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Posted 4:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
See Web History on the Wayback Machine
David Carlson on Web history
Unlike conventional, printed newspapers, one of the pitfalls of digital news delivery is that there often is no "morgue." When technology enables us to create a better website, the old site often is gone forever. That's where the Internet Archive and its "Wayback Machine" are stepping in. The "machine" offers access to an archive of more than 10 billion Web pages captured since 1996. The Internet Archive says it is "working to prevent the Internet — a new medium with major historical significance — and other "born-digital" materials from disappearing into the past." Thank goodness, because a trip on the "Wayback Machine" is a wonderful experience. "The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form," the site proclaims. "Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public." The archive, physically located in San Francisco, is operated by a non-profit corporation. Check it out at archive.org.
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Posted 3:14 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Not Exactly an Infinity of Choices
Steve Klein on streaming sports content
Mike McAllister, a columnist for the Dallas Morning News who writes about online sports, points out that "America's Team," the NFL Dallas Cowboys, do not make their radio game broadcasts available on the Internet. Even though these are not the best of times for the Cowboys -- they lost to the first-year Houston Texans last week -- it does deprive the team's large national following of Internet access. McAllister explains that the decision not to stream the games was made by Infinity Broadcasting, which owns KLUV, the Cowboys' flagship station. Infinity also owns the radio rights to nine other NFL teams, including such popular national favorites as the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants. And guess what? None of those teams' radio broadcasts are streamed on the Internet, either.So, what's the story? "Until all that stuff shakes out and a model shows that it's profitable, I don't see Infinity breaking down and doing anything different," said Craig Zurek, director of sales for the Cowboys Radio Network. McAllister points out that Internet audiences remain small compared to TV and radio audiences. The losers are the displaced fans, especially those of teams like the Cowboys who have large national followings. If you're a Cowboys' fan, however, who wants to listen to games on the Internet, there is some hope. Ten of the 15 remaining Dallas games can be heard on opponent's broadcasts (NFL.com has the links each week). You'll just have to put up with the blatant homerism.
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Posted 8:01 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
On the Bright Side, There's Less Competition ...
Steve Outing at the OJA judging
I'm in New York today helping to judge the Online Journalism Awards. The deliberations of the dozen judges are confidential — the finalists will be announced at the end of our meetings, and the winners at the Online News Association annual conference on October 18 — but I can offer one interesting tidbit. Last year's contest brought in entries from 419 companies and individuals. This year, that number dwindled to 200. It's not hard to guess the reason: the Internet downturn wiped out many of the online publishers who entered the 2001 OJA contest.
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Posted 1:22 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Reactions to 9/11: News From the Times of India Website
Madan Rao on differing views
On September 12, one day after the 9/11 anniversary, the home page of India's leading English daily, the Times of India, featured stories on U.S. remembrance of the 9/11 victims, the Indian Prime Minister's visit to Ground Zero, and his meeting with Indian families of the 9/11 victims. There were about 117 people of Indian origin among the dead, of whom 17 were Indian passport holders. The Times' home page also had links to related stories like "9/11/2002 in Asia: Fear, prayers, high alert"; "The year after: The plot thins, but U.S. spins"; and "The world must say no to Bush and stand by the people of Iraq." The world has sympathized with 9/11 victims and has a right to demand that Iraq comply with its disarmament obligations, but it must not legitimize U.S. contempt for international law and its attempts to press-gang the world into war, according to an opinion piece on the site.
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Posted 1:02 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Are Weblogs Journalism?
Rich Gordon on the continuing debate
The Los Angeles Times' Renee Tawa writes today about weblogs' "seeping into the popular consciousness," and whether they're legitimate journalism. One peg is UC Berkeley's weblogging class, which — depending who you read — is either a legitimization of blogs or "the Altamont of the blogging movement." In my new media classes at the Medill School of Journalism, I've been requiring students to write weblogs for two years now. A weblog is a great way to stimulate students to react to the topics we deal with in the course, and they appreciate the opportunity to write (and not just learn Web design, HTML, and Photoshop). But is it journalism? The most basic problem is that I have yet to find a simple, clear definition of journalism. Dictionaries describe it either as the reporting of news or as the content of publications/broadcasts. The second definition is circular; the first leaves you with the challenge of defining "news" (and the classic "man bites dog" definition doesn't work for most magazines or newspaper feature sections).For now, let me throw out a framework for consideration. Journalism has two components: the topics that are covered, and the nature of the coverage. The topics are recent events, trends, or patterns in the world around us ("recent" distinguishes journalism from history, "trends or patterns" goes beyond specific occurrences). The nature of the coverage falls into three categories: reporting (what's happening), analysis (why it's happening), and commentary (the journalist's opinions about what's happening and why). Using this definition, most topical weblogs clearly contain two of the three — analysis and commentary. There's a bigger question about reporting. In some weblogs, the reporting consists of pointing readers to what's been published on other websites, with no other information gathered by the author. In my view, a hyperlink alone is not journalism. But if you add analysis and/or commentary, it feels like journalism to me. Otherwise, William Safire, David Broder, and Tom Friedman aren't journalists.
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Posted 12:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
More on Chinese Censorship
Steve Klein on censorship
Following up on an item in E-Media Tidbits last week by Andrew Stroehlein, both The New York Times and the The Washington Post have stories today about the People's Republic of China blocking access to both Google and AltaVista search engines. Peter S. Goodman and Mike Musgrove reported in the Post that the Google site was accessible again Thursday morning in China, but that some content linked from the site remained blocked -- for example, Tibetan independence sites.More than 45 million Chinese use the Internet. However, by blocking search engines, the Post story reports, "the government is intensifying its effort to control the flow of information while at the same time embracing the profit-making potential of the global computer network. ... China's broadening censorship highlights the central tension underlying its transition from a closed and centrally planned economy to one where market forces hold sway: The Communist Party remains committed to maintaining its monopolistic grip on political power by controlling what Chinese people see and read, but it also wants private investors to take over the state's role as the engine of economic growth." Perhaps most surprising, a source told the Post that "the amount of information that was available via Google was shocking to the leadership."
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Posted 1:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Tip for TiVo
Steve Outing on media and the common good
I'm a big fan of TiVo, the personal video recorder. Last night, I watched President Bush's speech about 9/11 and the war against terror — live, not recorded on my TiVo. Now, I hardly ever watch live TV any more. (Even sporting events I begin to watch an hour or two after they start so that I can skip past the commercials and boring parts.) This got me to thinking that TiVo (and competitor ReplayTV/Sonic Blue) need to program in a new feature that has the PVRs automatically record momentous events that EVERYONE ought to know about: breaking news bulletins for really serious news; presidential addresses; etc.I'm talking about the kind of stuff that used to be broadcast to everyone with a TV set, on every channel, in the "old days" before digital technology, the hundred-plus-channel cable TV line-up, and the hundreds of Web news sites now available. With the media universe so broad and the audience fragmented, and the opportunities for consumers to craft their media consumption precisely to their specific interests, it's become harder for an entire citizenry to be exposed to what used to be universally viewed programming. Perhaps PVR manufacturers could do something about that.
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Posted 9:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Modest 9/11 Web Traffic Gains
Steve Outing on online 9/11 coverage
Allow me to follow up on my earlier item (two below this) about Web traffic at news sites today. Here are a few other sites' results.
AZCentral.com got about 10% higher than normal for page-views, and 20% higher for unique visitors. Most-viewed stories had nothing to do with 9/11.
WashingtonPost.com's multimedia features were getting "extremely heavy traffic today," says a spokesman. Server load was 35-40% above normal (due to the load from the bandwidth-heavy multimedia).
Tribune Interactive newspaper sites as a group exceeded their bandwidth allotment, also due to demand for multimedia features. Newsday.com had a particularly high number of multimedia offerings.
Nando Times this afternoon was projecting a 72% increase in page-views today (September 11) over the previous day, and a 102% increase over a week prior. One of the most popular pieces of content: a victim database containing a page for each victim.
Los Angeles Newspaper Group websites report that traffic was 33% higher than a week ago, and 30% higher than yesterday.
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Posted 8:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Photo Approach to Make Users Pause
Steve Klein on online 9/11 coverage
It should come as no surprise that USAToday.com has an extensive package of stories, photos, and multimedia to mark the first anniversary of the September 11 events. What is unique, however, is the four-photo rotating Flash animation that the site has been using with its main photo element on its home page. The device definitely should result in users lingering a bit longer on the page. It will be interesting to see under what other circumstances it utilizes this device.
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Posted 1:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Perhaps They've Had Enough?
Steve Outing on online 9/11 coverage
I've been asking around about news website traffic today, the one-year anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks on the U.S. Will Outlaw, deputy editor of StarTribune.com, just checked in with a report that may surprise you. It's been a "fairly normal" day (through late morning) in terms of traffic numbers, he says. The top-drawing story: "a reasonably routine, albeit exclusive, Minnesota Vikings story." The top-read 9/11 article on the site comes in at No. 11 — a listing of 9/11-related events happening today. "I would expect the 9/11 related content to continue to move up the list but don't expect any of it to be in our top 10 pages for the day," he says. Could it be that online users have had enough of anniversary coverage? It will be fascinating to see if other news sites have similar experiences today.Outlaw offered another interesting statistical tidbit: "Comparisons with traffic a year ago aren't really that accurate as we've seen continued growth since 9/11/01. We served more than 2 million pages on 9/11/01 and 1.9 million on 9/12/01. By point of comparison, we served nearly 2 million pages on Monday (9/9/02 and our second-highest traffic ever) and an 'average' day for us lately has been around 1.7 million pages."
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Posted 12:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Thinking About Community Online
Rich Gordon on what works — and what doesn't
Clay Shirky, who maintains an e-mail newsletter on "Networks, Economics, and Culture," has written an interesting essay about online communities. "Real community is a self-creating thing, with some magic spark, easy to recognize after the fact but impossible to produce on demand," he writes. He focuses on the challenges that traditional media companies face in trying to build communities. One of the most significant is systemic — moving from a world where a media company filters out information first, then publishes, to one where the community publishes and "the good is sorted from the mediocre after the fact." He adds, "Media people often criticize the content on the Internet for being unedited. ... What they fail to understand is that the Internet is strongly edited, but the editorial judgment is applied at the edges, not the center, and it is applied after the fact, not in advance."
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Posted 12:14 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Remembrance Day
Carla Passino on September 11 entries in American weblogs
Whether meditative or sanguine, traditional media coverage of the first anniversary of September 11 suffers from a degree of sameness. From the Washington Post to the New York Times, from The Times (Britain) to La Repubblica (Italy), newspapers (and their online editions) carry similar stories and similar pictures.Much more moving are the myriad weblogs where people have posted their very personal recollections of the day: Calpundit with his five lines on how he learned of the attacks; Jeff Jarvis with his guilt and his sense of duty; James Lileks with his letter to the man he was a year ago. They don't "cover" the anniversary. They live it.
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Posted 11:59 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Essential Internet
Steve Outing on new media-usage research
This story is a few days old, but I just noticed it. A new survey of 2,500 consumers finds that the Internet is the "most essential" medium in the lives of 20% of Americans. According to the new research by Arbitron and Edison Media Research, 34% chose the Internet as the most "cool and exciting" medium — 1% less than television. Among 12- to 34-year-olds, 46% said the Internet was the most essential medium; only 29% picked TV. With findings like this repeatedly emerging, the "troubled" Internet sector won't remain troubled for long.
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Posted 9:42 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Feeling Overloaded?
Steve Outing on 9/11 anniversary Web traffic
If something like an anniversary attack happens today, Web usage could go through the roof again — as it did last September 11. If this does turn out to be a busy news day, you may want to look to the advice of Adrian Holovaty on his weblog. He offers some ideas about how to pare down a news site's pages to accommodate a crushing load of users. Let's hope his good advice isn't needed.
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Posted 4:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
9/11, and Nothing But 9/11
Steve Outing on the anniversary
Have you noticed that the news media (especially in the U.S.) is making a bit of a big deal about tomorrow's anniversary of the U.S. terrorist attacks? Of course you noticed, unless you live on another planet or somehow have managed to unplug yourself from all media. If you're not yet burned out on the anniversary coverage, both Poynter.org and the American Press Institute are compiling lists of some of the best media coverage. API's CyberJournalist.net site categorizes the best types of coverage. And at Poynter.org (publisher of this weblog), there's a "Chronicling the Coverage" weblog listing an assortment of great 9/11 coverage, contributed by Poynter staff and faculty, as well as Poynter.org readers.
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Posted 11:31 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Journalist's Internet Play
Steve Outing on the theater and Sept. 11
One of the first (it may have been THE first) books about the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., 09/11 8:48 AM; Documenting America's Greatest Tragedy, set a milestone. Co-edited by Ethan Casey of Blue Ear and Jay Rosen, chairman of the journalism department at New York University, this "instant" book of people's experiences on that day (many of them journalists) was produced and edited via Internet collaboration. (Here's an article I wrote last November about the project.) Now comes word, as written up by M.J. Rose at Wired News, that the book has become a stage play. It opens on Wednesday evening (of course) at London's Old Vic Theatre. Rose says it's the first significant theater production conceived entirely on the Internet.
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Posted 11:01 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Phone Home for Sports
Steve Klein on wireless sports content
Now that we're no longer mad at baseball (right?), we must not be able to get enough of it (right?). With the playoffs and World Series fast approaching, RealNetworks and Major League Baseball have combined to provide live audio broadcasts of baseball games through cellular phones, according to a story by Nick Wingfield in the Wall Street Journal. AT&T Wireless Services is the first carrier to offer this service to its 20 million customers; it will charge fans $19.95 to listen to an unlimited number of games during the remainder of the baseball season. The time customers spend on phones listening to games counts against monthly minutes on wireless plans. The game audio is delivered over the Internet by RealNetworks before it is transmitted over the wireless network.The big plus will be for displaced or traveling fans who can't access their local radio or television broacast. Writes Wingfield: "Live baseball broadcasts have long been available over the Web and people can receive sports scores on pagers, but Major League Baseball executives said this was the first time fans could tune into any live baseball broadcast when they are roving around, whether in a taxi on a business trip or at the mall." The service has applications beyond baseball. "Part of our strategy is to take the Internet off the PC onto other devices," said Larry Jacobson, president of RealNetworks. The company says it is speaking to other wireless carriers about offering similar sports services.
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Posted 6:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
USA Today's New Generation
Steve Klein on the future of online news
Well worth reading: Advertising Age Washington bureau chief Ira Teinowitz's interview with USA Today president and publisher Tom Curley. Among Curley's comments: "We are no longer a newspaper; we are a network. We feed content to TV. We feed content to the Internet from the same core platform. ... The basic content of the newspaper is going to be on the Web. But the Web is also going in different directions that we call content verticals ... taking certain content areas and going deeper. ... We did (make money) for a couple of years. We are not now. But it's on its way back. For the last many months it was devalued as a medium. ... Now, it's coming back and there is a healthy attitude in the ad community that it works for these things. ... It's about connections and about targeting customers more directly than other mass media do."
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Posted 6:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
WSJ.com Returns to New York City
Steve Outing on Sept. 11 aftermath
The 85-person staff of WSJ.com, the website of the Wall Street Journal, today began moving to new offices in Manhattan after a year in New Jersey following the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. The Journal's office was near the destroyed WTC. The online staff will move to a different location in SoHo, while other departments of the Journal and parent Dow Jones Co. will return to the now-smaller World Financial Center. Here's a brief report posted on WSJ.com.
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Posted 11:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
SportsJournalists.com Goes Dark
Steve Klein on online sports content
You've probably heard the sarcastic cliche: If it's in the newspaper, it must be true. No one has ever said that about online news, but you still hate to see a source of information close down or go out of business, no matter how controversial it may happen to be. And so it is with SportsJournalists.com, which closed down last week, according to SportsPages.com. "After some soul searching and long hours of thinking, SportsJournalists.com was closed down," the anonymous webmaster known as Webby told SportsPages.com. "There was not one specific issue that lead to the site shutting its doors."SportsJournalists.com gained popularity when SportsPages.com discontinued its anonymous message board. SportsJournalists.com's anonymous forum peaked when former New York Post columnist Wallace Matthews posted a column on the board that his editors had refused to run objecting to that paper's Page 6 gossip page item on New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza and gays in baseball. The column got SportsJournalists.com mentioned in newspapers across the country and increased the site's traffic by 400%.
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Posted 11:41 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Good News About Online Advertising
Steve Outing on reaching the business person
AdAge.com has an interesting story today, citing new research that shows that the Web is now the No. 1 medium for reaching business decision-makers. The study surveyed nearly 1,000 executives and managers and found that 60% said the Web is the best way for advertisers to reach them. Nearly half said the Web had influenced a purchase decision for their business. This research (by Nielsen/NetRatings' @plan and Minnesota Opinion Research) mirrored findings of earlier research on business decision-makers. Because the Web is such an ideal medium for reaching business people at their desks, this bodes well for the future of online advertising. It's just a matter of time before the ad industry begins to more significantly shift more of its spending to the Internet — and end the long online ad slump.
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Posted 11:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
At Odds With Each Other?
Laura Ruel on the value of ALL media
At a time when new-media journalists are seizing the opportunities presented by the integration of all forms of media, I was surprised to learn of a recent media promotion. National Newspaper Week is October 6-12. Since 1940, the Newspaper Association Managers have sponsored and financially supported this event, which is "a week-long celebration showcasing the impact of newspapers on the everyday lives of our citizens." Quite a noble, valuable and important undertaking, I believe. What I find surprising, however, are the ads distributed to promote the week. One reads: "You've visited six websites, four chat rooms, and responded to 15 e-mails. So what have you learned? Make the time you spend pursuing information really matter. Read a newspaper." There are other ads with similar references to radio and television. (You can link to the ads via this page on the Kentucky Press Association's website.)Because their jobs revolve around integrating all forms of media, new-media journalists have been some of the first to realize the value and effectiveness of every form of communicating the news. I find it ironic that these newspaper ads are being distributed online. And, oh, I learned about National Newspaper Week while surfing the Web.
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Posted 11:04 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Huskers Go Big on Streaming
Steve Klein on online sports content
When you have a football program like the University of Nebraska's — not to mention other successful sports like women's volleyball — there's an audience that extends far beyond the confines of Lincoln, Nebraska. So it makes sense that the a revamped Huskers website is now offering streaming media of games, interviews with coaches, and even clips from practices — at a price, of course, as premium content. "We have so much content, but we've never had a vehicle to present it to our fans," said Larry Punteney, the site's senior producer. Now, with HuskerNside, as the subscription service is called, the university will package that footage as exclusive video content, updated daily.The university already sends a film crew to all Nebraska sports events, so HuskerNside will be able to show entire competitions of sports that usually aren't televised. With football, if the networks with broadcast rights don't show a game, it can be streamed online. The site, which has been online since August 12, has 500 subscribers. "People are really eating it up," said Punteney. Rates run $10 a month, but subscribers can get a six-month football-season subscription for $40 and an entire year for $100. Look for other university athletic programs to get in on this growing trend.
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