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Posted 7:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Pushing the Multimedia Envelope
Laura Ruel on MSNBC.com's latest interactive project
MSNBC.com has pushed the multimedia envelope again with "The Big Picture," a (U.S.) election presentation that allows you to be as passive or as involved as you want in your election 2002 online learning experience. The presentation can be viewed in a linear fashion, or can be paused at any moment if you desire greater depth or interactivity. Some highlights include short video clips of senators debating U.S. policy on Iraq. Viewers are then asked whether they agree or disagree with each statement, and are provided with immediate tallies. There's a similar poll on what should be done to fix the U.S. economy.MSNBC deserves a lot of credit for the creative, innovative thinking they put into these interactives. However, some moments of the presentation — such as when the narrator tells the viewers that this is their chance to "be in the hotseat" and answer a poll — could be criticized as more "infotainment" than journalism. And — not surprising, but worth mentioning — only those with high-speed connections can view the interactive. The presentation is worth checking out, if only to admire the resourceful design. There is even a poll question to complete if you decide NOT to continue watching. A viewer who logs on to the presentation for only a short time is asked the following question: "We noticed you didn't watch much, may we ask why?" Now that’s interactivity!
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Posted 12:40 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Supporters of Home-Page Bloat
Steve Outing on website design
I'm pleased to see that my last Editor & Publisher column, and others by Jay Small and Barry Parr, about bloated and busy news website home pages are stirring up some debate. While I didn't expect everyone in the online news world to agree with me — I suggested that many sites need to go on a home-page diet — I'm a bit surprised at some of the spirited defense I've seen of putting lots and lots of links and headlines on a home page. The primary argument against my view is that if something isn't linked on the home page, it hardly gets any traffic. Over at Adrian Holovaty's weblog, there was a spirited exchange of comments on this topic this week. This is a great topic of debate for the online news industry; I hope the discussion continues.One of the criticisms leveled at me was that I praised the search engine Google as a model of simplicity, but you can't compare a search engine to a news site. Actually, my point was that Google is king of the search engines in large part because of simplicity. An equally elegant and simple news site might beat out its competitors for the same reasons, but that doesn't mean you should copy the Google search home page. Also, as was pointed out to me, Google News has a ton of links, so even Google can get caught up in page bloat. Yes, but Google News is efficiently designed. To best serve online news users, I recommend something like this, not this.
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Posted 9:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Sorry State of New-Media Training
Steve Outing on online journalism
While most executives in the news profession would probably agree that new media and the Internet remain vital to the industry's future, the sour economy is making it difficult for the people they employ to be ready for what's coming digitally. News companies are not sending as many people to training programs. At the New Media Center of the American Press Institute, director Andrew Nachison is on the verge of canceling what he calls one of his favorite seminars, "Digital Story Master Class: How to Create Innovative Multimedia Journalism" (scheduled for December 8-12). As of yesterday, only four people had committed to attend; Nachison says he needs another half dozen by early next week, or he'll probably have to cancel.API and other training organizations that offer new-media training (including the Poynter Institute, publisher of this weblog) are having trouble filling some seminars as new-media budgets continue to suffer. Nachison assesses the situation this way: "Some companies are understaffed and simply can't spare people; others, I think, just don't want to spend anything on Internet content training or development right now. The bottom-line, short-term ROI may not be clear enough for them." That's too bad, especially in this case. I can't think of a stronger industry training need than learning how to tell stories using the new tools of digital journalism.
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Posted 9:06 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Watch Your Language; Spam Filters Are Watching
Steve Outing on e-mail publishing
Choose your wording carefully, or it may get censored by the Internet's automated language nannies — ISP and corporate spam filters. Ron Currier, CTO of Publishmail (the e-mail vendor that currently handles delivery of this weblog to subscribers), reports that a mailing his company delivered this week for the Chicago Sun-Times "set off dozens of spam filters" — and thus did not reach opt-in recipients who are the "beneficiaries" of the filters' services. The offense: the sports headline "C*hink in Pick-6 Computer Uncovered," about a vulnerability in a Maryland sports betting phone system. "C*hink" is apparently a banned word in many spam filters because it's also a slur of Asian people. (Of course, I had to misspell the word here, or those same filters would block e-mail deliveries of this weblog.) I've said it before and it's worth repeating: many spam filters are downright stupid — and hurt ethical opt-in e-mail publishers. Stupid, stupid, stupid. (I wonder if that'll get this weblog blocked? My mother always told me not to say "stupid.")
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Posted 3:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Folio Cites Some Online Winners
Steve Outing on website awards
The magazine-industry magazine Folio this week announced winners in its annual Editorial Excellence Awards. While these are primarily print awards, there is an online category. Gold winners were Advocate.com (consumer) and NetworkComputing.com (B-to-B); silver awards went to News.com (consumer) and EditorandPublisher.com (B-to-B).
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Posted 3:14 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Too Much Stuff on the Home Page
Steve Outing on reader feedback
In an item here yesterday, I noted coverage about news websites with bloated home pages. In my Editor & Publisher column this week on that topic, I cited WashingtonPost.com as an example of an award-winning site with a home page containing hundreds of elements and links. Site editor Doug Feaver confirms that at least one site user objects to this: Feaver regularly receives complaints from a person who counts the number of links and reports on his count.Feaver says that while in principle he agrees that home-page bloat is a bad thing, "the reality is that we know from tracking audience that generally speaking an article or feature not linked off the home gets less traffic than one that is linked off the home page. ... The question about how many links there should be on the home page is really quite complex, and frankly I don't think any of the major news sites have come up with the perfect answer. Meanwhile, we try very hard to provide a clear hierarchy on the first screen, then use organizational principles that make sense on the rest of the page."
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Posted 3:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Tale of Media Convergence in Action
Steve Outing on newsrooms cooperating
Columnist Michael Roberts of Denver's Westword newspaper has an interesting piece about how the Denver Post and TV station KUSA cooperated in covering the case of an abused infant's death and murder charges being brought against his parents. It shows how awkward media partnerships — where newsrooms are supposed to share information — can be. The article also covers the history of this newspaper-TV cooperation, which hasn't been all smooth sailing. But convergence is the way of the future, like it or not, so print, broadcast, and online people all need to learn how to get along. Does it serve the news audience? There's no clear answer to that yet.
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Posted 1:49 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
WWW Next Generation
Katja Riefler on Tim Berners-Lee
He is known as the "father of the WWW." But usually Tim Berners-Lee doesn't get much media attention any more. Now he has been awarded the honorable "Albert Medal" in the UK and is listed among the 100 most important Britons in history. If you want an update about his ideas for the next generation of the Web, read this article in The Guardian.
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Posted 11:19 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Kawasaki Formula
Vin Crosbie on the dot-com economy
How does your publication's website measure up under a "Kawasaki Valuation"? Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard credits venture capitalist and former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki with devising the following arch but simple formula for valuing high-tech start-ups in the Internet's post-bubble economy:
Add $500,000 to the valuation for every staff engineer.
Subtract $250,000 to the valuation for every staff M.B.A.
Online staff journalists or content producers neither add nor subtract value according to the formula.
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Posted 10:03 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Journalists and Bloggers: Can We All Get Along?
Paul Grabowicz on new media
A while back I posted a note about a panel on journalism and weblogs that we held at my school, with a promise to follow up with a link to the archived webcast of the panel. Belatedly, here it is. (I wish I could blame this on technical difficulties, but it was just tardiness on my part.) And for those of you without broadband access, one of the panelists, J.D. Lasica, put a partial transcript of the panel discussion on the Online Journalism Review website.
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Posted 9:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Wining and Dining in the Wireless Age
Steve Outing on new uses for wi-fi
Wireless technology will, I have no doubt, pervade most areas of modern life, eventually. Take, for example, restaurants. As the Los Angeles Times reports, at least one restaurant has converted its paper wine list to a digital tablet connected to a central database via wi-fi (wireless broadband network) connection. Far more efficient than the old paper list and a waiter who may or may not know anything worthy about wine choices, the tablet — presented along with your menu — gives you recommended wines to go with any of the restaurant's dishes; lets you search for wines by various characteristics; and when an order is made the device automatically updates the restaurant's wine inventory. It's kind of a techno-geek attraction now, but mark my words: this will be commonplace at quality restaurants in a few years.
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Posted 9:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Paid Subscriptions: Magazines Mimic New Media
Paul Grabowicz on the media business
If you've been following the debate over whether news websites made a mistake by giving away their content early on and now need to start charging for access, you'll be interested in this New York Times story about a similar dispute in the magazine world. Turns out that the average price of a magazine subscription has fallen 17% in the last five years largely because of discount offers, and readers are now resistant to paying higher prices. Some say this has made magazines too dependent on advertising, and publishers need to band together to force readers to pony up more money.
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Posted 6:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Daily E-mails Outnumber Humanity 5-to-1
Vin Crosbie on Internet usage
According to a research report last month by IDC, the number of e-mail messages sent will average 31 billion daily this year and is expected to exceed 60 billion daily in 2006. Slightly more than half of those messages will be person-to-person e-mails, the remainder e-mail alerts and notifications, commercial e-mails, and spams. The U.S. Census Bureau's World POPclock estimates the world's human population as 6.25 billion, so nearly five e-mails are sent daily per human on the planet. Of course, not every Earthling has online access. NUA estimates that only 580 million people do, so there is an average of more than 50 daily e-mails per online user. How's your own in-box today?
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Posted 4:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
You're Fat! Go On a Diet!
Steve Outing on news website home pages
There seems to be some momentum building here — or at least some consensus among Internet media pundits. In addition to my Editor & Publisher column published this morning about bloated news home pages, Jay Small weighed in last week with a column on this topic for his Sensible Internet Design newsletter. Over at Adrian Holovaty's weblog, there's been discussion of this issue. And now new-media consultant Barry Parr weighs in with a lengthy item on his MediaSavvy weblog. There's no point in beating around the bush. Many of your news website home pages are fat and you need to head to the gym — um, I mean the conference room for a content-trimming and -organizing workout.
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Posted 2:49 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Public Wi-Fi Progress Report
Steve Outing on wireless broadband
To keep with my tradition of tracking the growth of wireless broadband Internet access in public places, I'll note that T-Mobile has expanded its "Hotspot" paid access service beyond Starbucks coffee shops and Borders book stores to several airline clubs in major airports: United, American, and Delta. So reports CBS MarketWatch's Internet Daily.
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Posted 2:29 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Latest in New Technology
Steve Outing on the Business Time Machine
You know me, I just love new technological gadgets. The Business Time Machine from Bagotronics sounds great, and for only three easy payments of $299.95, well, who can resist? Ben Vereen's video infomercial convinced me. (Be sure to click on it from the Bagotronics site.) ... What? Oh, dang, it's IBM's idea of joke to kick off a new ad campaign, you say? And I was going to use it to go back to 1994 and buy up a bunch of .com addresses. (Thanks to my Poynter boss, Jim Naughton, who loves a good joke, for pointing this out.)
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Posted 2:10 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How Does This Online Story Make Your Feel?
Vin Crosbie on electronic publishing
You can see and hear news via the Internet, but can you touch it? Yes, another sense has now been added to human sensations served by the Internet. The British Broadcasting Corporation today reports that scientists at University College in London and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shaken hands via the Internet in the first public demonstration of the latest in remote touch technology. This technology requires high network speeds and won't soon be available to the public. But in perhaps a decade's time, you'll be able to touch the latest Milan fashions, feel the jolting bounce of race car in the Paris-Dakar Rally, or shake hands with an actor during an interview. Don't be surprised if, as has happened with many other online technologies, the adult industry is first to commercialize this breakthrough.
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Posted 12:01 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Let's Stop Shooting Ourselves in the Foot
Rich Gordon on privacy and public records
Business Week has an article about the debate over whether public records should be made available via the Internet. It's not a bad article, overall, but an impartial reader would probably conclude from reading it that there are many kinds of public information that shouldn't be posted to the Web. For instance, the article mentions property assessment information and asks, "How does [posting it online] serve the public good?" Well, here's one reason: It allows me — without trekking to the courthouse — to compare my assessment to that of my neighbors, to make sure I'm being taxed equitably. The article also brings up the infamous case of Rebecca Schaeffer, the actress who was murdered by a stalker who tracked her down through state driver's license records. That slaying spurred Congress to require states to block public access to driver's license records — eliminating a tool that reporters have often found useful to track down a source. The irony, unmentioned in the Business Week article, is that Schaeffer's killer got her address through a private investigator — and private investigators continue to have access to license records under the federal law.This article is, I'm afraid, all too typical. Frequently, coverage of privacy issues in the mainstream press seems to take the side of the privacy advocates — even when the cause of privacy is directly at odds with the ability of journalists to do their jobs. (And, I'd argue, with the role of the press in a democratic society.) I'm not arguing that journalists should become advocates in their coverage of privacy issues — but I think we can do a better job of making sure that the case for availability of public records online gets a fair representation in our coverage.
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Posted 1:51 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
If You Don't Know What Atex Is, Move On
Steve Outing on newsroom technology
This item is for the newsroom "old-timers" in the audience. Gordy Thompson, formerly the New York Times manager of Internet services, has written an entertaining essay (for the company newsletter) about Atex, the old proprietary publishing system that's finally been retired from duty at the Times newsroom. If you're old enough to have used an Atex editing terminal (or one from its chief competitor, SII, which were similar), you'll enjoy Thompson's tales of how newsroom workers were foiled and confused by the system's complexities.
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Posted 12:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Uzbekistan Flips the Filtering Switch
Andrew Stroehlein on Web censorship
A few months ago, I wrote an article for Online Journalism Review on Internet censorship in Uzbekistan, concluding that while the regime of Islam Karimov did establish the technical means for filtering content seen by Web users within Uzbekistan, there was as yet little evidence that the authorities were actively using it. Well, that seems to have changed now. Sources in Uzbekistan tell me that several sites are inaccessible and are thought to be blocked by the authorities. The blocked sites include, the opposition party Erk, the opposition movement Birlik, and a new website, stopdictatorkarimov.com, all hosted abroad, obviously.
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Posted 10:47 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Publishers: Charge for Paper Billing
Steve Outing on the old-to-new transition
In the old way of doing things, companies send out printed invoices to postal mailboxes. But as this story in today's New York Times points out, an increasing number of companies are demanding that customers receive and pay bills online — and charges a premium to those who still want to get bills via postal mail. Newspaper and magazine companies, especially, should take note of this trend. It makes sense for print publishers to adopt online billing as the default, and penalize customers who require postal-mailed billing. Why? Because publishers who have invested serious money into building supplementary online businesses should be doing what they can to get their customer base used to doing business online. Each billing for the print edition is an opportunity to steer customers to a publication's website. It's a win-win: saving money on invoicing because of online billing efficiencies, and promoting your online operations to an audience that includes many who have not yet realized the advantages of conducting business and getting news and information on the Internet.
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Posted 7:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Interactive Editor' Sands Named to APME Board
Steve Outing on new media joining old
Ken Sands, the creative interactive editor at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, has been named to the board of directors of Associated Press Managing Editors. Sands works for the newspaper, but does a lot with the paper's website, including experimenting with weblogs as new forms of coverage for major events. What a great choice for infusing some new ideas into this 69-year-old news association. APME last year decided to dedicate a slot on the board to a leader of an online news operation.
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Posted 6:40 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Monitor Boards RSS Bandwagon
Steve Outing on syndication technology
The RSS syndication format (Really Simple Syndication) is increasingly being deployed by news sites — as a way to allow users of aggregation software or websites to more easily read content from multiple content sites. The site of the Christian Science Monitor just announced that it now has a dozen RSS feeds available now. The Monitor's Joel Abrams says that in addition to the current RSS feeds — top stories, each of the site's sections (World, USA, Commentary, Work & Money, Living, Books, etc.), and one RSS with the whole of the day's paper in it — additional feeds will be added over the next couple months. An RSS file is basically a list of headlines encoded to work with other programs or websites. RSS is a form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language).
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Posted 3:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Election Spam Comes in All Media Formats
Steve Outing on stupid uses of technology
Pardon me here if the hook to new media on this item is a bit dubious — but the telephone calls I'm getting lately from political candidates are driving me crazy. Politicians, of course, have taken to the idea of using bulk automated phone calls to deliver recorded messages. Basically, this is "spam" using the telephone. And like e-mail spam, it's doubtful that these messages will influence anyone. Most recipients of these obnoxious calls will, like me, listen a second or two before they realize it's a spam message, then slam the phone down. ... Actually, maybe they will influence some people — who get so annoyed that a candidate would spam them that they turn against the politician who paid for the telephone spam. Spam is bad in e-mail form; it's bad on the phone. A politician who deploys such tactics shoots him/herself in the foot.
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Posted 12:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Journalist-Does-Blog Alert
Steve Outing on Daily News football weblog
Here's another newspaper journalist starting a weblog. The Philadelphia Daily News' Ed Barkowitz is now writing a blog about the NFL Philadelphia Eagles, called "Bark's Bytes." So far, the sports writer has kept his contributions short and sweet — mostly in the form of questions to sports fans. Some days, there's only a single two-line item. But that's not necessarily bad. Check out the reader comments that each item is attracting. Not bad at all. And if newspaper reporters and columnists are worried about a blog being "too much extra work," take a look at this. It can't take Barkowitz more than a few minutes a day to create this. My bet is that fans will like it.
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Posted 11:59 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Varsity Letter for 'Slowth'
Steve Klein on redefining Internet time
Remember the phrase "Internet time"? The Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes does in a nostalgic column that traces the phrase, which came to mean the accelerated pace at which business and work flow supposedly transpired. "Business plans, product cycles, big decisions — everything would be zipping along at a fraction of their traditional rates," Gomes says. Well, Gomes wants to replace "Internet time" with "slowth," which he defines as "no one is buying anything anyway; take all the time you need.""Slowth" seems to have worked for Washington, D.C.-based VarsityBooks.com, which seemingly burst along with the Internet bubble in its attempt to sell college textbooks online. The Washington Post reports that not only is the renamed Varsity Group Inc. still alive, but it is relatively thriving, reporting third-quarter net income of $2.1 million and revenue of $14.4 million. You can call it "slowth" or just plain down-sizing combined with good business sense, but Varsity Group, which now acts as a virtual bookstore for private high schools, laid off most of its 200 employees in 2000 when its stock fell to a low of 6 cents a share. Varsity Group stock closed at $1.13 a share last week, or about twice as much as its 52-week low of 57 cents. The bottom line, however, is that at this time, the Varsity Group is still ticking.
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Posted 11:47 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Redacted Sniper Document Displays Transparent Secrets
Steve Outing on PDF publishing
Last week, WashingtonPost.com made available for download a letter allegedly written by John Muhammad, the accused D.C. sniper, in which the author demanded a ransom payment. Police were able to extract unintended clues from the handwritten letter. The Post, however, revealed more in publishing the letter — in PDF format — than it intended, or than law-enforcement authorities wanted the newspaper to release. According to Kurt Foss, editor of Planet PDF, the Post (or whoever gave them the digital document) used a less than foolproof method to black out certain details in the letter. Foss' article on the episode explains that anyone using Adobe Acrobat software (but NOT the free Acrobat reader) could remove the black-out marks and read what was underneath. Oops!
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