.C. – NPR News has earned 18 honors in the 2009 White House News Photographers Association’s The Eyes of History awards.  The annual awards, announced earlier this week, recognize outstanding achievements in photojournalism.

NPR journalists were recognized in 12 separate categories, more than any other broadcast news media, with three first place awards in the following categories: New Media’s “Best Use of Photography and Audio with Narration,” Still Photography’s “Best Picture in Story/Politics,” and Video Editing’s “Sports.”

The awards will be presented at a White House News Photographers Association gala in Washington, D.C., on May 30, 2009, where the award-winning photographs and videos will be displayed.

The Eyes of History awards honoring the best in photojournalism were established as an annual contest in 1941 by the White House News Photographers Association, founded 20 years earlier.  The awards provide a historical look back on the year, with photos portraying compelling, interesting and memorable coverage of events in Washington and around the world.

Awards won by NPR are outlined below.  To view NPR’s winning entries visit: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2009/02/whnpa_contest_winners.html Continue reading →

Newspaper Association of America Joins Twitter… Finally

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I received the below email Today from the Newspaper Association of America telling me about them recently joining Twitter.  They joined today according to TwitterHolic but their posts go back to November of 2008, – they aren’t human.  They are being fed from Twitterfeed and Digsby.

I like the idea of NAA joining in the conversation, but how about having a human being at the helm to editorialize the information flow?  As it stands now, they are using twitter as an RSS feed and that just stinks.  I understand they want to use it to cover upcoming events, but what about the other 363 days of the year?

I hope NAA and any newspaper looking to utilize twitter as a social networking tool realizes that it’s the interaction that builds communities, not applications in and of themselves.  The Internet Editor for the Austin American_Statesman has a great blog post about abandoning twitterfeed to gain audience.  Here’s an excerpt:

The way I think about it is a morning news radio show. I say good morning, I say goodbye at the end of my shift. I thank them for contributions, etc. -quigblog

——————————————————————-

Here’s the email:

This Week’s Quick Tip: Follow the NAA Community on Twitter

The NAA Community recently joined Twitter, a social networking tool that provides a simple way for people to connect, exchange information, and even receive breaking news. You can “follow” the NAA Community to get the latest updates on NAA services and product offerings, fellowship application deadlines, upcoming events, the latest Community blog content, as well as news from NAA staff as they travel to newspaper site visits, industry conferences and more!

Sign up to now to ensure you don’t miss our extended coverage of the upcoming NAA mediaXchange conference in Las Vegas! To get started, sign-up for an account or log-in to Twitter, and visit NAA_Community to begin following.

We hope you find this Quick Tip easy and useful, and we’ll be back with another Quick Tip next week!

Need additional help? View our Online Tutorial or have a look through our FAQs for official answers. You may also or peruse the information in our NAA Community Blog — everything from how to get started to tips and tricks designed to help you get the most out of your Community. Just visit: http://community.naa.org/help or call 571-366-1200.

Thanks,
NAA Community Team

UPDATE:

I sent NAA_Community a tweet to see if a human was on the other end, listening and I got a response!  I hope this person, whomever they are, starts posting.

Top 5 News Destinations Not In Danger of Going Bankrupt in 2009

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The Bivings Report Has Their Top Ten Newspaper Website list up and I can’t agree with one of them so below is my own top 5 list.  I don’t discriminate on size, blog, news, paper, country, whatever.  These are just ones I think hit home runs.  Enjoy.

1. The Las Vegas Sun – I would say that this is THE BEST newspaper site in America however, it is not a traditional newspaper. Only a smaller version of the site is printed and distributed, as an insert, in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Still, this site kicks ass. It utilizes multimedia news reporting throughout the site, not just features. If you visit the site often, you’ll notice the front page layout changes every day, there are no rigid templates. The site uses Django and the Ellington CMS to do this as well as the genius of Rob Curley.

It has been rumored that this site will become completely cash flow positive in late 2009 / early 2010.  That would make it the first general interest news site that I know of which is economically sustainable. Continue reading →

Columbia J-School Webcast – Launching Your Own Media Business

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Listen here:

See Columbia Journalism School full archive of sessions (40+), on a wide variety of fascinating media topics, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/columbiajournalism

FREE WEBCAST: Launching Your Own Media Business: Thriving and Surviving in the Changing Media Landscape

[Post your comments, and see resources, at http://columbianm.blogspot.com/2009/02/webcast-launching-your-own-media.html ]

Speakers: Henry Dubroff, J’82 alum and Susan J. Marks, authors of “Battling Big Box: How Nimble Companies Can Out Maneuver Giant Competitors”

Using what they learned via Dubroff’s media entrepreneurship
experience and their brand-new book, our speakers will help
journalists understand how they can be entrepreneurial and take charge
of their careers in ways they hadn’t imagined. The session will be
filled with practical, actionable information and they will take your
questions.

Friday, Feb. 6, 2009
1-2 pm ET
10-11 am PT (where Dubroff will be calling from)
11 am-noon CT (where Marks will be calling from)
see local time around the world: http://snurl.com/b8a4l

If you Twitter about this, please use this hash tag – #columbiaj (see the conversation at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23columbiaj )

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Henry Dubroff, graduated from Columbia Journalism
School in 1972. He is founder and editor of Pacific Coast Business
Times. Despite operating in the shadow of the region’s big-box
competition in Los Angeles, Dubroff’s publication reached break-even
just 18 months after launch and continues to maintain double-digit
growth rates. Previously, Dubroff was editor of the Denver Business
Journal and business editor at the Denver Post, where he won numerous
national awards for excellence in journalism. His entrepreneurial
accomplishments have been recognized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the California
Legislature.

Susan J. Marks is an award-winning journalist, freelance writer, book
author, and editor. In her nearly 30 years of newspaper, magazine, and
book writing and editing experience, she has chronicled large and
small business successes and failures, innovations, and changes.

What Newspaper Websites Can Learn from Darren Rowse and ProBlogger – First Impressions

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It’s really getting frustrating reading about newspapers getting bailed out by questionable individuals, newspapers suing each other over… linking? really? Linking?  uh… ok,  and just the overall death of newspapers as the major source of news and investigative journalism.  So lets focus on something positive like the title of this post: What Newspaper Websites Can Learn from Darren Rowse and ProBlogger – First Impressions.

If you don’t know Darren Rowse or ProBlogger and you run a news site or any blog really, it is imperative you start following his blog and take the time to dig through his archives.  Ok, enough of that.

First, watch the video below from ProBlogger regarding the “first impressions” that a blog (or any site) makes on their visitors and what it means for engagement. Then we’ll go through some main points. Continue reading →

Recently Overheard, “Newspapers will never die, you can’t make a scrap book out of interactive products…”

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There’s a pretty good Newspaper Thread going on right now at Ask.Metafilter.com see below.

As a back story, the quote “Newspapers will never die, you can’t make a scrap book out of interactive products…” came from one newspaper person after another newspaper person was gloating about how many newspapers they sold for the Obama Inauguration.

I don’t want to name names because in this case it would just be mean, you see I went and posed the statement on ask.metafilter.com as a question. Here is my post:

I’m looking for smart ways to refute the following illogical statement: “Newspapers will never die, you can’t make a scrap book out of interactive products…”

Lets pretend that scrapbooking is the lifeblood of newspapers. How are interactive products (i’m guessing the person means websites, social networks, blogs, etc.) now used for “scrapbooking”?

or… Deconstruct the original statement any way you think is better. Thanks!

Here are the responses, 37 at last count.

UPDATE: Jan. 21, 2009
“newspapers covering yesterday’s inauguration ceremony will fly off the shelves as readers seek out their trusted newspaper brand for comprehensive coverage of this historic event.” -John F. Sturm NAA President and CEO 

Really John?  Is that why they are being sold in “mint”, “unopened” condition on ebay by the pallet full?  Because people wanted to read them?  Dream on…

Washington Post Launches New Blog / Wiki – Misses The Point

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The Washington Post Company (WPO) launched it’s newest online venture WhoRunsGov.com today. From their about page:

Who Runs Gov offers a unique look at the world of Washington through its key players and personalities.  Our site will feature profiles of a select group of government officials, including members of the new presidential administration, legislators, senior Congressional aides and committee staff, and experts at think tanks and interest groups who influence how policy is made.

For our initial site launch, creating and editing profiles will be limited to our editorial staff; in its second phase, our site will evolve into a moderated wiki.

I don’t see how this site can succeed in the face of competition from local competitors like Politico, national competitors like TalkingPointsMemo and international competitors like Wikipedia.org.  These three (and many more) are established and have great communities surrounding them.  Additionally, the mere presence of whorunsgov.com dilutes the already smallish pool of advertisers looking to get on politics sites.  Continue reading →

Washington Post to Carpet Bomb DC with Newspapers for Obama Inauguration

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Washington Post’s Inauguration Challenge: Deliver 1.72 Million Newspapers to Record Crowd -from Poynter Online

“The Post plans to publish a total of 1.72 million copies of morning and afternoon editions on Jan. 20 and 21, all for street sales, according to Mike Towle, director of retail and corporate sales.”

Wow.  That’s 1.72 million single copy sales on top of their regular issue for a total of 2.7 million newspapers over the course of 2 days.  Who’s going to clean up that mess?

The newspapers are going for $2 a pop… it just seemed like a nice round number.  I’m predicting early success (photos of the masses holding up “Obama sworn in” newspapers) followed by massive failure (photos of littered newspapers everywhere) inadverdently reinforcing the notion that newspapers are bad for the environment (regardless of how true this is).

Flip the script – or,
The photos appearing everywhere on the internet from inauguration are the masses holding up their Blackberries in a show of solidarity.  we’ll see…

Nicholas Carr Interview on NPR’s On The Media

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Cloud Atlas – OnTheMedia.org

Once, your computer was a box you loaded with stuff that you had to buy and maintain. Increasingly, your computer is a doorway that simply gives you access to a wealth of free services, software and storage on the web – what’s known as ‘cloud computing.’ Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World From Edison To Google explains what the new paradigm means for convenience, privacy and the future online.

Nick Carr – Rough Type blog

Next week, I think I’ll be participating in a discussion about Google, inspired by Randall Stross’s book Planet Google, at the Talking Points Memo Book Club.

About: Nicholas Carr bio and wikipedia listing

Blogs: nicholasgcarr.com and roughtype.com

Will The Paul Mulshine Fiasco Steepen Newspapers’ Decline? – twitter #mulshine

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For the complete backstory read:

-Mulshine’s original anti blogger post on WSJ.com
-Metaprinter’s Paul Mulshine reaction here
-Jay Rosen’s reaction here
-instapundit’s reaction here
-A Blog Around The Clock’s thorough reaction here (you must also visit this site to marvel at his header image.  It is beautiful)

- any twitter reactions? tag them with #mulshine

Down to business now. So Paul Mulshine works for the Newark New Jersey Star-Ledger. For the sake of full disclosure I worked there my self until this June when I took a buyout from the pressroom. I’ve since received my MA from NYU, blog, and do consulting work. Mulshine wrote an Opinion piece in the Weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal which boils down to: bloggers are idiots, they aren’t real journalists. Continue reading →

Paul Mulshine Waxes Romantic About “Real Journalism” and Hates on Stupid Bloggers

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Re: this Wall Street Journal column:

Paul Mulshine,

Your professors and the graduate students at Rutgers were right.

See also: Pros VS Pajamas

To answer Mr. Mulshine’s question; What is the New Model for generating revenue? The answer for general interest newspapers and news sites is that there is none. NONE. That’s no mystery. Continue reading →

MetaFilter Founder Matt Haughey Q&A – Including a Few Newspaper Answers

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Q&A with MetaFilter.com founder Matt Haughey. As Wikipedia defines it, MetaFilter is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss interesting content that users have discovered on the web. From personal use I know that Ask.MetaFilter.com is one of the most useful sites anywhere for “querying the hive mind”. Enjoy!

RI -“MetaFilter is one of the oldest (1999) online social sites. What keeps it going where others fail? (Author’s note, I think of mefi a as social site but only in the broadest of terms. Or rather, it’s become more social over the years (the first few years, there wasn’t all that much discussion on the posts, now the most popular posts have hundreds of comments)…”

MH -It has consistently grown ever since early 2000, when I think it hit enough of a critical mass to be interesting. As to why it keeps going – it probably has something to do with it being what it is first and foremost. When I think of other online social sites that come and go, they’re largely offshoots of some other service that didn’t fit quite right. MetaFilter has always kind of been its own thing and has stayed interesting enough to attract interesting people that continue to contribute to it everyday. Continue reading →

Kansas City Star Newspaper Plant – Invest a Lot to Learn a Little?

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November 10, 2008 “Publisher Mark Zieman said the paper was looking into the possibility of selling, then leasing back the huge $200 million printing plant it began using a little over two years ago. ” -from Editor&Publisher

“Looking to the future I wish the Kansas City Star my best and thank them for taking us on a tour. I hope that their expanded capabilities in the new plant enhance the publication and its reach into the community.”

That’s what I wrote on September 24, 2007 after attending the International Newspaper Group annual conference held in Kansas City.  We were given a tour of this facility.  Very Impressive.  Very New. Very Clean. Very Modern.  But tell me what is the point of building a $200million dollar buggy whip factory?  When they gave us that tour, we were told that the presses were capable of printing and binding other periodicals besides newspapers.  What we apparently weren’t told was that no contracts for printing such things were ever signed.

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The Kindle Needs a Bellows

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As a graphic communications professional, newspaper industry expert, graduate student at NYU, and basic all around 30 year old human being, I do not know ONE SINGLE person who owns a Kindle.

Total Sales as of Today’s date:
240,000 Kindles
1,000,000 Zunes (microsoft’s mp3 player that no one owns)
6,124,000 iPhones
163,000,000 iPods

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Improving Time Spent On Newspaper Sites, Is It Important?

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Editor & Publisher reported on November 19, 2008 that “time spent at top sites still declining”.  You’ll notice that Drudge report, a link site which sends its readers away, isn’t even listed in their report but if it were would be Number One with 00:59:39 time per person (hh:mm:ss) go figure.  

Time per person is not the only or best way to measure the performance of a site.  There are many ways to measure website traffic.  WebAnalyticsDemystified.com is a great resource to learn more about measurement techniques and visitor engagement.  They have a Free white paper available for download HERE.  

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The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program – Newspaper Journalists Take Note

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The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program

Hello, recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist! We’re Six Apart (you know us as the nice folks who make Movable Type or TypePad, which maybe you used for blogging at your old newspaper or magazine) and we want to help you.

We’re a company founded by bloggers, and we’ve supported online journalism from the beginning. During a time when so many great journalists are worrried about losing their jobs, we want to do what we can to help. So we’ve put together a program to put you on your first steps towards independence.

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program is FREE. But unlike the Fed’s financial bailout, this program will actually end soon. Just send us the link to your last piece for a newspaper, magazine or broadcast journalism venue to bailout@sixapart.com, and we’ll take care of the rest.

–Visit Typepad to learn more and good luck!

800 Newspapers From NewspaperDirect Now Available on iRex Digital Reader, Featuring ‘Electronic Paper’ Display

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By offering people a wide range of popular handheld devices on which they can read their favorite newspapers, NewspaperDirect gives publishers more ways to reach their readers.
Source: NewspaperDirect Official Release

Monte-Carlo, Monaco, November 12, 2008 — NewspaperDirect Inc., the world leader in multi-channel newspaper and magazine content distribution and monetization, is introducing its PressDisplay.com online news portal on the iRex digital reader at this year’s Monaco Media Forum, held this week in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. PressDisplay.com’s PressReader software will run on the iRex Digital Reader 1000 series, allowing readers to download their favorite daily newspapers in a matter of seconds and read them at their leisure.

With newspaper publishers facing mounting pressure to cut costs while maintaining their circulation, PressDisplay.com and the other distribution channels offered by NewspaperDirect (which include libraries, hotels, cruise ships and a range of custom-publishing solutions) are providing them with more ways to reach their readers. The iRex DR1000 is a sleek and lightweight portable digital reader featuring the world’s largest electronic paper display. The 10-inch screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper, unlike the strain and glare of a computer screen.

PressReader software on the iRex digital reader puts 800+ full-replica newspapers in your hand.With official release in December 2008, the iRex DR1000 will join a growing list of handheld devices on which PressDisplay.com is available, offering 800+ newspapers and magazines from 80+ countries. These include Apple iPhone, Apple iPod Touch, BlackBerry and numerous smartphones.

“The DR1000 series equipped with NewspaperDirect’s PressReader software will offer readers an unparalleled digital newspaper reading experience with the feel of reading a real paper,” said Hans Brons, CEO of iRex. “We are pleased to be able to enhance our long-standing relationship with the newspaper industry by offering a unique reading platform to make publishers’ content available to a potentially untapped new audience.”

As with all its content distribution solutions, PressDisplay.com for iRex is available at no additional cost to publishers. NewspaperDirect’s technology taps into the pre-press workflow of any publishing system, making it possible for NewspaperDirect to extract rich digital content that can be repurposed for use in a variety of distribution channels. NewspaperDirect provides full hosting, payment acceptance, customer service management and technical support.

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Amazingly, This Guy Still Doesn’t Get It

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“Say a high school kid who is a sports nut gets some local prep stuff online and tries to build a little business out of that… how could he direct traffic to it? He’d have to take ads out in our paper.” John Tompkins CEO News Media Corp. from an interview on InlandPress. Small, local newspapers do enjoy certain business characteristics and revenue opportunities that the larger papers do not.  I agree with this 100% though the opposite is also true.  The above quote reinforces a feeling I keep getting that older generations simply do not understand how younger generations are using Social Media.

Tompkins Bio Video

Tompkins Bio Video

This is particularly unsettling in the case of John Tompkins because he rose to such power at a very early age.  At 21 years old, “After borrowing money from family members and his bank, John purchased The Rochelle News Leader, a twice-weekly publication in Rochelle, Illinois.” -as quoted from the above video.

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Recap from Changing Media Landscape event at Columbia Journalism School November 11, 2008.

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Columbia J-school’s annual look at the media revolution, with several media influencers – and no Powerpoint! Columbia-Hearst Journalism Dialogues and the Columbia Journalism Alumni Association present: Changing Media Landscape 2008

Comments in Bullet Points and direct quotes appear in quotes.  Moderated by Sree Sreenivasan -Dean of Student Affairs & Professor Columbia Journalism School.

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Metaprinter to Twitter Changing Media Landscape, 2008 NYC

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Changing Media Landscape, 2008
November 11, 2008
Columbia J-school’s annual look at the media revolution, with several media influencers – and no Powerpoint! Columbia-Hearst Journalism Dialogues and the Columbia Journalism Alumni Association present:
• Sewell Chan, blogger/editor, The New York Times “City Room” blog (from midtown)
• Adriano Farano, executive editor, CafeBabel.com (from Paris)
• Erica Smith, news designer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and “Paper Cuts” blog (from St. Louis)
• Jacob Weisberg, chairman, Slate (from midtown)
Tuesday, 6:30-9 pm (reception from 6:30-7 pm)

Follow My Twitter Feed for Updates as they happen and revisit this site for complete coverage of this event.

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The Future of Guerilla Advertising? MoveOn.org Hits A Homerun!

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Great Example of Viral Marketing by MoveOn.org

If i wasnt going to vote, I am now. Click to view.

If i wasn't going to vote, I am now. Click to view.

And the follow up letter days later.

Dear Robert,

Wow. Thanks to people like you, this nonvoter video has now been sent to over 6.3 million friends. It’s going out to more than 30 new people per second.

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Breaking Newspaper Innovation!! Reddit and UK Newspaper ‘The Independent’ Team Up

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It is getting increasingly harder for me to report on newspaper industry innovation news, there just isn’t much out there.  Today makes up for all the latest goose eggs.   Social news / ranking / aggregator site Reddit has partnered with British Newspaper The Independent to offer Reddit functionality to the newspaper site.  I think this is a big step in the correct direction for newspaper websites.  I have said all along that it is not the original content sinking newspaper sites, but their crummy user experience, navigation, and link structures which are horrible.

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