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Posted 6:22 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Lethargic News Sites
Steve Outing on breaking news on the Web
"With few exceptions, the race among the most-read online news sites has turned into a competition to see which site can post wire copy the fastest." So writes Amy Langfield in her Online Journalism Review article, "Net News Lethargy." Langfield monitored 15 of the highest-traffic news websites in late September and early October to see how they did at covering breaking news quickly and with original coverage. Her portrait is mostly unflattering, and she complains about how news sites aren't moving fast enough in covering big stories.She doesn't get into the why, but is content to document the poor state of online news. The why is obvious, of course; shrinking budgets, the ad slowdown, and media convergence trends all conspire to keep original online reportage to a minimum. With an economic turnaround coming soon (we hope), perhaps we'll see a wave of online-original news content. Let's hope. As Langfield concludes, "As long as the major websites continue to rely on the same wire coverage for breaking news, viewers will stick with their TV when they need to know something fast about a developing story."
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Posted 3:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
We'll Take You Where You Can't Go
Steve Outing on news site's Web White House tour
Bravo to WashingtonPost.com for taking some initiative. With the White House closed down to public tours (for obvious security reasons), the website put together a virtual tour of the White House, putting photos taken during a recent press tour into a Web slide show. It can't match the real thing, of course, but it is a nice use of the Web. Photo District News currently has an item about this in Dorothy Ho's PDNewswire.
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Posted 12:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Dear Abby Dot-coms
Steve Outing on skirting terrorism with the Internet
As CNET's News.com reported yesterday, Dear Abby (a.k.a., Jeanne Phillips) has finally found the Net. You may recall that the 34-year-old "Operation Dear Abby," which collects and delivers reader printed letters to military personnel overseas, was canceled this year due to the anthrax threat. Phillips instead has launched OperationDearAbby.net, which is collecting electronic messages instead of paper letters, and delivering them via an Internet bulletin board.I'm pleased to see Phillips recognize the value of electronic publishing. I heard her give a speech at a content conference last summer, and was surprised then at how little she seemed to acknowledge the value the Net might bring to Dear Abby.
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Posted 11:13 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How Good Is Your Website?
Katja Riefler on an international benchmarking initiated in Germany
Do you know how your website really compares to your competitors? German online newspapers decided that they don't know this exactly enough. So in June they initiated an in-depth study about the contents and performance of their sites in competition with other media and in other countries. Some 120 websites participated in the contest, 90 of them German newspaper sites, the rest international and other media. First results of "Webtest E-Print" show that the German sites are good in breaking news and functionality and design, but not as good in using multimedia features yet. You can read the full press-release (unfortuantely, in German only).
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Posted 8:28 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Iraq's Digital Divide
Steve Klein on Internet access around the world
The window to the Internet world remains narrow in Arab countries like Iraq, where the only way citizens can access the Internet is from government-run Internet cafes, according to an AP story. Private links to the Web have yet to be introduced, and satellite dishes and modems are banned. Local media are either state-run or sponsored by the ruling party and present the official version of the news. Verginie Locussol, a Middle East expert with Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, said controlling the Internet is typical of all dictatorships that "try to keep people in complete isolation from the world."
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Posted 5:38 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Let Your Users Contribute Funny Content
Steve Outing with some website advice
I nearly always ignore spam, but I did click on a URL in a spammed e-mail from FunnyPrizes.com. The site features (among other things) funny photos contributed by its users. FunnyPrizes is nothing to crow about — and I hate to promote a business that engages in spamming — but the site's concept did get me thinking again about the model of allowing a website's users to contribute content. Ethical news sites should, in my opinion, spend some effort in cultivating user-generated content. The idea of having people upload funny personal photos is a good one, and could be implemented as a fun feature by local news sites. (Make sure you vet the contributions, of course.) Online, such a feature could become as popular as the print comics pages. (And the best of the best contributions could be published in a print edition once a week.)This concept is hardly new; the website of the Port Charlotte Sun-Herald in Florida, when it was run by Ron DuPont (now at the St. Petersburg Times), was seriously into this sort of thing — encouraging people to submit photos of their boats, pets, etc. The Sun-Herald won several top online newspaper awards in part because of this strategy. But larger mainstream news sites haven't picked up on this in a big way. They should.
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Posted 11:25 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Big Prints From the Web
Juan C. Camus on new content techniques
Clarin.com, the website of the greatest newspaper in Spanish (if you listen to its own commercials), has begun an interesting experiment, which allows readers to print out, using a home printer, very large posters. The section "Gigantografías Para Imprimir" (Big Pictures to Print) began with the photo of south Manhattan taken from a satellite after Sept. 11. To get the full picture you have to print all the pictures, and then paste each one together with the other pages, following the directions on the website. For example, the NY photo has 20 pages (letter or A4 format) and the final big print is 47 by 32 inches. The next Big Prints offered by Clarin.com are mostly from the sports world: posters of soccer stars like Diego Armando Maradona and the National Soccer Team, and the National Rugby Team, Los Pumas.
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Posted 11:10 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Please, Let Others Do The Work for You
Katja Riefler on mobile business models
Looking for money? Mobile content offerings are still seen as being far more attractive than content on the Web. The German online community Clickfish, which specializes in questions of all kinds that are answered by self-selected "guides," has an especially clever business idea: it has signed a deal with Deutsche Telekom that will make its expert network, "Askforce," part of the mobile subscription package "T-motion," which will be promoted heavily next year. It's a good deal for Clickfish, also probably a good one for Deutsche Telekom. But also a good one for the content industry?Unfortunately, the experts — the real content producers — won't see a penny of the money. They still are urged to work for their own reputation plus some Webmiles and to please answer questions within a 15-minute timeframe. The 15-minute response time is one of the major marketing assets that T-motion wants to use to promote the service. So what will happen to the business model if the experts don't want to continue this kind of self-exploitation? Rafael Bonnelly from Terra Lycos (Spain) recently mentioned at the Content Summit conference in Zurich that Terra has tried to make content producers pay for being part of the network for a long time, but came up empty. Now Terra lets content providers participate by getting 10-60% of the revenue generated.
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Posted 6:06 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
You Choose the Best
Juan C. Camus on content with users' feedback
Do you remember the old days when editors and journalists were the only people involved in deciding which individuals or issues were selected as the most significant or best of the year? In a new twist in how to do this selection, the online Chilean portal Emol.com (related to El Mercurio newspaper) is allowing its users to vote for the best news stories and people of 2001. The new section is Lo + del 2001, where the users choose best individuals in each of four categories, and the best in each of seven areas, such as book, movie, or TV program of the year. The idea behind this project is to have interesting content on the website and to create compelling content for the print edition, as El Mercurio will publish this content on the last week of the year.
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Posted 2:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Another Flavor of 'New Media'
Rich Gordon on journalism for interactive TV
At the risk of appearing self-serving, I think E-Media Tidbits readers might be interested in an interactive multimedia newsmagazine created by a team of graduate journalism students at the Medill School of Journalism. It's designed as a prototype for interactive television, which I think looms on the horizon as the "killer platform" for new media journalism (and other kinds of content). Because the prototype was designed with Web tools (Flash and Quicktime), you can view it via the Web. Caution: broadband connection required. (E-mail me at richgor@northwestern.edu if you'd like a copy on CD-ROM.)
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Posted 1:55 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Hotjobs.com IV
Steve Klein on online advertising
Remember how the dot-com ads came to dominate the Super Bowl until last year? Well, one is still around. Hotjobs.com will advertise on Super Bowl XXXVI on Feb. 3, with one 30-second in-game spot and a sponsorship announcement. The commercial, by Brand Architecture International of New York, will continue the "Onward Upward" campaign that began last year. This year marks the fourth Super Bowl for the online recruiter. Last year, Hotjobs ran one in-game spot and three pre-game commercials.
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Posted 1:50 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Google Adds News
Steve Outing on search engines
Google remains my favorite all-purpose search engine (for now). Lately it's been adding new features. The latest: news headlines. According to an item in SearchDay, Google is now crawling headlines from 100-plus leading English-language newspapers, aggregating top headlines on a single page and grouping them into six categories: World, U.S., Business, Entertainment, Science & Technology, and Sports. The service picks out the major headline topics and presents a link to a single "best" story. Below that link are "Related links" to other similar stories on other news sites. Headlines are updated once an hour throughout the day. (Google isn't the only search engine doing news aggregation, of course. Search Engine Watch has a good list of all the news search offerings on th Web.)
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Posted 12:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The War Comes to Your Inbox
Steve Klein on online coverage of the war on terrorism
Can't get enough coverage of the war on terrorism? The Washington Post doesn't think you can, so it's doing something about it by providing a new e-mail newsletter that includes the latest multimedia features along with up-to-the-minute news and analysis by Post writers about the war delivered five days a week. The newsletter does require registering, but if you prefer one-stop access to information, it's a nice complement to the excellent coverage also available on MSNBC.com, CNN.com, and the New York Times.
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Posted 8:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Best Weblogs
Steve Outing on an online content contest
What's the best weblog on the Net? While Scripting News' awards won't be definitive, the site is endeavoring to choose the best weblogs. Nominees are listed on this page and anyone is welcome to submit their votes, in various categories; voting is open through January. (I'm disappointed that E-Media Tidbits wasn't included; nor was Jim Romenesko's MediaNews weblog.)I encourage you to spend some time looking over the weblog finalists on this page. Weblogs are a form of online content not often adopted by mainstream media. Especially for professionals working at mainstream media organizations, you owe it to yourself to understand what the webloggers are doing — and how their techniques might be adapted at your shop.
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Posted 12:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-books Are Not Dead
Steve Outing on digital publishing trends
The recent demise of some big-name e-book ventures — iPublish, MightyWords, and At Random — does not spell the end of the e-book industry, says M.J. Rose, Wired News e-books columnist (and e-book author). In her Wired column this week, Rose contends that e-book sales are "stronger than ever" and that independent publishers and retailers are reporting record sales. Once again in the Internet world, we see that players who threw a lot of money at a new technology were not able to survive the economic downturn. But smaller players live on, and even pick up the scraps of the fallen enterprises.
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Posted 12:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
When HTML Is Good, and When It Is Bad
Steve Outing on e-mail formats
Yesterday I implemented some new features for Poynter.org's discussion lists. One of them is a script that automatically strips out HTML from messages sent in by list members, converting them to plain text. One of my co-workers pointed out that normally I am a proponent of HTML (that is, graphical) e-mail, so perhaps there was some contradiction in my adding a feature that removed HTML. In answer, HTML e-mail is good in its place — such as the HTML e-mail delivery of this weblog. E-Media Tidbits subscribers receive in their inboxes once a day this weblog in the Web-page format. It's preferable to stripped-down plain text, with no graphics and no hyperlinks. (Subscribers with older e-mail client software can get a plain-text conversion of the page.)On the other hand, HTML is annoying when it comes to e-mail discussion lists. Depending on the client software a list member has, the HTML messages sent by other members may or may not look OK. Some list members get a daily "digest" of all messages, instead of single messages received throughout the day. The digests are a mess to read when there's a mixture of text and HTML messages. In short, HTML is bad for discussion lists, but fine for e-publications.
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Posted 7:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Study Shows Online Community Features Do Increase 'Stickiness'
Vin Crosbie on the value of online community features
A new study by McKinsey & Co. and Jupiter Media Metrix of 40,000 online consumers shows that online community features — chat rooms, bulletin boards, user reviews, etc. — creates "substantial" value for both users and publishers. McKinsey and Jupiter found that consumers who use those features on a site are twice as likely to spend money online, nine times as likely to revisit the site, and twice as loyal to the site as consumers who don't use those features. (The study requires pre-registration but is free to read on The McKinsey Quarterly site.) Of course, how periodical-publishing websites can successfully deploy online community features is an open question, though Advance.net president and creative director Jeff Jarvis provided some good examples in a posting Saturday to the Online-News discussion list.
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Posted 7:23 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Copyright Thieves, Your Number Is Up
Steve Outing on a new Web resource
Copyright theft is a vexing problem on the Internet. It's simple for anyone to grab someone else's writing (or photo, or artwork), put it on their website, and claim it as their own. One victim of the online crime, Virgil Huston of Kudzu Media, has decided to fight back by exposing copyright thieves and (it is hoped) shaming them into removing purloined content or paying the copyright holder for its use. Huston just announced the Copyright Theft Notification List (CTNL), of which he explains: "There are plenty of spam cop operations, but none that address the blatant theft of writing, images, and even code from websites. This effort is designed to meet that need."The idea behind the venture is to provide a place for publicly listing websites and print publications that have engaged in copyright theft. Huston will be collecting theft stories and posting them — but he will require some evidence of the content theft (such as screen shots from the offending publication). The site and e-mail list isn't fully formed yet, but he promises a formal launch in the next month or so. He also seeks volunteers to help run the project. E-mail Huston at editor@copyrighttheft.com.
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Posted 5:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Playboy Adorns, Rather Than Strips, Online Budget
Vin Crosbie on an online pioneer's contrarian thinking
While most magazines are stripping bare their online budgets, Playboy Enterprises is attiring its site with new technologies and investments. Among its new media accouterments for next season is US$20 million to add streaming video to the site, according to Internet.com. Playboy also recently launched a German-language site. Last week at Fall Internet World 2001 in New York, Playboy Enterprises chairman and CEO Christie Hefner outlined her strategy to reap an online profit in 2001 from combinations of advertising, online subscription, e-commerce, online gaming, and live streamed events. She also noted that the millions of consumers who access Playboy in print, TV, and online media are different and not necessarily interchangeable, an often obvious observation that I think many periodical executives overlook.
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Posted 5:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
New Content and Advertising Models
Rich Gordon on today's WSJ.com
Thomas E. Weber of the Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today about the music industry's efforts to block users from copying files downloaded from subscription music services. It will be interesting to gauge consumer response; personally, I believe that the music industry will have to move toward allowing more copying if it wants these services to succeed. Weber's article was noteworthy for another reason: the New York Stock Exchange ad that ran next to it. (I've archived a copy at this address.) Using Java-based technology from EyeWonder.com, the ad is essentially a full-motion TV commercial embedded in a Web page. Video quality was mediocre, but in a broadband world the concept is intriguing. Make a video sufficiently compelling, and I think it could work for advertisers. (Note that the audio doesn't play unless you click on the audio icon. This was a good decision in terms of respect for users, but it should have been more obvious that the audio could be turned on.)
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Posted 1:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
TiVo Likes Commercials?
Steve Outing on advertising trends
Personal digital recorder (PVR) maker TiVo has been forced into playing two sides of the fence, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. It's begun courting the ad industry and is trying to make its 280,000 subscribers (I'm one) like commercials instead of fast-forwarding through them. (I routinely watch TV while skipping the ads; it's one of the best features of the TiVo devices, though TiVo doesn't play it up for fear of the ad industry beating up on it.) What the WSJ report demonstrates is that advertising is being forced to change as a result of new digital technologies like PVRs. TiVo users may skip commercials that are included in the shows they record, but they can still be reached with ads delivered directly to the devices. TiVo enticed its users to watch one of four Lexus ads recently, for example, by holding a contest for a free car; to enter, you had to watch the commercial. That ad was incredibly successful in response rate.The lesson: New technologies require completely new, out-of-the-box thinking about advertising.
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Posted 12:59 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
You Will Converge!
Steve Outing on new monthly e-publication from API
The Media Center of the American Press Institute has debuted a new monthly e-publication, NewsFuture, which aims to assist companies involved in media convergence. The newsletter is edited by Andrew Nachison, who explains, "Our goal is to remain true to our core mission of helping online and multi-platform publishing companies improve." The first issue has some interesting stuff, including two essays on paid online content by Bruce Annan and Gordon Borrell; there's also an opinion piece about bloated news home pages by Steve Yelvington. This is good stuff.
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