|
Posted 6:38 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Now They Tell Us Why It Didn't Work!
Steve Outing on online media models
McKinsey & Co. makes it all seem so simple. In its freely available report, "What Went Wrong for On-Line Media," the world's top management consulting firm takes very few words (and charts) to explain why online media failed up to this point. (E.g., while 750 magazines competed for $12 billion in ad revenue, 9,000+ Web content sites fought for $6 billion in ads. And, of course, online users ignored the ads anyway, keeping advertisers from buying.)McKinsey's outlook for online media: "If on-line media can develop new ways of delivering value to advertisers, many of these properties can flourish. Indeed, historical data and current trends suggest that the time to profitability, especially for the major portals, will be well within the normal range for the rest of the media industry." And: "Media companies should be patient: all new media models take time to find their feet. They should also remember that incumbents are better positioned than their pure-play competitors to absorb short-term losses in hopes of finding a long-term audience."
Posted 2:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Reflections
Andrew Nachison on global perspectives
The MIT Program in Comparative Media Studies has put together a series of essays that offer yet another perspective on how the media has communicated or interpreted the events of September 11.
Posted 11:51 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Easy Tampering With News
Katja Riefler on hacking Yahoo! News and other sites
Security of websites always comes into mind when a new worm or virus spreads. But an astonishing number of news organizations seems still to be vulnerable to "Subversion of Information Attacks": People with more or less IT knowledge are able to change the content presented. The most recent victim seems to be Yahoo! News. According to SecurityFocus, 20-year-old hacker Adrian Lamo was able to access the portal's Web-based production tools on the morning of September 18. "By configuring a Web browser to go through one of the proxies, anyone on the Internet could masquerade as a Yahoo! insider," winning instant trust from the company's Web-based content management system, says Lamo.The security hole was closed. But the hack highlights a risk that has troubled security experts since 1998, when a group defaced the website of the New York Times, replacing the front page with a defense of then-imprisoned hacker Kevin Mitnick. A year ago, hackers modified a news story on the Orange County Register's website to report that Microsoft founder Bill Gates had been arrested for hacking into NASA computers. Those fakes are easy to detect. Imagine how much more damage can be done during a crisis by subtle changes: Altering lists of people who were reported missing, misquoting politicians, posting stories attributing attacks to certain people. There also is an interesting side aspect of the Yahoo! News case: "There are more secure parts of their network," says Lamo. "It's more difficult to get into their advertising reporting statistics than their news production tools."
Posted 11:45 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Weblogs, the Alternative Terrorism/War Info Source
Steve Outing on personal journalism
Moreover.com's Nick Denton has a piece in today's Guardian (UK) suggesting that some of the best coverage of the events of the last week and aftermath can be found on weblogs. (You're reading a weblog right now, of course.) While there's an overload of coverage from a variety of mainstream media sources available online, to get meaningful personal accounts and to hear alternative views, seek out the weblogs, Denton suggests.
Posted 6:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-publishers: Adjust Your Bounceback Settings
Steve Outing on impact of latest worm
If you publish an e-mail newsletter, you need to watch that your list software is not auto-deleting subscribers as a result of the latest worm to hit the Internet. In a warning from ContentBiz, publisher Anne Holland points out that the worm has messed up many folks' Internet connections, and many publishers are getting 10-15% bouncebacks of mailings. (I've noticed this on my own e-newsletters.) Adjust your list software bounceback settings so that you don't delete subscribers because of this temporary situation. Good advice! (After posting this, I'm checking my list software.)
Posted 5:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Keeping Up With Military Strategy
Amy Gahran on defense strategy resources
Troops have started moving, and (understandably) the military and the government are not talking about what they plan to do. Traditional media is providing some interviews with and commentary from military experts — but that's a limited and scattered resource. One easy way to get more in-depth information, context, and educated speculation about the military aspects of the current conflict is to check out reputable defense/security information sites such as Stratfor and Jane's Information Group (which includes the renowned Jane's Defence Weekly). One thing I love about the Internet is easy access to valuable niche publications and resources — especially in a time of crisis. I'd rather read informed commentary in Stratfor than listen to talking heads babble on FOX News any day.
Posted 2:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-Media Tidbits' New Home
Steve Outing on this weblog
Regular readers of E-Media Tidbits will notice a change today: The weblog is now a service of Poynter.org, the website of the Poynter Institute, the well-respected, Florida-based professional journalism school. The content and writers of Tidbits will remain the same, though in time we'll be adding some new things. I'll keep you posted in the weeks ahead.
Posted 10:59 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Our Enemies Are Your Enemies; No, Really
Andrew Stroehlein on the Web as translator of hate
Since September 11th, parts of the Macedonian-language media have been pulling out all the stops in an effort to link the tragedy in the U.S. to local Albanian insurgents, the National Liberation Army (NLA). Apparently, some ethnic Macedonians feel that if they can get the world to believe headlines such as "NLA Directly Linked With Bin Laden's Terrorists," then this could promote international support of the government forces' efforts against the insurgency. The subtext of the message is clearly, "Hey, our enemies are your enemies, so please send a few cruise missiles toward those NLA-held villages while you're going about this new war business."Never mind that the daily Dnevnik has very little if any credible evidence for this alleged connection announced in bold headlines. The real problem for them is that no one with cruise missiles in his pocket will be reading the Macedonian-language newspaper. Thus, a Macedonian Web site has stepped in to translate the article into English and bring the message to an international audience. The inappropriately named "realitymacedonia" is reminding us all that the ability of the Web to spread information can also be used to spread disinformation. Unfortunately, ethnic Macedonian hard-liners are not the only ones trying to convince the U.S. that its enemies are terrorists linked to bin Laden; we're seeing this in other parts of the world as well. The worry is that, being so anxious to identify targets right now, Washington may actually take such Web reports seriously.
Posted 10:45 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Bad News Equals Higher Traffic
Steve Klein on online news sites
Bad news inevitably results in higher traffic on online news sites, and that was certainly the case last week following the U.S. terrorist attacks. Writing for Inside.com and using data from Jupiter Media Metrix, Rafat Ali reports that daily traffic to news sites nearly doubled to 117 million unique users a day. Benefiting the most: CNN.com, with an estimated 4.6 million unique daily visitors, to pass MSNBC.com at 4.2 million. Prior to the attack, MSNBC.com was averaging 1.6 million visitors daily and CNN.com 1.3 million. ABCNews.com more than tripled traffic to about 1.3 million, thanks in part to a live TV feed on the Web site.Newspaper sites benefited, too. NYTimes.com had about 1.1 million daily visitors, WashingtonPost.com 800,000, USAToday.com 715,000, LATimes.com nearly 300,000, and NYPost.com almost 200,000. Philly.com, the Philadelphia-based portal for the Inquirer, Daily News, and City Paper, tripled traffic to about 1.4 million with coverage of the Pennsylvania plane hijacking/crash. And Slate.com, the only Internet-only news and opinion site, spiked 385% to 678,000 daily visitors. Even DrudgeReport.com benefited, up more than 50% to 354,000 daily visitors. The AOL News Channel had about 4.4 million daily visitors (up from 2.7 million the previous week).
Posted 4:59 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Prepare for the Next Time
Andrew Nachison on streamlining news sites for big events
Extraordinary news calls for extraordinary media planning — and that's true regardless of the delivery platform. Rusty Coats of MORI Research and Steve Yelvington of Morris Digital Works offer some advice for websites to plan for the next big story. Their tips are part of a series of articles, advice, and analysis contributed by staff and friends of the American Press Institute (where I work). The package includes a collection of editorial cartoons, newspaper editorials, a critique of newspaper front pages, and a must-read essay by Charles Haynes on resisting hate and hysteria directed at American Muslims. And, if you're interested, I contributed an admittedly personal essay that touches on convergence and news values. You can respond in the forum linked at the end. Please do.
Posted 1:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Believe It or Not: New Economy Lives
Katja Riefler on positive signals from a German fair
When you see how big search engines like Lycos or Altavista are still letting people go by the hundreds, you could doubt that times will ever get better. But there are other signs. The German fair Intergeo, one ot the world's biggest focusing on geodesy and geographical information, just announced with 416 exhibitors — a record number. Organizers expect up to 15,000 visitors to Cologne. Analysts speak of great demand of communities and companies for detailed electronic maps. The other big growth area is data that could support location-based services for mobile devices. Almost every phone company in Germany is looking for localized information on schools, pharmacies, gas stations, and so on. And if you look at what kind of services are already available for German mobile phone users (d2privat, e-plus, t-motion), it's amazing.
Posted 12:47 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Flash Project Expands as Story Grows
Steve Outing on MSNBC's ambitious multimedia presentation
MSNBC.com produced a Flash animated graphic presentation (more of a presentation than an infographic) last week about the terrorist attacks on the eastern U.S. In an article I wrote for Poynter.org on Friday about Web coverage, I included the MSNBC.com presentation and had some criticisms of it. Today I heard from Angela Clark, MSNBC.com's director of interactive content: "Since then, we have released a much more extensive look at that day. It has been refined, expanded, and is now bandwidth sensitive. We detect the readers' bandwidth and deliver the appropriate files, so our modem readers don't have to wait for the experience. It's compelling and unique to what's currently on the Web." Here's the revised presentation.
Posted 12:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How a Dispute Over Royalties Thwarts Webcast News Coverage
Vin Crosbie on how Internet might have saved lives
Like many office workers nowadays, some people in New York City's World Trade Center were probably listening to webcast music on the morning of September 11. But none were listening to webcast local news. Local news stations there stopped webcasting their signals months ago, in a dispute with the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists (AFTRA). It's now the contention of Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban that more of those WTC office workers, confused by the impacts that struck their buildings, would be alive today if they'd been quickly informed by news webcasts that hijacked airliners had struck their buildings, which were ablaze and in danger of collapse. Many workers did not have regular radios, but electrical power and Internet access continued for a relatively long time after the initial attack, according to survivors."Had WOR and other (news) stations in NY been streaming (online), maybe, possibly, hopefully, someone at their desk could have been listening when that station broke in with the news of what had happened, like I'm sure every broadcast station in NY did. So possibly they might have received news that the first strike was not a small plane and accident, and the second strike definitely was not," Cuban posted to the Webcasting discussion list.
The AFTRA guild represents the actors who perform advertising commercials. Under Section 10 of AFTRA's new contract rules, the stations that webcast a broadcast containing commercials must pay a 300% additional royalty to the actors who appear in those ads, which can then be used online for a year. But rather than pay those ad performance royalties, many news stations simply stopped webcasting. Indeed, no NYC news stations or U.S. national news network has webcast live coverage of the NYC disasters and recovery, then or now.
Posted 1:30 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Media Giving Campaigns
Steve Outing on iWantMedia.com's list
Lots of media companies have launched campaigns to raise money for disaster relief following last week's terror attacks. iWantMedia.com has put together a nice list of the various media programs (on the right side of the site's home page). These are mostly traditional media companies (though many practice "convergence" and publish online, too). It wasn't that long ago that this list would have included a lot of dot-com media enterprises.
Posted 1:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Has There Ever Been Something Called Privacy?
Katja Riefler on new attacks on civil rights
Will September 11th change the Internet? It is already going to. Think of the anonymous remail services, which in the past had helped some dissidents from non-democratic countries to make their situation known. Some of these services already have begun to shut down, Network World Fusion reports. These services may also be used by terrorists and criminals. In Germany there is much fear of more supervision of civilians by police and secret services. Official voices warn not to give too much new power to the police. These fears are fueled by reports like that from Wired, which told of FBI officials who reportedly have urged Internet providers in the U.S. to immediately install the "Carnivore" system, which is used to "sniff" the e-mail of individuals. Carnivore has been in discussion since 1999 and hasn't been reported to do as much harm as everyone feared, as far as I know. But what will come next?
Posted 12:22 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Editorial Cartoonists Pack a Punch
Steve Outing on terror coverage
Editorial cartoonists from around the world are turning out some moving, outstanding work since the September 11 terror attacks. The Web gives us an opportunity to see all their work in one place. Slate is carrying hundreds of editorial cartoons from the last week, dealing with all angles of the attacks, aftermath, and war. You'll find them in Daryl Cagle's Cartoonists Index, which is now part of MSN. Powerful stuff.
Posted 12:17 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ummm, You Forgot to Promote the Web Site!
Steve Outing on newspapers' omission
On the discussion list Online-News, Anchorage Daily News online editor Roger Price made an important post today: "I was just glancing at all the front pages that Poynter has posted on its site and was surprised to see how few newspapers even mentioned their website on the front page. The events of last week seem to be the ideal situation for cross-promotion between print and online. Why are so few papers telling their readers that updated stories are available on their website?" Indeed. They missed an important opportunity. Websites are newspapers' way to compete with TV news for immediacy. Most papers blew the chance.
Posted 10:28 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Pew Report: The Internet Supplements TV
Steve Klein on the value of the Internet in a crisis
For American news consumers hungry for news and information about the terrorist attacks last week, the Internet remains a supplemental rather than primary source for news, according to a report issued by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project. Not surprisingly, 81% of all Americans got most of their information from TV and 11% from radio. According to the report, 3% of online users got most of their information from the Internet. "For many online Americans," reads the report, "the Internet played a useful supplemental role as a communications tool — through their use of e-mail and instant messaging — and as a news source. The general picture of many Internet users ... is that they were aggressively using all the means at their disposal to get information about the unfolding crisis and make contact with their networks of loved ones and friends."
Posted 10:02 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Terrorized by Fear of Layoffs
Jade Walker on fiscal viability of online media
Before terrorists decided to attack America, online journalists worried about the little things, like copyright violations and the troubling stream of dot-com failures. We all hoped the second half of the year would bring enough advertising and subscription revenue to keep us employed for just a while longer. Now the hope for a future recovery has also crashed. In order to adequately cover this tragic event, Web sites all over the country turned off their ads, canceled subscription requirements, and jammed their staffs into 24-hour work cycles.No revenue coming in. Tons of overtime being filed. Millions of users turned to the Web for their news and none of them saw any advertising. Even as the online news media showed its usefulness and humanity, it also offered the higher-ups a glimpse at how much such news organizations cost to run. I wonder ... once this story trails off, and the news returns to normal, how many of us will still have jobs? Will our tireless efforts to cover this tragedy lead to our own demise?
Posted 9:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How Good Was Web Coverage of the Terrorist Attacks?
Paul Grabowicz on online news
There's been a lot of discussion about the performance of online media sites covering last Tuesday's terrorist attacks and whether community sites like Slashdot did a better job. Here's a list of stories on those topics and others related to the role the Web played in disseminating information on the attacks. (The list is part of a page of resources I put together for students and faculty at my school who were following the story.)
Posted 9:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Paying the Freight in Arkansas
Steve Klein on online newspaper revenue models
While looking at an excellent resource compiled by the Newseum of newspapers' online coverage of last week's terrorist atack of the United States, I happened to click on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's link and got this little surprise message: "If you choose not to subscribe, your access will be limited after October 1 to section fronts, classified ads, and the archives." Yet another example of a newspaper going to a Web paid-access model for non-subscribers in order to boost print circulation. If you subscribe to the print edition, you get free online access. If you're a displaced Razorback and want full online access, you'll have to pay for it. Seems shortsighted to me.
|