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Posted 4:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Borrell Fends Off a Monster
Steve Outing on being quoted out of context
Interactive news industry consultant Gordon Borrell is annoyed at online employment giant Monster.com for quoting him out of context in a PowerPoint presentation being shown by Monster executives. Borrell's quote (from an American Press Institute article he wrote): "The Internet has become the leading medium for recruitment. It IS more cost-efficient than newspaper advertising. And it DOES deliver a host of capabilities such as resume-filtering and instantaneous contact that newspapers will never be able to match in their print form." Monster uses this quote to support the idea that newspapers will benefit by teaming up with it.Foul!, says Borrell (as reported by Editor & Publisher). He does not recommend that newspapers sign up with Monster, and he professes the belief that newspapers will "give Monster two black eyes and tear off their limbs and feed it to them."
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Posted 3:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Don't Be Illiterate, Learn About the Internet
Eva Domínguez on a program to eradicate technological illiteracy
The Spanish government plans to eradicate technological illiteracy by launching a program to teach the Internet to all citizens. The program, named Internet para todos (Internet for all), is intended to avoid the social differences caused by the ignorance of the Internet. The courses, divided in basic, medium, and advanced levels, take 15 hours and cost 15 Euros. At the end, the pupil will have a Surfer Card, which certifies Internet competence.
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Posted 11:16 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Not a Good Deal
Steve Outing on absurdly long URLs
TheDeal.com debuted a redesign recently, and as part of the change, stories on the site now sport really, really, really long URLs. (Example: http://www.thedeal.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer? pagename=TheDeal/TDDArticle/TDStandardArticle&Box1=NULL&Box2= NULL&banner=NULL&c=TDDArticle&cid=1021505321228.) Long URLs (often necessary because of the design of content management systems) are quite awful. The main reason is that many people send URLs via e-mail — to tell a friend about a story, or other reasons — and the e-mail recipients of such long URLs have to do manual cutting and pasting into their Web browsers to get to the content. Clicking on a way-too-long URL doesn't work in many e-mail applications. As Rafat Ali (of Venture Reporter) noted when he pointed out TheDeal.com's redesign, "In this day and age of URL mapping, shouldn't they be simplifying this instead of complicating them?"
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Posted 10:52 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Marketing? Not Budgeted
Vin Crosbie on a news industry shortcoming
Peter Zollman's May 3 item on this weblog ("Tampa Tribune Offers Electronic Edition (Shhh...)") about poor promotions of online newspapers' services reminded me that in 2000 a survey by the International Newspaper Marketing Association found that the average INMA-member newspaper in the U.S. spends only 1.57% of its revenues on marketing and promotion. By comparison, a recent Harvard Business School survey found that the average packaged-goods manufacturer spent 8-10%, and the average retail store spent 4-6%. How much of that 1.57% did the average newspaper spend on marketing and promoting its online service? Only 1/20th (an amount equal to only 8/10,000ths of the newspaper's revenue)! So, not only are some newspapers failing to properly market and promote their online services on their own sites, as Peter mentioned, but most newspapers fail to spend much money marketing and promoting any of their print or online services. That parsimony is astounding if you consider that the average U.S. newspaper suffers between 20% and 60% annual churn in print subscribers and faces formidable competition online.(Editor's note: Vin Crosbie is the Internet columnist for the International Newspaper Marketing Association.)
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Posted 10:35 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Would You Like Slaughtered Cow With Your Salad?
Steve Outing on the importance of URLs
Judy Pokras, founder and editor of Raw Foods News, an online news-magazine about the "raw vegan lifestyle," has a problem. A prankster (Pokras thinks it's someone she knows) registered the URL RawFoodNews.com — note the missing "s" — and is pointing it to the website of Omaha Steaks. Pokras has written to Omaha Steaks executives asking if they will block site traffic coming via the RawFoodNews.com domain, but hasn't heard back yet. She says she always intended to buy the "s"-less domain, but the prankster beat her to it. There's an obvious lesson here for other Web publishers.
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Posted 5:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Cartoons Should Move!
Steve Outing on old-new media
Cartoons on the Web (and in other digital media) are primarily static images — just like traditional print cartoons. This needn't and shouldn't be the case, says J.D. Lasica in his Online Journalism Review article from earlier this week. Are animated online cartoons rare because of the cost involved in producing them? Not so, says Lasica — there are inexpensive ways to created moving cartoons. There's hope: "There are signs the winter of animation hibernation is nearing an end," he writes. Watch for links to animated online cartoons throughout Lasica's article.
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Posted 4:23 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
AJR.org Arrives, at Last
Steve Outing on journalism magazine's website
The website of American Journalism Review, AJR.org, debuted this week with its redesign. This has been in the works for a long time, and the magazine has effectively operated without a site for many months. Previously, AJR.org was mostly just a teaser for the print magazine, rather than a viable media vehicle of its own. The new site features full text of AJR content, which the previous site did not. (I'll point you to the May column of Poynter's Barb Palser, who writes occasionally for this weblog.)
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Posted 11:34 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Save a Thousand Words
Jade Walker on useful multimedia
In such an interactive medium, it's amazing how often online journalists forget to think outside the box. We're all so focused on publishing short, punchy articles that we overlook the Web's other unique capabilities. I'm talking about multimedia, folks.The cliche is true: a picture (or a sound) is worth a thousand words. You can write 90 inches on the September 11th attack at the World Trade Center, but it won't have the impact of watching a 10-second video clip showing an airplane fly into one of the towers. When TLC singer Lisa Lopes died, her fans were devastated. But for those unfamiliar with her music, a short audio clip published beside her obituary would have served as an excellent informational tool. CNet offers another good example of how multimedia can aid a reader's online experience. In a story about how organized hackers stay one step ahead of law enforcement, the technology news wire published an animated graphic that explains just how a hacker invades a computer system and then escapes undetected. Check it out -- it really gives the story an added dimension readers are sure to appreciate.
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Posted 11:27 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Closing the Digital Divide in Brazil
Steve Klein on Internet access
In another attempt to close the digital divide between the wired and the unwired, Brazil will install computer kiosks in post offices around the country where people will be able to log on to the Internet, according to a story on Wired.com. Correios, Brazil's postal agency, plans to have at least one computer in each of Brazil's 5,366 post offices. As a way of encouraging people to use the service, the first 10 minutes will be free; fee rates for longer sessions have yet to be determined."Of course we intend to charge a very low price, at least lower than cybercafes," said Fausto Weiler, Correios' assessor in the capital city of Brasilia. "Our goal is to open this new world for those who can't afford to buy a computer, even in the countryside." The next step, according to Weiler, is to create a project called Permanent Electronic Address (PEA) that will supply every Brazilian with a free, private e-mail account.
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Posted 11:20 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Tough Times at SportsLine
Steve Klein on online sports staffing
A brief item in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel notes that SportsLine.com, the Fort Lauderdale-based Internet sports media company, has reduced its local work force by 25 employees. The newspaper reports that the company now has 240 employees in Fort Lauderdale and 310 nationwide. At the beginning of 2001, SportsLine had 450 workers.With the contraction of competitive online sports sites following the death of the pure-plays (like Total Sports and Quokka), the bricks-and-clicks sites like ESPN, The Sporting News, CNNSI.com, and CBS SportsLine remain — thriving or barely surviving depending on the bottom-line mercy of their parent companies. So who will survive? A hint could be the degree to which each property is integrated across media. As a model, The Sporting News does a great deal right, but the website is not going to be any more successful than the print magazine is profitable. Just how much interest CBS has in SportsLine's independent growth is anybody's guess. CNNSI went off the air this week — not a good sign for the website. The smart bet remains the obvious one: ESPN.
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Posted 11:14 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Smothered by Convergence?
Vin Crosbie on convergence in Canada
The uncertain business models and finances of media convergence may wind up "smothering" media companies, according to André Préfontaine, head of one of Canada's largest consumer magazine publishers, the Globe & Mail reports. "Once heralded as a great money maker, convergence has turned out to be more of a Pandora's box for many of its architects," the president of Transcontinental Media Inc., publishing arm of Montreal's GTC Transcontinental Group Ltd., told a Toronto audience on Tuesday. He cited examples such as the merger of AOL and Time Warner. "These great convergence empires have a hard time making a good return on their investments and may find themselves smothering in their ivory towers." Préfontaine expects that Canada's debt-heavy convergence players will soon be forced to restructure operations.
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Posted 10:46 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Employment Ad Blues
Peter Zollman on the employment classified collapse
It's a good thing for newspapers that the housing market is still strong and that dealers are still selling cars — because employment advertising is still a disaster area. The Newspaper Association of America reported this week that auto advertising during Q1 at U.S. and Canadian newspapers was up 4.7% (year-over-year) to $1.1 billion and real estate increased 2.8% to $766 million. The "all other" category was up 6.6% to $546 million. But employment, the most lucrative and (until recently) the highest-revenue category, was down 38.4% to $1 billion.Some of the revenue will come back as hiring picks up, of course, and year-over-year comparisons will get much more favorable starting with Q2, because the fall-off began in Q2 of 2001. But while most newspapers continue to see growth in their online revenue, it will be a long time — most likely forever — before they see print employment advertising reach the lofty levels of 2001.
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Posted 1:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Deep Linking Redux
Rich Gordon on the latest copyright skirmish
The latest controversy over "deep linking" involves Rodale Press, which objects to the fact that a website for runners is linking directly to the "printer-friendly" version of stories on the Runner's World website. While this may seem like just another example of a traditional publisher trying to stop a practice that's central to the value of the Web, I think Rodale is in a much stronger position legally than other companies that have tried to block deep links. In this case, LetsRun.com is not only deep linking, they're linking to versions of a story that don't carry ads. Under U.S. copyright law, financial impact is one of the key factors that determines whether a given practice qualifies as "fair use" of copyrighted material. I'm not a copyright lawyer, but it seems self-evident that a link to a "normal" Web page, with all its ads and navigation, presents a stronger "fair use" case than a link to a "printer friendly" page without those revenue-producing features.
Posted 10:54 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-Mail Still Dominates
Vin Crosbie on the demand for newsletters.
Electronic Mail is still the dominant online application, according to the Nielsen//Netratings First Quarter 2002 Global Internet Trends report (PDF format) issued last week. "Of all the popular Internet applications, e-mail is the global activity of choice," said Richard Goosey, chief of measurement science for Nielsen//Netratings. E-mail has always been more frequently used than the Web, but Nielsen//Netratings also found that e-mail was more than twice as heavily used as chat rooms, instant messaging, or listening to streaming or pre-recorded audio or video online. That should be no surprise, particularly to publishers of tech magazines and trade journals.The Boston Globe on Monday reported that magazine publisher International Data Group and rival TechTarget have greatly increased their e-mail newsletter efforts. "We can't produce them fast enough," said IDG President and CEO Kelly Conlin.
Posted 10:44 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Taxes Paid, Refunds Delivered
Juan C. Camus on Internet tax filing in Chile
More than 54 percent of Chilean taxpayers completed their duties through the Internet during “Operación Renta 2002,” the nationwide procedure to declare taxes, according information given by “Servicio de Impuestos Internos”, our version of the United States' IRS.This agency, which has been moving forward in providing e-services, offered to every taxpayer a proposal about their income and payments for the year. Taxpayers simply had to accept if they agreed with the numbers provided. No fillings, no papers and no seals on papers. Just the “submit” button.
According numbers published by Mouse e-Zine more than 1.2 million taxpayers used the system, while 920,000 went the paper route. That is an increase of more than 45 percent over the previous year. And the good news is that during the present week, some of them will receive their income tax returns, transferred through the Internet to their bank accounts.
Posted 10:36 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Price of Spam in Chile
Juan C. Camus on the cost of handling junk e-mail
Every Internet user in Chile will receive more than 700 e-mails from spam sources during year 2002, according a new study released by Santiago Chamber of Commerce, a local private e-study center.The document calculates that every user needs about a minute to download, read and discard each message, totalling 12 hours per year. In nationwide numbers, the study established that national economy will lose about $36.1 million due to spam-related jobs. The study also laments that the last legislation concerning citizens' private data (passed in 1998) didn’t prohibit spam.
Posted 3:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Profits in Travel
Andrew Stroehlein on travel sites
Two UK travel sites have just recorded domestic profits for the first time. Of course, Lastminute.com and Ebookers are both making pre-tax losses in their international operations overall, but this seems due to agressive expansion plans in Europe, as Owen Gibson reported for MediaGuardian on Friday and Monday. The news of domestic profitability is a positive sign not only for the online media but also for the travel industry, still recovering from the downturn after Sept. 11.
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Posted 3:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
All You Need Is... Football!
Juan C. Camus on Internet contents
If you have a website in a Latin American country these days, all you need to put on your front page is a soccer section. (By the way: soccer is the name of the sport in the USA, but in the rest of the world it is "football.")The World Cup begins at the end of May, so many of eyeballs will be going to the Web's sports sections.
Soccer fever crosses all countries; even in those that have no teams in the World Cup, such as Chile, the main portals and news websites have football sections (such as Terra and Emol).In the countries that do have a national team on the sport summit, you can see great websites developed at news sites. Some examples: Argentina with La Nación; Ecuador with El Comercio; Brazil with O Globo; and Mexico with El Universal.
The importance of the World Cup can be summarized in just one site: Yahoo!. The global portal has developed an alliance with Fifa and set up a website in seven languages.
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