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The Content Graph and the Future of Brands
Yesterday, two stories from Aol’s DailyFinance appeared in the Sunday print edition of the Daily Telegram, a newspaper in southern Michigan. These stories appeared on a business page that would otherwise have been produced almost entirely with stories from the Associated Press. The Daily Telegram got permission to publish these Aol stories not through a big corporate [...]
The New Associated Press for the 21st Century
This week, at TechCrunch Disrupt, we’re announcing the launch of Publish2 News Exchange, a platform aimed at disrupting the Associated Press monopoly over content distribution to newspapers. With Publish2 News Exchange, newspapers can replace the AP’s obsolete cooperative with direct content sharing and replace the AP’s commodity content with both free, high-quality content from the Web and content [...]
High-End Brand Publishers Need to Sell Scalable Premium Ad Solutions, Not Commodity Ad Space
Newspaper online advertising has not benefited greatly from the recent upswing in online ad spending, according to the New York Times and most of the recent newspaper company quarterly results. This is no surprise because most newspaper websites sell SPACE for commodity advertising — display ads and classifieds — and thus are hard pressed to [...]
Content Doesn’t Matter Without the Package
In response to the launch of Google’s Fast Flip, I observed that Google is correctly focused on creating a new user interface for news, when most media companies are not. A lot of people responded that Fast Flip is not an innovative or effective UI for news — which may be true, but that misses [...]
What Google Understands About the Future of News and Publishing That Publishers Do Not
Google knows a lot about the future of news — more than many publishers. It’s evident in Google’s new product, Fast Flip, which allows news consumers to “flip” through news stories. What’s striking about Fast Flip is that Google is innovating precisely where publishers used to lead innovation.
Fast Flip is a new package for news.
The [...]
The Briefing: Start at Y Combinator, finish at EveryBlock
It was a busy Monday morning in two corners of the hacker journalist community: EveryBlock is acquired by MSNBC, and Y Combinator announces a “request for startups” to address that whole “future of journalism” question hanging out there in the open air.
Want to catch up?
Start here:
Msnbc.com acquires local news Web site
MSNBC.com | August 17, 2009
Ryan [...]
What I Read Today: Facebook Buys FriendFeed Edition
Why Facebook Wants FriendFeed
GigaOm | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: Om Malik calls it “the problem of plenty.” Facebook is trying to solve it by acquiring FriendFeed. Will news orgs compete?
Facebook Takes FriendFeed To Take On Twitter
TechCrunch | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: M&A, as always, is driven by startups building what incumbents should have [...]
The Briefing: Who’s going to save your URL shortener from extinction?
Yesterday, URL shortener tr.im announced that they’re shutting down.
Why? What do you need to know about it? What’s going to happen as bit.ly swoops in to the (attempted) rescue? Are we too dependent on services like tr.im to tie the social Web together?
Ten links to answer your questions:
tr.im R.I.P.
tr.im | August 9, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: [...]
Journalists Are News Companies’ Most Valuable Asset
Journalists are news companies’ most valuable assets.
That’s what Mike Arrington asserts, and I think he’s right (disregard the “failing old media” rhetoric):
And earlier today I got a glimpse at what AOL is up to – they are hiring all the journalists being fired and laid off by the newspapers and magazines. And they now have [...]
Best Practices for Journalists Curating the Web: New York Times Bits Blog “What We’re Reading”
The New York Times technology blog, Bits, which features original online reporting by all of the NYT technology journalists, has formally launched a new feature called “What We’re Reading.” This feature (powered by Publish2) illustrates a number of important best practices for how journalists and news orgs can create significant value for readers by curating [...]
Wordpress & SocialVibe: Blogging Gone Good
New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson is one of the most prolific and renown bloggers on the web. And if you go his blog, avc.com, you’ll notice that (like most blogs) he runs advertising to generate revenues. But what many of you may not know is that all the proceeds Fred generates through his blog [...]
Why we link: A brief rundown of the reasons your news organization needs to tie the Web together
Originally posted at BeatBlogging.org, a resource for journalists using social networks, blogs, and other Web tools to improve beat reporting.
Whenever I talk with news organizations of any size about linking to sources, resources and journalism that originated outside the walls of their newsroom, two questions come up: How and Why.
Well, conveniently enough, I work for [...]
Retraining Wire and Feature Editors to Be Web Curators
If the wire editor and feature editor roles are becoming obsolete for print newspapers, as Steve Yelvington persuasively argues, then those editors should be retrained — or retrain themselves — as web curators. Rather than become obsolete, these editors could become essential to their news organization’s future on the web.
Steve observes:
On the Internet, we have [...]
Collaboration can’t cure #swineflu, but it can fight filter failure
Perhaps you’ve noticed a bit of activity online the last few days related to a certain not-quite-pandemic bug that’s going around.
Swine Flu.
Or, to put it in microblogging terms, #swineflu.
The wonderful thing about the ease of communication online is that anyone can start a discussion, carry it on, pass along information, retweet it, forward an e-mail, [...]
Joining Publish2: Ryan Sholin, Greg Linch and Howard Weaver
Today we’re announcing three major additions to the Publish2 team — journalists whose stellar reputations speak for themselves:
Ryan Sholin joins us next week as Director of News Innovation.
Greg Linch is the winner of the Publish2 Future of Journalism Contest and will join us in the fall as our Producer.
Howard Weaver has joined our Board of [...]
How Google Stole Control Over Content Distribution By Stealing Links
There is so much misunderstanding flying around about the economics of content on the web and the role of Google in the web’s content economy that it’s making my head hurt. So let’s see if we can straighten things out.
Google isn’t stealing content from newspapers and other media companies. It’s stealing their control over distribution, [...]
The Great Seattle Advertising Experiment: What Will Happen to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Print Advertising Dollars?
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer today because the first major metro newspaper to stop publishing in print but keep the news brand alive on the web. Seattlepi.com’s Executive Editor Michelle Nicolosi promises bold experiments, “to break a lot of rules that newspaper Web sites stick to.” And to be sure, the entire news industry will be watching [...]
Announcing Digital Sunlight: Publish2’s Platform for Collaborative Journalism
Today, with the signing of the largest government stimulus program in history, Publish2 is announcing a new initiative to help newsrooms faced with declining resources continue to play the watchdog role that is so vital in this time of crisis. Digital Sunlight is our code name for a new feature set that will allow citizens [...]
Why local-news aggregation is useful information, not information overload
My post on the Washington state linking project focused on the awesome innovation involved and on the benefits of collaborative linking in general. But the project also shows why this kind of news aggregation is so useful for a local audience.
The biggest danger with news aggregation is that instead of acting as a filter, it [...]
Networked link journalism: A revolution quietly begins in Washington state
The discussion about journalism’s future so often focuses on Big Changes — Kill the print edition! Flips for everyone! Reinvent business models NOW! — that it’s easy to forget how simple innovation can be.
Sometimes all you need is a few Tweets, a bunch of links, and some like-minded pioneers.
That’s how a quiet revolution began in [...]
The Problem of Media Economics: Value Equations Have Radically Changed
Entering 2009, the future of media is undoubtedly a quandary, with no end of head-scratching across the industry. As with everything these days, it seems that it all comes down to radically changing economics. There are way too many conversations about the future of media, news, journalism, etc. going on out there that don’t reference [...]
One Week Left To Enter The “I Am The Future Of Journalism” Contest
There’s one week left to submit an entry to the “I Am The Future Of Journalism” Contest. The deadline is December 30.
We’ve gotten some great entries by journalists who are thinking creatively, passionately, and positively about the future. You can show your support for them by helping to rate the entries (some examples embedded below):
[...]
When A Newspaper Stops Publishing In Print, What Happens To The Print Advertising Dollars?
With all the debate over the future of newspapers, here’s a question I haven’t heard anybody ask (much less answer): If a metropolitan newspaper suddenly ceased to publish, leaving the city with no newspaper, what would happen to all of that newspaper’s ad dollars?
Most newspaper companies’ strategy right now is based on the assumption that [...]
Breaking News Link Journalism: Blagojevich Arrest
So you’ve got a big breaking story right in your backyard, e.g. the governor gets arrested for trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the President Elect. Your newsroom is on the case, but the story is still developing. There are national ramifications, so reporting goes beyond the local angle. How do you [...]
Crowdsourcing, citizen journalism, and the lesson of scrapbook news
I want to further explore the idea of “scrapbook news” as a way of reframing the crowdsourcing/citizen journalism discussion.
One reason mainstream news organizations haven’t embraced the concepts may be that the spirit (if not the letter) of the cit-j discussion tends to focus on the people involved rather than the news being covered. That is, [...]
Why not writing a story is innovation
Discussions about journalism innovation usually focus on technology: Twitter, RSS, Flash, Django, data visualization, and all the other cool stuff that’s making online news so rich.
But there’s an equally important conceptual aspect of journalism innovation. Newsrooms have to rethink the kind of stories they cover and the way they tell those stories, or all the [...]
First Entry In The “I Am The Future Of Journalism” Contest: Daniel Bachhuber
The “I Am The Future Of Journalism Contest” has its first entry, and it’s awesome. Daniel Bachhuber is a journalism student at the University of Oregon, a photographer, web developer, member of CoPress, and a journalist with a compelling vision of the future:
Here’s the text of Daniel’s entry:
There are three important themes I’d like to [...]
Announcing the “I Am The Future Of Journalism” Contest
Publish2 is launching a contest for journalists to promote themselves as the future of journalism. We believe journalism has a bright future, and we’re betting everything on that belief.
The winner of the “I Am The Future Of Journalism” Contest receives a prize that we know is increasingly valuable in journalism due to shrinking supply — [...]
Link Journalism Drives Page Views and Engagement
There’s an article page on GoVolXtra, Knoxnews.com’s sports vertical site for the Tennessee Vols, that accounted for 6% of ALL Knoxnews and GoVolXtra article page views for the last two weeks, and as much as 14% of all article page views one of the days since it was first published. The page has consistently generated [...]
Should Newspaper Companies Get Out Of The Newspaper Business?
Forget the bailout. I have a great new business model for Detroit automakers. Sell Toyotas and Hondas. Detroit already has the dealer networks. There’s great demand for Japanese cars. In fact, Detroit could retool all of their manufacturing plants to make Toyotas and Hondas.
That proposal is similar to one put forth for newspaper companies by [...]
Hulu to Match YouTube’s Revenue: Ten Observations For The Future of Media
An analyst at Screen Digest estimates that in “2008 YouTube will generate about $100m in the US, compared to about $70m at Hulu. Next year both sites will generate about $180m in the US.” That’s very significant because YouTube had 83m unique viewers in the US in September, while Hulu only had 6m.
Here, in no [...]
The market and the internet don’t care if you make money
The title of this post comes straight from the mind-blowing mind of Seth Godin, preaching to the book industry (promoting his book Tribes), but he could just as easily be preaching to anyone in media:
he market and the internet don’t care if you make money. That’s important to say. You have no right to make [...]
Link Journalism Innovation: What We’re Reading at Reading Eagle
Reading Eagle has brought their journalists out from behind the curtain to share with readers what they are reading on the web — often beyond what can be found on Reading’s own site. Their new link journalism feature is called, appropriately enough, What We’re Reading:
Each editor has a profile on the page with photo, email, [...]
Newsrooms Can Grow Twitter Followers By Using Twitter For Link Journalism
Most newsrooms have utterly narcissistic Twitter accounts. The worst offenders (which unfortunately is the majority) use services like Twitterfeed to automatically tweet links to the newspaper’s own content. Here’s our RSS feed on Twitter! Don’t get enough of our content on our site or through RSS? Now get it on Twitter, too!
Some newsrooms are slightly [...]
Guardian Launches Full RSS Feeds, First Media Company Not To Suppress RSS Adoption
On the eve of The Guardian’s launch of full text RSS feeds, Matt McAlister, Head of Guardian Developer Network, pinged me looking for examples of other mainstream media companies that have full text RSS feeds. Surely this many years into the age of syndication, Guardian couldn’t be the first mainstream media company to adopt full [...]
Mainstream News Organizations Entering the Web’s Link Economy Will Shift the Balance of Power and Wealth
The New York Times published an article this week about mainstream news organizations embracing link journalism and news aggregation. Gawker and others scoffed that they are late to the game, which they are, but that misses (predictably) the BIG story.
If news orgs like the NYT, Washington Post, and hundreds of newspaper sites start linking to [...]
Nervous About Link Journalism? Ignore Web’s ‘Cesspool’ And Tap Its ‘Natural Spring’
There are several reasons why most mainstream news organizations have been slow to embrace link journalism.
First, news orgs typically act as though other news orgs don’t exist (blame long-standing notions of “owning” the news, and more recent unjustified fears of sending readers away). Second, news orgs had few mechanisms for breaking out of that walled-garden [...]
Will Algorithms Make Human Editors Obsolete? Not If Journalists Collaborate
Will algorithms replace human editors on the web? It’s a bogeyman question on one level, but ask any news site about the percentage of traffic they get from search engines — and what the trend looks like — and you’ll realize that algorithms are increasingly deciding what we pay attention to, what is important, what [...]
The New AP
Matt Thompson and Jeff Jarvis have been doing some important thinking on how news coverage needs to change in the Internet Age. They argue that a flow of shallow, time-dependent stories no longer works as a foundation for helping readers understand the world.
Thompson started a blog devoted to exploring an alternative. He writes in the [...]
False Steve Jobs Heart Attack Report on CNN’s iReport Is a Failure of Open Systems
Someone posted a false report that Steve Jobs had heart attack to CNN’s citizen journalism site iReport. The fallout (which could include an SEC investigation) lead to the inevitable question of whether this is a failure of citizen journalism.
It’s not. It’s a failure of open systems.
As Sarah Perez points out at ReadWriteWeb, ANYONE can become [...]
washingtonpost.com’s Political Browser Uses the News Judgment of Journalists to Filter the Political Web
washingtonpost.com has launched a new politics page called Political Browser, which features, wait for it… links to the most important and interesting political news around the web. That’s right, the Washington Post, one of the paragons of original political reporting, has dedicated a page to help you find the best of OTHER news organization’s political [...]
Link Journalism in Action: Vols Game Coverage Roundup Most Viewed and Commented on GoVolsXtra.com
Yeah, fine, so Drudge gets lots of traffic for links, but we’re not Drudge, so it won’t work for our news site, right? Wrong. Here’s a case example from Knoxnews.com’s sports site GoVolsXtra.com.
This roundup of links to coverage and commentary on the Vols’ loss to Florida was the MOST VIEWED article today on GoVolsXtra.com.
You could [...]
Why Isn’t Facebook Making More Money? (Hint: Advertiser Value and User Value Are Not Aligned)
I happened to visit Facebook’s Business Solutions page, and was struck by how, at least on the surface, these advertising formats seem like exactly the kind of innovation that should be helping Facebook achieve Goolge-style revenue — which is of course what Facebook’s $15 billion valuation assumes will happen.
And yet with 100 MILLION users, Facebook’s [...]
How Newspapers Abdicated the Front Page’s Influence and How They Can Get it Back By Linking
The front page of the newspaper used to set the news agenda. Extra, Extra, read all about it! But that influence has steadily waned through the TV and Cable News era, and the web now threatens to obliterate it entirely.
So who sets the news agenda now? One significant influence is a guy with nothing but [...]
Advertiser Online Now, Get a Free Ad In Print
Just saw this house ad on NYTimes.com:
A print ad offered as added value for online advertising. Now THAT’S a reversal.
Here’s more:
NYT is trying to reverse the economic polarity of its business.
Is this kind of offer a trend?
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Explaining the Financial Crisis: Continuously Updated News Aggregation in Action
Scott framed his previous challenge to news sites in general terms: like Drudge, any site could use continuously updated aggregation to become a “destination for links to news of what’s going in the world.” But this kind of aggregation can be just as powerful when applied to specific stories or topics.
For example, you might have [...]
Why Every News Site Should Put a Continuously Updated News Aggregation on the Homepage
My post on Drudge beating all other news sites on engagement was an aha for many, which is interesting because the lesson of Drudge has been around for a decade. But the lessons of web publishing are all so utterly counterintuitive that I suppose they take a while to sink in.
That said, a number of [...]
Drudge Report: News Site That Sends Readers Away With Links Has Highest Engagement
There are two main reasons why news sites are reluctant to send readers away by linking to third-party content. First, you shouldn’t send people away or else they won’t come back to your site. Second, a page with links that sends people away has low engagement, which doesn’t serve advertisers well.
But if you actually look [...]
Spinewatch: Can Link Journalism Change How the Media Covers the Presidential Election Campaign?
Jay Rosen of PressThink has started a meme called “spinewatch,” which he’s pursuing on Twitter with the #spinewatch tag and on the Publish2 Spinewatch Newsgroup that he created, where he offers this description:
Spinewatch is a newsgroup and link bank for campaign 2008 stories of a certain narrowly-defined type. Here, we keep track of reporting from [...]
Evolution of the Newswire on the Web
Jeff Jarvis has post today worth reading, about the emergence of the web as the new newswire and the trend away from traditional newswires like AP:
The old syndication model in the old content economy just won’t work today when all the world needs is one copy of a story up in the cloud with links [...]
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