Tag Archives: NewMedia

Webby Award Winners – News and Newspaper Category

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2009 webby awards

NEWS

Webby Award Winner Agency – Credited Organization

BBC’s News website BBC’s News website
http://www.bbc.com/news – BBC Worldwide

People’s Voice Winner

BBC’s News website BBC’s News website
http://www.bbc.com/news – BBC Worldwide

Nominees

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

NEWSPAPER

Webby Award Winner Agency – Credited Organization

guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ – guardian.co.uk

People’s Voice Winner

NYTimes.com NYTimes.com
http://NYTimes.com – The New York Times

Nominees

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

Steve Buttry’s Blueprint For News Media Companies

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A Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection is exactly what it sounds like.  Steve Buttry is editor of The Gazette and GazetteOnline a news source for eastern Iowa, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City. On his blog he graciously shares his detailed 38page blueprint for the path ahead for Gazette Communications.

This is a must read for all news media professionals.  The document is insightful and creates great potential for reflection on business practices. I’m not saying his blueprint is THE best, but even if you hate his ideas, there are lots of salient points to build on. One obvious forehead-smacking point he raises is that the details of his blueprint, “will be determined not by my decree but by the needs of the marketplace and by the creativity and abilities of the staff”.  Did you catch that?  THE NEEDS OF THE MARKETPLACE.  In the internet paradigm, what needs are you now filling?  I love it.

Something I wish Steve would have addressed more clearly is the distinction between geographic communities and communities of interest.  Does he agree there is a distinction?  Why or why not?  Can print and online serve both communities equally well? How does his blueprint address these distinct communities?

I emailed Steve and asked about the above points.  Here is his response:

Robert, absolutely there is a difference between geographic communities and communities of interest. However, the local media organization has its strongest opportunities to appeal to communities with at least a geographic tie. For instance, we attract attention of Iowa Hawkeye fans around the world. They are a community of interest, but they have a geographic tie. The blueprint details plans to help countless communities of interest within and overlapping a geographic community – the family/friends of each high school graduate or engaged couple, congregations, etc. Print can serve some communities of interest (we have a business magazine and a magazine geared for young adults), but because of the cost of transportation, print is quite geographically based. Thanks for asking.

There you have it metaprinter readers, ask and you shall recieve.

RELATED:

How are you going to make money? By changing your relationship with your community -from OJR.org

O’REILLY releases The Twitter Book

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The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly & Sarah Milstein
–New from O’Reilly

The Definitive Guide to the Planet’s Most Useful  & Effective Communications Channel

Sebastopol, CA—Given the intense media spotlight shining on Twitter right now, chances are if you haven’t twittered yet, you’re probably considering it. Even Oprah twittered for the first time recently and Twitter traffic surged 43 percent as a result. Continue reading →

Jacek Utko: Can design save the newspaper? TED2009

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Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? Should newspapers be Free? Tabloid? Local? Niche? Opinion? Breakfast fodder? “In the long run there is no practical reason for newspapers to survive” states Jacek. Regardless, he is working with newspapers to create entirely new workflows and embedding great marketing, via design, right into the products.

Why you should listen to him:

Newspaper designer Jacek Utko suggests that it’s time for a fresh, top-to-bottom rethink of the newspaper. (At this point, why not try it?) In his work, he’s proved that good design can help readers reconnect with newspapers. A former architect, Utko took on the job of redesigning several newspapers in former Soviet Bloc nations, starting from basic principles. He worked closely with newspaper executives to figure out the business goals of their papers, and then radically reformatted the product to fit those goals. (And he wasn’t afraid to break a few grids in the process.)

As the art director at Warsaw’s Puls Biznesu in 2004, he redesigned this small business-focused newspaper and immediately won the SND award for world’s best-designed newspaper. Readers responded, and circulation went up. He’s now art director for the Bonnier Business Press, overseeing papers in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, and the work he oversees consistently wins major prizes (including another SND world’s-best in 2007 for Estonia’s Äripäev), despite their small teams and limited resources.

“Who knew that the world’s best designed newspapers are in Poland and Estonia?”

-June Cohen, TED

RELATED:
TED2009 Evan Williams: How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses
TED2005 Sasa Vucinic: Why a free press is the best investment

Paywall? Copyrights? Meet The New Elvis

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Kutiman, Big Media, and the Future of Creative Entrepreneurship -from 43Folders

“Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like, gang. And,
eventually somebody will figure out (and publicly admit) that Kutiman,
and any number of his peers on the “To-Sue” list, should be passed
from Legal down to A&R.”

He’s probably right, but it’s also a little sad.

Second Street Media Solutions Owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard Discuss Upickem

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Interview with Second Street Media Solutions Co-owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard to learn more about their fastest growing product, Upickem, which is an online contesting platform.

RI - Simply publishing content on a website is not enough.  How does Upickem bring news sites into the internet paradigm?
MC - By virtue of the way contests work, ie. participation, we make newspaper news sites much more interactive with their target community.

RI - How do you drive user engagement? How do you build communities?
MC - The contests engage a passionate community. “cutest dog contest” for example generated 4.5 million pageviews, 6800 dog photo submissions, over 1million votes, and 15,000 registered users for The Minneapolis Star Tribune.  The users who register to participate in the contest provide the paper with their email info that can be used to drive participation in future contests. Continue reading →

Interview With Mark Briggs CEO Serra Media

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First, a little about the company:  Serra Media is a web technology company that’s taken a unique approach to web-based software for local publishers. We think it should be truly innovative, yet easy to use. It should be made for you and leverage the power of your brand in the local marketplace. And it should even be fun. It’s all about technology with style, plus world-class customer service. And it will help you grow audience and revenue, too.

Hyperlocal imagination. Hyperlocal innovation.

Newsgarden is our first product and it can revolutionize local news. It is a map-based web application that filters the location of recent news items, blog posts and other information available on the web down to the neighborhood level.

But it’s not just news on a map; it’s about building new communities online, with new content, in a way that integrates the journalism already being done. It allows a news publisher or local blogger to cover more news with less resources, creates a new market for advertising revenue and helps you move toward a future dominated by location-aware mobile devices

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With the above in mind, I wanted to learn more about Newsgarden so I met up with Serra Media CEO Mark Briggs.  Here’s what I found out.

RI - What is Newsgarden? It looks like a Google Maps Mashup.
MB - Newsgarden is our premier product offering and yes it can be described as a Google Maps mashup, however it is much more powerful than that.  Think of Newsgarden as a social mapping platform where geographically targeted content from news staff or readers is displayed in a familiar Google map.  The content can be in the form of stories, photos, links, video and really anything else where geographic context adds to the experience. Continue reading →