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Posted 7:54 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
No Tidbits on Friday
This weblog's editor and writers are taking a day off on Friday, May 3. We'll return to our regular publishing schedule on Monday.
Posted 7:51 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Wireless Couldn't Be More American
Steve Klein on connectivity on campus
American University — where I teach — in Washington, D.C., plans to become the first fully integrated wireless university. By fall semester, AU will eliminate telephone lines, using a wireless system to handle voice, data, and messaging. While other U.S. colleges offer either a wireless local area network or wireless phone service, AU will be the first to offer both technologies. Students will use cell phones for their primary voice communications and be able to surf the Web on PDAs and laptops throughout the campus, indoors or out. Students will have a custom cell phone plan that eventually will replace their dorm phones and be able to access class schedules and cancellations, course availability, grades and transcripts, and weather updates over a wireless Web."We can leverage the investments we've already made in our network," said Carl Whitman, executive director of AU's e-operations. "It's going to allow us to avoid some capital expenditures that we otherwise would have had to make in more traditional telephony equipment down the road." The university is working with KPMG Consulting and Cingular Wireless to install the system and provide cell phone service.
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Posted 5:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Why 'Convergence' Is Like Teenage Sex
Vin Crosbie on the future of publishing
Canadian author and columnist Jim Carroll provided the annual congress of the International Newspaper Marketing Association with the following reasons why media "convergence" is like teenage sex:
No one knows what it is but thinks that it must be great. Everyone thinks that everyone else is doing it. Those who say they are doing it are probably lying. The few who are doing it aren't doing it well. Once they start doing it, they realize that it's going to take them a long time to do it right. They'll also soon start realizing that there is no "right" way to do it.
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Posted 4:50 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ireland.com Switches Much of Site to Paid Access
Vin Crosbie on paid content
Here's yet more paid-content news. (Also see two items below this.) Ireland.com, the news and Irish information portal site of the Irish Times of Dublin, on Wednesday joined the ranks of newspaper websites switching to paid access business models. It has begun selling annual, monthly, and weekly subscriptions, before closing to the public many news, sports, and information areas of its site on June 6. Subscription access fees are £79 annually, £14 monthly, or £7 weekly, although Ireland.com is offering some early subscriber incentives. There are also special fees offered for corporate access to the site.
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Posted 11:43 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Jerusalem Post Steers Toward Paid Content
Steve Outing on online revenue models
The website of the Jerusalem Post provides another example of the trend toward paid content being offered by news sites. (Also see the item below this about FT.com.) Post VP of electronic publishing Alan Abbey reports that JPost.com is starting to charge for some Web-only products, "and we're making money with them." He says, "We have made a decision to charge for as many things as possible, and so far, so good." The site has long produced free e-newsletters, but those have been either canceled or will be canceled soon. Abbey says the site soon will make available a digitized, searchable version of the Palestine Post from 1932 to 1950. Jpost.com is an unusual newspaper website, in that 90% of its traffic comes from outside its home nation of Israel.
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Posted 11:03 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
FT.com Starts Charging
Katja Riefler on paid content
Since yesterday (May 1), FT.com (website of the Financial Times) joined the list of websites that offer premium content for subscribers only. It's put together two different packages priced from US $110 to $300 per year. The expensive one includes access to company profiles and press databases worldwide. A substantial part of the site will remain free. Time will show whether FT.com will find enough paying subscribers. But what I really liked about the introduction of the service is the Site Tour created to introduce and explain the new services to users.
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Posted 6:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
SPJ Awards: 8 Online Winners
Steve Outing on best of online journalism
The Society of Professional Journalists today announced the 49 winners of the annual Sigma Delta Chi Awards for Excellence in Journalism — among them eight recipients in the online category. (This contest covered work produced in 2001.) The online winners: Tampa Bay Online, ABCNews.com, CNET News.com (two awards), Jon D. Markman of MSN Money, SeattleTimes.com, HoustonChronicle.com, and Kenneth Vogel and Meleah Rush of the Center for Public Integrity. Congratulations, all. It's good to see online journalism take its rightful, prominent place in such competitions.
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Posted 12:54 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Belo vs. Deep Links: One More Angle
Rich Gordon on why publishers should fight FOR deep-linking rights
Steve Outing's item (below) took the words right out of my mouth: "What is Belo thinking?" His arguments against Belo's legal position are sound. I'd add one more. In the digital world, one of the most valuable things a journalist (or journalism company) can do is to point Web users to relevant material that's available online. This can be in the form of related links to an article, or the kind of links that Web-savvy columnists (like Dan Gillmor) are including in their weblogs. The last thing that journalists should want is for there to be legal prohibitions against "deep linking." In any case involving the legality of deep linking, in my opinion, journalism organizations should be weighing in on the side of permitting them, not banning them.
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Posted 11:37 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Belo: What Are You Folks Thinking?
Steve Outing on "deep linking" controversy
Jim Romenesko mentions this in his MediaNews weblog today, but it's worth noting here, too. Belo (owner of the Dallas Morning News) has sent a letter to a political website telling it to stop publishing "deep links" to articles on DallasNews.com. The letter, according to a report by Wired News, demands that the site instead link only to the DallasNews.com home page (which is a corporate policy meant to apply to any website that links to its content). Perhaps Belo needs to get rid of the lawyer who wrote that letter, because this is downright foolish. First, deep linking got a court's OK in the Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com case. Second, demanding that sites not link directly to your content is aiming a gun at your foot and firing. Links from any and everyone are good. ... Wow. It's amazing that any media company would still think like this. Haven't newspaper companies learned anything after all these years of Web publishing?
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Posted 8:49 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
No Print Papers for One Day
Juan C. Camus on real online journalism
During two days of every year, news websites replace the print newspapers in Chile as the major providers of information. Those days are today (May 1) and January 1, because for both days (legal holidays in the country) there is a working agreement between publishers and the national association of newspaper sellers. As the newspapers are sold mostly through street vendors, during those days the print editions are not published and newspaper sellers can rest at home. But, as there is no agreement for news websites, they can still publish.An additional and more important effect is that news websites are cut off from their main supply of information, the news feeds from the print editions. What you'll see today at all those news sites, then, is fully produced by the online staffs. As an example, see La Tercera, La Cuarta, or El Mercurio.
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Posted 8:31 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
FIFA Goes Internet
Norbert Specker on World Cup coverage
In stark contrast to the International Olympic Comittee, FIFA (the international football association) announced yesterday that it will make World Cup video footage available via the Internet. A special highlight service of around 4 minutes will be offered for a total of about $20 through the site of its official partner, Yahoo! The subscription covers all the 64 games of the tournament that is the biggest regular peacetime event.On another World Cup topic, Andreas Herren, FIFA press manager, told me over lunch that 35 pure online sports services journalists have been accredited to cover the tournament — still only a fraction of the 1,700 present, but a big step compared to "none" at the Olympics.
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Posted 6:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspaper Classifieds: Worse Than They'll Admit?
Steve Outing on the industry's elephant in the living room
Evidence continues to roll in that U.S. newspapers are losing lots of their employment classifieds revenue. As this AdAge.com article notes, newspaper classifieds revenue fell 15.2% last year; the help-wanted category slumped 34.5%. Meanwhile, newspaper-industry bogeyman Monster.com saw its employment listings revenue increase 41% to $536 million last year. Consultancy Classified Intelligence (run by Peter M. Zollman, who also writes for this weblog) today released a report on the migration of employment advertising away from newspapers. Zollman and company interviewed 14 executives responsible for placing recruitment ads for major employers. The finding: "We got the same message over and over: 'We're moving our advertising out of the newspaper and trying new things. Not all of it, but a growing portion of it.'"Meanwhile, that AdAge.com article quotes Tim Landon, president of Tribune Classified Services: "We think the vast majority of the current downturn is related to the economic cycle. (But) we think about 20% of the downturn is related to the Internet and the new competition." I think he's downplaying the threat. It's not just the bad economy, it's a sea change that is pure bad news for newspapers.
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Posted 5:38 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Mr. Pérez Sent an E-mail
Juan C. Camus on the participatory Internet
A study about how to use the Internet to improve citizens' participation in public affairs shows that few websites are ready to use this way to listen to people in Chile. The most interesting part of the study was the case of Mr. Juan Pérez (fictional person, as in John Doe), who sent e-mails to 27 public agencies and private companies (two of them, the main portals in Chile) looking for information and offering his participation with ideas to improve the website. After that, Mr. Pérez sent e-mails to each of 120 members of the Parliament. The result: only six agencies or companies and nine deputies replied.One of the conclusions of the study, which was conducted by Claudio Orrego and Rodrigo Araya for a collection of papers for a United Nations agency, was: "There is some degree of asymmetry between the public claim and the real effect of websites; some institutions must speak with their example in their calls to have an e-government which could be transparent and participative."
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Posted 5:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
If Paper Goes Electronic, Is It Still Paper?
Rich Gordon on the latest from E Ink Corp.
When most of us think about the future of electronic publishing, we imagine a whole bunch of new devices: e-tablets, cellphone/PDAs, e-book readers, interactive TVs. But what if the future of publishing is paper — in an electronic version? That's the vision of E Ink Corp., which is now calling this product "radio paper." The company's head of research and development, Dr. Michael McCreary, is interviewed in the Wall Street Journal (registration required). By 2005, he says, the company will produce a display about the thickness of "a few sheets of paper" that can be refreshed with an electric charge, with superior resolution and much longer battery life than LCD screens.Will we see the product by then? I wouldn't bet on it — but Gannett and Hearst are two media companies that have made bets, in the form of equity investments. Ken Bronfin of Hearst Interactive Media notes the huge expenses associated with printing and distribution. "The idea of eliminating that cost, to a degree, is a dream for any company," he says. "It's a big, big idea."
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Posted 2:14 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Original Online Content: It IS Being Done
Steve Outing on a CBC Web project
CBC News Online today launched a special online-original report, "The Way We Work: Canada's Workforce in Transition." What's notable is that this project, which contains 60 (Web) pages of content, is 95% original content (reports from staff as well as pages where people tell their own stories). The last year hasn't seen a lot of online-original content by the Web operations of traditional media organizations — that is, the bad economy resulted in lots of "shovelware" — so this is a good indicator, perhaps, of the return of online content.
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Posted 10:59 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Denton's New Venture: Weblogs, the Next Level
Steve Outing on Web content innovation
Former Financial Times correspondent Nick Denton made a name for himself in the entrepreneurial world by founding Moreover, a Web aggregator of news headlines. Now he's off on a new venture, based in New York, involving weblogs. He's being vague at this point, but has posted a Web page with a general description of what he's up to: "This is an unabashed media idea, financially supported by advertising. ... (Weblogs) are an indispensable part of the Web, along with e-mail and search. But for the broader online public, and for advertisers, the medium is far too fragmented. ... There is still a need to make weblogs more accessible: to turn them from a cult phenomenon into mainstream media. This is the company's focus." Denton has a track record of identifying new Internet opportunities early in the game. This is a venture to watch.(Note: I changed the headline on this item, which originally referred to Denton's venture seeking to "commercialize" weblogs. Denton says he's sensitive to bloggers' likely resistance to commercializing their beloved new medium, and that is NOT what his new company seeks to do.)
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Posted 10:44 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Profits in 20.2 Months
Juan C. Camus on Internet e-commerce
Chilean Internet companies need an average of 20.2 months to become profitable, according an analysis made by Digital Economy Center, a private study center affiliated with the Santiago Chamber of Commerce, which began the work a week ago. The story was published by La Tercera and it showed that areas that are faster to get profits are e-learning (14 months) and Internet portals (18 months).The study makes no reference to news websites, but "common wisdom" says that none of them have achieved profitability yet. All of them, at the least, will need more than the months cited by the study to get there. The same paper established that about 61% of local companies have Internet access, 11% have a website, and 6% are selling through the Internet.
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Posted 5:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
New Technologies and Internet Will Change TV
Eva Domínguez on a television industry research
The new tendencies in the television industry landscape are not being pushed by audience behavior but by the use of new technologies and interactivity, according to Universidad de Navarra research. The study finds 11 tracks of this change, such as convergence of newsrooms, production of information regardless of platform (paper, TV, Internet ...), and interactivity, among them. In this sense, the results project an increasing participation of viewers in the creation of scripts. The Internet also will play a big role in the future, since high-bandwith connections will consolidate this medium as a relevant way of distributing TV products in upcoming years.
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Posted 2:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Americans Prefer Print Over Web Magazines
Vin Crosbie on online publishing
A survey by the consumer research subsidiary of a major advertising agency found that most Americans who do read publications online think that reading magazines that way is too inconvenient, and prefer to read magazines in printed format. InsightExpress, a unit of Interpublic ad agency NFO, telephoned an unreported number of American consumers about online magazine reading, according to Internet.Com's Advertising Report. InsightExpress reports that of those Americans who regularly read publications on the Internet, only 22% actually prefered reading magazines online, and that 73% said they wouldn't forgo paper magazines for online magazines even if the online editions cost half the printed editions' price. The major reasons given for dislike of online magazine reading were the inconvenience of using the Web (54%); online banner ads, pop-ups, and general distractions (47%); online magazine access charges (43%); and eye strain from reading online (23%)."Given that resources remain scarce, publishers would be better served to cut their losses when it comes to online and focus on their readers' overwhelming preference — high quality paper magazines. And any hopes of growing revenue with online magazines seem to be misguided as most readers expect online content to be free," commented InsightExpress COO Lee Smith. "Though online magazines have an advantage in that they can deliver real-time news and information, they don't stand a chance when competing for a reader's undivided attention. ... Online is not the magic bullet publishers were hoping for to retain readership."
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Posted 1:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Integrated Newsroom at Work
Steve Outing on print-online cooperation
When TLC band member and Atlantan Lisa Lopes died in a car crash in Honduras last Thursday, it was a big story for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Lopes was famous locally for burning down the mansion of then-boyfirend Andre Rison, a wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons.) AJC.com (the paper's website) editorial director Hyde Post explains that how the story got covered was a demonstration of the importance of a print-online integrated newsroom. Post: "Normally, we (the website) are dark online between 2 and 4 a.m. The printside staffer who works overnight saw a radio wire report that Lopes had been killed in a car wreck. He called our news editor at home. She called others from the online group and they had stories, photo galleries, and whatnot up by 6 a.m. And then the printside staff kicked in, filing a total of 22 news bursts on the story between dawn and 7 p.m. Plus several full pieces and some live audio from a recent interview. We had an extra 100,000 visitors Friday as a result. That kind of live contribution just would not happen if print and online staffs are separate."
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Posted 8:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspapers: Online Weekdays, Print on the Weekends
Paul Grabowicz on online media
A growing number of people appear to be reading their newspaper online while at work during the week, and prefer to get the print edition only on weekends. That's the new twist on convergence that Savannah Morning News managing editor Dan Suwyn found when readers were asked about their subscription habits. In a column for Poynter.org, Suwyn has some interesting ideas on how a newspaper might change its coverage to address that shifting readership.
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Posted 8:29 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Scratch Me, I'm Fun!
Katja Riefler on rich media advertising
Rich media advertising can be fun or intrusive. We've had a lot of discussion about this since its first introduction. In Europe the overwhelming Web advertising format is still the traditional banner. But now the German ad server company Adtech wants to renew viewers' interest and presents a nice collection of various new rich media banner formats. The newest one is obviously the "4to1 Banner." There are exploding ones, some with Flash animation or video, but if you ask me, my favorite is still the "Scratchy Banner." Probably those funny banners still have a long way to go. If you look at the most commonly used banners, for example at Horizont Net's "Bannerwatch," you won't find many of them yet.
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