kirk lapointe's themediamanager.com: how the news business is changing

The announcement that the New York Times and Linkedin have found a way to provide customized pages to Linkedin users bodes well for future old media-social media alliances. Now it should be possible for an array of such deals to permit content to find new audiences..
In essence the Times is serving sector-related content to sector-working Linkedin users. A good deal for both.

With all apologies to Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, I have stolen that headline --- or that line --- he used some time ago at a conference I attended. I'm not sure if he coined it, but if someone had it trademarked in recent times, they might be in for a killing in the years ahead.
In reading AdAge, it's apparent that the big guys are going to start linking to the others and aggregating content to be the best utility for their audiences. This has started to happen in the New York Times' blogs, but it'll now be a feature of the home page material in the fall. The page itself, says Jonathan Landman, will be more of a blog patch.
The notion of linking out to others' news is coming into its own. The sentiment is that the competitive terrain in future will have a little less to do with who reported what than with who can gather what. In other words, do what you do best, link to the rest.
This is more than a little frightening for organizations that invest in work that then is linked by aggregators, but if everyone starts, no one will be able to stop it.

 If advertisers are only willing to really pay as their ads are viewed, should publishers only pay if the content is read?
Blogger Tim Anderson is the latest to weigh in on a fledgling debate on the way in which writers should be compensated in the digital sphere. His piece is based on an interesting technical method from Chris Green on quantifying an author's appeal online. Anderson and others have noted the problems in this approach. There are many dynamics in the publisher-writer relationship that transcend click-per-view models.
Forget the click fraud issue; technology can likely address that. Bigger issues are the value attached to a reader (income, education, etc. that an advertiser might cherish), how a particular piece of writing contributes to the value of the publication (its placement and prominence), and how important a publisher wants to retain a writer for competitive purposes --- among many other things. Pay-per-click doesn't encompass those issues in the least.
In recent weeks Gawker has pruned its pay-per-click compensation for its writers.
Anderson notes that a changing model of journalism is going to need rethinking on compensation. Newsrooms essentially pay the same rates for their staff's work. But how that might change is anyone's guess, and a minefield after the guess.

AllVoices.com is an aggregator of networked and conventional news media, drawing on some 3,500 traditional sources and any number of registered users for content. It validates citizen content and uses algorithms to rank and place them for relevance and context. The merge is optimally a good pro-am blend.
It has been in beta for about a year now, but it's at last being rolled out in public form. The look and feel of the site are quite competitive. The searchable map helps pinpoint geographical content, while the categories reasonably group content (we should all have a section called Conflict and Tragedy). When I went looking for Canadian news this morning, it provided a relative impressive assortment of traditional material --- at this point it seems to have only a smattering of user-generated content.
There are many other crowd-sourcing sites in the mix, but AllVoices is on the surface a worthwhile addition.

Most likely we all come from households that tacked things on a corkboard or magnetically attached them to the fridge. Which is the principle behind some of the initiatives at newspapers: Create clippable, useful guides to life that bear enough importance to be kept in a prominent place in the home or office.
Follow The Media suggests this so-called hyperlocalism is part of the shift in newsrooms away from far-flung coverage. I'd prefer to echo folks like Jeff Jarvis, who say newsrooms should do what they do best and link to the rest.

From former Philadelphia Inquirer editor Rich Heidorn Jr. comes TreeHouse Media, a turn-on-its-head approach to the contemporary angry journalist. The site is striving to give journalists the tools to self-soothe. It's discursive, but not looking for gripes and grievances. Rather, it has a collaborative, let's-get-out-of-this-morass-together tone. Mainly it seems to say the newsroom is morphing into a batch of self-employed service providers, so join the club.

It is a treat to see the revival of Interactive Narratives, which had long ago aggregated the traditional media's bravest work in new media.
The new incarnation is still dazzling but less futuristic. It is mainly a collection of the best and brightest of today's work by conventional media in the digital sphere.
Original showcaser Andrew DeVigal and two others relaunched the site under the auspices and sponsorship of the Online News Association. Already on the site today are recent multimedia packages from the Washington Post on an earthquake in China and Las Vegas Sun on prescription drug consumption. Each offers a different twist on conventional storytelling.

We all like getting the unmarked brown envelope, sealed by someone who has had enough with the subterfuge or the disinformation or the misguided media. We can only imagine what it feels like to have that brown envelope contain a secret we kept from the public.
Which is why Wikileaks has been such an adventure online since its inception a year ago. It has been fearless --- almost dangerous --- in taking documents that weren't destined for the public domain and putting them up for all to see.
In the early days of the Internet, there was criticism that roughshod sites might elude accountability by placing servers and domain registration in jurisdictions indifferent or averse to prosecution. Wikileaks has revived that concern, and many groups that seek to take it down have been thwarted in part by its mirrored addresses and vaguely organized operation.
But it hasn't pratfalled over the tripwires. Large news organizations have cited its findings. Large companies, groups and governments have descended at times to shut the site --- all of them unsuccessfully. And somehow Wikileaks has adhered to a discipline of verification.
Wired's profile this month does well in examining its challenges of securing content in a very security-conscious information environment.

Electronic paper is touted as one of the most viable options for newspapers in the years ahead because of its capacity to reproduce text and images with greater lines of definition and by using natural light --- as opposed to backscreen illumination --- in its presentation. Thus, easier on the eyes, with the electronic benefit of updated information.
In this context there is a very revealing interview with Ryosuke Kuwata, in charge of the Asia Pacific region for E-Ink, the electronic paper firm. He predicts that the first commercial applications in e-paper newspapering will emerge in the second half of 2009. Verification of the technology seems to be taking place starting later this year.
Kuwata also notes that the Hearst Corp. is looking at developing a proprietary terminal to carry the product in the U.S., and that Le Monde is examining its options in this field.

I waited a few days to see if perhaps the initial reports were somehow out of context or perhaps lost in translation, but I can't find anything to dispute the move last week by the Romanian Senate to pass a law mandating that 50 per cent of all broadcast news be positive.
The law will be implemented by a national council, which will have the enjoyable task of determining what constitutes good and bad news.
As a news manager, I'm asked all the time why we don't carry more positive news. I typically reply that there is plenty there for the perusing: Sports sections chronicle athletic prowess, Arts sections examine creativity, Business sections look at the generation of wealth and entrepreneurial innovation, and the news sections contain all sorts of stories on advances in medicine and science and the betterment of society. The adage in broadcasting --- if it bleeds, it leads --- hasn't been effective for some time, even if newscasts often start with the most shocking developments to attract interest.
But I don't think anyone would like a quota of even five per cent. The community will decide if you're too negative by moving to some entity that isn't.