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Newsroom (Index)
1. Working Writers, 2. Fast Cash Freelance, 3. Screenwriting News, 4. Writers Write, 5. Writers in the Sky, 6. Study Student News,7. Freelance Blogging News, 8. Photography News, 9. Graphic Design News, 10. E-Media Tidbits, 11. Bloggers Blog,
12. Creative Freelancing, 13. Copyright Law, 14. Book Deals,
15. Book Publishing News,16. Readers Read, 17. Literacy News,
18. Write Better, 19. Horror Fiction News |
 E-Media Tidbits
• Testing CUNY's New Business Models with Adjusted Assumptions
by Dorian Benkoil
19 Nov 2009 at 7:29am
Amid the rhetoric over how to support the business of journalism, the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism has taken a plunge by creating models of what a news network on the Web might look like with hard, if optimistic, numbers.
Broad and multi-tiered spreadsheets filled with detail build upon each other until at the bottom, they predict handsome profit margins for small, medium and large blogs, as well as a larger network that might aggregate them and have its own editorial and business staff. In the main cases, the sites are supported by advertising supplemented with other income streams.
The models, presented first this summer at the Aspen Institute and again last week at the "New Business Models for News" conference at CUNY, are a fine start, and the spreadsheets are provided openly. At both conferences, project leader Jeff Jarvis of the CUNY J-school said he was hoping people would test the models to strengthen their viability. "The aim," he said last week, "is to question, poke, probe, improve the business models."
My poking and probing shows that when the assumptions are changed to less optimistic but still reasonable scenari... ( cont'd )
• Don't Give Up on Online Video Yet
by Regina McCombs
18 Nov 2009 at 3:34am
Poor video. For a while, he was the hot boyfriend of the online world. His buddy, pre-roll advertising, was touted as the way to save the industry. Now, like a guy who dumped us, people are trashing-talking video content on news sites and telling all their girlfriends that video on the Web fails to perform. I think it's time for some relationship counseling. While clearly there are video efforts that have failed or been abandoned, declaring it all a failure doesn't accurately reflect what's going on in the industry. CNN.com is dropping its live online-only newscasts, but has also said that online video advertising has grown. I've got my own thoughts about why 702.tv didn't succeed, but since nobody asked, and this is about what is working, I'll move right along. When I posted a question to the newspaper video listserv asking what kinds of video are working, I got an earful (eyeful?). What does work: news shows. What doesn't work: news shows. What works: spot news. What doesn't work: spot news. What does work: feature pieces. What doesn't work -- you get the idea. Of course, defining success is very slippery. A lot of traffic on one site may not be enough ... ( cont'd )
• CUNY Conference Shows Journalists Must Understand Business
by Dorian Benkoil
13 Nov 2009 at 3:02am
What a chasm to overcome. One journalist tweeted that the financial spreadsheets being shown were overwhelming, that "I don't do numbers." Someone else in the room quipped that business isn't as much fun as journalism. A third admitted, while watching a spreadsheet presentation, that he didn't understand EBITDA, a key financial term being used.
All of them, if they want to run a news business, need to get to work. The gathering was the third annual "New Business Models for News" conference at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, and the goal was, well, to try to find ways that the news business can survive.
The 150 to 200 people there were a diverse audience -- local bloggers and independent journalists trying to make a living, reps from big media companies like The New York Times and Gannett, venture capitalists, foundation funders, educators, consultants, students, technologists, advertising salespeople, ad network experts. Among all those people, the most frustration seemed to come from the folks working for independent and hyperlocal news sites -- the kind of sites targeted by many presentations.
In one panel, they heard rep... ( cont'd )
• Google Latitude Adds Features with Potential for Journalists
by Paul Bradshaw
11 Nov 2009 at 11:14am
Google Latitude, a service that works with your mobile phone to enable people to see where you are, has launched 2 new services with interesting potential for mobile journalism: Location History and Location Alerts.
  RELATED
 "Google Latitude Comes to the iPhone," Lifehacker
Location History (shown above) allows you to "store, view, and manage your past Latitude locations. You can visualize your history on Google Maps and Earth or play back a recent trip in order."
There are obvious possibilities here to add editorial information to this map. If you're covering a parade, a marathon or a demonstration you could edit placemarks to add relevant reports as you were posting them. (Or someone else with access to the account could do it from the newsroom.)
Location Alerts is less obviously useful. This sends you a notification (by email and/or text) when you are near a friend's location, although as Google explains, it's a little more clever:
"Using your past location history, Location Alerts can recognize your regular, routine locations and not create alerts when you're at places like home or work. Alerts will only be sent to you and any ... ( cont'd )
• News Sites Must Use Alerts and Tools to Help Readers Find Content
by Dorian Benkoil
10 Nov 2009 at 7:24am
I used to cover tennis, was in the stands as Andre Agassi teared up after his final tennis match as a pro, and can be a bit of a fanatic about the sport. So when I learned recently that The Times newspaper in the U.K. was going to carry excerpts of Agassi's revelatory autobiography "Open," I immediately logged on.
The Times had a story, based on the book, about his admission to using crystal meth while playing, but hadn't yet posted the excerpts. Nor was there a link or any alert system to push information to me about when the excerpts would go live.
That, for The Times, was a missed opportunity. Had I seen something that said, "Sign up for an e-mail (or Twitter or Facebook) alert" when the excerpts were posted, I would have done so right then. Sure, I could have subscribed to The Times' tennis RSS feed and periodically glanced through the headlines to see if the autobio had been posted (assuming that story's headline even made it clear that it was the excerpt), or continually visited the site or checked Twitter and the like.
Instead, I just looked at Google News once in awhile and read Guardian and USA Today stories and whatever happened to come over th... ( cont'd )
• Fort Hood Shooting Shows How Twitter, Lists Can be Used for Breaking News
by Craig Kanalley
6 Nov 2009 at 11:22am
RELATED
"Covering the Fort Hood Shootings, A Day Later," Al Tompkins Days after Twitter Lists were introduced to the public, the shootings at Fort Hood on Thursday showed the power of this feature to cover a major news event in real-time.
News organizations quickly created a trusted set of Twitter Lists to follow developments out of Texas. Lists from The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times were among the first. Others were not far behind curating their own lists, like CNN, the Dallas Morning News and The Washington Post.
Lists proved a new way to follow breaking news on Twitter, with filtered groupings of local news outlets, military accounts, and local citizens. But perhaps lost in the shuffle was an honorable journalistic effort on Twitter not involving lists at all, though it quickly made its way onto lists -- an account called @FtHoodShootings. The local feed was established by The Austin American-Statesman and chronicled developments of this event in real-time through various sources.
"Single Account" Coverage
The Austin American-Statesman was quick to react to the news as it unfolded about 60 miles nort... ( cont'd )
• New Hampshire Suit Challenges Mortgage Blogger's Use of Anonymous Sources
by Damon Kiesow
5 Nov 2009 at 9:30am
The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that calls into question the legal protections available to independent Web sites that cover news.
The case involves mortgage lender Implode-Explode, a Las Vegas-based site launched in 2007 that publishes stories about the meltdown of the mortgage industry. The court did not make a final decision on the case Wednesday, but one of its options could be to send the case back to the lower court for further review and litigation on specific points of law.
RELATED "Scrappy Mortgage Blogger Fights Bad Court Ruling," Columbia Journalism Review
"The Mortgage Specialists, Inc., v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries," Citizen Media Law Project
The dispute began in November 2008 when The Mortgage Specialists Inc (MSI) won a temporary injunction requesting that a confidential document, "2007 Loan Chart," be removed from Implode-Explode's site, ml-implode.com. MSI also requested the identity of the source and of a commenter, "Brianbattersby," who they allege made defamatory comments about the company and its president.
Implode-Explode removed both the loan chart and the... ( cont'd )
• How The New York Times, Others Are Experimenting with Augmented Reality
by Dorian Benkoil
4 Nov 2009 at 10:15am
Journalists and publishers are exploring ways to use the emerging technology known as Augmented Reality in their work.
Augmented Reality, or AR, is "layering digital information onto the physical world," in the words of New York Times Creative Technologist Michael Young. The most common AR apps today live on "smart" handheld devices like the iPhone or ones using Google's Android platform.
Someone will, say, point their smartphone's camera toward a big office building and see what restaurants and shops are available in the lobby, or point down a street to see what subway stations are available in that direction and how far away they are. The apps rely on the phones' built-in GPS locators and compasses, as well as their ability to layer graphics and text onto what the camera is showing on the devices' screens, while receiving data that changes and updates the graphics.
Young and his team of technologists at the Times have been looking into AR to help with such location-based journalism as restaurant reviews (point your phone at the restaurant and get its details and ratings), real estate (see how many apartments are available and what floor they're on in a g... ( cont'd )
• New Google Analytics Tools Make it Easier for News Orgs to Track Metrics
by Damon Kiesow
2 Nov 2009 at 2:05pm
Just in time for the holidays, Google has announced some potentially valuable new additions to its free Web metrics suite, Google Analytics.
Among the highlights: better metrics from mobile devices, more flexible goal setting and tracking, automated and custom metric alerts and more precise tracking of individual visitor behavior.
The new tools build on what the company describes as its "enterprise-class" features that were first introduced late last year and include: advanced segmentation, custom reports, site search analytics and motion charts.
Google Customer Solutions Engineer, Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, led a Webinar on Oct. 29 explaining the basics of the new tools. The Google Analytics blog, meanwhile, is featuring a series of posts to discuss the features in more depth.
One thing to remember before you log into your Google Analytics (GA) account is that these features will be rolled out gradually over the next month or two. You may or may not find them in your profiles immediately, but Google said it expects the full launch to be completed before the end of 2009.
Engagement goals
Previously, goal tracking was reliant on visits to specific pages on your sit... ( cont'd )
• How Journalists Can Use Twitter Lists to Customize, Discover and Curate
by Craig Kanalley
29 Oct 2009 at 7:07am
Journalists, take note: Twitter is about to introduce a highly anticipated feature that will add a whole new experience to the social networking service. As early as this week, Twitter Lists will be introduced to the general public. They're now available only to a select group of beta users. [UPDATE: TechCrunch reports that a full rollout is underway and all users could have access by Friday.]
HOW TO MAKE TWITTER LISTS
Creating lists is simple.
Start with any user's Twitter page, click the "Lists" button above the timeline and choose "New list."
Give the list a name and decide whether it will be public or private.
A link to the list will appear on the right side of your profile page, under the search bar and above trending topics. It also appears on your public profile page and under your Lists page.
You can add to the list in a few ways. Look for the "Lists" button next to each user on follower/following pages and on users' profile pages.
Like "groups" in other clients, Twitter Lists enable users to follow collections of breaking news feeds, news outlets, specific journalists, niche sources, or any group of related Twitter users --... ( cont'd )
• Online Publishers Should Watch Looming Battle over Online Privacy
by Dorian Benkoil
23 Oct 2009 at 1:43pm
There's a freight train in Congress heading toward the Web that isn't getting a lot of attention in newsrooms, though it could have a huge effect on their ability to support themselves online.
U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher (a Democrat from Virginia) is proposing legislation that could be introduced in the House next month to protect privacy on the Web. If enacted, the new law could drastically change the way information can be collected through browsers' cookies, and it could have a serious impact on the billions of dollars spent every year on display advertising on the Web. It could even change how we use the Web itself.
"How many consumers want to pay $1,000 a month to have access to the Internet?" Matthew Wise, president and CEO of Q Interactive asked Wednesday during a debate on privacy at The Economist's Media Convergence Forum in New York. "The reason they don't have to is because of advertising."
The crux of Boucher's bill for the advertising industry is a plan to prevent Web sites from sharing information with "unrelated third parties." It is just this type of third-party data collection that allows large-scale ad targeting and accounts for billions of do... ( cont'd )
• Pew Survey on Twitter Users Suggests News Strategies
by Howard Finberg
21 Oct 2009 at 3:20pm
As news organizations develop social media strategies, there's some interesting news from the Pew Internet & American Life Project with the release of a new report on Twitter and similar sites. The report shows a significant increase in status-update services among younger and mobile Internet users. It also provides updated demographic information about who is using Twitter.
PewInternet.org
Three groups lead the growth of Twitter and status updates: younger Internet users, mobile users, and those who are already using social network Web sites. These groups are more likely to share and, since they are mobile, have the means to share. Twitter makes it easier.
About 19 percent of people who are online report using Twitter or a similar service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others. Less than a year ago, in December 2008, 11 percent of Internet users said they used Twitter.
RELATEDTwitter Yields Uneven ROI for News Organizations Using Automation, Curation, Interaction Experimenting with Twitter: How Newsrooms Are Using It to Reach More Users
Building a Twitter Strategy for Your News Organization (NewsU Webinar Replay)
Twitter f... ( cont'd )
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Newsroom (Index)
1. Working Writers, 2. Fast Cash Freelance, 3. Screenwriting News, 4. Writers Write, 5. Writers in the Sky, 6. Study Student News,7. Freelance Blogging News, 8. Photography News, 9. Graphic Design News, 10. E-Media Tidbits, 11. Bloggers Blog,
12. Creative Freelancing, 13. Copyright Law, 14. Book Deals,
15. Book Publishing News,16. Readers Read, 17. Literacy News,
18. Write Better, 19. Horror Fiction News |
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