Scan-N-Land

An optimist about newspapers

2007-05-14T15:20:00.000-04:00

I sent away for a copy of the Charlie Rose interview with Anthony O'Reilly that I mentioned in my earlier post. Here is the relevant passage. Rose is asking O'Reilly, a former CEO of the Heinz company and now a prominent global financier, why he's willing to invest in deadtree publications at a time when the Internet is all the rage:

ANTHONY O'REILLY: My view is that with the
Internet and the proliferation and the ubiquity of the Internet,
newspapers, if they had not been invented, would have had to be invented
because of the Internet.
Because in my view, a newspaper, properly edited and presented
newspaper, is the ultimate browser. In a half an hour, you can get all the
news, all the views, all the sport, all the gossip, all the commentary from
people you trust or dislike or like, and you get it all for the price of a
cup of coffee.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you do your own search.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: Absolutely. Whereas, if you go on the
Internet, you have look for something. You`re looking for something.
CHARLIE ROSE: But why are American newspapers hurting?
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: Well, I think that certain events happened in
American newspapers over the past two or three years. There were some
scandals involved in relation to the ABC circulation.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: Most newspapers wanted to clean up the act and
to say this actually is a circulation that we have. And so many of the
fees that they gave away and many of the contortions that they used to
increase their circulation have been done away with.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: And so papers are now coming back to the
bedrock of their actual circulation.
But I would think that the actual circulation decline of the
newspapers has been relatively nominal, and worldwide, newspapers are
actually on the increase. In India, for example, we are showing a 25
percent increase in our newspaper...
CHARLIE ROSE: But I point out something you know. They`re developing
at a rapid rate an increased middle class in India.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: That`s correct. And those people believe that
newspapers, to them, are, as I said, the ultimate browser.

Users more engaged with smaller communities

2007-03-23T10:12:00.000-04:00

A new report put out by Communispace states that the social networking sites of tomorrow will cater to smaller audiences.

Buh-bye, MySpace.

BizReport: Users are more engaged with smaller communities

Print Media Makes Its Transition to the Web-Video Age -- New York Magazine

2007-03-17T15:27:00.000-04:00

Print Media Makes Its Transition to the Web-Video Age -- New York Magazine:

"And this very moment, before anyone professes to know much more than anyone else, is probably the beginning of the new medium’s great golden age. Enjoy it while it lasts. "

I'm not really sure I get Anderson's kicker. Is he saying that there will come a time when all Web videos will have high production values? The Buchwald obit he mentions certainly does. But is it safe to say that all online vids will be like this? The low production values are part of the aesthetic, not just a question of necessity, right?

Everybody is doing it

2007-02-14T12:44:00.000-05:00

Reuters reporter Adam Pasick does it. CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman does it. Journalist James Wagner Au does it. Even Marco Cadioli, a photographer and college lecturer from Milan, Italy, does it.

It seems everyone does it.

What is it? "Second Life," the online virtual universe (or "metaverse") program. While one of our classmates is the perpetual pooh-pooher of Second Life, some pretty important people are taking note according this Feb. 13 "Shop Talk" column in Editor & Publisher.

About once a week, Terdiman's avatar GreeterDan Godel hosts interviews in CNET's virtual theater with prominent people from both the real world and within the program. Subjects have included Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, the program developer, and DigiBarn's Bruce Damer, who is a historian of virtual worlds. A recent interview featured the chief gaming officer of Fortune 500 company Sun Microsystems.

Legions of blogs and websites devoted to the metaverse have sprung up, including the leading blog New World Notes. The site is run by Au. He had spent three years serving as Linden's official "embedded" journalist within Second Life, but his site is now affiliated with Federated Media Publishing, which runs the popular site Boing Boing.

The program also has its own newspaper, The Second Life Herald. Within Second Life, users can click on a kiosk to bring up the publication's website, which is funded by advertising just like most other content websites. A would-be rival, The Democrat, which sought to provide in-world content through the program's "notecard" feature, folded in early November after a four-month run.

So like it or not, we may all be pulled into 3D journalism someday.

What Can We Expect?

2007-02-12T22:14:00.000-05:00

Hopefully we’ve all been keeping up with our Poynter readings from the “Writing for Convergent Media” course…I know I haven’t.

But, I’m trying to rectify that. In doing so, I came across this item from Sunday. It provides a good synthesis, in general, of what types of jobs in journalism that we might expect. I think that I like the “editor-host” model, though I’m not sure that I could sit behind a desk and computer all day—I do that already. :-)

Ken C.

Newspapers: The Ideal Browser?

2007-01-02T20:01:00.000-05:00

Channel surfing after getting home late from work the other night, I happened onto a Charlie Rose interview with Tony O'Reilly.

He an Irish-Brit who formerly headed an American company (Heinz) and who now is investing in the media, among other things. You can find out more about him and his company here.

Annoyingly, I can't find a copy of the video on the web or on Charlie Rose's website (a definite candidate for Vincent Flanders list.

What interested me was O'Reilly's rationale for investing in newspapers even in an Internet age. O'Reilly said something to the effect that some of the heaviest Internet usage is also in countries with the heaviest newspaper readership: Japan and one of the Scandinavian nations -- maybe Norway -- were two he mentioned.

This may be a commentary on those countries lack of entertainment options :-).

But O'Reilly thinks newspapers and the 'net go hand-in-hand. Internet users like papers because good old edited ink on paper turns out to be "the ideal browser." Or so says one megabucks investor.

Hope everyone had happy holidays!

Kathy K

Is Your Blog Exposing You to Legal Liability?

2006-12-27T23:16:00.000-05:00

That's the question posed in this Law.com article.

Author and lawyer Lawrence Savell looks at issues including defamation, copyright and trademark.

"Blog operators need to be alert for situations possibly raising liability issues. Use common sense, use appropriate disclaimers and, if you are not a lawyer, consider legal review. Check your insurance policies to determine if your risks may be covered," Savell recommends.

-- Mark H.

Citizen journalism

2006-12-18T09:44:00.000-05:00

Hi,
This article seems to support a future wave of cell phone reporting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/17/AR2006121700828.html

This person was paid for the photo he submitted - is this ethically sound?

I don't know about you but I'm paying alot of money to learn journalism and this seems like a slap in the face. I would hate to think that I can't get a job because "citizens" are keeping the world informed.

Trinay Blake

What's old news to you might be new to your readers

2006-12-16T11:09:00.000-05:00

It is important to make Web sites easy to use for readers.

"You don't know how readers use your site," Matthew Greenberg, former executive producer of AOL and now an account supervisor at Mindshare Interactive, told students in American University's Interactive Jouranalism class on Saturday.

"You can't control how people use your content," he said. "They're going to read what they want to. They're going to go where they want to."

Making it easy to use a Web site brings readers back, he said.

Tips that Greenberg gave the budding Web journalists included:

Content can have a long shelf-life, except when it doesn't.

What's old news to you might be new to your readers.

Archival cotent can be topical.

But some content starts out old and stays that way.

"Make your Web page one-stop shopping," Greenberg said.

It is also important to tell a story without words because readers don't read entire stories.

"To assume that they are going to read the whole thing is folly," he said. "Pull in content that will expalin the story, even if the reader doesn't 'read' beyond the headline."

Videos, photos or graphics are ways to tell a story without words, he said.

But words are important.

"People scan pages," Greenberg said. "And scanning and skimming are two different things."

Skimming is quickly reading through the whole story, although not every word, he said. Scanning is quickly looking over a page and reading what catches your eye.

To hook readers, words must be focused, concise and clean, Greenberg said. But it's about more than words, it's about formatting.

Other tips included:

Don't use italics, because they are hard to read online

Stay away from foreign words

Use bold type sparingly

Use explanation points sparingly

Think about how the text is going to look once you publish it.

Finally, he said to use the whole page to tell the story.

"That's the beauty of this medium -- you have so many ways to tell your story," he said.

-- Mark H.

I love journalism but I hate asking uncomfortable questions

2006-12-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

Many of you may have received the e-mail sent by Wendall Cochran about this article I love journalism but I hate asking uncomfortable questions

Talk about being honest. I thought it was very forthcoming and truthful. It was refreshing to read about somebody who is embarking on journalism as a new career but to realize that everyone has their own fears and insecurities-whether they are a veteran in the field or just starting out.

The article talks about his deep fear of-people. Or as he puts it “Of talking to them, of asking them nosy questions about their lives. He also said left to his own devices “I’d stay in my room, do nothing and never go out.

I would definitely have to agree that interviewing people and approaching them can be a difficult process-especially if you are shy. Is it possible to be a journalist and be extremely shy I wonder? Cary Tennis who wrote this article states it best “Journalism is irresistible. It is a way to participate in the world that is uniquely fascinating, lively, heroic, intense.” He also writes that he had difficulties and self-doubt through out his career and says to enter into a field or topic that you will enjoy.
“One of the first things that comes to mind, if you do want to write, is to try and find a field that does not involve the partisan antagonism of politics, the private tragedies of crime or the hotly tribal warfare of culture and religion,” Tennis said.

So bottom line-enjoy what you do, try and conquer you fears-however difficult and pain-staking a process this may be, and know that everyone in some way shape or form has their own insecurities and doubts no matter how good a journalist they are. Did anybody ever see "BARBARA WALTERS SPECIAL: 30 MISTAKES IN 30 YEARS" Part 2 that aired on Friday, November 17 at 10:00 p.m.????? Walters shared her interviews with world leaders, athletes, musicians and Hollywood icons, chronicling her mistakes and their mistakes. So if Barbara can make a few mistakes here and there, I think it’s safe to say I may make a few along the way, and hey that’s o.k.

---Vanessa C.

"Ambient Findability"

2006-12-16T08:03:00.000-05:00

A co-worker is reading Ambient Findability by information architect Peter Moreville.

It deals with rapidly changing technology and information overload.He takes a look at information-seeking behavior and the new landscape of "ubitquitous computing."

Questions he poses:

How do you know what to trust when there is so much data available in so many forms? How does all of this influence our decisions?

Does all of this information make us a more literate and informed society?

Does push-pull technology provide us targeted information or constant in-your-face annoyance?

What is the value in virtual realities?

How can we keep consuming device after device?

The book is published by our old friends at O'Reilly. I look forward to reading it.

- Jean

Sports multimedia presentations

2006-12-16T00:09:00.000-05:00

Here's a story about some multimedia packages that the Arizona Republic sports department put together to accentuate their coverage in print.

"It was a good opportunity to utilize more media than just the print sports section," sports editor Mark Faller said.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that I'd like to be able to do one day. Hopefully, after this program is over, I'll be able to.

-Quang

ARGH! Does blogging ruin grammar?

2006-12-15T22:50:00.000-05:00

Just spotted this subhed on one of the sites touted in the Rob Curley note that Amy recommended in her last email.

Below are links to comments by some of the Bloggers that Met With Gates:

Hello!? THAT is a pronoun that refers to THINGS. When we are talking about people, we in the English-speaking world use WHO or WHOM.

Why do so many professional writers make this basic mistake?

Aaaaah. Glad I got that off my chest. I feel better now.

--Kathy K

Moving towards change

2006-12-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

I believe that ink-on-paper publications are doomed. They cost too much to produce and distribute. The change in the newspaper industry will be driven by two things: cost and technology.

I believe that the newspaper of the future will be an interactive publication that will be delivered for free via broadband (possibly wireless) that will feed e-tablets that will become part of people’s lives in the future. As e-tablets and wireless broadband become more common, publishers will take advantage of the technology to deliver their product.

Instead of the local newsagent throwing the paper over the fence from a car, your e-tablet will upload the latest edition of the newspaper automatically while you are sleeping.

The reader will receive a free newspaper and the publisher will enjoy a huge increase in profit because they will no longer have to pay for ink, paper, printing and distribution.

The reader of the future will be able to select whatever newspaper or magazine they want from a menu, or they will be able to subscribe to daily, weekly or monthly uploads of the files every time that the publication is published. The combination of cost and technology, spurred on by the publishers’ never-ending drive for greater profit, will sign the death warrant of the ink-on-paper publication

I believe that they will be free, because the cover price of any printed publication covers only the distribution cost and in no way reflects the actual production cost.

Remove the entire distribution cost and most of the production cost; and it will be in the interests of both publishers and advertisers to give electronic newspapers and magazines away for free to increase circulation.

As e-tablets become cheaper and cheaper, I will not be surprised if newspaper publishers begin to give them away as part of a subscription package that has a once-only up-front fee to cover the cost of the e-tablet.

I believe that change is both inevitable and desirable. And that's what motivated me to become an Interactive Journalism student.

-- Rati Sud

Passion, expertise, humility, reliable numbers

2006-12-15T10:05:00.000-05:00

These are some of the things you need in order to succeed in online publishing, according to the Online Journalism Review. "Don't fall into the traps that have left too many other journalists muttering that 'no one can make money online, '" writes editor Robert Niles. Lots of good, fundamental info here. (via Mediabistro)

--Jeremy Egner

Do I have a future in journalism?

2006-12-15T02:26:00.000-05:00

I'm glad I opened the email that Wendell sent out the other day, because this article hit really close to home for me.

While my fear of asking questions of strangers doesn't run as deep as this guy's, I do have an extreme aversion to it. It's just who I am - I don't even really like to call and order pizza.

When Amy first sent out the class syllabus and I saw that we were going to have to interview people for an article, I got really bummed. I thought to myself - what the F am I doing in this program? Did I really think I was going to get a journalism degree without having to interview anyone?

The thing is, I do love journalism - I started reading the newspaper regularly when I was about ten years old - and I do think there's a place for me in it somewhere. I admire greatly what Kathy does - but I know I could never do it.

Maybe I'd be good at editing or something. I don't know. Hopefully I'll figure it out before we graduate...if I get that far.

- Max A.

Flickr Trick: Finding Free-to-Use Images

2006-12-15T01:01:00.000-05:00

[Newbie Notes: Free-to-use stock photos]

Hugo's Blog on iStockphoto.com pointed out how to use that service for low-price stock images.

Poynteronline explained how to use Flickr for free-to-use photos in their E-Media Tidbits of Monday, December 11.

Our class discussion on the use of photos and videos and copyright laws in the previous class hopefully has informed everyone about the possible consequences of using copyrighted works.

The Poynter Blog, posted by Amy Gahran, shows how to search for Flickr photos that are contributed under the Creative Commons licensing scheme.

Go to the Flickr advanced search page and check the "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos" box and then enter your search criteria.

Read the license restrictions carefully.

Most photos require attribution. Some cannot be modified. They cannot be used for commercial purposes.

There are also some pitfalls to watch out for. Several tips for using the photos are listed in the article.

If one is careful to adhere to the Creative Commons license restrictions this would be a good source for free stock photos.

--Michael H.

AT

2006-12-14T21:49:00.000-05:00

We’ve talked in class about how blogs are a good vehicle for breaking news.

But the mission of the blog I mentioned on the first day of class, apartmenttherapy.com, is “changing the world, one apartment at a time.”

“AT” has been called “quietly addicting” by The New York Times. Its founder, New York City interior designer Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan has been dubbed “part designer, part life coach.”

Fans of HGTV’s Mission: Organization can still catch him sometimes in reruns of the earlier episodes, riding to the rescue on his motor scooter. He is also a commentator on the network’s Small Space, Big Style.

Maxwell believes in analyzing how your home should work for you and how you can realistically achieve it. It's not merely about organizing or decorating.

Maxwell’s book, the eponymous Apartment Therapy, is the showcase for this ideology, carried out in The Eight-Step Cure.

The Web site has a special Cure blog with reader photos and comments.

Maxwell and his wife Sara Kate, a food writer, also blogged on AT the renovation of their 250 square foot West Village rental apartment in tandem with SKGR’s pregnancy this year. Title: The 9 Month Cure, complete with reader comments thoroughly analyzing MGR and SKGR's financial and family life.

AT shows me that there are real people like me who make things work in tight space with little cash, multiple kitties and no car to go to malls for shopping for the place (but good street pickings).

I've had the opportunity to look into other people's homes with the photos they submit and see how they organized, arranged, how they did things.

To start, there was one site only, for New York City.

The first contests were held. Then a new "sister" site: The Kitchen.

In time the Open Threads and other features with comments often got tense.

And things are now much more entrepeneurial, with sites in LA, San Francisco, and Chicago. T-shirts. More sites are planned.

The increasing volume of posts makes it hard to find specific subtopics under topical threads in the blog format. Many wonder if a forum-style format with user registration would serve the site better than the Open Threads.

AT's growing and changing so fast.

How is multimedia success impacting the core readers? What new markets and niches are still unplowed ground?

Nothing ever stays the same, even in a virtual neighborhood of friends and family. Maybe the expansion and branding will make this community last.

I really hope so -- I love what Maxwell has done for us! And I love looking at those photos and videos!

(Interview with Maxwell: http://www.podcasts2.com/podcasts/060330Ryan.mp3 -- from the WrittenVoices.com site)

---jg

News University

2006-12-14T19:02:00.001-05:00

For anyone interested in taking a quick crash course or two to supplement this program, you might try News University.

It's a Poynter Institute for Media Studies project, funded by the Knight Foundation, that offers interactive courses for journalists. You have to register for the site, but most of the courses are free and can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Here are a few good classes:

Anatomy of a Newspaper: explores every department of the newspaper, plus gets you acquainted with newsroom vocabulary
Get Me Rewrite: tips on how to improve your writing and rework awkward phrases
Color in News Design: how color complements the written word
Math for Journalists: extremely useful
Handling Race & Ethnicity: how to deal with race and ethnic descriptions in stories
Freedom of Information: how to use FOI laws
Language of the Image: how to tell a story with images

What might most interest people in this program is the 2-part Online Project Development that takes you through the multimedia production process using online projects that were finalists for the Online Journalism Awards.

-Janey Adams

iStockphoto.com

2006-12-14T19:02:00.000-05:00

I took a peak at iStockphoto.com recently and discovered that it’s quite the tool. There are a couple of things that I liked:

1 – Quick registration process
2 – Easy-to-use search function

Joining is free and the registration process only requires submitting a unique name and your e-mail address. Agree to their terms and conditions, and then click Sign Up. You’re in.

Searching is simple. To determine how much time a typical user might need to spend searching, I punched in a few random words—apple, door, phone, koala bear, mango.

The results displayed a second later, organized in groups of 10 to 20, with crisp, neat titles beneath them.

Purchasing and uploading photos
To purchase a photo, you must purchase a credit package. Each credit costs $1.00, and packages start at $10.00.

You can purchase a photo for one credit, lots of them, and there is a “free image of the week” section where you can actually download more than one royalty-free image.

If you are a photographer, you can upload a photo, which they will sell for you. There is an approval process that you must follow if you do submit one.

Throw away the clip art cds
As I got ready to log off, I noticed a banner on the site indicating that their repository has over 1,299,057 photos--I guess we won’t be reaching for the clip art cds any more.

-- Hugo

Mojos and Manslaughter

2006-12-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this up on the blog last week, as it certainly applies to everything we have been talking about in class. On December 4th, Washington Post Staff Writer Frank Ahrens wrote an article about the Fort Myers News-Press, and how they have been taking steps to become "hyper-local."

They are forgoing the traditional reporters and replacing them with mobile journalists, or what they dub, "mojos." These next generation journalists work out in the field seeking out the latest news and processing the information via a slew of techincal gadgets in the comfort of the front seat of their car.

Gannett is also incorporating searchable databases allowing the reader to do their own investigations. It is "crowdsourcing" techniques like this that are making it easier for citizens to uncover a scandal in the government or an inconsistancy in a company's business practices.

In his blog, he adds some additional changes that didn't make it into his article, but are just as innovative, intriguing and...a bit frightening:

Like some other Gannett papers, the News-Press has "citizen members" of the editorial board. These Regular Joes apply for a one-year term on the paper's editorial board. They do not write editorials, but they influence the paper's stand on issues and they vote on endorsements. The News-Press has three, one of which is a former inmate, four times imprisoned, once for manslaughter. The paper knew this when it appointed him to the board. Now, that's diversity.

Check out either of these articles to read more about the different things Gannett is experimenting with in their papers, making them more geared towards our fast paced lifestyles that come with rapidly changing technology. Ahrens wonders, however, if they are actually becoming to customized for the citizens.

Regardless of whether or not this is true, I think that once you grant the reader the power and the convenience of interactivity, it will be nearly impossible to back away from these new standards. The information flood gates are now open...for good.

-Chris Snyder

Photo by Flickr user roland

Don't end up on this list

2006-12-13T13:58:00.000-05:00

Regret the Error lists the biggest media gaffes of 2006 (via Romenesko). Sample scoop, courtesy of Reuters: Queen Elizabeth lays 2,000 eggs per day.

--Jeremy Egner

At the entrance, not the exit

2006-12-12T17:05:00.000-05:00

While driving through the Court House area in Arlington, Va, during lunch today, I saw a reporter and camera man at the Taco Bell waving down cars that were pulling out of the drive thru.

Of course, my immediate reaction was to stop and join them, and conduct my own interview on the E. coli outbreak that recently took place at some of the Taco Bells in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

It was exciting to see them out there doing their jobs. They were both carrying equipment, moving with both purpose and confidence. I was happy for them, and I hope they got a good story.

I am sure, among other things, that they were trying find out how concerned customers might (or might not) be about the quality of the food, considering the recent incident.

As I came to a stop at the next light signal, though, I couldn't help thinking: instead of standing at the exit, why not the entrance of the drive thru? I mean, come on, don't interview folks about the green onions after they have purchased the burrito meal.

-- Hugo

Trust and CitJ

2006-12-12T09:53:00.000-05:00

Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, posts on his blog a recent speech on trust in the age of citizen journalism. It is relevant for our upcoming discussion Saturday.

-- Amy

Inside joke

2006-12-12T08:11:00.000-05:00

--kathyk

(with special thanks to the Planters Co.)