|
Posted 6:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Quality Online Content = Less Annoyance Over Ads
Norbert Specker on user behavior
Why should advertisers buy ads in a quality environment — i.e., with quality online publications, for example? Obviously, the reasons we are familiar with from the offline world have to be proven anew in the online fight for advertising. AtNewYork reports on a preview of an Online Publishers Association-sponsored study investigating the issue. And lo' and behold, also online the quality of a site seems to rub off on its advertisers. Site visitors to quality sites are "less annoyed by ads, demonstrate brand loyalty, and a willingness to pay more for products they perceive to be of higher quality."
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 5:57 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Trouble at Newspapers: Online Is the Loser
Katja Riefler on layoffs in German new media
It was a bad day for the German online news media. Newspaper companies continued to suffer this year with the most serious reduction of ads in their history, and management tries to cut costs wherever possible. It has just been learned that the big national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is going to lay off 38 of the 60 employees at its online venture, FAZ Eletronic Media GmbH. Affected is not only the newsroom but also marketing and technology. The company is responsible for faz.net, faz.de, and faz.com, plus the radio stations FAZ Business Radios in Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt. While it is not yet known what will happen to online, there is no hope for the radio stations: they will be shut down or sold.Negative developments also are reported at the Cologne publishing house DuMont Schauberg, which owns several regional newspapers. The publisher of Express and Kölnische Rundschau will liquidate its new-media company RegioInformation GmbH & Co.KG at the end of the year; 26 employees already have received dismissals. The newspaper sites already have been re-integrated into the printed papers. The city guide portal City-Guide Köln will be discontinued. Whether the online activities of Sueddeutsche.de, the website of Süddeutsche Zeitung, will be affected by the major cost-cutting efforts that its mother company announced today is not yet known. The official press release just says that in total 600 out of 5,000 employees will be let go by the end of next year.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 5:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Enhancing Your Theater Experience
Steve Klein on uses for e-books
E-book technology has yet to overtake the printed page, but Ball State University — thanks to a $20 million grant from the Eli Lilly Endowment — has found an interesting approach to e-books, according to a story(subscription required) in the Chronicle for Higher Education. Call it interactive theater. E-books are an integral part of the school's latest production, "Blood Relations," a play about Lizzie Borden, infamous for her acquital of the axe murders of her father and stepmother more than a century ago. More than half of the audience get an e-book (there aren't enough for everyone). Here's how it works: During the show, audience members can tap around on the e-books to see digitized historical photos of the Bordens and the crime scene and to read commentary especially written for this production. They even get to vote on the verdict.So far, the reaction is mixed along a generational digital divide. Younger students — the Game Boy Generation — are accustomed to multi-tasking and interacting with digital technology. To some older theater-goers, the e-books interfere with their experience. "I saw students sitting and looking at the e-books, not because they were bored, but because they saw something of interest in the play but they didn't understand it," said Rodger Smith, Ball State professor who's director of the play. When the audience leaves, they get business cards with the address of a website where they can find all of the information that was on the e-books, a list of hyperlinks related to the Borden murders, and a tally of their vote on the Borden verdict.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 4:07 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Publish Your Paper Notes Instantly
Ernst Poulsen on the digital pen and paper
Journalists or artists who work in areas where computers may be prohibited or risky to use could in the future use digital pens and a special grid-paper to transmit everything they write instantly. The new Anoto Chat-pen and grid-paper allows for transmission to any e-mail address or database on the Web. Currently, a number of Swedish companies use digital pens and grid-paper to allow employees to transmit paper forms directly to databases. Grid-paper contains a unique number of dots, which allows for programming specific functions into the paper — and a pen, which through a camera is able to track your exact handwriting. The pen then lets the user send whatever is written, be it text or drawing, through a mobile phone. An in-depth explanation is found at the company website.I sent a sample of a typical 3M post-it note to myself at a recent presentation in Copenhagen, and though I'm amazed by the technology I find it hard to predict whether chat-pens and grid-paper will succeed in the long run. The paper is only twice the cost of ordinary paper, but the pen and a phone capable of sending messages are still around US$350 each. Also, Tablet PCs and PDAs may push digital paper forms out of the market, but perhaps E-Media Tidbits readers can predict how digital pen and paper will be useful tools to journalists in the future.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 3:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Don't Know What to Do on Monday? Visit Maastricht!
Katja Riefler on an upcoming research conference
Just a short notice: The final conference of the EC-sponsored MUDIA project, "Multimedia content in the digital age," will take place in Maastricht, Netherlands, October 14-15. MUDIA has done a lot of important research on European cross-media technologies, media convergence, and the impact of digital technologies on the media industries since the project started in May 2001. Much of the material is online, but if can spare the time it is still possible to register online for this free event.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 10:46 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Pay for This Content ... With Ads
Steve Outing on an alternative for paid content
Perhaps this is one way to make online advertising effective: Have online users "pay" to read premium content by viewing ads that are worth "money" to pay for the content. That's the principle behind a new Web service called Pico-Pay. Here's how it works: User wishes to read a piece of content that has a price tag of 50 cents. User has option of viewing enough ads to "earn" 50 cents to get the content free. Each ad is worth a set amount, and it may take more than one ad viewing to amount to 50 cents. Ads also contain a timer, and the user must spend a specified number of seconds viewing the ad to earn the money.It's an interesting concept. I can see it being a nice alternative to cash payment for certain types of content — say a PDF file of a report. It also could work for news sites that choose to charge for access to all content. In lieu of a subscription or a day pass fee, the user could gain a day's access to a paid site by viewing several ads to earn enough for the day-pass fee. I think the key will be to offer options, because having forced ads as the only option will just annoy people. Also, forcing users to view several ads to earn enough to pay for the content — as is the case in the Pico-Pay demo — is too much. Viewing a single ad for a specified time should be enough for most content. For expensive content, users could be offered a discount in exchange for viewing an ad.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 7:26 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Know Paid Content? Here's a Gig for You
Steve Outing on a weblog on hiatus
Are you a guru when it comes to the topic of paid online content? Then you can take over (temporarily) the Paid: the economics of content weblog normally written and maintained by new-media journalist Rafat Ali. In India for a family emergency, which will keep him there through December, Ali says he will resume the weblog when he returns to London. Meanwhile, he's open to the idea of someone else with knowledge of the topic taking over Paid for the next few months. E-mail him if you're qualified and interested.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 6:06 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
El Mundo Has the Mold
Laura Ruel on the SND.ies design competition
It has been about 10 months since the Society for News Design began its "Best of New Media Design" competition — of which I am the contest coordinator — and there are some trends worth noting, like the consistency and volume of winning entries from elmundo.es in Madrid, the website of the newspaper El Mundo. Contest results from the month of August were posted today on the SND site, and once again elmundo.es had the greatest number of winning entries from any single publication. As one judge puts it, "I continue to be very impressed with the volume and quality of elmundo's work." It's true. This operation seems to churn out interactives on a quick, daily newspaper timeline.Alberto Cairo, who works in the interactive department of elmundo.es, and whose name is on a majority of the winning entries, told me a few months back that he and others at elmundo.es are among the few graphic journalists who are thrilled by the storytelling potential that multimedia tools offer. "The infographic has reached levels of sophistication, informative power, clarity, and formal beauty never imagined," he said. SND.ies judges seem to agree: "elmundo.es has the template down for animated graphics. The choreography between graphic and text is excellent. Effective use of animation. The use of 3D makes the graphic very realistic. The interface was very clean and had high usability."
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 2:06 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Saga of Arts & Letters Daily
Steve Outing on death of a weblog
The popular (and old!) weblog Arts & Letters Daily is gone, as noted here earlier. If you're curious about the story behind its demise, the Chicago Tribune has an account of what happened, "Sudden Death of the Arts & Letters Daily."
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 1:49 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Can We Trust Microsoft-owned Slate on TiVo Story?
Steve Outing on journalism ethics
Slate had a story yesterday about the likely demise of TiVo (because the author suggests that the company will suffer the fate of so many failed technology first-movers throughout business history). While it's not a bad argument, the fact that it ran in Slate, which is owned by Microsoft — which is introducing a new XP operating system for home entertainment centers — makes me want to totally disregard the story. How can we possibly trust that Slate isn't acting to support its parent company by dissing a competitor?Frankly, I doubt that there is any "evil-doing" on the part of Slate's editors. I don't doubt their professionalism and editorial independence. BUT, I don't think this story has any place on Slate in the first place, because of the perception of conflict of interest. The weblog Gizmodo, where I learned of the Slate piece, assessed the article this way: "It made a lot of solid points, but the timing is a little curious, since it's appearing on a site owned by Microsoft at exactly the moment when Microsoft is pushing this new version of XP designed to replace TiVo."
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 12:46 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Open Source' Journalism in Spain
Eva Domínguez on a "copyleft" approach to intellectual property
The free newspaper 20 minutos, which has editions in Madrid and Barcelona, yesterday (November 9) launched its website. The site will not only be free to read, but also free to copy. The site has created its own license to allow anyone to copy, distribute, reproduce, or adapt its content without asking for permission. The requirement to do so is to always mention the source and origin of the content. The license has been inspired by Michael Stutz's Design Science License, based on a "Copyleft" idea. The managers of the site think that traditional laws for intellectual ownership are old-fashioned and want to adopt an "open source" style for media.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 12:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Also In Germany: Digital Editions Become Counted Circulation
Katja Riefler on an important newspaper development
The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and the Business Publishers Association (BPA) in the U.S. already count some digital newspaper editions as paid circulation. In Germany, the Informationsgemeinschaft zur Feststellung der Verbreitung von Werbeträgern e.V. (IVW) will probably do so soon. At its board meeting next week, members are supposed to decide whether to count digital editions, beginning in January 2003 if a publication meets three main criteria: the digital edition has to include the complete and unaltered content of the print edition; users must be able to use the service either online or offline according to their choice; and the service has to be availiabe 24/7 and the real usage documented. One issue perhaps will bother some publishers: the digital circulation will be counted completely separate from print. It is not allowed to sum both circulations. IVW hopes to provide the most transparent information for advertisers.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 7:26 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Analyst Predicts Subscription Revenue Plummet for AOL
Vin Crosbie on biggest ISP's woes
When an online service that hosts nearly one in every five U.S. users of the Internet and itself is a major publisher of news online trends toward financial decline, its survival should worry online publishers who want to reach that audience, and worry news-hungry online consumers. Merrill Lynch media industry analyst Jessica Reif Cohen is raising alarms that America Online's subscription revenues may have peaked. Internet.com reports that Cohen's research suggests that without incremental revenue from broadband applications, AOL's cash earnings from subscription fees could decline to US$850 million in 2003 from a peak of $US2.3 billion in 2001. Moreover, she questions the economics of AOL's broadband strategy, which calls for AOL to pay cable companies fees for access to broadband audiences and thereby probably will result in lower profit margins per subscriber than with AOL's dial-up services. Cohen writes, "The notion that AOL broadband will be a profitability savior for the AOL business may be a flawed concept, unless it is successful in driving substantially higher revenue per household through premium services." (My analysis of why Time Warner AOL's strategy of premium synergies will fail was published by Internet.com in August.)Cohen estimates that new advertising isn't replacing AOL's depleting backlog of ads and that AOL's 2003 advertising revenues and commerce sales will be $1.2 billion, down 26% from this year's estimate of $1.6 billion and much less than AOL's $3.9 billion figure in 2001. AOL is a major publisher of news online, recently ranked 17th among U.S. "Current Events and Global News" sites, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 5:50 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
My Blogging Pet Peeve
Steve Outing on weblogs
I visit quite a few weblogs daily. Unfortunately, some weblogs are not updated with new content daily — and posting of new stuff at some is intermittent and unpredictable. Which brings me to a pet peeve: bloggers who don't announce that they won't be posting anything for a few days. For instance, on my bookmark list is John Hiler's MicroContent News, which hasn't had any new material added since September 25. Is Hiler on vacation? Is he busy with other things? Has he dropped from the face of the planet?Here's some simple advice to bloggers: If you know that you're not going to publish for a while, let your readers know. I'm appreciative when some of the other bloggers I read do this. Keep your loyal readers clued in.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 4:32 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Still Only Dabbling in the Stream
Steve Klein on online sports content
Here are three good reasons sports video webcasts don't work, reports Verne Kopytoff in a story in the San Francisco Chronicle: broadcast rights (television networks don't want their broadcast rights jeopardized); poor image quality; and, oh yeah, lack of profit. "All the sports are dabbling in video webcasts until they can make sure it's a good viewing experience for consumers," said P.J. McNealy, online entertainment analyst with market research firm GartnerG2. "We're not talking about DVD quality or full screen display." While Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association have been the most aggressive in the U.S. in experimenting with webcasts, the National Football League and National Hockey League only offer free video highlights. Web portal Yahoo charged $19.95 for video highlights of the World Cup this past summer.The networks still call the tune, according to Bob Bowman, chief executive for MLB Advanced Media, the online arm of Major League Baseball. "Fox and all of TV are important partners of baseball, so we dance the tune they call. Some day, that may change. Getting people used to watching video online takes time. We feel good about the pace." But do users?
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 4:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
To Brand or Not
Katja Riefler on online newspaper classifieds
Would you give up your traditional newspaper brand name to promote a common brand with your former competitors? A tough question for every newspaper publisher, I think. In Austria, eight regional newspapers decided to do just that and have started a common portal, Dermarkt.at. A click on the "classified" button on each paper's website leads to the common platform. That is quite unusual in the German-speaking online world."Versum.de," the big German newspaper collaboration that recently failed, had allowed all participating papers to present the pooled ads in their own look and feel. So does rheinmainclick, a collaboration of eight German regional papers. DerMarkt.at now has to prove whether it can be as beneficial to its members as Finn.no is to Aftenposten and affiliated Norwegian newspapers, which also follow a common brand strategy in Europe.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 11:34 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NewsStand Plans Key Enhancements
Peter M. Zollman on digital-replica editions
Kit Webster, president and CEO of NewsStand, shared some real news about planned enhancements to the digital-replica publishing service in an e-mail to a handful of new-media experts. Among other things, Webster noted that the primary complaint about NewsStand is the ability to print the publication. "The next release of our software (this month) will contain comprehensive printing enhancements, including printing of an arbitrary area, printing over multiple pages, cut and paste, and e-mailing of articles," Webster reported. (It's worth noting that several other digital publication tool providers, including Olive Software, already offer print capability.) Webster also reported that more than 80% of the people who use NewsStand editions are not readers of the printed edition."NewsStand's technology and market are at their very infancy, and the opportunity to grow and change and to respond to the market for customized information on demand is significant," Webster wrote. "NewsStand today is to NewsStand in five years as the PC in 1980 was to the laptop of 2002. NewsStand's long-term strategy is not to simply deliver publications over the Internet. That is our current business and it will provide the relationships as the bases for interesting and revolutionary twists and turns in the future." (Disclosure: I have served as a consultant for both NewsStand and Olive; however, I have not worked for either in more than a year.)
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 11:28 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NewsStand, Take 2
Steve Outing on digital-replica editions
To follow up on Peter M. Zollman's item above this about the future of NewsStand, it's fascinating to think about the future of digital-replica-edition technology. I find today's Internet digital-replica services like NewsStand to be uncompelling — primarily because the device that you read a digital-replica edition of, say, the New York Times with (a laptop or desktop PC) is far from ideal. The digital-replica business only gets interesting, in my view, when we have portable digital tablet devices that feature excellent-quality screens, long battery life, portrait screen orientation (instead of the standard PC screen's landscape orientation), and wireless network access to download content. At that point, digital tablets become a serious alternative for reading Time magazine in print. I remain unconvinced that reading a broadsheet newspaper on a tablet device will be a good choice, unless the layout is tweaked to accommodate a smaller screen. But print magazines are a different matter, for their existing formats can simply be copied to pixel form.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 6:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
This Game Doesn't Strike Out
Steve Klein on online sports content
Thanks to MSNBC.com. Its new "Strikeout! Pitch Like a Pro" interactive game is the most fun I've had pitching online since Comics.com let me help Snoopy hit a home run off Charlie Brown. The MSNBC game, which has a high-bandwidth version with audio and a dial-up version without audio, allows a user to select from three pitches (fastball, curveball, and slider), choose plate location, and pitch in nine "pressure situations." There's an online tutorial that requires a little online patience, and a savvy online pitching coach (who looks suspiciously like Don Zimmer to me!) who provides tips for each situation.Although I struck out five of nine batters, I gave up four hits in key situations, including a home run. As a result, the pitching coach called me a "Little Leaguer," which at the time I played the game was the fate of 87% of other participants. My downfall: I just had to keep trying the fastball. This is just the kind of interactive game (so is the Peanuts game) that turns users into doers, which is exactly what an online experience should be about.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 6:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Old Ideas Don't Die, They Return When Time Is Right
Steve Outing on newspaper Web cooperation
Remember New Century Network? The U.S. newspaper Web consortium for a while produced a nifty website that featured the top stories of the day from a variety of its member newspaper sites. Even if NCN tanked, it was still a good idea. Now a new multi-newspaper Web service has debuted: Asia News Network. It's an alliance of 11 newspapers from Japan to Pakistan, meant to provide an Asian perspective of the region and serve as an alternative to Western news organizations. (Here's a Wall Street Journal report on the venture; subscription required.) The site includes a smattering of articles from each affiliate news organization, available free. The result could even be likened to a human-edited, slimmed-down, niche-news version of Google News.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 12:19 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
From Web to Print
Juan C. Camus on sharing content
El Mostrador, an Internet-only news site from Chile, is testing a new way to do business. During 2001 it published 14 opinion columns about the "Left and Capitalism" between José Joaquín Brunner and Tomás Moulian, two well known Chilean polemists. And now, the site has published them in a book that can be found on newsstands at a US$3 cover price.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 12:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Lighter Future of Student Backpacks
Steve Outing on e-books
One of my regular daily Web visits is Gizmodo, a weblog about new gadgets. Today, Gizmodo pointed me to an announcement about a new Tablet PC that is geared toward educational uses. While the price (about US$1,250) is still way too expensive to feasibly outfit a whole class of students, I think that within a decade as prices come way down, use of such tablet PCs will be commonplace in the classrooms of developed countries. One of the biggest attractions will be the replacement of printed textbooks. As my Poynter colleague Al Tompkins wrote recently in Al's Morning Meeting, student backpacks are getting ridiculously heavy — and are causing back injuries to some kids. An educationally oriented Tablet PC that could replace a backpack full of books will be a great thing. I doubt that my oldest daughter, now in fifth grade, will benefit from this tech trend until college. But perhaps my younger daughter, now in kindergarten, will be easily toting e-books to and from high school.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 11:41 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Google May Charge Users
David Carlson on paid content
London's Daily Telegraph is reporting that Google is considering charging customers for some of its services, especially the new Google News. The Telegraph quotes Omid Kordestani, senior vice president, as saying, "We may experiment with ways of monetizing after we have got the service right. Charging would be one approach. So far, we have found it better to keep the service free and charge for targeted advertising." Kordestani was visiting Europe to promote Google's advertising business. The story goes on to quote Yuri Punj, an Internet analyst at UBS Warburg, who said: "The Internet advertising model has been shown not to work. We all know in business that free doesn't work. I think Google will realize that they have to go to some paid search capability."
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 10:32 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Teaching Checklist Works for Journalists, Too
Laura Ruel on effective online learning
An article in Front Range Tech Biz offers a great checklist for those who teach online. Not surprisingly, it also is a great checklist for online news providers, who essentially have similar goals, with an unlimited class size. Tips such as "Understand your students and their motivation for learning" or "Develop drivers to graduate students to the next level of understanding" really hit home when applied to online news presentation. With a little editing, this back-to-basics checklist could be a good foundation for listing goals in an online newsroom.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 6:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
An Early Blog Retires
Steve Outing on weblogs
In case you missed it, Arts & Letters Daily is no more. (See the announcement on the site.) According to Hylton Joliffe, who's a guru when it comes to weblogs, A&E Daily was "one of the first blogs, digests, tipsheets, whatever you want to call it."
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 6:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Spam Humor
Steve Outing on junk e-mail
The junk e-mail I get in my in-box daily (and there's plenty of it) is usually a source of annoyance, but one piece of spam this morning brought a chuckle. The subject line read: "If your ignorant- push delete button."
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 1:10 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Will New Quark Move Print Designers to the Web?
Laura Ruel on design tools
Recently I interviewed a number of successful newspaper designers about why many of them hesitate to transition their skills to Web design. (The article appears in the Society for News Design's Journal #83 — which can be ordered from SND. These award-winning print designers cite many reasons for their lack of enthusiasm, including not being inspired by what they see on most news sites, the frustration of designing for an 18-inch monitor, a lack of support from their supervisors, and — interestingly — the lack of a program as "easy as Quark" with which to create Web pages.Well, Quark claims to have addressed that last concern with its latest release of version 5.0. CNET rates the new version an 8 on a scale of 10, and states that among the new version's strengths are "adequate Web-page layout tools." The program lets you do your design in Quark, then open the file in Dreamweaver. There also is an XML export option. But, will Quark be the answer to moving newspaper designers online? What do others think?
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 11:30 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Funny Pages Redefined
David Carlson on paid Web content
Truth is, I don't read the comics, so you won't catch me ponying up $9.95 for access to Mycomicspage.com. If you are a comics lover, though, you won't want to miss it. For 10 bucks a year, you can get same-day access to more than 100 comic strips and some 30 editorial cartoons. From "Garfield" to "Doonesbury," from "Mother Goose and Grim" to "Ziggy," you can view your comics on the website or have them e-mailed to you every day. Editorial cartoonists range from Lalo Alcaraz to Pat Oliphant and Tom Toles. The site is operated by Uclick and offers cartoons from Universal, Tribune, and Creators. It will be interesting to see how successful the site becomes. As I said, I'm not a likely candidate, but next to horoscopes and obituaries, reader surveys show that comics pages are the best-read parts of newspapers.
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
Posted 11:17 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Blog, Blog, Blog ... Enough, Already!
Steve Outing on what's in a name
Interactive editor Ken Sands (of the Spokesman-Review in Washington) says he's tired of the words "weblog" and "blog" — and no longer uses those words (even though he "blogs" for his paper's website). I'll let him explain: "One way to avoid the continuing debate about whether blogging is journalism is to avoid the 'blog' label. I have now begun to talk about 'interactive column writing' as a potentially great journalistic practice. That's not very catchy, but at least it doesn't carry the blog baggage. Some people have a very narrow definition of blogging. And much of the journalistic potential that I envision strays pretty far from that definition. (Besides, I've never liked the word 'blog.') Maybe we can come up with a new word to describe journalistic blogging." Anyone got any good ideas?
[ Discuss THIS item | See ALL Tidbits discussions ]
|