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Posted 6:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Radio Stations Must Pay to Stream Music to Web
The U.S. Copyright Office has decided that radio stations must pay royalties to stream music on the Web, according to a report in Inside.com. This is a decision that could cost the broadcasting industry millions of dollars. For years, radio stations have not had to pay royalties for broadcasting music over the AM and FM airwaves. But when radio stations now stream to the Web, they will have to pay royalties to the music industry. Coming up with a scheme for handling Web stream royalties could be quite the challenge! —Steve
Posted 6:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Cramer Officially Joins TheStreet.com Staff
Hedge fund manager James Cramer is now officially a member of TheStreet.com's staff. He will assume the title "Markets Commentator and Adviser to the CEO" for the New York-based business-news Web operation, according to the Wall Street Journal. Cramer owns about 13% of the enterprise and is its largest shareholder. —Steve
Posted 11:35 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Interview With Richard Curtis, Agent and e-Publisher
Inside.com yesterday published an interesting interview with books agent Richard Curtis, who talks about his e-reads project. Curtis is a big-name agent for authors who negotiates deals with the traditional publishing houses. But with his startup e-reads, he's acquired digital rights to some 1,200 of his clients' works that have previously been published in print (and are now out of print). E-reads will sell digital versions of those books through its own site as well as partners like Amazon.com, BN.com, etc. Curtis explains how he's dealt with the potential conflict of interest of being an agent and a publisher. —Steve
Posted 6:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Music Industry Is Gonna HATE This
When Bluetooth technology is embedded in all sorts of devices (desk-bound and portable), things really start to get interesting. Bluetooth is the developing technology that will allow devices to communicate without wires over short distances. As Wired News reports, the pioneers at this week's Bluetooth Developers Conference in San Jose were showing off some cool tricks that Bluetooth can do. Parthus Technologies demonstrated two laptops that streamed MP3 files through a wireless communications filter into a box with a couple speakers that represented MP3 players. A Parthus representative explained: "One of the scenarios we're looking at is kids with MP3 players with Bluetooth can swap tracks with each other. ... Yeah, the music industry isn't going to like that."
Yeah, well, the music industry will just have to learn to deal with it, because it'll happen. But this coming technology will impact more than just the music industry. Imagine when many of us are carrying around wireless-enabled PDAs or e-book readers that we use to read news and other content. We'll be able to effortlessly and wirelessly give copies of articles, photos, video and audio clips, reports, etc. to other portable device users. Wow — is this an exciting time to be in the publishing industry or what! ... Yeah, it's also a scary time to be the owner of intellectual property. But we'll learn to deal with it. It'll be fun. ... Really! —Steve
Posted 3:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Inside the Online Journalism Awards
The Poynter Institute's Bill Mitchell wrote up a nice piece about the Online Journalism Awards ceremony last Friday. I just noticed his article, which was posted on Monday. It's worth a look, and will explain why Matt Drudge did not win an award, and may not make an ideal member of the Online News Association, which sponsored the awards. —Steve
Posted 3:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Best Florida Election Coverage on the Web
Broadcasting & Cable columnist Russell Shaw did a bit of Web surfing to find out who among local sites was doing the best job of covering the Florida election zaniness. He really liked TCPalm.com, the E.W. Scripps news site. TCPalm is affiliated with Scripps-owned newspapers and a TV station in the "Treasure Coast" region of eastern Florida. TCPalm executive producer David Johnson boasts that his site was the first, simultaneously with the TV station, to break the news about the infamous Palm Beach "butterfly ballot" problems. —Steve
Posted 3:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Correspondent.com's New Look
If you haven't checked in with Correspondent.com yet, it's worth a look. The site, which is fashioned as a global Internet news agency that hooks up freelance correspondents and news publishers, recently debuted a site redesign. The Correspondent.com concept is an interesting one, though the service is not yet brimming with activity. It's likely to take a while to build. —Steve
Posted 6:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
iSyndicate to Sell Individual Stories
As I learned from my e-mail edition of ContentBiz.com today, Web syndicator iSyndicate is moving toward offering individual articles for sale, instead of just content feeds from individual publishers. ContentBiz reports, "Previously this has been a major differentiator between iSyndicate and its competitors ScreamingMedia, Yellowbrix and others. (Spokesperson Carolyn) Love e-mailed us, 'We are currently working on this (but it's not final yet) whereby we are becoming more flexible to our content providers and to our customers by (IN ADDITION to selling monthly) we will also be selling content by article as well. So it's not a matter of changing business tactics, but offering more choices and flexibility to customers and content providers.'" —Steve
Posted 6:01 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ken Layne Blogs!
Here's a great column by Ken Layne for Online Journalism Review about journalists blogging. ... Blogging, that's writing a weblog (like this one that you're reading). Layne tells what it's like ("If you write for a living, don't read this, and don't try the Web-log game. It's too easy, and it will Suck Your Soul Away") to write a weblog, and suggests that more journalists could stand to try it — since many weblogs are amateurish. He does link to E-Media Tidbits with the link wording "some of the best media Web logs." Thanks, Ken! A final bit of Layne advice: Don't expect to make much money writing a weblog. Yeah, I can confirm that! —Steve
Posted 1:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Palm Pilot + Phone = Cool New Gadget
Here's the latest attempt to meld a phone and a PDA: The Kyocera Smartphone Series - QCP 6035. It is a full-functioning Palm Pilot and a wireless phone. Early reviews indicate that it's less clunky than a previous attempt by Qualcomm; and it's certainly less clunky than adding the mobile phone module to a Handspring Visor. The size is large for a mobile phone: 5.59 in X 2.60 in X 0.86 in. Compare that to my Nokia 8290 phone (which I love): 4 in X 1.75 in X .75 in.
I'm still not sold that this is the ideal wireless device to carry around with me, but I do like the idea of always having wireless Palm functionality with me at all times. Currently, I go everywhere with my tiny Nokia phone, but often leave my Visor PDA at home — because it's too bulky to take to the grocery story or the movies. I do think, though, that for many people, devices like the new Kyocera Smartphone will be a primary way that they interact with Internet content in the future. —Steve
Posted 1:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Which Direction for Future Media?
That's the question I pose in my latest Editor & Publisher Online column. Online news practitioners make some fascinating predictions. For example: We'll soon be be listening to newspapers while driving to work, instead of obnoxious local radio stations. —Steve
Posted 12:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
It's Official: The Net is a Mainstream Political News Source
One-third of Americans with Web access went online for election news in 2000, according to a joint report by two Pew organizations. (See: "Youth Vote Influenced By Online Information") This report indicates that Americans who sought political news online tended to gravitate toward the big-name venues with roots in traditional media, such as CNN.com and MSNBC.com.
Yesterday in Computer User, Kevin Featherly wrote an excellent article about this report. In it, he noted an observation that "In part ... the need to go outside mainstream news organizations is minimized by the presence of a great deal of direct-from-the-source information on sites like CNN.com and CBSnews.com." Hopefully, this will be a wake-up call to traditional news operations: They can leverage their credibility to become excellent guides for their online audiences, as well as original sources of news and information. This probably would be more constructive (and even lucrative) than simply viewing the rest of the Web as "the competition." — Amy
Posted 11:32 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Enough Wealth Porn, Already!
For some time now I've gown increasingly annoyed at the swelling preponderance of "wealth porn" in media – news and features that slavishly worship wealth for its own sake, and that blindly venerate the wealthy as near-saints. I'm not just talking about Fortune and Upside – wealth porn seems to be becoming a staple of nearly every news outlet, traditional and online.
So I'm glad to see some in the media speaking out about it. For instance, the cover package of the Nov./Dec.Columbia Journalism Review offers a thoughtful and diverse exploration of wealth porn in media – including what media pros can do about it. I especially liked the brief interview with James Lardner of Inequality.org (a Web site that focuses on America's economic divide). And then just yesterday, Alex Beam of the Boston Globe published a wonderfully pithy column on this topic: "Pandering in the best of taste."
As an online content pro who is also very concerned with social and economic matters, I worry about the Net at the same time I embrace it. It's a great opportunity to create diverse and personal media, and to foster communications that used to be quite difficult or impossible – but only for people with the resources to access Net technology, and (usually) with enough education to be able to assimilate and make good use of what the Net offers. That still leaves out most of the world, and that's likely to be the case for some time. But people on the other side of the digital divide do matter, and I hope they don't get left any further behind by the communications revolution. — Amy
Posted 6:52 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Sore Loser
From today's Silicon Alley Daily about last week's Online Journalism Awards ceremony in New York: "And with every awards contest, there is a sore loser: This time it was Matt Drudge, calling the moment the awards ceremony ended to complain to (awards administrator Sreenath) Sreenivasan that he hadn't won, and threatening to post Sreenivasan's cell-phone number on DrudgeReport so his readers could complain directly. Sreenivasan asked him not to, explaining there was a stipulation for winning an Online Journalism Awards prize: Web sites had to enter, which Drudge's apparently had not done."
Posted 6:24 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
PR Newswire Hatches Scheme to Make Money From Press Releases
This is innovative. PR Newswire, one of the big press release distribution services, is adding what it calls interactive "T-buttons" to the Internet news releases it sends out on behalf of client companies. Readers of the releases will be invited to buy a company's products or stock. These new releases will debut in February. That's a nice idea. (Here's a CNET story about this.) —Steve
Posted 5:59 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
KnightRidder.com Lays Off 68
In the latest online content cutbacks, KnightRidder.com, new media subsidiary of the giant U.S. newspaper and media company, announced a restructuring that will result in layoffs for 68 workers (but because 34 new positions will be created, the net loss will be only 34 jobs). The restructuring will focus on recruitment classified sales, building a single platform for the Real Cities Network, and leveraging KnightRidder.com's multi-market scale, according to a SiliconValley.com report. CEO Dan Finnigan projects profitability by the end of 2002. —Steve
Posted 5:51 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Downturn Finally Reaches Print
Magazine titles like Business 2.0, Wired, Industry Standard and Red Herring have been fat with Internet-company advertising for some time now. But the downturn in Internet stocks that started last spring is finally catching up to the slow publishing cycles of the print magazines — and they're getting thinner. From a reader perspective, that's fine with me. My copies of Business 2.0 had gotten so fat that it was a chore to read them. Inside.com reports on the tech publishers' troubles. —Steve
Posted 5:38 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Softlock, No More; Digital Goods Debuts
Softlock is now Digital Goods — a name I think will work better for the company. Softlock developed a secure digital content transaction system, designed to allow publishers to sell high-value content without worrying about it getting passed around the Internet. Digital Goods is a partnership between Softlock and digital rights management giant Reciprocal, and it offers a suite of interactive marketing services for publishers. The old name gave a sense of copy protection of digital documents. While that was accurate, it was ultimately counterproductive. Think of how unsuccessful copy protection of software was a few years ago. The new name conjures up an image of a company helping sell digital content. That's much better. This week's M.J. Rose column for Wired News talks about this in the third item. —Steve
Posted 12:29 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
That's Online Journalism (Blush!)
A journalist for a Hong Kong online newspaper got a bit too much into his story: the local prostitution trade. According to a Reuters report, the "investigative" reporter for HKCyber not only got film of him making his way through a seedy prostitution area and picking up a prostitute, but also of him naked, having sex with the woman for several minutes. (Here's the link. The site is in Chinese.) And I thought the investigative reporters at a couple of my local TV stations were sleazy. In comparison, they're saints.
—Steve
Posted 12:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A New Online Writing Columnist
You might want to watch for the work of new Clickz columnist Kathy Henning, who has begun writing on the topic of online copywriting and editing. Her debut column is "Writing Well Online: Talent Isn’t Enough." —Steve
Posted 11:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Consumer Reports Syndicates Its Reviews
Consumer Reports has just debuted an interesting new revenue stream. It's allowing third-party sites like MySimon to sell digital copies of CR product reviews — with consumers paying the $2.95 per report via online transactions service Qpass. If you're using MySimon, say looking advice on the best DVD player to buy, you'll see a link to a CR full ratings report on the players. Here's an example.
This is significant because ConsumerReports.org, the magazine's paid-subscription Web site, previously has offered only subscriptions to the site's content. This is the first time the organization has offered individual product review reports for sale. It's also interesting that the per-item sales are facilitated via third-party sites, not ConsumerReports.org itself. In this instance, MySimon and CR share the revenue from per-report sales. —Steve
Posted 6:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Cramer to Focus on Journalism
TheStreet.com founder James Cramer has said that he will retire at the end of the year from the hedge fund he manages, in order to pursue his "side job" as a journalist full time. Cramer has been plagued by conflict-of-interest accusations for some time. He said in a statement: "I wanted to go out on top. I want to write more. I want to do more TV. I want to write a book. I want to help TheStreet.com." (Here's a report from Silicon Alley Daily.) —Steve
Posted 6:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Don't Cry for Stephen King
Stephen King may have axed his e-serial, The Plant, but he made out just fine. According to an interview with the author in the New York Times, King brought in about $500,000 in revenue from selling chapters of the never-finished book, of which he spent $124,000 on advertising. He sounds downright giddy at how well his little e-experiment did. Of course, he angered some of his fans by not completing the story. However, he says that when he publishes part 6 — which will be the last installment for quite some time — it "is going to finish up quite nicely." King continues to urge other authors to use Internet self-publishing to supplement sales of their printed books. —Steve
Posted 4:46 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Usborne: Hire Better Writers!
Writing for Clickz, Nick Usborne has a nice message in his latest column, "Words: The Last, Best Way to Differentiate Yourself Online." "Nobody invests in writers. They're not paid enough or respected enough," he writes. A great way for any Web site to differentiate itself from the crowd is to focus on quality writing. Don't expect flashy design and gee-whiz programming to be enough, he suggests. Great advice, but will anyone listen? Regrettably, probably not. —Steve
Posted 4:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Slowly Grinding Wheels of the Olympics Machine
The Wall Street Journal reports from the International Olympics Committee meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, that the debate over Olympics video coverage for the Internet is unlikely to be resolved in time for the 2002 Games. Net-video is being discussed at the IOC's World Conference on Sport and New Media, which started today, but no new decision on the subject is expected anytime soon. Because broadcast rights to the Olympics have already been negotiated through 2008, it might not be till after then that Internet rights could be negotiated! The one small glimmer of hope for Olympics coverage on the Web would be if broadcast rights holders agree to permit brief Olympics clips after the footage has been aired on TV or on the rights-holders' Web sites. There's a remote chance that that could occur in time for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. —Steve
Posted 11:37 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NASA Television on Your Computer
You can try to follow the current activity on the international space station by standing outside and looking up. However, it's probably easier to tune in to NASA Television on the Web. This is a Webcast of video and audio content that is also available to satellite TV subscribers, and over some cable systems. It includes explanations and commentary, as well as some live feeds of communications between the space station and NASA control here on Earth. The online version works best with a broadband connection. Good luck with that other solar array up there! —Amy.
Posted 1:07 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-book Readers: Not Just for Books Anymore
I just released the latest edition of the Content Spotlight newsletter. I've got a piece about the growth in usage of e-book readers or digital tablets, and how they need to be designed with the needs of periodical publishers in mind — not just book publishers. Also in this issue, we've got Crawford Kilian's Online Writer column; Ethan Casey's Online Publisher column; and a Venue Spotlight profile of Women's Enews by Michelle Goodman. —Steve
Posted 12:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
U.S. Supreme Court: Net, not TV
As the U.S. Supreme Court enters the presidential electrion fray, they've made an interesting decision about how people will and won't be able to follow what's happening there. According to an article in today's Industry Standard, "The Supreme Court will post to its Web site all legal briefings in the Florida election case. And audiotapes will be given to the media on an 'expedited basis.' But TV cameras are barred." (See "Net Election: The Web Is In, TV Is Out," by Ronna Abramson.)
I'm very glad that the Supreme Court understands the value and significance of putting its information online. However, the presidential election is an issue of national importance, and we still have a significant digital divide in this country – most Americans still can't (or won't) access the Internet. Combining the Net with traditional broadcast media is a crucial part of making sure that everyone can access the information they need. —Amy
