|
Posted 12:41 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Importance of User-generated Content
Norbert Specker on photos from around the world
Never has user generated content been so important for the people. Not the least to those who submit it. This site from Victoria displays photos of sorrow as they come in from around the world, as the world stops to think about victims of this week's terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Posted 5:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Hear What They're Saying in Afghanistan
Amy Gahran on shortwave radio
One intriguing source of information about the world is shortwave radio. Lately, shortwave frequencies have been abuzz with news and perspectives on the attacks of September 11 and their possible consequences. If you don't have a shortwave radio, Glenn Hauser's DX Listening Digest offers a good roundup of what's happening on that part of the spectrum, reported by broadcasters and listeners from around the world.
Posted 4:28 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Watch for Critical Infrastructure Plan
Amy Gahran on shifting national priorities
In the wake of the September 11 mayhem, U.S. priorities have been shifting. Later this month, the Bush administration is expected to release a new critical-infrastructure plan that will likely include a strong push for improved security in federal informations systems, which are often criticized for poor security in reports by the GAO and others. Today, the Industry Standard published an article about shifting legislative agendas on several technology and communications issues. See: "Information Security: A New Priority," by Patrick Thibodeau.
Posted 3:51 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Terror Infographics on Parade
Norbert Specker on having pictures do the talking
Paul Nixon has collected, and is still collecting, infographics related to the terrorist attack on September 11. Please provide him (nix@nixlog.com) with links to your Flash animations and at the same time feed webmaster@contentsummit.com with screen shots (reported here yesterday) of September 11/12. Not only journalism professors and their students will profit from extensive collections, but so will the whole industry.
Posted 12:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Read the World's Newspapers Free This Week
Steve Outing on NewspaperDirect's offer
NewspaperDirect, an Internet company that digitally publishes newspapers from around the world, this week has opened up its beta service for free use. Go to the site and click on "Read online now!" The site offers a wide variety of newspapers from around the world, which you view on screen in the same format/presentation as their print editions. These are not test papers, these are today's editions — and it's not just the front pages, but the entire papers. At commercial launch this will be a paid service, but during this crisis period the company is making the papers' content free on the Web.
Posted 12:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Net Impact
Steve Outing on news site traffic
We all know that Web news site usage went through the roof on Tuesday morning, and stayed up through the week. A Los Angeles Times report offers a few numbers: "MSNBC, the Internet's largest news site, saw a tenfold increase in traffic, with as many as 400,000 hits at any point. CNN.com surged to 162.4 million page views in 24 hours from a 14 million average, and CNET.com's traffic tripled on its news.com site. By Wednesday, the sites were more prepared, and congestion eased. By early afternoon, some sites reported even heavier traffic than Tuesday."It's interesting that even technology-news sites like CNET got hit hard with traffic. CNET's director of editorial operations, Kurt Oeler, told me on Wednesday that his site saw five times normal traffic on Tuesday, after the attacks on New York and D.C. CNET covered the story with wire accounts.
Posted 9:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Attack: Screen Shots of Online News Sites
Norbert Specker on online news
The online news community receives nods of appreciation on its reporting in this time of tragedy. Deservedly so. A collection of at this stage 150 screen shots of entry pages from online news sites around the world on September 11/12 can be found at my website. It offers the chance to compare the visual and topical approach of the many news entities that struggled with the enormity of the event and will help to further competencies within the industry.I invite further screen shots of entry/home pages to be submitted. Send them to: webmaster@contentsummit.com. I'm aiming for general interest online newspapers, magazines, portals, and broadcasters. The local date should be September 11 and/or 12. Please include URL, date/time, town, country, and if possible a contact. Submissions will be included in the next release. I hope that at the same time the scroll may serve as a little pebble to the memorial of the innocent victims of this attack.
Posted 4:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Donating Edition Prices to Disaster Relief
Vin Crosbie on the worthy example of an Oregon newspaper
Like many other American newspapers, the Medford, Oregon, Mail Tribune on Tuesday published a special print edition about the New York and Washington, D.C., terrorist attacks. But rather than selling that special edition for the regular newsstand price, it offered it for half that price and announced that all sales proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross for disaster relief. The initial 7,000 copies sold out, raising nearly $5,000 for the Red Cross. One charitable individual even bought one of the $0.25 editions for $2,000! Another special edition of 10,000 copies was printed on Wednesday.
Posted 2:07 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Telling the Story — With New Media Tools
Rich Gordon on MSNBC's animated retrospective
MSNBC has produced an effective Flash animation of the terrorist attacks. It's the first thing I've seen that has attempted to integrate words, pictures, and animated graphics to tell the story. I think it's a fine first effort — but it illustrates both the limitations of today's tools and the amount of time it takes to produce real "new media storytelling."
Posted 1:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Bigotry Paints With a Wide Brush Online
Steve Klein on hatred on the Internet
At its worst, the Internet can be a free-flowing, unedited medium of hatred and bigotry. And across the Internet — on websites and weblogs and in chatrooms — there were distastful outpourings of anti-Arab hate speech in the wake of Tuesday's acts of terrorism in the U.S., according to a story by Julia Scheeres on Wired.com. Despite numerous cautions from government officials and in the media to avoid blaming any group, anti-Muslim speech was rampant online. Now, as evidence mounts pointing to the potential involvement of Arab terrorists, America's estimated 7 million Muslims are bracing for the backlash."We've got reports from all over the country," said Joshua Salaam, civil rights coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations, a nonprofit group that promotes a positive image of Muslims in America. "People are reporting stuff to us from chat rooms that is absolutely hateful. Our own website has been bombarded with death threats." In a column on the Muslim-oriented Iviews website, Muqtedar Khan wrote: "If Muslims are responsible for the attack on America, then Muslims as never before will be in desperate need of American protection. Muslims in America will need the U.S. to defend them from the rise in xenophobia and hatred that may arise."
Posted 12:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Life Goes On
Peter M. Zollman on our bad week
Another surreal scene from September 11: Inland Press Foundation was holding the second day of its three-day Online Management Conference in suburban Chicago. About 30 of us were in a morning presentation when word filtered in slowly about the terrorist attacks. What do you do? ... Life goes on. With great difficulty, Mike Blinder of the AIM Group (my business partner) completed his session on revenue generation; I did my afternoon workshop on classifieds revenue; and Ron Dupont of the St. Petersburg Times proceeded with critiques. Why? Because what else could/should we do? Some people left; some were glued to the tube. But most of us soldiered on.What Tuesday's events reminded us — or certainly should have served to remind us — is how remarkably important media (broadcast, print, online) are to all of us in this age of communication; how they knit the fabric of our communities and our country and world together, in good times and bad, and how much people feel the need to connect, collect information, and receive pertinent details from a reliable source.
Posted 11:44 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Slowly, We Return to 'Normal' Things
Steve Outing on e-publishing's halt
Excluding news-related sites, I noticed a lot of publishing on the Internet halted this week due to the U.S. terrorist attacks. Many people publishing on topics unrelated to the news felt that it would have been disrespectful or unseemly to go on as if life was normal. This morning, I started seeing my normal flow of e-newsletters return to life.With E-Media Tidbits, my colleagues and I focused on topics obviously related to the terror attacks and the media angle. While we'll continue that for some time, no doubt, I've also started posting again on non-terror topics — such as Carla Passino's item below, which she wrote before the attack on New York.
Posted 11:26 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Return of the Big Buck
Carla Passino on Dennis Publishing's £2m website launch
Dennis Publishing is investing £2 million ($2.9 million) on a new games portal, reported The Guardian earlier this week. The site, which will be associated with Computer & Video Games magazine, will make extensive use of sophisticated personalization technology. "On top of our investment in content and talent, we have made a significant investment in technology to guide users through what will be one of the largest and most comprehensive games sites ever built," said the managing director of Dennis' interactive division, Guy Sneesby. Either Dennis Publishing is stuck in a time warp (circa 1999) or the Internet depression may be about to end.
Posted 11:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
PGA.com Gets Its Eye on the Ball
Steve Klein on online sports sites
To update my item on Web sports sites in yesterday's E-Media Tidbits, late Wednesday PGA.com got its online act together with a package of three stories related to Tuesday's terrorist acts in the United States. The first story was about Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik, who had to flee his hotel near the World Trade Center and spent the day in Central Park. The PGA Tour canceled all of this week's events, and Tiger Woods met with Tour officials about whether the Ryder Cup should proceed.
Posted 5:08 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
In Dark Days, Words Matter
Amy Gahran on the "content" implications of the mayhem
Late Tuesday evening, I published a special editorial in my online newsletter Contentious entitled "What We Say, Hear and Do Today." It concerns how people are communicating about the awful carnage of September 11. In a nutshell, I'm asking people to watch out for "loaded" words like "terror," "strength," "security," etc. Take the time to figure out what such loaded terms really mean to you, and use them accordingly and wisely. In dark days like these, rhetoric and misunderstanding spins easily out of control.
Posted 4:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Good Promotion Does Not Compromise Journalism
Vin Crosbie on ensuring resources for online news
News Web sites have again proven their value to readers, providing excellent coverage of the terrorist attacks on America. But many online news executives meanwhile fear that the further economic downturn those attacks may have propelled might provide their companies with a further excuse to cut online news funding. To prevent such cuts, promote your online coverage successes now, not as an afterthought. An online journalism organization that does not survive will not be able to provide online journalism. If your site covered the terror attacks, let your news company's executives know how well your site served its readers. Promotion, like money itself, is a realistic need for continued good coverage. Good promotion does not compromise good journalism.
Posted 4:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
FAZ: Pictorial Turn
Norbert Specker on media impact of terrorist acts
German newspaper icon Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for the first time in its history placed a picture on its front page of the print version today. Here, too, things will never be the same.
Posted 3:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Online Sports World Pauses (Mostly)
Steve Klein on online sports sites
A day-after sweep of the online sports world's most trafficked Internet sites demonstrates balance and good taste for the most part as Americans cope with Tuesday's terrorism. It should come as no surprise that the clear winner for depth of coverage is ESPN.com, which leads with "To Play or Not to Play." Whether you agree with him or not, the best piece is Hunter Thompson's column, "Fear & Loathing in America." No. 2 Sportsline.com leads with a weak "A new day," and the intriguing overline "When will we play?" is merely a list of postponement updates. CNNSI leads with a day-old picture of the "Tonight's Game Canceled" sign at Wrigley Field and a "Most events postponed" headline. Frank Deford has a provocative column, "Let the games go on." The Sporting News leads with "Sports World at a standstill" but hasn't cut back on its usual sports offerings.Among the highly trafficked professional sports sites, mlb.com and NASCAR.com are easily the most tasteful, featuring American flags at half staff and updates on event status. The National Hockey League official site mourns the loss of two Los Angeles Kings scouts, Ace Bailey and Mark Bavis, who were on board one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center. Two sites, however, seem to lack professional editorial direction: PGA.com headlines "Tour officials still trying to figure out what to do with events," and the site clearly reflects that. NBA.com leads with "MJ hints at return," old news at best even without the events of Tuesday.
Posted 3:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Giving It Away During Times of Crisis
Andrew Nachison on paid Web content
As reported in today's New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal's subscription site is temporarily all-free. (Thanks to Patrick Phillips at IWantmedia for alerting me to this.) The Cedar Rapids Gazette also has opened up its subscription site.
Posted 1:50 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Facing the Pain Together
Carla Passino on sharing the tragedy on the Web
The New York Times reports that shocked Americans are turning to the Web to try and make sense of yesterday's tragedy. "More than news, what people all over the world craved in the wake of yesterday's terrorist attacks was connection to each other, and many of them found that most easily achieved by going online," writes journalist Amy Harmon. Indeed. On every forum, newsgroup, mailing list, and weblog I accessed today, people shared their sorrow, vented their anger, and, most of all, tried to understand what had befallen them.But this collective sob, as the New York Times labels it, made me appreciate all over again why I chose to be an online journalist. Because writing for the Web is not only about telling people what has happened. It is about discussing it with them.
Posted 11:17 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How to Tell Your Friends
Katja Riefler on the power of new media
What good is the Web in times of terror? A wireless PDA could be a wonderful tool for getting breaking news, as Rusty Coats told us yesterday in a Tidbits item — if you can get a connection. E-Mail turned out to be the single medium that worked for communication when fixed lines had collapsed and cell phones didn't work due to congestion. Also, chat rooms and discussion groups were crowded. The Washington Post has put together a nice piece on that, and Washtech has even more.As those articles point out, some media companies would never have been able to cover the story as they had done without the help of the Internet. Just think, for instance, of tracking tools like Flight Explorer from Fairfax, which offers a tool for tracking the exact position of planes through a Web interface. Flight Explorer customers include United Parcel Service and Federal Express, which use the software to track their planes, and such airlines as TWA and AirTran.
Posted 11:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Web's 'Front Pages'
Steve Outing on online media
I mentioned yesterday the Poynter Institute's compilation online of newspaper "special edition" (print) front pages. Also interesting is to look at how news Web sites treated the tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. John Rood, online manager at the Lincoln Journal Star (Nebraska), collected screen shots from 16 major news Web site home pages and has published a compilation page. While not as comprehensive as the Poynter project, it provides a fascinating snapshot in time of one of humanity's worst days as seen through the lens of online media.
Posted 10:56 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Stripping Down to Handle the Load
Steve Klein on online response time
You would think that handling huge traffic spikes in response to major news events should be standard operating procedure for major Internet news sites by now. With both respect to and understanding of the gravity of the horrific events in New York City and Washington, D.C., yesterday, sites such as CNN.com, USATODAY.com, and NYTimes.com, among others, made emergency design changes during the day, dropping advertising and photos to improve download time. Newsbytes' Brian McWilliams rounds up the response to what began as a slow start online but improved during the day.
Posted 10:51 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Journalists Tell Their Stories
Andrew Nachison on crisis journalism
The American Press Institute, my employer, has created a forum for journalists to share their personal stories of covering and coping with the September 11 terror attack in the United States. Not just covering — we have a group of newspaper copy editors here this week who have struggled emotionally with NOT being in the office, on the desk, for the biggest story of their lives. If you need help of any sort from fellow journalists on this story or would simply like to share your side of the story, use the forum and tell your colleagues about it. We hope it will help. API also has a special report with some pointers on crisis journalism that may be of help.
Posted 12:29 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Historical Record
Steve Outing on e-mail news bulletins from today
Journalist J.D. Lasica on his personal "New Media Musings" Web site has collected all the e-mail bulletins sent out today by CNN.com and the New York Times to their online subscribers. It's a fascinating record on an historic day. It's also a warts-and-all record, as it includes bulletins that later in the day proved to be unfounded or wrong.
Posted 6:14 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Don't Forget Wireless Coverage
Steve Outing on getting today's news
Here's an item that reminds us of the power of wireless technology to disseminate breaking news. Rusty Coats of MORI Research tells it:
"I was in Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (this morning), expecting to depart at 9:10 a.m. CST. After announcing we'd soon be boarding, the CNN airport-news screens went blank and the gate agent announced we would be delayed until 1 p.m. because all flights were grounded. I checked wireless news sites on my Palm to see what was happening. The only site that had the news on its wireless deck immediately after the event (as far as I could find) was Excite. MSNBC soon followed; CNN was inaccessible, but that may have been a connectivity problem. Once I had the story, other passengers passed my Palm up and down the ticket aisle, reading the story while we were reassigned to later flights. (Which later were scratched.) For several minutes, a PDA was our only link to what was happening, since gate agents were as silent as the video screens. It was a good reminder of how powerful wireless news sites can be in reaching audiences when they need us the most."
Posted 4:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Advice on Covering the Tragedy
Steve Outing on a useful resource
My colleagues at the Poynter Institute have quickly put together a package of articles offering advice on covering today's tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. The stories are written by faculty and staff at Poynter, and if you work for a news organization, you'll find them helpful. (I recently joined the Poynter staff part time, and you'll find an online media advice piece from me on the site shortly.) Also interesting is this page featuring images of front pages of special editions of U.S. newspapers published today.
Posted 12:44 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Media Ill Prepared for Biggest News Story
Steve Outing on servers on overload
Today's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., clearly mark the biggest news story in the Internet age. (And I can't write this without first expressing heartfelt condolences to those who lost loved ones today.) I first learned of the events online, from a CNN e-mail alert. But when I tried to learn more at major national news Web sites like CNN.com, MSNBC.com, ABCNews.com, and others, I and millions of other Internet users couldn't get through. Most of those news sites were brought to their knees by the huge surge in traffic. I know I'm not the only one who gave up on the Web and turned to the TV and the CNN cable channel.By later in the morning, CNN.com and MSNBC.com had streamlined their pages of most graphics and had rudimentary pages featuring top headlines — which allowed more people to see their content. Clearly, when all this shakes out, national news sites will need to plan better and beef up their contingency plans for big-story traffic surges — adding servers and network bandwidth more quickly when it becomes obvious that they are about to be overwhelmed. This wasn't a content problem, but a technical one.
Frankly, in the early hours of this tragedy, this was a made-for-TV story. Even if the major news sites had been able to accommodate the demand, the medium (at least in these bandwidth-limited times) could not compete with televised images of a jetliner crashing into a building and the tallest structures in the U.S. crashing to the ground.
Posted 12:53 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
It's Starting Up Again (Have Faith)
Steve Outing on the next Internet boom
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. The dot-com depression is almost over. We're about to embark on "Internet II" — which will make "Internet I" (what we just lived through) look like amateur hour. The stars and planets are aligning and at some point not too far off the next great economic boom will begin. ... So says Michael S. Malone in the Forbes ASAP article, "Internet II: The Rebooting of America." It's definitely worth the time to read. It just might rekindle your enthusiasm for all things Internet. Heaven knows we need a little optimism backed up by solid argument.
Posted 3:47 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Rev Up the Engines
Steve Klein on media convergence
For 26 years, media conglomerates have been legally unable to expand by taking over local television stations. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has signaled its willingness to strike down those regulations, according to an article in the New York Times. The judges are troubled by what they believe is inadequate justification for a rule that prevents a television network from owning stations that reach more than 35% of the nation's households. The possibility of eliminating ownership regulations reflects the belief of deregulation-minded policy makers that the rules stand in the way of a convergence of broadcasting, print, and the Internet. The flip side: Weakening the rules will give too much power to a few large media conglomerates and limit the diversity of views on the airwaves."The market structure of the media industry will look dramatically different in two years from today," said Blair Levin, a regulatory and telecommunications analyst at Legg Mason who served during the Clinton administration as a senior official at the FCC. Levin predicts a spate of corporate deals after the changes in the rules. "You can now call up (Disney CEO) Mike Eisner and tell him to start revving up his engines."
Posted 12:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Leading Dutch Publisher Closes Its Internet Division
Norbert Specker on a full stop strategy
NCR and Planetmultimedia report on the change in strategy of leading Dutch publisher PCM. The internet company PIM (PCM Interactive Media) might be closed down as early as January. A variety of Internet properties will be shut down as well, with the probable exception of FactLane, a database and news service. The newspaper and magazine sites (among them De Volkskrant, NCR Handelblad, and the Algemeen Dagblad) most likely go back to their titles and will have to operate with restricted financial means, thinks NRC editor-in-chief Folkert Jensma. Pieter van Dijk, PIM director, has three weeks to present a redundancy program for the about 100 people involved.To put this move into perspective: TA-Media, a leading Swiss media company, made a similar move last fall when, beyond the central technical platform services, its sites were handed back to the newspapers and magazines. It is not alone in this move: While "Re-integration" may taste of failure, it has happened in many places over the last 12 months and often has proven to be a key element for establishing a cross media brand and advertising strategy that is worth its name.
Posted 11:43 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Tollgates on the Information Superhighway
Rich Gordon on the latest mega-merger talk
It's beginning to look more and more like an AOL/Microsoft world. On the heels of last week's U.S. Justice Department decision not to pursue the breakup of Microsoft, AOL Time Warner is contemplating an offer for AT&T's cable TV business. (Coverage from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and CNET.) If the deal happens — and passes antitrust review, which seems a much easier hurdle today than it was under the Clinton administration — it could be the beginning of the end of the open publishing environment spawned by the World Wide Web. With Microsoft controlling the computer desktop and AOL the TV screen, anyone trying to find an audience for interactive content would have to deal with (i.e., pay or share revenue with) these two giants. The only silver lining I can think of — and it doesn't make me particularly happy — is the possibility that one or both companies can institute a cable-like pricing model where content providers share in subscription revenues.
Posted 11:36 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Opt-in Only for Europe?
Andrew Stroehlein on spam in the EU
On Thursday, the European Parliament voted against a draft directive on electronic communications that would have allowed companies to continue sending unsolicited e-mail. The vote was something of a surprise, as members chose to reject the recommendation of the citizens' rights committee, arguing that opt-in e-mail lists be preferred over opt-out, as the committee's draft envisioned. The draft now returns to committee. The vote was seen as a victory for privacy by some, but others see the prohibition of opt-out marketing lists as detrimental to European business. As EurActiv.com reported, a consumer group spammed all 626 members of the European Parliament just before the vote as a warning of what might happen if opt-out lists became the norm. Guess it worked, then.
|