The Digital Edge Blog

Online Ad Revenue on Newspaper Sites Jumps 19 Percent in 2007

2008-03-28T11:09:05-04:00

From an NAA press release today:

Advertising expenditures for newspaper Web sites increased by 18.8 percent to $3.2 billion in 2007, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America. Spending on newspaper Web sites has now grown to account for 7.5 percent of all newspaper ad spending last year (up from 5.7 percent in 2006).

For last year’s fourth quarter, advertising expenditures for newspaper Web sites increased by 13.6 percent to $847 million versus the same period a year ago, marking the thirteenth consecutive quarter of double digit growth for online newspaper advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.

Innovation of the Month: Dayton?s Press Release Tool

2008-03-28T09:38:00-04:00

The Dayton Daily News has launched a press release tool on its Web site that allows community organizations to upload their own press releases, much like other, similar press release tools.

Here’s where Dayton’s approach gets unique: The tool automatically syndicates headlines to other sections of the newspaper’s Web site, so the entertainment section, for example, has the headlines from the most recent entertainment-related press releases. In addition, the tool automatically alerts the appropriate news editors when a press release is uploaded, and the tool will soon interface with the newspaper’s events calendar. Spam prevention? They have that covered, too.

Read about it on our latest Snapshot from the Edge.

Citizen Journalism and Newspaper Web Sites: The Revolution will be Uploaded

From cranky bloggers who cover town council meetings to newsy non-profit collectives and social networks, non-professional news sites are changing the face of journalism online. With more than 450 citizen journalism sites now dotting the U.S., these largely volunteer-driven sites provide yet another challenge--and opportunity--for mainstream newspaper publishers.

From building social networks to experimenting with crowdsourcing and other online extensions to traditional newsgathering, many newspapers are also trying to build their own platforms for people-powered news. Learn from the experiences of the Fort Myers News-Press and learn how independent, online citizen journalism operations in San Diego and central New Hampshire have affected the daily newspapers there.

This Digital Edge report will be released next week at www.naa.org/digitaledge.

Behind the Winning Entries: LJWorld.com

2008-03-27T10:06:00-04:00

Weekly, now through the end of summer, I’ll be posting one of the winning Digital Edge Award entries from the 2008 awards. All the entries are available in the report “Behind the Winning Entries,” but posting them here over time may make them more digestible and spark ideas in your newsroom as different issues come up in your communities. Here’s our third installment:

Best Overall News Web Site (circulation less than 75,000): LJWorld.com

Lawrence Journal-World

Entry submitted by:

Daniel Cox

Director of Mediaphormedia

The World Co.

dcox@ljworld.com

(785) 843-1000

LJWorld.com is dedicated to providing Lawrence, Kan., with round-the-clock local news and information and to giving residents a platform for participating in community dialogue.

Our “Today’s News” allows for easy browsing of all the content published on a particular day, from developing stories to blog entries; obituaries, births, and anniversaries; audio and video clips and more. Since launching this feature in April 2007, it has become the second-most visited page on our site second only to the front page. We invite readers to step into the stream of ongoing local news wherever they choose.

Content sections take advantage of our relational data platformto automatically present readers with related photo galleries, podcasts, blog entries, special features and more, making it easy to explore interesting topics and to discover associated content that deepens their appreciation and understanding of the stories of the day.

LJWorld.com makes extensive use of mapping technologies, wedded to our local coverage, to enhance readers’ perception of news and information around them: for example, as an interface to Lawrence ArtWalk 2007, a local arts experience; as a means of richly communicating the state of local roadwork and street construction projects; and for in-depth reporting features, like our exploration of underage drinking in local bars. Stories routinely use Google maps for added context.

Our reliance on storing all our news content as well-structured data separated from presentationin any medium allows us to deliver the news and information readers want, in the manner they want it, when they want it: on the Web, via automatic section e-mail editions, via RSS, or on our mobile edition. For our 2006 election coverage, the very same information powering our Flash election results feature scrolled across the screen of our TV news channel.

LJWorld.com is committed to exploring the possibilities of re-imagining journalism in the context of an interactive online medium. Reader comments often drive our coverage of a topic by providing news sources and community perspectives.

The Capital Conference Countdown Begins

2008-03-27T09:52:09-04:00

Newspaper publishers and editors, along with the industry’s digital, technology, production and operations professionals, will converge April 12-16 at the 2008 Capital Conference at the Washington (D.C.) Convention Center. The event will merge the annual conventions of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), combining conference events and sessions that will address mutual issues affecting the industry. This year the NAA NEXPO conference and trade show coincides with the NAA/ASNE meetings, with a portion of programs scheduled as joint sessions. (For more information, see today’s NAA press release or head over to capitalconference.naa.org.)

We’ve heard that NEXPO is becoming more and more “digital” – fewer giant printing presses, more digital media stuff – but still plenty of both. There are around 150 exhibitors, so anyone from your organization interested in poly bags, post-it notes for the print edition, new press technology, mobile technology, content management systems, ad servers, etc. should schedule some time to wander the exhibit hall.

And, there are really interesting sessions on everything from environmentally-friendly operations, digital strategies for smaller markets, mobile journalism, social media and more.

The fun stuff: An evening at the Newseum, which is opening this month in downtown D.C., several parties and plenty of networking opportunities.

Hope to see you there!

BlogTalkRadio Gets Well-Deserved Attention

2008-03-26T07:28:00-04:00

I’m glad the people from BlogTalkRadio are finally getting some well-deserved attention in large-market newspapers. The Newspaper Association of America had a very positive experience with Mel Taylor and John Havens when we invited BlogTalkRadio to the NAA Marketing Conference earlier this year. Taylor interviewed more than 10 digital media gurus during the conference, and you can listen to all the interviews at www.blogtalkradio.com/naa.

Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post reported this week:

A year and a half after New Jersey businessman Alan Levy launched the venture, BlogTalkRadio is averaging 2.4 million listeners each month for programs that range from politics to the paranormal, along with sports, finance, food, religion and romance. The Pentagon recently started two shows on the network.

The question is whether this is a flash in the pan that appeals mainly to geeks and those with a need to talk to someone -- anyone -- or whether, like blogs, online radio could explode in popularity.

Most shows are hosted from home by bloggers who need no special equipment and pay no fee. The only requirement is that they put a link to the program on their Web site. On BlogTalkRadio's site, visitors can search for programs by name or category.

The process is nearly idiot-proof. The host logs on to a Web page with a password, types in when he wants the show to air, and then -- using a garden-variety phone -- calls a special number. The computer screen lists the phone numbers of guests or listeners calling in, and the host can put as many as six on the air at once by clicking a mouse. Listeners can download a podcast version later.

Kurtz is right: The process is definitely pretty fool-proof, as long as there’s an analog telephone line available. A number of the interviewees noted how effective and simple the technology is, and many said they were interested in partnering with BlogTalkRadio at some point for their newspaper’s Web site.

Early Video Survey Results

2008-03-25T13:31:08-04:00

As some of you already know, NAA is conducting a survey about online video on newspaper Web sites. We're closing the survey soon, and I thought I'd give a heads up on a few of the early results.

Without getting into numbers (because we haven't vetted answers or removed the duplicates, yet), here's what U.S. daily NAA-member newspapers told us:

Flash is about 3x more popular as an output format as the next most popular format, Windows Media.
Sony and Canon are by far the most popular video camera manufacturers for newsrooms.
Almost all newsrooms own a tri-pod, thank goodness, and most own microphones in addition to those included on the cameras.
A surprisingly high number of newsrooms are having their reporters shoot and edit video -- this isn't just an "online department thing," as it once was.
Newspapers that responded to the online video survey reported a very wide range of revenue that was not necessarily tied to the size of the newspaper.

Look for more results in May...

Trib Wins Sun-Times Contest

2008-03-21T16:37:00-04:00

This is hysterical, or maybe I'm just tired.

A Chicago Tribune news intern won a music video contest sponsored by the Chicago Sun-Times. The subject: "Zell No," focusing on the Tribune Co.'s Sam Zell, who announced he was considering selling the naming rights to Wrigley Field.

The video is great, and the intern, Katie Hamilton, said she will be donating her $1,000 winnings to charity.

An Experiment Worth Watching in South Florida

2008-03-20T12:06:00-04:00

Here’s an interesting experiment in technology and personnel convergence: The Tribune Co. announced yesterday the broadcast and interactive operations at the Miami station WSFL-TV (a CW affiliate) and the Sun-Sentinel newspaper’s print and online operations together. WSFL will move into the Sun-Sentinel’s offices in Ft. Lauderdale. Print, broadcast, online, advertising – all under one physical roof.

The potential for these operations to become a real powerhouse in South Florida are tremendous.

Few places are truly converged like this across mediums. Lawrence, Kan., has a similar set up – television, newspaper, online and advertising operations all coming from one building. But, the relatively small size of that local market, to some extent, limits it. Imagine taking that kind of convergence, mixing it with the right attitude (see below) and making it a lot bigger.

There are a lot of benefits to this model. It goes far beyond a traditional corporate partnership, where separate television and print newsrooms are supposed to work together but don’t always do that. Here, the Sun-Sentinel will “serve as a new and innovative content engine for WSFL’s on-air and online programming.” Another benefit is that it has the potential to create a more efficient way for businesses and marketers to purchase mixed-media advertising along the Ft. Lauderdale-Miami corridor. (This, however, will depend largely on how the sales force is structured.)

The Right Attitude

Allyson Meyers, will return to Ft. Lauderdale as general manager at WSFL (she was the station’s general sales manager from 2004 to 2007 before moving to Jacksonville). “I’m excited about this,” she said in a press release. “Having the print and interactive resources of the Sun-Sentinel within arms reach will be a tremendous advantage. And we’ll be a good resource for the newspaper, too—it has to work both ways to maximize the opportunity.”

I’ve always said the right attitude can go a really long way; I hope there are more people like Allyson in South Florida.

Behind the Winning Entries: Knoxnews.com

2008-03-19T11:05:19-04:00

Weekly, now through the end of summer, I’ll be posting one of the winning Digital Edge Award entries from the 2008 awards. All the entries are available in the report “Behind the Winning Entries,” but posting them here over time may make them more digestible and spark ideas in your newsroom as different issues come up in your communities. Here’s our second installment:

Best Overall News Web Site (circulation 75,000 to 250,000): Knoxnews.com

Knoxville News Sentinel

Entry submitted by:

Jack Lail

Managing Editor/Multimedia

Knoxville News Sentinel

lail@knews.com

(865) 523-3131

Strategy: Knoxnews.com strives to serve our community better than any other news or information source, period.

Innovation: Knoxnews loves to be an innovator, both in step-change and incremental change: Knoxnews was an early beta site for the local channel of the AP Video Network and AP’s local ads for its video player.

Knoxnews added a blog aggregator in late summer, [the site] heavily emphasizes reporter-shot video, and we post video to YouTube and other video sites. Knoxnews invited bloggers to cover us in a open meeting suit. The site also features outbound links to Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. The newspaper is doing a $200,000 business transformation initiative.

Adaptability: From $99 video cameras to $20-a-month social networking sites on Ning to off-the-shelf blogging software, we’re using free and inexpensive tools that any site could replicate.

Impact: Monthly unique visitors are topping 1 million and year-over-year audience growth has been 40 percent in both of the last two years. Video views topped 1 million through the first 10 months of 2007. Early this year, Knoxnews declared war on its local competitors and since then has reversed negative trends in its Hitwise report.

In June, Knoxnews.com went into a new, Django-based content management system with a new design that is more interactive, with user comments, more SEO-friendly and has an admin interface that makes it easier to train newsroom journalists to add stories and photos and do site admin.

Breaking news is a heavy emphasis for the site and we pride ourselves on getting it first and right. We monitor e-mail alerts of all competitors.

Nielsen Online Names Top 30 News Sites

2008-03-19T09:51:56-04:00

The following is data from Nielsen Online on the top 30 sites in the “News” category based on February 2008 traffic. This data takes into account U.S. home and work Internet usage, and it shows both unique visitors to each brand or channel and sessions per person. For more information about the sourcing of this data, please visit www.netratings.com.

Nielsen Online is providing these data sets to the Newspaper Association of America on a monthly basis.

Top 30 Online Current Events & Global News Destinations, ranked by Sessions per Person

Brand or channel; sessions per person; unique audience (000)

1. drudgereport.com; 19.9; 3,445

2. Daily Kos^; 8.9; 1,204

3. Fox News Digital Network; 8.3; 10,177

4. CNN Digital Network; 7.9; 37,181

5. AOL News; 7.7; 21,119

6. Yahoo! News; 7.4; 35,274

7. MSNBC Digital Network; 6.4; 34,013

8. ksl.com^; 6.0; 796

9. Breitbart.com; 5.3; 2,674

10. Google News; 5.3; 12,050

11. Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division; 5.1; 13,998

12. NYTimes.com; 4.9; 18,975

13. Netscape; 4.8; 2,709

14. Townhall.com; 4.7; 1,152

15. Media General Newspapers; 4.6; 1,761

16. GTGI Network 4.5; 1,345

17. Star Tribune; 4.3; 2,108

18. TWC News Websites; 4.1; 840

19. NewsMax.com; 4.0; 4,054

20. Zwire^; 3.9; 1,089

21. Cox Newspapers; 3.9; 5,197

22. washingtonpost.com; 3.8; 10,441

23. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; 3.8; 1,259

24. The Buffalo News^; 3.7; 502

25. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 3.6; 1,472

26. MediaNews Group Newspapers; 3.5; 5,850

27. USATODAY.com; 3.5; 10,571

28. WorldNow 3.5; 10,588

29. IB Websites; 3.4; 7,565

30. St. Louis Post Dispatch^; 3.4; 1,022

^ Indicates Home and Work audience duplication projections did not meet minimum sample size standards. Combined home and work audience estimates for these sites may exhibit increased variability month-to-month as a result.

This data, also from Nielsen Online, shows the monthly traffic and other data for newspaper-based Web sites for February 2008:

66,456,096 – monthly unique audience for newspaper sites, an increase of 13.2 percent (year over year)

41 percent – active reach, an increase of 9.4 percent (year over year)

3,064,613,644 – total page views on newspaper sites, an increase of 8.5 percent (year over year)

46.05 – page views per person

A More Serious Notes on the Cows...

2008-03-17T09:59:00-04:00

I’m questioning my choice for the Quote of the Day for today’s Online Publishing Update*.

Here’s what it was:

Quote of the Day: ‘Til the Cows Come Home…
“We live in a post scarcity economy (a.k.a. abundance economy) now. Now, grass that’s already been eaten by some cows still has value to cows, forever. The grass never goes away and grass grows every day. It’s always green for the cows that want it, so long as you don’t put up a fence (which is futile). But this new world gets crazier; your cows can now occupy more space faster. They can be two places at once. Your patch of grass can also be your neighbors’ patches at the same time. These cows can teleport, man. It’s nuts out there.”

-- An essay by Zac Echola called “Generosity as a Business Model: In order to compete you must cooperate.” In it, Echola uses a cow analogy and others to illustrate the economy of abundance in online news, and what it may mean for news publishers.

Great quote, right?

But, it’s not really indicative of the tone or content of Zac’s essay, which is really quite good and definitely gets “worthy read” status. Instead of choosing a summarizing quote, I decided to go with something that would prompt readers would say, “What?! Huh?” and click on the link. We’ll see if it works.

I wanted to promote Zac’s essay in a more serious (and perhaps more fair) way by giving you a better idea of what it’s about.

“Generosity as a Business Model” focuses on the proliferation of online news sources and content, and what it may mean for online publishers going forward in terms of how to attract both readers and revenue.

Long before the cow analogy (validly based on the Tragedy of the Commons) comes up, Zac writes:

Change happened to our industry and now we can’t continue making the same decisions. If we continue to keep quiet, we’re making a bad decision in the long run. We have to adapt our way of thinking to a new world model. We shouldn’t ask how change happened or what we could have done to stop it–the world we live in is a much more mathematically complex place than these games–we should ask how we can leverage our situation now.

Leveraging the situation involves making a number of decisions. Those decisions include:

whether to share information and become a hub in the World Wide Web network, or hoard information and close your site off (hint: the answer is to share);
how to – or whether to – collaborate with competing sites to maximize audience share in your market;
how to look at the relative costs of distributing information (with a reference to Scott Anderson’s recent Wired article on this);
and retooling ad models to maximize relevance, making advertising easy, granular and unbundled.

Zac’s essay details his thoughtful deliberations on all these decisions. By using rationale-based (crime) and economics (cow) analogies, he both aptly illustrates what has happened to the news industry online and puts a new and interesting spin on the conundrums publishers and online GMs are facing.

(Note: Zac works for Forum Communications and is a founding member of Wired Journalists.)

* The Online Publishing Update is a thrice-weekly e-mail newsletter that is just one of many benefits of becoming a member of NAA’s Digital Media Federation. To learn more,

click here. The archives are available here -- if you like what you see, please call NAA Member Services at (800) 656-4622 and ask to sign up!

Kudos to Hernandez, Peck, Densmore, Witt and Murphy

2008-03-14T15:33:00-04:00

General kudos to these five people...

Richard Koci Hernandez

Richard Koci Hernandez, a great visual journalist and the founder of the blog MultimediaShooter, had a pretty bad week. Some people with too much time on their hands hacked MultimediaShooter, one of the most popular newspaper video blogs out there. There was apparently quite a bit of damage. Sadly, Richard decided to shut down MultimediaShooter – an announcement met with an overwhelming response of disappointment from other newspaper digital media folks.

But yesterday, Richard found it in him to bring MultimediaShooter back – and apparently get some revenge on those hackers. His “lessons learned” post has really good tips for all bloggers.

Chris Peck, Bill Densmore, Leonard Witt

This is a great team of three really smart people working on a smart journalism experiment in a small community. They are Chris Peck, editor of the Commercial Appeal in Memphis; Leonard Witt, Fowler Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University and the chief blogger of PJNet (Public Journalist Network); and Bill Densmore, of the Media Giraffe Project, the New England News Forum and Journalism That Matters.

They are working with Locally Grown in Northfield, Minn., an independent community-based journalism site. With a grant from and community-based funding, Locally Grown will hire an entrepreneurial, professionally trained, multimedia-savvy journalist to both report on and work with the community.

Chris Peck will be providing editorial support and guidance, Bill Densmore and Len Witt will be providing professional support and helping with the logistics -- getting the project up and running and figuring out how to keep it going long term. Great idea, great team, great project.

More information on the process and project are available at pjnet.org/representativejournalism.

Joe Murphy

Joe Murphy of the Denver Post launched a site we all need: HappyJournalist.com. The site is in response to the sadly popular site AngryJournalist.com. HappyJournalist.com, like the opposing site, invites contributions from any journalist. Go share the love (and thanks, Joe, for providing the space).

Bloggers Have Mixed Reactions to Cuban's Ban on Bloggers

2008-03-13T12:52:00-04:00

This is a follow-up to my earlier post, "Cuban on Newspaper-Based Bloggers: A Rebuttal".

Turns out Mark Cuban’s decision to ban bloggers in the Dallas Maverick’s locker room (and his related comments about why newspaper reporters should not blog) sparked quite a bit of commentary. Here are a few links and quotes:

Howard Owens (GateHouse Media): “It would help newspapers.com tremendously if more reporters and editors would not only start blogging, but learn to do it well. It’s a fact, blogs help grow audience. Blogs, however, can also help us produce online products that are different from our print product, giving consumers more choices and maybe, just maybe, a reason to make a habit of both print and online. I say, it’s worth a try, cause the way we’re doing things right now ain’t working out so well.”

Unfair Park (Dallas Observer): “It’s rare you’ll hear me getting empathetic toward Dallas’ Only Daily, but for Cuban -- who 50 years from now will be considered one of the Founding Fathers of Blogging -- to draw a virtual line in cyberspace is as baffling as it is wrong. Right?”

L.A. Lakers Blog (The Los Angeles Times): “I must say your decision to ban any writers with the word "blog" attached from the Mavs locker room is nothing short of a slap in the face. Not simply because it makes any work we'd do that much harder, but because the explanation provided on your own blog (irony alert!) doesn't even do us the respect of creating a plausible rationale. Your locker room is too small to house a few more writers? That's really what you're running with? A premium on elbow room? If things start getting really crowded come playoff time, will you demand that scribes lose a few pounds or find their credential yanked?”

However, others agreed with Cuban – at least to some extent.

Hollywood Paroxysm: “So there should be a standard set. Not too loose, but not equal. Let's not go down that dangerous road of the phrase, "s______e but e___l" and demean, well, everything, but we're also not talking about civil rights here. There are things bloggers would want to know about that reporters don't care about, and vice versa.

“The point is that we have to come to some sort of compromise or there's only going to be more vitriol spit by us at them, and more disdain tossed by them at us. And whether I'm talking about newspapers or the league, I'm not really even sure of myself anymore.

“Either way, I hope Cuban, in a pretty clear attempt at punishing a guy and then making a subsequent point, hasn't just set back the medium by three years.”

Can’t Stop the Bleeding: “… there should be a separation. For starters, I think at some point there’s got to be a level of integration, albeit on a sliding scale, for access between bloggers and newspaper guys.”

Related: The Society of Professional Journalists wrote a letter to NBA Commissioner David Stern. In part, SPJ President Clint Brewer wrote:

Bloggers are somewhat new to the media landscape. However, their rights as a member of the media are just as important as their traditional counterparts. To simply ignore them or to push them out of important places would be a terrible step backward.

In addition, this media policy coming in the wake of a critical blog posting by this particular journalist is suspect. Allowing this kind of management of the league’s teams only perpetuates the notion that professional sports organizations are attempting to control media coverage.

Alltop Launches Journalism News and Blog Site

2008-03-13T10:16:00-04:00

So this is neat: A new journalism-focused blog and news aggregator site launched recently under the Alltop brand.

Alltop’s new journalism site, at journalism.alltop.com has RSS feeds of the five most recent posts from 86 Web sites. News sources include Poynter, Editor & Publisher, The Guardian and Open (New York Times). Blogs include BuzzMachine, MediaShift, Newspaper Next, Journerdism and, yes, the Digital Edge. (Thanks for adding this, Alltop team!)

Guy Kawasaki, Kathryn Henkens and Will Mayall, who started Truemors last year, launched Alltop in February. In addition to journalism, the site includes aggregators focusing on politics, celebrity news, lifehacks, sports and a wide range of other categories – nearly 40 in all with more to come. In each category, the site displays the five most recent stories by source from news Web sites and blogs. Hovering over a headline allows you to read the first sentence, clicking on the headline brings you to the blog entry or news article itself. The site works by collecting the RSS feeds from individual sites.

From the site’s about section:

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

Cuban on Newspaper-Based Bloggers: A Rebuttal

2008-03-12T12:30:00-04:00

Mark Cuban, a blogger and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has decided he can’t allow bloggers in the Mavs locker room for the simple physical reason that the locker room isn’t big enough. That’s justifiable to a limited extent.

What I’m really in disagreement with him on is a passage pretty far into Cuban’s blog entry explaining his decision. In response to a note from the American Society of Newspaper Editors arguing that blogging is actually a core function of beat reporting, Cuban wrote beat writers should be focusing more on features and analysis, both of which would be a better use of their time (and more valuable for readers) than blogging.

I’ll take this opportunity to once again mention BeatBlogging.org, a great experiment in how blogging and opening reporting to community participation can improve beat journalism. Also, part of covering a beat is that the reporter gets a lot of great information that doesn’t necessarily justify an entire 800 – 1,000 word story in itself. Blogs are a fabulous outlet for that information.

Cuban wrote:

Instead, we get bloggers from mainstream media. Newspaper blogging is probably the worst marketing and branding move a newspaper can make. The barriers to entry for bloggers are non-existent. There are no editorial standards. There are no accuracy standards. We bloggers can and do write whatever we damn well please. Historically, newspapers have set some level of standards that they strived to adhere to. By taking on the branding, standard and posting habits of the blogosphere, newspapers have worked their way down to the least common denominator of publishing in what appears to be an effort to troll for page views.

Let’s take this point-by-point.

Cuban wrote: “The barriers to entry for bloggers are non-existent.”

This is good. Low barriers to entry mean that more people are getting their voice heard (or trying to, at least). The low barrier also has paved the way for things like citizen journalism through blogs, community activism on issues and much more.

Cuban wrote: There are no editorial standards. There are no accuracy standards.

Ok, Mark, fair point. However, newspaper reporters who blog do have standards because they are blogging for the newspaper – which has standards. Further, most reporters and editors who are blogging can write pretty well because of the nature of their job, and copy editors are generally available to look over blog entries for typos.

Cuban wrote: We bloggers can and do write whatever we damn well please.

Again, ok. You’re right. However, bloggers who are reporting for a newspaper can not write whatever they want to write (see aforementioned references to employment).

Cuban wrote: Historically, newspapers have set some level of standards that they strived to adhere to. By taking on the branding, standard and posting habits of the blogosphere, newspapers have worked their way down to the least common denominator of publishing in what appears to be an effort to troll for page views.

Newspaper-based bloggers are not taking on the standards (or lack thereof) in the blogosphere except for inviting the community to participate and publishing blogs in reverse chronological order -- the technical definition of a blog. Further, Mark, newspapers are not “trolling” for page views on their Web sites – I really think you have the motivation of the newspaper industry all wrong here.

Newspapers are taking on the “branding” of the blogosphere for several reasons: It’s a well-guided effort to reach out to the community and connect with readers (especially younger readers). NAA has case studies on this from the Spokesman-Review, The (Racine) Journal Times and more. In fact, several reporters have said they even get story ideas from the community participation that occurs on their blogs (we have this in the Online Community Cookbook). Blogging get news and information out to the community as it happens throughout the day and through a technology that generally allows for easy sharing. Further, it’s just one way (of very many) that newspapers are smartly using the Web to communicate.

Newspaper blogging is probably the worst marketing and branding move a newspaper can make?

Blogs give newspapers a great opportunity to differentiate the online offerings from the print products. There are still a lot of good stories to do for print, and I’ll be the first to say I enjoy print editions. But blogging is a unique online form. Newspapers can start or guide conversations, and share rather than just report.

Cuban sells all bloggers – even newspaper-based bloggers – short by not recognizing how much they have contributed to and changed modern media of all types.

(Note of thanks to Howard Owens for letting me bounce ideas off him. See his two posts on journalists who blog here and here.)

Behind the Winning Entries: PolitiFact

2008-03-12T11:07:25-04:00

Best Overall News Web Site (circulation > 250,000): PolitiFact.com

St. Petersburg Times/Congressional Quarterly

Entry submitted by:

Robin Lankton

Creative Strategy Manager

St. Petersburg Times

rlankton@sptimes.com

(727) 893-8111

Strategy: PolitiFact is an effort by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to focus on sorting out the truth. During the presidential campaign, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ will examine the candidates’ speeches, TV ads and interviews and analyze whether their claims are accurate.

Goals:

1. Bring the truth to politics.

2. National brand recognition for the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly.

3. Make the hard calls that other news organizations don’t provide.

Creativity/Innovation: Each election year we hear this lament from our readers suffering the barrage of campaign rhetoric: “Just gimme the truth.” That’s the mission of PolitiFact. The St. Petersburg Times of Florida and Congressional Quarterly of Washington, D.C. – two of America’s most trusted, independent newsrooms – have created the site to help voters separate fact from falsehood in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Journalists and researchers from the Times and CQ will fact-check the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other campaign communications. We’ll publish new findings every day on PolitiFact.com, and list our sources for all to see.

PolitiFact (pronounced puh-lit’-eh-fact) is bolder than previous journalistic fact-checking efforts because we’ll make a call, declaring whether a claim is True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True or False. We even have a special category for the most ridiculous claims we call “Pants on Fire.”

PolitiFact will offer readers the choice of quick scorecards or longer stories explaining the issues and our rulings. It is a vibrant database that allows users to search for candidates’ records of accuracy based on their names, issues, or the rulings on our Truth-O-Meter. The site will include video of campaign ads and candidates’ speeches.

We’ll also publish an “attack file” – a home for fact-checking the attacks candidates make against each other. We recognize that in a world of political bloggers and “independent” political action committees, attacks don’t just come from the candidates themselves. So, we will also check out many claims that enter the public discourse via a talk show host, a blogger or even a fictional character in a YouTube video.

We think PolitiFact breaks new ground in political journalism. As voters get bombarded with confusing claims and counter-claims, they can turn to PolitiFact to find out what’s right and what’s not. The site was developed in-house. The St. Petersburg Times is Florida’s largest newspaper and the winner of six Pulitzer Prizes. Washington-based Congressional Quarterly is the authoritative news source for coverage of Congress and politics. CQ and the Times are affiliates of the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a center for journalism education in St. Petersburg.

Adaptability: A political Web site could be developed for local, state or national campaigns.

Impact: Politifact receives more than 62,000 unique visitors the first month since launching. Advertising revenue is $25,000 and will continue to rise as the race gets closer. The site has received national recognition by CNN, Slate, Advertising Age, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and many others. The Washington Bureau chief appears regularly on CNN and XM satellite radio.

Whatever Happened to "Both-And" ?

2008-03-10T11:03:00-04:00

Return of the blog! I admit I slacked a bit last week – a combination of travel and an extremely busy “vacation” (I worked hard all week, but not on NAA stuff) all conspired against the blog. Excuses, excuses.

Anyway, I wanted to weigh in on the Newsweek article controversy mentioned in this morning’s Online Publishing Update. Here’s what I put into the OPU this morning:

Newsweek: UGC Falling Out of Favor; Bloggers Disagree
Web 2.0 is based around the user: User-generated video, social networking and more have driven traffic at sites like YouTube and MySpace. “But now some of the same entrepreneurs that funded the user-generated revolution are paying professionals to edit and produce online content,” Newsweek reported. “In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web.” Reasons include the ability to attract advertisers risk-free and charge more to those advertisers for access to vetted, quality content.

However, several bloggers slammed Newsweek’s article for using more anecdotes than statistics to back up the claim that UGC is falling out of favor. Howard Owens of GateHouse Media wrote, “And people wonder why I think journalism needs to be reinvented. When unexamined blather like this Newsweek piece can see the light of day, there is something seriously wrong with journalism.”

Terry Heaton wrote, “Let’s begin with the assumption in the title (“Revenge of the Experts”), that there is a battle underway in our culture between experts and amateurs. Says who? The so-called experts, that’s who, because they feel their protected turf is being threatened. It is, but not by any amateur movement or cult. Institutional arrogance is their biggest threat. They need to look in the mirror.”

I won’t jump on the Owens-Heaton bandwagon, although I do mostly agree with their criticisms. But, with a nod to the Beatles-iTunes deal (or not?), I will say this: Maybe all we need is love.

I’ve been doing a bit of research and writing and editing on online communities and community journalism v. MSM and “pros” v. “ams” and “professionally produced” v. UGC…and I’m starting to wonder why there’s so much “this v. that” in the Web world.

What happened to “both-and”?

Why is it taking some media experts so long to figure out that the people going to their Web sites (and driving up traffic and advertising revenue) are not actually the enemies?

Jay Rosen’s Beat Blogging project and Wired/NewAssignment’s Assignment Zero and (maybe) the Dallas Morning News JFK project have taught us this: The audience is not perfect, however the audience can be knowledgeable, helpful, insightful and interesting. The audience provides traffic (of course), but there are ways they can also help mainstream media organizations extend their brand reach and more fully integrate into the communities they serve. And, adding user-generated content to just about any site through photos and videos and comments <drumroll> drives traffic even more!

User-generated content mixed with content that is more professionally produced creates a win-win situation: Site visitors win by getting more interesting and useful content -- even if it's not perfect -- and the site wins by attracting site visitors with more interesting and useful content. I’m not seeing “v.” here. I'm seeing "and." Where's the love?

Shameless plug alert: One of the arguments in the Newsweek article was that expert produced content attracts advertising because it’s “safe.” Section 3 of the Online Community Cookbook, released today, begs to differ: Several newspaper.coms are already successfully and creatively selling advertising in and around user-generated content.