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Posted 11:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
News You Want, How You Want It
Kerry Northrup on Strategy.com
Belo Interactive is the latest news organization to sign up with services from Strategy.com, an enterprise I have been watching with interest over the past couple of years. The company's concept is interesting, matching up the different news and information individuals want to receive with the different ways in which they want to receive it — Web, fax, phone, mobile, etc.Despite that today's technologies are all about anywhere, anytime information, most news services treat each medium as an island. They put up a Web site with no option for delivering content via fax. Or they concentrate on WAP phones as if they expect mobile phone users to stop reading print. The fact is that people adopt a mix of media to serve their various news and information demands, and they shift from one device to another based on what's convenient at the moment. Therefore, a publishing model that is flexible enough to shift on the fly with the news consumer should be very attractive.
Strategy.com has yet to really take off, however, perhaps because of the relatively slow adoption rate and conflicting standards for mobile devices in the U.S., where the company mostly operates. Once the always-on, always-connected member of the new Information Society emerges in larger numbers in the States as he/she already has in places such as Scandinavia and Japan, this could be the way to go.
Posted 11:24 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Industry Standard Europe Shuts Down Print Edition
Katja Riefler on a pioneer in trouble
James Ledbetter, editor-in-chief of the Industry Standard Europe, had a sad task this week. He announced the shutdown of the European print edition of the Standard due to the lack of advertising income. It had just started in October 2000 and has been praised for its high-quality journalism. The Web site will stay in service and hopefully so will the really useful newsletters. (You can still subscribe.)Standard Media isn't alone in its current struggle to survive, of course. The German edition of Business 2.0, for example, is selling less than half the ad pages it sold just one year ago and has not found an investor yet. But there is a small comfort for us Germans that we will keep at least one new-economy high-quality magazine: Uli Pecher, editor-in-chief of Business 2.0, will soon change his job and work for the Wirtschaftswoche e-Business. And it just announced a content cooperation with the Industry Standard.
Posted 12:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Last-ditch Strategy: Beg for Money
Steve Outing on content site survival
NetImperative badly wants to survive (don't we all in the Internet content industry?), so it's resorted to the last-ditch strategy of begging for money from its users, as the Wall Street Journal reports. The site is asking its more than 8,000 registered users to pledge to pay 50 pounds for six months of services that they now get for free (daily news, archive access, and weekly analysis of 300 Internet-related UK stocks). As of Thursday, 217 people had pledged the money. Is it "embarrassing" for a for-profit content site to beg for money? If it is, it's less so than simply folding up shop.
Posted 11:40 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How It's Supposed To Be Done
Kerry Northrup on using the Web for news
Four Lee Enterprises newspapers serving communities in peril from the Mississippi River flood have created the Flood2001.com news micro-site to supplement the critical information and support they are providing their readers. Looking for an example of how print and Web ought to interact, how traditional-minded newspapers can think out of the box — here's one.The site certainly is not fancy. And if it were mine, I'd move the constantly changing information such as water levels and road closings to the middle rather than the links to archived stories from the papers. But the point is that the site blends the benefits of both print's perspective and online's immediacy, creating something more useful than either would be alone. The site is also a sharply targeted news source, even with its own topical URL, much more effective than if the papers had just tried to pump up their general sites, lumping the flood disaster in with world news briefs and sports.
Most impressive, however, is that the newspapers did this fast, with the reaction time expected of a newsroom, or of an Internet-era business, rather than at the plodding pace of innovation typical in many media organs.
Posted 11:34 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Is Idealism Dead?
Andrew Nachison on the future of media
The Internet wasn't built in a day, and it wasn't built to make money. But it seems like money is all anybody wants to talk about. Could that spell doom for the Internet as we know it? If media companies pursue the closed-network model perfected by AOL, will the open standard Internet vanish altogether, become an information ghetto or revert to a tool and toy for academics? Some Internet old-timers think so. They're working in a group called People for Internet Responsibility, described in this story from the Los Angeles Times.Even in the midst of Dot-Bust it seems hard to imagine the Internet itself simply vanishing. But the lessons of the past few years don't bode well for the open-standard idealism that enabled the Internet to grow so large in the first place. Nor does it bode well for "news" companies determined to make money on the Internet AND fulfill a public service as defenders, proponents, and facilitators of free expression. I'm not sure they can have it both ways. The Internet may be too free, and too open, for traditional media.
Posted 7:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Stars Set on the Web
Steve Klein on online sports content
If you're a displaced sports fan, webcasts are one of the best things about the Internet. But the Stars were dimmed on ABC Radio affiliate WBAP-AM in Fort Worth Wednesday when the station removed its live webcasts of Dallas Stars NHL playoff games because of concerns about advertiser royalty fees. It may be a month before that situation is resolved, but NHL.com has come to the rescue. The league's official site uses a different source for its streaming audio feed, according to a story in the Dallas Morning News. So, if Eddie Balfour and the Stars are to keep shining, they need only worry about the Edmonton Oilers for the time being.ABC Radio isn't alone, of course, in its decision. Clear Channel Communications pulled the plug on many of its webcasts earlier this month.
Posted 3:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Other Thoughts About TiVo
Rich Gordon on personal video recorders
I have a slightly different take than Steve Outing on what TiVo teaches us about the Internet. If you're interested in the future of interactive content, there are a couple of exciting things about TiVo and other personal network recorders (which I've seen called personal video recorders, or PVRs). First, there's the "download, store, and play" model that these devices use. When PVRs start receiving Internet-delivered content as well as traditional broadcast/cable programming, we have a solution for the bandwidth constraints that continue to limit the quality and usability of real-time streaming media delivered to desktop computers. Second, because PVRs know who you are and what you're interested in, they will enable the delivery of targeted video/interactive advertising. Web banner ads have limited effectiveness for at least two reasons: it's hard to create a compelling ad in a space the size of an ad banner; and despite the early promise of the Web, most banner ads are not well targeted to people who are most likely to be interested in the products being advertised. PVRs could deliver a marketer's dream: advertising that's as compelling as the best TV commercials, targeted only to the people most likely to be interested in the product.
Posted 1:36 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
What Does That Mean?
Katja Riefler on useful helpers on Web sites
Ever heard of "Mr. Check"? This is a German-language service that's part of 500 Web sites. If you don't understand a word or phrase you can mark it and click the "Mr Check-Button," and a window with the explanation will pop up. At the base of the service are the huge databases of Xipolis.net. This company is pure old economy: The publishers of such strong brands as "Duden" (traditional dictionary, the "bible" of German language), "Brockhaus," and "Meyers" combined strengths and went into content syndication. They were laughed at when they first presented their idea of making money out of their content. Let's talk again in some months when we can see if it really works.
Posted 12:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
But First, an Animated Ad From Our Sponsor...
Steve Outing on online advertising
I often enjoy the rants of Jason McCabe Calacanis of Silicon Alley Daily. Yesterday's commentary was a tirade about how the Web industry continues to be stupid by clinging to banner ads. Calacanis' suggestion: A major industry leader like the New York Times Web site needs to get the industry thinking in a different way by introducing 20-second full-screen Flash-animated ads that visitors must view before getting to the content — or pay an annual subscription fee that includes an ad-less reading experience. Calacanis is one of a rising tide of voices saying that the new bigger, Flash-ier banner ads showing up on content pages of sites everywhere won't work. (I also have an opinion on the new bigger banners, which I explain in my latest Editor & Publisher Online column.)
Posted 8:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Quokka No Longer a Mate
Steve Klein on online sports content
Back in 1996, a new Internet company called Quokka Sports in San Francisco appeared on the thriving online sports scene promising to be the revolutionary birth of the broadband future: streamed, downloaded, uploaded, digitized, analyzed, customized, synchronized, layered, played, replayed, and e-mailed. Named for a relative of the kangaroo, the quokka was known in Australia for its ability to survive and even thrive in a hostile desert environment. So what does that say about the current dot-com climate, which added the site's immersive sports experience to its ever-growing list of submerged victims? In a story in the Industry Standard Wednesday, Terry Lefton reports that Quokka is joining Rivals.com, Broadband Sports, and MVP.com on the Internet sports sidelines, all of which have sunk since the first of the year.Quokka started out by taking users to places they'd never experience competitively, from ocean sailboat races to climbing mountains to running desert marathons. Partnering with TV network NBC and the Olympics, Quokka produced the official 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics site and was developing the official site for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics (those rights revert back to the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee). The company attempted to go mainstream with golf and college sports, buying the rights to Raleigh-based Total Sports' inventory, including Golf.com and FinalFour.net (Quokka holds rights to the 2002 NCAA Final Four men's tournament).
According to Lefton, 220 Quokka employees will lose their jobs and the company will file for bankruptcy as soon as next week. As they say in sports, every loss hurts — and you can learn more from losing than winning. But with No. 2 Sportsline announcing 92 layoffs today, and even Disney's ESPN giant not exactly passing go(.com) these days, you have to wonder just who the winners ultimately will be when it comes to sports content on the Internet.
Posted 1:58 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Can Paperless Paper Survive?
Rich Gordon on that Virginia paper
It's interesting that the News Journal has gone online-only. (See Jade Walker's item below.) But judging from the news coverage of this story, the newspaper has been struggling for some time. So this is probably not going to work. After all, if the News Journal has had trouble selling sufficient advertising to support a print edition, the chances of online-only success seem slim. But at some point, the lower costs associated with online distribution really ought to encourage more online-only news publishing — perhaps not via Web editions, but rather via e-mail or distribution to portable devices.
Posted 1:08 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
B&N's Dumbed-down E-books
Steve Outing on companies that don't get it
Michael Werner is rolling out a new set of e-books on careers, "Dream Jobs To Go," so he has been inquiring with Amazon.com and BN.com (Barnes & Noble) about carrying them. With BN.com, he's run into a couple dumb-corporate-policy snags. A BN.com represenatitive told Werner that she liked the books and was interested, but her company will 1) deal only with e-books that have a print companion, and 2) all the hyperlinks within the books will have to be taken out. "Hotlinks are one of the things that make an e-book an e-book," says Werner. "We're trying to decide whether to degrade our products to 'get a shot' at playing with B&N." Good grief, B&N, get a clue!
Posted 10:35 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Paperless News Finally Arrives
Jade Walker on Web news
Most major newspapers in the U.S. support an online version. Some sites simply repackage the newspaper's stories onto the Web, while others take the time to build out their stories, adding video, audio, and related article links (or best of all, writing stories specifically for the Web). But one newspaper, the News Journal in Virginia, has gone completely virtual.Faced with the rising costs of printing and postage, the owners of the weekly newspaper opted to avoid a shutdown. Instead, they cut costs by dumping the paper's printing presses and joining the 21st century. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the News Journal is reveling in its paperless status by focusing on its ability to continuously break news. It's slogan: "Why Wait?" Why, indeed.
Posted 6:28 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Google to Rescue of Ex-Themestreamers
Steve Outing on Themestream's demise
Some writers who contributed their work to Themestream, the online writing pay-per-view site that died last week, didn't make backups of material that they submitted — and now Themestream.com is inactive and their articles inaccessible. But there is a solution that will work for some people: Use the search engine Google's cache feature. Use Google to search for your article and you'll probably still find it. On the results page will be a "cache" link, which is a copy of your article that Google made when it originally came upon the article. If you know the URL used by Themestream, you can quickly find your article via Google. Just type in the URL as in this example:http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.themestream.com/articles/
45501.html+&hl=enBut retrieve your articles quickly. Google will eventually purge all the Themestream URLs that no longer work. (Thanks to Tara Calishain of ResearchBuzz, who posted this handy tip to the Online-Writing list.)
Posted 1:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Pay-per-view Executions
Andrew Stroehlein on Web voyeurism
The British media is always fascinated by two aspects of US culture: the relatively lax gun control laws in the US and the continued use of — indeed the popularity of — the death penalty in the States. The undertone of most reporting here is generally a sense of (perhaps deserved) cultural superiority that the UK is not as violent a society as the US. Thus the whole issue of US company Entertainment Network Incorporated's desire to broadcast the May 16 Timothy McVeigh execution live on the Web has been a great focal point for the media here. This morning, the most important news program on UK radio, Today, debated the matter with great vigor live on air and then continued the Web voyeurism debate, uh, well, on the Web in the program's online forum.
Posted 12:26 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Not All Online Pubs are 'Spring Chickens'
Amy Gahran on long-lived online publications
Most online publications have only existed for a year or two, a few for five years or so ... but the history of online publishing stretches back much further. Today marks the 11th consecutive year of TidBITS, an excellent weekly online newsletter for Macintosh users published by Adam Engst. Check out "TidBITS Goes to Eleven" for the editor's retrospective on this newsletter and on the Macintosh world.Also, don't miss last year's retrospective piece, "Lessons from Ten Years of TidBITS," for some of the best advice I've read on how to run an online publication/community. Well done, TidBITS!
Posted 12:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Pulitzers: The World Doesn't Care
Steve Outing on American provincialism
After I posted a short item noting where to find a list of the Pulitzer winners yesterday, I received a note from Stephen Downes of Canada, who suggested that the prestigious prizes represent "a competition with a stacked deck" because only journalism from U.S. newspapers is eligible. "That means that this year's best piece of journalism — which was published in India — is completely ignored. Doesn't even qualify. The Pulitzers may represent the best in American journalism, but it is utterly pretentious to assume that it represents anything more. Certainly, they're nothing the rest of the world needs to hear about."
Posted 11:49 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Blogger Users Are Frequent Users
Norbert Specker on user involvement
As reported on E-Media Tidbits yesterday, Blogger.com got some much-needed help when it went in for a deal with another application provider, Trellix. The most amazing snippet of information to come out of the reporting on this deal was that the people who maintain Web pages on Trellix (site builders) visit on average for 80 minutes and 2.2 times per month. Bloggers, like ourselves, tend to visit an average of 2.2 times per day. Choose the better option in terms of building user involvement and community.
Posted 4:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Winners Are ...
Steve Outing on the Pulitzer Prizes
Here's a list of the winners of this year's Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism, announced this afternoon.
Posted 1:40 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Can You Say Consolidation?
Andrew Nachison on consolidation and convergence
In the United States, a law dating to the early '70s prevents a single company from owning a broadcast station and a newspaper in the same city. Exceptions, like Media General's ownership of WFLA-TV and the Tampa Tribune in Florida, predate the law. Even so, Media General is limited in how far it can enable its broadcast and newspaper personnel in Tampa to collaborate or share resources. In today's world of media convergence and corporate consolidation, that's a problem for companies that would like to combine their journalistic and sales resources and, let's be honest, find ways to save money and make more. Many analysts predict the cross-ownership rules are doomed under the Bush administration.So how much can a single company control before it's deemed too big — a media monopoly? The New York Times doesn't touch that question in this story about the coming changes, but it does say this: "The changes have been denounced by some consumer groups, which say they will further concentrate media power in many markets with limited competition, sharply reducing the diversity of viewpoints on the airwaves and diminishing the number of companies distributing such services."
Posted 11:04 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
New Business Strategy for Blogger?
Amy Gahran on weblogs
Earlier in E-Media Tidbits, Steve Outing recounted Blogger's recent woes. Today, Trellix (a provider of managed Web hosting services and free Web development software) announced that it has licensed Blogger technology from Pyra Labs.This means that the ability to create Blogger-style weblogs will be incorporated into the Trellix publishing platform — which I think is a pretty cool idea. I happen to write a twice-monthly column on content issues for the Trellix Cafe (the online community for Trellix users), and I can see lots of opportunities for disseminating weblog capabilities this way. I hope we see more Blogger licenses, maybe even customized for special purposes. Lots of ventures could use this service, and it may even help support the free edition of Blogger.
Posted 10:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Keeping Up On Wireless
Paul Grabowicz on mobile devices
I've found M-Business magazine and its companion MbizCentral Web site really useful sources of information on the market for mobile wireless devices. The March issue has a good piece on the state of advertising on PDAs, cell phones, etc. And the April issue has articles on the Short Message Service format, the debate over the Nielsen Norman usability study on WAP phones, and the growing youth market for portable devices. The latter stories should be up soon on the MbizCentral Web site.
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