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Posted 6:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Flash Cartoons Against Bush
Steve Outing on Web politics
The Democratic National Committee has begun using animated Flash cartoons in the fight against President Bush and Republican candidates, points out my Poynter colleague, Julie Moos. The DNC website currently features "Social Insecurity," an animation that shows Bush kicking a young man and an old woman in a wheelchair down a steeply declining stock-market slope — with audio berating the Republican proposal to put Social Security funds into the stock market. Says Moos, "It's really interesting to see it taken as seriously in terms of the political debate as a TV ad." (Here's an Associated Press story about the debate over the online cartoon.)
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Posted 2:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
1-3 Free Stories a Day Beats Hiding Behind Subscription Wall
Steve Outing on online business models
In an MSNBC.com piece from earlier this week about business models of sex-content and online personals websites was an interesting concept. A personals site called AdultFriendFinder allows free registration, which allows a user to view three profiles per 24 hours without charge. To view more profiles costs $19.95 or $29.95 a month. This is a model that could be applied to mainstream content websites. I dare say that Salon.com would do better offering registered users one free Salon Premium story a day than its existing system of blocking 100% of premium stories from "freeloaders." That one story a day could serve as an effective teaser to showcase the quality of articles behind the subscription wall, and better demonstrate why Salon Premium is worth paying for. Newspaper websites that have taken the dubious approach of putting all content behind a wall, and allowing only paying online subscribers or print-edition subscribers to see anything, also should consider this approach. (Thanks to The End of Free weblog, where I happened upon this.)
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Posted 12:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Journalists' Favorite Web Sources
Steve Outing on a resource survey
Howard Finberg has published the results of a survey of readers of American Press Institute's NewsFuture e-mail newsletter, in which they were asked what websites they "simply can't live without." No. 1: the search engine Google. No surprise there. Here's the full list of sites mentioned by journalists. (Note: Link to the main newsletter above gets you to last month's edition; the new edition is received by e-mail subscribers.)
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Posted 12:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Salon Retracts
Steve Outing on online corrections
Salon has taken down a story published in August that accused the U.S. Secretary of the Army, Thomas E. White, of participating in questionable accounting practices while he was an executive at Enron. According to a piece in today's New York Times, Salon removed the article from its site because a critical piece of evidence, a "smoking gun" e-mail attributed to White, could not be authenticated. The Salon report was cited in the mainstream press, including by a prominent Times columnist, who had to retract his own column on the topic, because he cited the Salon report. Earlier this week, Salon's editors publicly explained why they took down the original article.
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Posted 11:04 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Ads: One Face to the Customer
Katja Riefler on a new standardizing initiative in Germany
Online advertising was the only advertising format to grow during 2001 in Germany, though customers still complain of the lack of common standards and advertising-reach measurement. One of the obstacles for future growth now seems to belong to the past: the online ad agencies agreed to discontinue their competing studies "Online Reichweiten Monitor" (provided by Agirev) and "@facts" in favor on a new common study. The first results of the new initiative "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Online Forschung" will be presented to the public next summer.
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Posted 4:38 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Managing Editor's Weblog
Steve Outing on online journals
Hurray for Hank Kalet, managing editor of the South Brunswick Post, who has started writing a regular weblog for the paper's website. Called Channel Surfing, the blog is a "way to more quickly react to the news of the day ... and to allow for a free flow of ideas back and forth from writer to reader," Kalet says. "What I am hoping to do is present an online version of the journal I've been keeping since my freshman year in college, a 22-year endeavor that has kept me sane, kept me thinking, and kept me writing." How nice to see a newspaper executive try blogging as a way to better stay in touch with readers. I'd love to see this happen at some larger papers. (Thanks to the Spartaneity Project for alerting me to Kalet's blog.)
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Posted 4:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Most European Newspapers Believe in Digital Editions
Vin Crosbie on on electronic publishing
Almost all of the European newspapers contacted in a recent survey believe that digital editions will become commercially viable later this decade. The Digital Dots consulting firm, in partnership with the Ifra newspaper research bureau, asked 50 major newspapers in Europe if digital editions — such as those now produced through NewsStand.com, NewspaperDirect, Olive Software, PEPC PressPoint, or produced by newspapers' own software — will become a profitable and significant part of their newspapers' circulation. Nearly 90% responded yes. By my own consulting company's count, nearly 200 daily newspapers, mostly European and Asian major dailies, now produce and distribute digital editions.
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Posted 3:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Am Geek, Will Travel
David Carlson on hotels for geeks
What's a self-respecting Internet geek to do when he or she is on the road? I don't know about you, but I'm so spoiled that dial-up just doesn't cut it for me anymore. We all know there are hotels that provide high-speed Internet access, but short of calling them, how do we know which ones they are? Enter GeekTools.com and its wonderful list of "geektels." From Aruba to the United Arab Emirates, GeekTools lists hotels that offer high-speed access in hundreds of cities, including 2,115 hotels in the United States. The listings are complete with address, telephone number, and Web link. What it doesn't list is how much the access costs, but with the provided contact information, it's not hard to find out.
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Posted 11:04 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Popular E-Publishing Column Canceled
Jade Walker on industry news coverage
Five years after launching the E-publishing Ink column on Wired.com, MJ Rose has decided to cease its weekly publication. The reason? E-books and electronic publishing have become integrated into the whole publishing process, thus news of separate innovation has dried up. "My column was created to cover news in the e-book world and publishing news that originated on the Web, or lived online. ... But in the last six months it has become increasingly difficult to find and lately I've been feeling as if I'm doing PR not covering real news," Rose stated in her farewell article.Rose still plans to cover the electronic publishing industry — when news breaks — but she also intends to focus her attention on her burgeoning fiction career and on a new marketing venture for authors and publishers, scheduled to start this fall.
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Posted 10:15 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Voice of Multimedia
Steve Outing on "rich" Web content
I'm pleased to see that multimedia content is becoming more common at major news websites these days. Today's example comes from the New York Times — an interactive slide show to accompany a food article. Author Nigella Lawson is featured in an audio slide show (direct link not available; look for the Multimedia link), talking about two British "comfort foods." The technique used is slightly different than I've seen before, with images changing automatically as Lawson speaks, and camera pans of the photos making the presentation seem more alive than static images — but without the bandwidth requirements of the same content done in Web video. Increasingly, Web multimedia is bringing voice (literally) to print journalists. It's a trend to be applauded.
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Posted 10:12 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Is Amber a Proper Use of the Medium?
Steve Outing on child-abduction alerts
Earlier this week, CBS Marketwatch reported that America Online is joining in the "Amber Alert" program, which distributes emergency notifications about kidnapped or missing children in the U.S. AOL plans to distribute alerts to users only in states where the messages are appropriate. Methods of distribution include on PCs, in e-mail, through mobile phones and pagers.Frankly, I'm not sure what to think of this. As a parent, I laud new efforts to quickly solve child abductions, and AOL can reach a lot of people. As an online publisher, I'm uncomfortable in making an interactive medium into the equivalent of a one-way medium like television. I'm not sure that an ISP (and AOL is the world's biggest ISP) should be interrupting what is an interactive experience (in which, by definition, the user sees what he/she seeks out) with unasked-for content, no matter how noble the cause. I'll raise the issue here, and let you discuss it. What do you think? (Click the link directly below.)
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Posted 2:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Powerful Journalism, Effective Multimedia Storytelling
Steve Outing on LATimes.com's "Enrique" series
The Los Angeles Times is publishing a moving enterprise package this week, "Enrique's Journey," about a Honduran boy who heads on a dangerous journey to the U.S. to find his mother. The six-part series is great journalism. But what I want to point out is how the package, which for print was text and still images, has been significantly enhanced online. LATimes.com is doing outstanding work with this sort of thing — adding multimedia elements like Web video and Flash slide shows to Times writers' work to make the online experience of reading a special package so much more compelling than the print experience. Note the video narration of specific sections of the content by the package's author, Sonia Nazario; also the photo slide show, which has an innovative technique for displaying photo captions.
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Posted 12:36 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Inside Google News
Steve Outing with a follow-up
Last week, many of us were talking about Google News, a powerful and ground-breaking addition to the news search world (and, I think, a potential threat to news sites, as well as an opportunity). Today, search guru Chris Sherman reviews Google News in his SearchDay column. Sherman digs deeper than other coverage in terms of the technology that makes the decisions about story placement within Google News. Worth a look, as some of the Google technology potentially could apply to news sites.
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Posted 12:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Teoma May Give Google a Run
David Carlson on Web search
There's a new gun, 'er search engine, in town — at least it's new to me. Teoma not only matches your search term with an expansive list of "hits," it also provides a list of related resources and tips on how to refine your search. One thing I particularly like is a simple checkbox on the main search page to "find this phrase." The site claims to go "beyond traditional page ranking methods" to determine authority and relevance. It says it ranks sites based on the number of same-subject pages that reference them, not just general popularity. Also check out the "Refine" heading on the search results page. It offers easy ways to "sharpen" search terms.
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Posted 11:49 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Portal Dumps 15,000 Paying Customers
Ernst Poulsen on monthly fees vs. micropayments
In just 12 months, the Danish portal Jubii has managed to convince 15,000 users to pay an annual fee of 250 Dkr (US$30) to join its Jubii Nation concept. The fee covered special services like chat, e-mail addresses, high-quality Web radio, discounts at restaurants, etc. Jubii is the largest Danish website, with approximately 1 million unique users per week and 20 million page-views a month.Although 15,000 paying customers seems like a high number in a country with 5 million inhabitants, Jubii has decided to close down the entire "Jubii Nation" concept in favor of micro payments. "The trend is clear — the entire media market is moving toward more flexible products, to meet the still more individual needs of customers," says CEO Martin Thorborg in an interview with the Danish edition of Computerworld Online. Jubii initially will let readers use either credit cards or the "Valus" micropayment system, which is backed by 50 media websites in Denmark.
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Posted 6:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
In Columbus, Throwing Money Away
Steve Outing on a dubious paid-content scheme
As noted here a couple weeks ago, the Columbus Dispatch today makes the switch on its website to paid access. Here's the description of the paid options. You'll note that if you want to get content from the site, you'll need to pony up for a $4.95-a-month subscription.I'm no fan of this approach. Dispatch.com makes a critical mistake by insisting that non-print subscribers enter into a long-term relationship in order to view its content. The site misses an obvious opportunity to bring in additional revenue: a $1 "day pass." You can bet that a good many online visitors will want to access the site on some days, but won't be willing to sign up for a long-term subscription. They could drop a buck on the site, but Dispatch.com will settle for them leaving. How smart is that?
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Posted 6:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
New Report: Mobile Operators Should Outsource Content Supply
Madan Rao on wireless opportunities
According to research group Strand Consult, mobile operators should consider linking up with "Master Content Providers" to help grow revenues from data traffic in the coming years. The study is based on the South Korean model, where each of the three mobile operators has appointed between five and ten Master CPs, each one specializing in a specific area of mobile content, such as location-based services, games, news, or entertainment. The Master CPs manage relationships with dozens of other CPs. Korea is considered to be three to five years ahead of Europe from a technological standpoint with 30 million mobile subscribers, 9 million of whom use 2.5G devices.
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Posted 2:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
One More to the Paid-Subscription Wave
Eva Domínguez on charging for newspapers online
El Mundo, surprisingly, has started to charge online, as of today. The Spanish newspaper has switched to a paid-subscription model before its bigger competitor, El País. El Mundo explains that "tuning with a tendency followed by the most prestigious international media and with the aim of improving even more of its Internet content," the company has decided to charge for everything coming from the print edition as well as the archives. Content created for the Web only, such as last-minute news or multimedia packages, will remain free.To make the gap between print and online-only content more visual, the part of the site showing print content has been redesigned to look more like its counterpart. The price list includes many options, from 6-month or 1-year subscriptions to a variety of article-bonus offers. Other Spanish media are thinking about the possibility of charging online. We will see soon how contagious this decision can be.
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Posted 1:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
I'm a Javascript Dummy
Steve Outing on Web usability
OK, OK, already. I'm an idiot for having used javascript pop-up code on the clickable writer names in this weblog — like my name in blue above. So says (in no uncertain terms) Youngpup.net in this useful article about how to properly code pop-up window links for your website. The big problem with javascript pop-up links: they return errors or pop up blank new windows on some browsers, and users can't right-click on them (which for some people is a common practice when they want to view a link via a new browser window). I'm ashamed of using javascript code here for so long. Please forgive me; from now on, I've reformed! (And thanks to Holovaty.com, where I learned of this tip.)
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Posted 1:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
No Joke: Paying for Humor
Steve Outing on The Onion's paid-content plan
Humor newspaper and website The Onion looks to be the next to jump on the paid-content bandwagon. According to this story, existing free Onion content will remain free, but new "premium" content will be produced that carries a price tag.
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Posted 12:50 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspapers Are Blowing It Online
Steve Outing on the new Harvard/Borrell report
Borrell & Associates and Harvard Business School pull no punches in a new report released today, "Newspapers and the Internet: An Opportunity for New Net Growth." The message of the report, based on analysis of more than 250 Internet operations at daily newspapers, is that newspapers have remained dangerously reliant on traditional customers — missing $300 million per year by failing to use the Internet to serve new advertisers and enter new, related fields. Newspapers are failing to behave pro-actively and are reacting to the "disruptive technology" of the Internet in a classic short-sighted manner, the report suggests. Instead of seeking out new customers, newspapers try only to get online revenues out of existing customers, which leaves money on the table and provides a wide-open door for competitors. As I read through the executive summary of the report, I found myself nodding a lot.Borrell and Harvard business professor Clark Gilbert emphasize the danger to newspaper classifieds, pointing out that print employment ads already are in a "crisis" or third stage. (In the past 18 months, 40% of jobs classifieds revenue has evaporated for newspapers.) Real estate ads also are at a "stage two" risk, and heading the way of employment ads. The report predicts that "the erosion will continue but it will be gradual — possibly resulting in the complete collapse of traditional wants ads — over the next decade."
This reminds me of a research report I wrote for Editor & Publisher about online classifieds, way back in 1996. I felt safe even then predicting eventual negative growth of newspaper classifieds as a result of online classifieds competition. That prediction was controversial back then.
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Posted 6:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Week Is Too Long to Wait
Steve Outing on online vs. print publishing schedules
Since I live in Boulder, Colorado, my hometown newspaper, the Boulder Daily Camera, is going to get picked on. Sorry, Camera folks! In this morning's print edition was part 1 of a 2-part Dan Gillmor column about Jack Valenti, who heads the Motion Picture Association of America, and his views on digital copyright. I read it at breakfast, and eagerly awaited part 2, which will run in the paper next Monday. Actually, there was no need to wait. Part 2 ran in the San Jose Mercury News yesterday, and is available online.The Camera does what many newspapers do, it publishes syndicated columns as much as a week after it receives them. I will argue that in the Internet age, the media world has been speeded up — so much so that it's no longer reasonable to hold onto content for that long before publishing it in print. To an Internet-literate audience, the newspaper looks out of date.
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Posted 1:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Don't Ask How, Just Make Money
Katja Riefler on online publishing business models
Is your online newspaper profitable? Perhaps, if yours is one of the still rare lucky ones. But does your money really come from online publishing? I ask this question for it took me by surprise to read in the Financial Times Deutschland today that Germany's biggest newspaper site, Bild.T-Online.de, which serves more than 250 million page impressions a month, makes most of its money from a weekly print supplement to the printed Bild newspaper on Saturdays. Ads in this supplement are sold in cross-media packages for print and online.Bild.T-Online.de is not too happy about this situation. CEO Peter Wuertenberger therefore announced recently that he plans to offer most of bild.t-online.de as paid content only in 2003. The first step will begin next Monday. Only subcribers who pay 5 Euro a month will be allowed into the "VIP Club." Its members can, for example, access content from the men's lifestyle magazine Maxim or get a discount for car rentals. So this probably is genuine profit from online-newspaper publishing?
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Posted 1:06 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Online Threat to Printed Legal Notices
Steve Outing on newspapers' next big loss
Juan Carlos Camus' item below this about the Chilean newspaper site's documentation feature for legal ads should be read by American newspaper publishers who are worried about the threat the Web poses to their lucrative legal-notices business. Also, read this report by Wayne Robins in Editor & Publisher today. He compares the threat to newspaper legal notices from online venues (private and governmental) to the loss in employment advertising to Monster.com, et al. The smart newspaper publisher will have an effective print-online package available for carrying legal notices.
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Posted 12:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Your Ad Was Really Placed
Juan C. Camus on online accountability
Did your online ad appear in the space and on the date you bought? El Mostrador from Chile is using a special approach to confirm it. In a promotion ad campaign, the online news website is offering to publish legal ads at a third of the price of print ads. As a premium, it offers to give you a "paper copy," signed by a notary, of your ad published on the Web — so you have it as evidence of publication.
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