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“Overall circulation of the UK’s regional evening papers dropped by 5.6 per cent year-on-year from 2.95 million to 2.78 million in the first six months of this year. The regional dailies which describe themselves as mornings fared slightly better - down f
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“The UK’s regional Sunday newspapers dropped circulation by an average of 5.2 per cent year-on-year in the first six months of this year.”
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“Total circulation of the UK’s 420-odd paid-for weekly newspapers has declined fractionally year-on-year by 1.11 per cent.”
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“While the U.S. online video advertising market is expected to surge 89% this year to $775 million, that will account for just 3.6% of overall Internet ad expenditures.”
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“The idea is to create new forms of journalism with whatever tools we can, and if they don’t exist, create them too.”
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“Did that require a Captial P programmer to do? No. Does every journalist in every news organization need to know how to do that? No. Was I trained to do that? No.”
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“Algorithms are fast and can cover a lot more ground than individual human, but they lack a fundamental human gift — judgment.”
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“The NS Annual Regional Press Survey, published today, shows the number of websites grew from 828 to 1102. The number of core regional newspaper titles went up slightly to 1303, while the number of stand-alone magazines and niche publications grew b
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Nielsen Netratings US panel: “The data shows Mail Online with a US monthly audience of 4.137 million in July, marginally ahead of Guardian Unlimited, which had 4.131 million US users and is planning to launch a US-focused version of the site.
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“That got me thinking: maybe what’s warranted is a moderated corrections wiki. Picture this: The kind of disclaimer notice Slesinsky proposed could appear on the story and link to a wiki page for that story.”
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“Now my friend Kio Stark has come up with what seems like a nice, and more anthropologically correct version: Indigenous Content (which is to say ‘Created by the natives for themselves’.)”
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“Flickr is back in the news this week with reports that it will add video. But we’re still loving the photo-sharing element: here’s a 100+ ways to get even more out of the popular photo site.”
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“Newspapers have a greater chance of surviving the 21st century if they embrace bloggers, rely more heavily on readers to provide news coverage and abolish subscriber fees for use of online archive material.” - Cory Doctorow
Entries from August 2007
links for 2007-08-31
31 August 2007 · No Comments
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-29
29 August 2007 · No Comments
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“o here’s the question: is what Jimmy Justice does journalism? Consider: he is performing the watchdog function of journalism, holding government and its agents to account. “
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“The research found that half of the 1,000 people surveyed expected all media content to be free, but one in five were prepared to pay for premium content. Around 39% of those surveyed said they preferred video because it is less time-consuming than readi
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“We were arguing about the centralized-v-distributed architecture of media. Martin is arguing that some media brands — yes, the Times — are worth coming to,,, I say that they all — yes, even the Times — must look at new ways in which we can do mor
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“It was shot with a camera phone. It is camera phone journalism. The audio is clear and the picture clear enough. It gets the job done. If reporters aren’t carrying point & shoot cameras, shouldn’t they carry a device like this?”
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-28
28 August 2007 · No Comments
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“E&P talked to Wilson, Brady, and about two dozen other online minds from newspapers large and small to present some hard-earned lessons.”
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“Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.”
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“The most effective, lasting way to adapt your online-media mindset, habits, and priorities is to actually use these skills — not just know about them in a theoretical sense.”
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“Average daily Internet use in 2006 (36 minutes) increased by 158% on 2002 and time spent on the mobile phone (almost four minutes per day) was up 58%.”
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“The growth of broadband and the internet, mobile phones and MP3 players are revolutionising how Britons spend their time, according to a report by regulator Ofcom.”
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“The net, mobile phones and MP3 players are revolutionising how Britons spend their time, says Ofcom’s annual report. It reveals that older media such as TV, radio and even DVDs are being abandoned in favour of more modern technology.”
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“Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground found that technology’s greatest impact has been on the depth and range of friends that 14-24s have… Nearly 70% said the first thing they did after turning on their computer was to check IM.”
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“Newspapers and local websites are a perfect match. Newspapers have the reporters, the relationships and the resources to provide better coverage of their local areas than anyone else could even dream of. “
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“Following my presentation/panel discussion on social networking the other day, here’s the analysis I gave of what I see as a three-step strategy when getting involved in social networking. visibility, connectivity, tools”
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Tips from 1994 via Ilana.
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“Here’s a league table of schools’ performance based on the results they are sending us themselves. It’s being updated in real time (almost). And here’s a map of those same schools with links back to their position in our list.” [Via Paul Bradshaw]
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Via Tom Coates
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Barry Parr: “Content producers have struggled with how to manage their relationships with intermediaries on the Web… Content producers need a strategy to compete successfully in an increasingly intermediated media market.” [subscription]
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Jupiter report: “To thrive on the Web, news sites must become more network-focused and aggregate content from other sources while distributing their own content through intermediaries,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch.
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“Give the reader a variety of choices of places to go at the end of a story. Indeed, treat every story like it’s a proxy for the home page, with as many inducements for a reader to stay on the site as possible.”
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“if we are programming the Web to remember, should we also be programming it to forget - not by expunging information, but by encouraging certain information to drift, so to speak, to the back of the Web’s mind?”
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“E&P seems to be presenting these (frankly minor) failures as discouraging “lessons” in what not to do. In fact, in almost every case, these were good ideas that should not have been abandoned just because they were bungled in execution.”
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-27
27 August 2007 · No Comments
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“There are many things you can do to cultivate a positive, constructive online community where vitriolic outbreaks are relatively rare, short-lived, and easy to handle.”
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“What follows is a list of the recommended posts, together with the name of the blogger (or bloggers) who made the nomination.”
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“sites connected to traditional news organizations are growing more slowly than those of the major nontraditional news disseminators, including aggregators, bloggers, and search engines and service providers.”
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“The badly flawed Shorenstein report arguing that local newspapers are the most seriously threatened by the Internet already has been properly shredded by Jeff Jarvis, but there’s another angle that strikes me: sloppy use of the word “local.”"
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“The Shorenstein Center at Harvard just released a report arguing that local newspapers are the most threatened by the internet… But first, I have to say that I think the report’s methodology — and, a few cases, its analysis — are seriously flawed
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“This Blivings Report on the “top 10 newspaper sites”… over looks a number of good better sites, and inexplicably includes the ugly and tanking USAToday.com and the link-bloated Chron.com… So, I’ll do my own Top 10 list. “
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“Here’s the Compete.com data, showing monthly visitors down from 14 million in March to about 10 million today, a 29% drop in unique visitors.”
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“20% year-over year increase in traffic for the month of July 2007 and a month-over-month growth of 24% according to Nielsen/NetRatings. “
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“What I’ve seen is a straight line continually rising. The ups and downs, booms and busts, and other gyrations were investors’ and traditional media companies’ helical movements rotating around that upward line.”
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“Our mission is to aggregate the work of talented video journalists of great diversity and distinction whose work is characterized by a powerful individual vision.”
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“Publish2 is a social network and 2.0 platform for journalists… which aims to put journalists at the center of news on the web by creating a journalist-powered news aggregator.”
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On Shorenstein/Harvard report: “You always have to take Web traffic statistics with a very large grain of salt. Online traffic measurement is still a bit of a black art, even if you’re analyzing your own server logs, and third-party traffic counts are eve
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“As Long-form Content Becomes Bite-Size, Make Everything on Your Site Eembeddable”
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Bacn: “Email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter.” It’s the “email you want. But not right now.”
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“It’s not for nothing that providing advice on how to innovate is a massive business. I think that most people that have tried it will agree that there’s no silver bullet, but that you can do some things to help foster an innovative approach.”
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-16
16 August 2007 · 1 Comment
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“As a follow-up to our research on newspaper websites that we published recently, we decided to break out a list of the best examples of “good” newspaper websites.”
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Cross-promotion example from the Washington Post
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“The web and digital media have generated an overabundance of content — not just a spike in high-quality content but, more disruptively, and even larger spike in ‘pretty good’ or ‘good enough’ content. The web has of course utterly destroyed distributio
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“The Internet Activity Index (IAI) provides a new way of looking at consumer engagement online, dividing Internet usage into four distinct activities: content, communications, commerce and search”
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-14
14 August 2007 · No Comments
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The press release of the WAN figures on global newspaper circulation growth from a few of months back: “WAN said global newspaper sales were up +2.3 percent over the year, and had increased +9.48 percent over the past five years.”
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“It’s easy to say that the New York Times and other newspaper companies are screwed, but sometimes it helps to actually run the numbers.”
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“‘Internet outsider’ Henry Blodgett’s analysis of the newspapers’ long-term prospects Why Newspapers Are Screwed is (as you may have already intuited from his title) pretty superficial.”
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“nobody knows for certain, but the odds are it will be a hybrid publication in which an online edition that’s focused mainly on breaking news and service works in tandem with a print edition whose staples are analysis, context and opinion”
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-13
13 August 2007 · No Comments
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“Christian Dunn, head of digital news at the Evening Leader in Wrexham, has set up a wiki for digital journalists to gather knowledge and exchange ideas.”
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“If your email is urgent I’ll tap out a reply straight away. If not, I tell myself I’ll reply later and move on to the next message. Of course by the time I get to my desk your email is underneath a pile of other emails so I answer those and yours disappe
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“The short answer is what I call the “Three Cs”: Catalyze and Curate Conversations. As we roll out new features over the next year, you’ll see the ratio of conversational catalysis to traditional journalism climb.”
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“The assumption is this: only 1% (10%, whatever) of people will be active contributors/prosumers/etc… One I heard recently from the Beeb was something ‘Creators, Catalysts, Collectors, Consumers’. Cute. But missing the strategic point entirely.”
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“Two recent news stories remind us of some of the things that newspapers don’t (necessarily) do (any more) (1) print their own newspaper (2) write the words that go in it.”
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“It has remained secretive for months… testing its engine, adding some 100,000 profiles and inserting other social networking features.”
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People search engine.
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“The latest Pew Research Center study on Americans’ views of their news media show falling trust, growing divides, and the emergence of media tribes.”
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“Communities aren’t created by management fiat. They grow on their own. You can provide a fertile environment for yours, and nurture it with light-handed moderation and by having staff members participate in its early conversations.”
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Wiki of Bivings article on improving newspaper sites.
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“A new study by Yahoo has looked at the effect of online advertising on consumer shopping patterns offline, finding that online ads can increase the number of offline buyers, as well as their average spend.”
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“The 30-strong team… already has plans to launch three websites by the autumn. BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, has earmarked 15 areas for potential online launches, or re-launches of existing websites.”
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“Let’s take a look at the most interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools.”
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“If you’ve been waiting for the straw that will break the camel’s back - the camel being the news organisations, and the back being their willingness to trade Google News’ “fair use” of their stories for traffic to their sites - here’s a candi
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“It’s too messy because comments on different articles will all be bundled up in one heap and attached to the news cluster… And too orderly because only the incumbents get to take part… Will this breed a good debate? I doubt it very much indeed.”
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“Google is short circuiting yesterday’s inert, rigid, vertically integrated mass media value chain - by adding a feedback loop to it, the production process is made recursive.”
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“Everyone in media is about to go widgetmad but they’re thinking about it the wrong way: They are deciding what to put in the widgets (here are our headlines, take our quiz…). We should decide what we want in the widgets that we distribute.”
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“VSS forecasts that online advertising will grow by more than 21 per cent per year to reach $62bn in 2011, making it bigger than newspaper advertising, which is expected to total $60bn in 2011.”
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“Shift to Alternative Media Strategies Will Drive U.S. Communications Spending Growth in 2007-2011 Period; Consumer Media Usage Expected to Level Off Going Forward”
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“our total media usage is declining, though what’s interesting to me is that part of this, they say, comes from efficiency” And time spent on consumer-supported media grew 19.8% (2001-6 CAGR), vs decline of 6.3% on ad-supported media.
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“Executives are blaming the internet for the downturn, and are beginning to accelerate plans to take the battle to their online competitors.”
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“By adapt I mean, be part of the conversation. We can’t back away from turning our web sites into platforms for community participation. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean we need to surrender to unmoderated, unfiltered, undifferentiated noise.”
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-09
9 August 2007 · No Comments
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“We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question.”
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“maybe Google’s going to get flooded with comment requests from people who are tangentially mentioned in news stories and looking for more visibility in searches.”
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“GazetteLive, the website of the Evening Gazette, was relaunched today in the second stage of a major upgrade of the websites of Trinity Mirror’s regional titles. The group is simultaneously also relaunching nebusiness.co.uk”
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Newspaper site for Evening Gazette, Teesside. Includes 20 hyperlocal community sites for each area of Teesside.
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North East business and financial news from The Journal, Newcastle, and Evening Gazette, Teesside.
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Business blog for the North East, alongside NEBusiness.co.uk.
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New hyperlocal site in Teeside. One of the 20 community blogs now part of the GazetteLive network.
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-06
6 August 2007 · No Comments
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“anyone who has spent time doing business online realizes that less than 10% of anyone’s audience (even if your audience are rich people) will pay for online content.”
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“I’d also argue that WSJ.com should become distributed, putting its news and, more important, its data out there as nuggets, widgets, modules that many other sites — blogs, social services, shows — can distribute for you.”
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“Lehman Brothers analyst Doug Anmuth does a detailed number-crunching and analysis of the scenarios if WSJ.com became open”
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“much of the international audience is transient, coming in for a story and leaving, often sent that way by Drudge.”
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“According to the latest figures from Nielsen//NetRatings, the media researcher, Guardian Unlimited and TimesOnline, the UK’s two largest “quality” newspaper websites in terms of users, have more American than British readers.”
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Vin Crosbie: “The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn’t that your content isn’t online or isn’t online with multimedia. It’s your content. Specifically, it’s what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people…”
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“I despise the internet. It’s irresponsible and, often, a net of hate. And I don’t have time for Blogopops.”
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On Robert Fisk piece: “Should I ever get around to telling you why I think the National Grid lacks a sense of humour, I would hope that someone, somewhere would point out that I’m talking nonsense. “
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“During the course of Project Red Stripe we have come to realise that assessment, reassessment and change are natural parts of the innovation process. As part of this process – and with some regret – we have decided that we had to move on from Lughenj
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“I would have thrown another requirement on Project Red Stripe or any media company’s innovation incubator: that they start a sustainable — that is, profitable — business… now the business of journalism is every journalist’s business.”
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“The innovation that normally yields results is the kind that arrives in a light drizzle; small, incremental, building on work done by yourself or others, utterly un-noteworthy to all but the geekiest observer.”
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“The Desert Sun site from Palm Springs, California is one of the first sites to get the facelift”
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“First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the AA, Halifax and the Prudential have all withdrawn ads.”
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“Facebook, and other social networking sites will need to find ways to provide filtered delivery of advertising soon, or face the real possibility that advertisers may take their business elsewhere”
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“a new site that brings you the best news from all over the Web and delivers it in concise, efficient summaries. Newser offers a quick, graphic snapshot of the news and a way to dig deeper for images, audio, video, and links to the best sources. “
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“It certainly looks neat, and helps in efficient news consumption. But tough to make a go as a destination brand, especially as a generalist news site, and then the issues of scale, competition and specialist news sites. “
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“I actually like Newser, but whether I would use it regularly will depend on whether the editors can do a good job of not only keeping on top of breaking and important stories, but also picking stories that interest me.”
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On Newser: “It’s Yahoo! News without the exclamation point. It’s the dullest thing I’ve seen all day, and I’ve been staring into a jar of pennies for the last half hour.”
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On Newser: “Lumping that content together in yet another new way - especially without any apparent attempt at personalisation or smart filtering for individual relevance - probably won’t be the salvation of journalism in the information age.”
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“We like the equality of the site at the moment - everybody’s post gets a chance to gather readers. However, it can be difficult to know what you’ve missed. We wanted to provide more ways into the conversation.”
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“Those in their 40s make up the largest group - almost a quarter of users. Almost a fifth of users are in their 50s and a similar proportion are in their 60s. Those groups account for almost two-thirds of My Telegraph members.”
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“The UK’s top Internet properties and top gaining properties for June, based on data collected through the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service.”
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“At GateHouse Media, I think we’re going to “require” real identities. We’re still building our system to “enforce” this, and are months away yet, so I suppose this policy is subject to change, but I’m pretty set on it.”
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“For many organisations, the best approach is about ‘iterating crapness’ out of the user experience.” (Login required.)
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Research, links and statistics on online video.
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“The CPM rate changes from one based on cost per thousand page views to cost per thousand unique users.”
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“We’ve rounded up more than 80 popular CMSs due to reader requests. For the sake of brevity, we haven’t delved too deeply into CMSs for personal blogging or wikis”
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“I look at the philosophical differences between publishers and advertisers on measurement, consider a new solution by startup Quantcast, and dream the impossible dream of one universal online metric.”
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“Twitter is a publication because it provides me with a flow of information… you can’t appreciate this until you are following the right mix of people whose thoughts, ideas, sentiments, life experiences, and totally random banter are interesting to yo
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“To alter the organisms so dramatically, the scientists from the Hanover University of Veterinary Medicine tweaked the genes that determine body shape.”
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“They are closed lists that aren’t accessible to the public, and each posting includes the person’s name, mailing address and email address to verify who they are”
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“As seen from the graph, Digg.com has lost nearly half of its traffic from its glory-days towards the end of 2006. No doubt, Kevin Rose’s creation is facing stiff competition from other web2.0 startups such as Reddit, Stumbleupon, del.ico.us and others”
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“Slashdo… has fully committed to the shift towards open reader participation in online news gathering with the public launch of the Slashdot Firehose, a social news portal that lets readers publicly submit and vote on the day’s top stories.”
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“So we have “serious, traditional” journalism over HERE, and all this experimenting with “citizens” and “crowds” and whatnot over THERE.”
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“We should let the audience make the content. We should just print it up for them”
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“You don’t need a skunk works to be innovative, you need a culture of innovation. It’s very tempting to create a separate team with their own budget and resources, free of bureaucracy…to whom you can give the task of innovation and then forget about it”
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“MicroMedia: Quick audio or video messages published to a trusted social community. May be created and consumed using mobile technology, and often distributed using other social media tools”
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“Currently, virtual hangouts differentiate themselves by targeting particular audiences and providing certain types of immersive experiences.”
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“Holding on to this disbelief – this myth that users won’t scroll to see anything below the fold – is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users.”
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“OJR’s editor answers basic questions about how news organizations can improve investigative reports by using the Internet to gather information from their readers.”
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“when it comes to at-work media use, the study found that the Web clearly dominates (with 54.6% reach, compared to television’s 21.1%), and is the only medium that ranks among the top two at both work and home.”
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“I agree that hyperlocal could bring back fleeing readers and even expand into new territories. But only when done well.”
Categories: Daily links
links for 2007-08-03
3 August 2007 · No Comments
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“Last week, the Telegraph’s Shane Richmond put out an appeal for the essential blog posts about online journalism. Here’s my contribution — hopefully a case of ‘better late than never’.”
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“This is a series of essays on the future of journalism and some of my ideas on how advances in technology have changed the way that we report and write the news”
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“The Web… has every advantage that should be available to the CAR practitioners, including unlimited depth, the ability to customize or personalize and the luxury of designing a database so that it will truly be useful to readers. “
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“f I were in a position to hire a reporter, I’d be looking for a solid writer with Web skills… Next, I’d be looking for one of the trinity: multimedia, interactivity, data.”
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“It’s not the maker of the toy who holds the affinity position but the one who gives it to him, and this is the problem with the whole on-demand media frenzy currently underway”
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“the value of newspapers isn’t, and never has been, a function of the content they create. It has always been a function of owning the relationship with the reader.”
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“1. Audiences are built. Communities grow. 2. Communities face a tradeoff between size and focus. 3. Participation matters more than quality. 4. You may own the software, but the community owns itself. 5. The community will want to build. Help it, or at l
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“Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own. The writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak— to the world, as it w
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“The traditional premium on impartial journalism is a function of media scarcity: if you are the main or sole source of news you have an obligation to be balanced.”
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“The day that you could, as a media organisation, expect people to come to your home page, to navigate to news within your site, make you a part of their daily routine. That day is going.”
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“Widgets are taking over the web, small pi