David Black

“The last time I looked at the Express online in any detail, it didn’t even offer a site search of archived articles. The recent redesign clearly shows there has been a significant change of new media strategy at Northern and Shell Media Publications “

“On the other hand, there are frequent clear calls for user interaction, and the ‘most read / commented upon / curious’ widget dynamically draws attention to the footprints people are leaving as they visit the site.”

“The traditional Banner format is struggling, however, and became an increasingly unpopular choice in 2006, dropping from 21 to 13 per cent in the total number of ad formats delivered from January to December.”

“Rupert Murdoch has summoned his top news executives to his Californian ranch next week for a three-day meeting to plan asurvival strategy for hisglobal newspaper empire in the digital age.”

Helvetica: “Celebrating its 50th birthday, the ubiquitous typeface has played a crucial role in providing shape and tone to the modern visual landscape. But are its days numbered?”

“A high-profile blogger’s concern about being misquoted is understandable — but so is a journalist’s concern about having an less-than-ideal interview medium dictated to them.”

From inactive users to content creators, from Forrester. [Via Ilana Fox]

“patterns have emerged where low threshold participation amounts to collective intelligence and high engagement provides a different form of collaborative intelligence”

“Facebook released improvements to its Status Updates feature over the weekend, including SMS support and other Twitter-like features. “

Where do I start?

“Overall, classified revenue at Tribune fell nearly 14%; at the New York Times it slid 11.6%; while Gannett saw a drop of 3%. “

“But as the earnings for the NYTCO, Gannett and Tribune have shown, interactive ad dollars are not growing as expected (Dow Jones and the smaller Journal Register Company represent the exceptions).”

“Newspapers (and their websites) are competing with everything – including restaurants, and when people are giving away excellent food just down the street the mad restaurateur is the one still trying to charge people for a meal. “

“The news property is built on Newroo technology, a company they acquired in early 2006 for a rumored $7 million… Users can vote on each item of news with a ranking of 1-5.”

Very Beta: one or two votes for most of the top items, and no way of submitting stories yet. Will be interesting to see how this evolves over the next couple of months as they improve the product and start promoting it to Myspace users.

“1. Why no comments? 2. Needs widgets, or other integration with profiles. 3. Search? 4. Spam… 5. The site is dead, and will remain dead until they link to it from elsewhere on MySpace.”

Wired News’s Combiler isn’t impressed yet either: “Like many people, I anticipated MySpace News making a big splash upon release… It seems as though MySpace should have spent another six weeks in development.”

Upcoming relaunches, switches to Yahoo’s login system, and gets itself a better locations system.

Stick-it-to-the-man style post from Mashable on Upcoming’s relaunch and integration into Yahoo’s network.

On the introduction of time per visit metrics, touted as a replacement for page views: visit duration is inflated by distractions from the site; ignores tabbed browing; and is only indirectly linked to engagement.

“The king of free online classified advertising insists that Craigslist is not a threat to the newspaper industry. ‘It’s just a simple platform where people help each other out,’ he says. ‘In a way, anyone can do what we do’.”

“Caitlin Fitzsimmons speaks to those entrusted with devising strategies for making the most of the medium’s opportunities.”

“The Audit Bureau of Circulations has taken the first step towards merging the audit process for regional newspapers, aimed at bringing together paid-for and free copies under one combined figure. “

“IPC Southbank has appointed Julie Stuckes, previously head of new media operations at Future Publishing, to the new role of digital development director.”

“The company said Tuesday that net income for the first quarter fell 11 percent from a year earlier, while revenue, excluding certain payments made to partners, was up 9 percent.”

“Facebook is considering the launch of a local classifieds service, a source told Mashable. Under the proposed system, it would be free to list items in your own network, and cost a few dollars to post to each additional network.”

“Participants in online discussions hate moderation. This is fairly easy to understand given that moderation often polarises website users and those who own or manage them into adversarial situations.”

“This yields a new architecture of news, a distributed architecture… Those students put their news up on their own sites because they have them and because the people they care about know their addresses and will read them”

Round-up of coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings.

“In the aftermath of yesterday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech, important details, jarring images, and on-the-ground accounts were provided by bloggers and cell-phone slingers, even as other online services helped a community steel themselves collectively”

“UK digital publishers experienced an average 60 per cent increase in turnover in 2006, and are predicting an average of 72 per cent growth for 2007 – double what they were forecasting this time last year.”

“The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called ‘cumulative advantage,’ or the ‘rich get richer’ effect.”

“The results showed clear evidence of cumulative advantage, says one of the authors of the study”

“consists of 47,000 college, high school, employee, and regional networks… handles 600 million searches and more than 30 billion page views a month.”

“Frequent Cookie Deletion by 3 out of 10 U.S. Internet Users Leads to Overstatements in Audience Sizes by a Factor as High as 2.5″

“People often say that comScore’s numbers (and it’s competitors numbers too) are too low. It’s true that panel data is generally a lot lower than your own server logs. But that doesn’t mean your server logs are right.”

Twitter-fiction: a tale of a zombie attack unfolding on Twitter, as if in real time…

National newspaper circulation figures for March 2007.

“As for those oh-so-valued arts of newspaper production, they appear much less useful as we adapt to papers on screen. Though website designs are important, they are formats which require many fewer layout tricks to capture audiences.”

US: “36 percent of all Internet users visited a newspaper Web site in November, 2006, and page views for newspaper Web sites increased 27 percent year over year during the second half of 2006.”

Interesting US stats. NYTimes has 12.96m unique users/month, 456m page impressions, and 37 minutes per user per month.

“According to Nielsen//NetRatings, unique visitors to the site were up 21% from February, with more than 10,943,000 unique visitors counted.” Registered users tripled.

“Currently, online advertising is still dwarfed by print advertising, making up only 5.4% of the industry’s total… as newspapers’ online efforts continue to flourish, online revenue should account for a double-digit percentage of industry revenue by 09″

Social software honeycomb: identity, sharing, conversations, groups, reputation, relationships and presence.

Twitter search engine and keyword ‘buzz’ trends.

Vox powers Metro’s blogging network: “Build your own online neighbourhood, and be a part of Metro’s, in Vox — a free blogging service that lets you share what’s going on in your world.”

“The site includes calendars of community events, blogs that residents can both write in and comment on, and forums on community issues like taxes.

Hyperlocal community sites from Chicago’s Sun-Times Media Group.

Five newspapers using Twitter

“The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick’s advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies.”

World facts and statistics shown on maps of the world.

“Running through any sensible community strategy is the realisation that many news organisations need to re-engage with their readers and viewers to reinvigorate a faltering relationship… Ask yourself: What ties your community together?”

“the big branded advertisers that are leaving TV and print in search of better performance on the internet want to be able to brand with their ads…. So branding/banners may grow faster than search/CPC in the coming years, or at least grow as quickly.”

Options for comments on newspaper sites.

Mac Slocum: “I’d learn how to be a researcher and guide… as a Web journalist, I spend my days sorting through articles, blog posts and RSS feeds. It’s a constant hunt for ’something interesting’.”

Mac Slocum: “1. Good content attracts readers. 2. Readers create page views. 3. Page views attract advertisers. 4. Advertising generates revenue. 5. Most importantly: revenue = paycheck.”

Mac Slocum: “a forum/blog moderator is equal parts party host, discussion leader and diplomat. What does this have to do with journalists? Online, writers and editors are expected to interact with the audience”

“It’s Making All Of The Cost Adjustments Metropolitan Newspapers Must Fulfill In The New Media Age While Positioning Itself As Tomorrow’s Leading Multiplatform Hyper-Local News Force”