January 2007 Archives
Tags: the Mix | Las Vegas | Mandalay Bay | NAA
The online producers of KnoxNews.com on Sunday night won a Digital Edge Award from the Newpaper Association of America for Best Use of Interactive Media for their weekly RandomThis videos.
They are, from left in the photo above, Katie Kolt, Lauren Spuhler, Erin Chapin and Online Editor Jigsha Desai.
The judges are among the smartest folks in online newspapers so it's very nice to see this talented team get recognized for their efforts.
The News Sentinel "Edgie" was one of six won by E.W. Scripps newspapers with The Naples Daily News winning four and the Evansville Courier winning one.
Congratulations to all.
Tags: RandomThis | vblog | NAA | Edgie | E.W. Scripps | newspapers
At some point in time, I became a MockTech Celeb, just a hair less prestigious as being on the Forbes Web Celeb 25 which Knoxville's Glenn Reynolds made at No. 7 this week.
I have my own paparazzi email address spottedjackL@gmail.com. Well, not mine, but anyway.
So help the MockTech keep track of me -- if you can!
As you can see from the photo at right, I am elusive.
Tags: MockTech | Forbes web celebs | Paparazzi | Instapundit
I have a Polar F6 Heart Rate Monitor Watch
It usually takes me several times for the computer to hear the watch/heart monitor's chirping. Sometimes I find it easier to just manually enter the data, but then the next time it does connect, the data is duped.
Anyone else have this problem? Suggestions? Leave a comment.
An aside. I also think it's weird that the site that stores the data has no import or export feature. What's up with that?
I'm obivously not a fitness nut, but I'm geeky enough to like to track stuff like exercise duration and intensity as measured by heart rate with the aid of a tool. It doesn't do much for procrastination, I've found.
Been listening to Ben Harper's album "Both Sides of the Gun
One of these days journalists are going to find out what people actually want to read. And that should scare the hell out of them.
-- from a Dan Gillmor post
Congratulations to Randy Neal and the KnoxViews bloggers and users on the anniversary of the first year of operation of KnoxViews.
For those not familiar, KnoxViews is a Knoxville blogging community site that skews toward government/politics/policy topics, but delves into a lot of areas with a vibrant community of bloggers.
The stats are impressive.
Tags: citizen journalists | blogosphere | KnoxViews | blogging | community | social media
Keith Jenkins, The Washington Post picture editor, makes a clarion call to newsrooms and their managers in "Take a Blogger to Lunch (And Other Radical Ideas for Journos Struggling to Understand the Web)" on Poytner's site.
In the process of his call for change NOW, he hammers the caretaker attitude of newsrooms, "hiding, hoping to be passed over, undiscovered, until they can make their way safely out of town."
It's a tough mindset to change. In our newsroom, convincing managers to use IM as a communication tool has been like asking some to have a root canal without a shot. Blogging still brings on quite a bit of journalistic credibility handwringing even while we have an expanding core of writers doing it -- with a few of them generating excellent traffic numbers.
And our newsroom has an advantage many don't: A new media veteran as editor. The newsroom is being challenged to change, to think differently, to try new approaches. There are successes and pockets of change There has been overall glacial movement. Yes, glacial.
The money quote from Jenkins' piece:
What our newsrooms do have are decision-makers who have never built a Web page by hand, watched Rocketboom, or listened to a podcast. They don't 'get' YouTube and have never heard of Flickr or del.icio.us or Boing Boing. They think viewing a 30-inch story on a cell phone is cutting-edge and don't understand that I would rather spend 10 minutes downloading littleloca videos or hanging out in Second Life, than reading their newspapers -- even the online version. They are not innovators, they are caretakers.
(via Howard Owens)
Tags: newspapers | culture change | poynter | Web 2.0 | newsrooms
Uber-bloggers Helen and Glen Reynolds have a podcast with Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz about print and online and why newspaper publishers should be adapting to the new era (duh); why young people don't read newspapers; and he offers a view of blogging as "a great journalistic art form."
Good stuff.
Tags: podcast | wall street journal | newspapers | online newspapers
If local newspapers can't win local search, what's there for them to own?
We in newspapers better figure this one out. The whole advertising/audience economy of online newspapers depends on it.
One of the solutions in Pramit Sigh's post (and he has several excellent ones) is to give reporters blogs (and we're back to this evening's earlier post).
- Rich Skrenta: Appropriate Discoverability or why newspaper SEO sucks.
- Greg Linden: Newspapers should own local
- Dan Dodge: Newspapers should own local search results
- Rob Hyndman: Newspapers Shouldn’t Own Local Search
- Pramit Singh News 2.0 = Newspapers + local + SEO
- Mathew Ingram: Newspapers and local - who owns who
(via Mindy McAdams)
Tags: SEO | local search | newspapers | online newspapers
Eric Berlin says more eloquently than I did in June that the Netscape dreamed up by Jason Calacanis -- a hybrid between traditional media news sites and the social news approach of Digg/Reddit/Techmeme -- may be the "Future of News." Ironic, one of the Internet's oldest consumer sites, has become the "future of news." That's our Internets.
Berlin sees successful news sites of the future developing along three lines:
- User-Submitted Content
- Admin submitted content
- "Original" content
Read Berlin's post, and if you haven't, tool around Netscape. Does it work or flop for you?
Tags: online media | netscape | digg | social news | mainstream media | Jason Calacanis
Nielsen//NetRatings said Wednesday the number of unique visitors to blog pages within the Top 10 online newspapers was up 210 percent in December from a year ago, while overall readership grew by only 9 percent.
“As Web 2.0 becomes a predominant online consumer model, traditional publishers are adopting interactive forums like blogs. It makes perfect sense for online newspapers, where responding to a blog posting is like writing an instant letter to the editor."
-- Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.
Writing in "Just an Online Minute," Wendy Davis notes these numbers show that the proportion of online newspaper readers who also visit the paper's blogs has grown from 4 percent in late 2005 to 12 percent in late 2006.
That's what I call hockey stick growth.
I couldn't figure out the same measurement for KnoxNews, but I did come up with some similarly startling comparisons.
Traffic, in terms of page views, was up 83 percent in 2006 from 2005, nearly four times the growth of overall site page views (22 percent). The growth has come from both growing the number of blogs we have and growing the audience of those blogs.
Our first and most prolific blogger is Michael Silence with his "No Silence Here" blog, which had its first post on Aug. 31, 2004. Since then, he's opened his blog to a wide group of guest bloggers; often pointed the newspaper and his blog toward blog-centered public debates, opinion and reporting by area bloggers; and forged links between the mainstream media and the blogging community.
Behind the scenes Online Editor Jigsha Desai has been creating and nurturing the KnoxNews blogging environment, designing templates, gently guiding new authors, answering endless questions, highlighting blogging on the home page and within the site, and working admin magic with our corporate Web services staff.
See all our bloggers on our blog index page.
If you're still poo-poohing blogs, the data will leave you with more than a little pooh on your face. Blogs are the columnists and conversation of today's consumer Web. What's your strategy for tapping that audience growth?
Tags: newspapers | blogs | blogosphere | mainstream media
I always like this view of the Tennessee River from atop the hill at the Lakeshore Greenway. Today the temperature was 66 when this was taken, but there was a good breeze (wind gusts of 25 mph forecast) and you can see the gray line of a band of clouds moving in. By Wednesday, the forecast is the high will only reach 39. Weird winter weather, but I love the warm breaks.
Tags: tennessee river | photography | weather
If you're preparing for a career in the shrinking world of mainstream journalism ... or just trying to get a journalism job ... here's some good posts to study.
It should go without say (but apparently it needs to be said): Big J jobs of the future: online skills a must. Also note: the possible careers in journalism are growing even if traditional newsrooms are contracting.
Rob Curley: What sort of things should an aspiring journalist be thinking about?
Mindy McAdams: Getting (and keeping) a job in journalism and with another post: It's about stories ... which stories? And why?
Bob Stepno: Following up on Mindy with some of his own ideas ... Glue this to a journalism school dean's nose?
Howard Owens: Don't be thrown off by the title, it's also about what skills to have to get a job ... Additional notes on Outing’s advice for small newspapers
Tags: journalism | journalism jobs | mainstream media | newspapers
A superb line about the newspaper environment today ...
The spin on newspapers is ... "A cycle of irrational negativity about their prospects."
Tags: newspapers
"He's probably the leading expert in buying businesses he knows nothing about."
-- an unnamed aide to an unnamed billionaire as quoted by Michael Wolff in Vanity Fair.
I guess I'm a latecomer to the Duhks. I bought the band's latest album Migrations
Produced by Tom O'Brien. Can't go wrong there.
Nice tunes!
And ... WNCW has posted their listeners Top 100. Also includes top regional, top blues, top reggae, top bluegrass and top celtic. Great list to scan for new tunes.
Tags: duhks | folk | Grammy Awards
Are newspaper the new railroad stocks? Normally, with a question like that, I'd assume it's just another newspaper industry doom and gloom story.
AOL "Blogging Stocks" blog doesn't quite draw that map.
Zac Bissonnette notes that railroad stocks have performed better than other transportation stocks the S&P 500 because their prices had been beaten down so low.
The moral of the story: valuation matters. Most stocks are a good deal at the right price.
I think this is certainly one of the reasons why private investor groups are interested in some Big City papers. It goes beyond ego (which is a factor) and to the point that at a distressed sales price, newspapers can provide wonderful returns.
He draws some comparisons between mature and declining newspapers and mature and declining raolroads.
But its also true that Internet sotocks are remininscent of the early days of railroads stocks, an industry that built a number of fortunmes. As a fortune builder, the same could be said of the golden age of newpspering. A question: Will a new set of owners find a fortune in beaten down out-of-favor newspaper stocks?
Tags: newspapers | stocks | investments
John Edwards may not win the Democratic nomination for president in the 2008 campaign, but his use of online video is being viewed as a tipping point in defining online video as a serious medium ready to content with traditional media.
Edwards pre-announced his candidacy on YouTube before the official launch. That act has almost gotten him more buzz than the actual announcement (which was expected). I think it has gotten him more blogger buzz, but that's just a guess.
The "webisode" is posted here.
Al Gore invented the Internet; John Edwards invents video as a serious online medium.
If Howard Dean's was the first Internet presidential political campaign, will Edwards' be the first to win YouTube?
Tags: John Edwards | YouTube | online video | media
A collection of media and web predictions for 2007 in no particular order.
HipMojo.com: Top 10 Media Trend Predictions for 2007
The Luon Blog: 10 key predictions for 2007 - as read on eMarketer
Greg Sterling: Predictions for 2007: Evolution and Acceleration
David Card: Predictions 2007: Media and Technology
Dan Gilmor: Media Predictions, 2007
John Battelle: Predictions 2007
Wired: Wild Predictions for a Wired 2007
Dave Morgan: My Thoughts on 2007
Robert Good: New Media Trends And 2007 Predictions: What's Coming?
Aidan Henry: Blogging Predictions for 2007
Rex Sorgatz: 30 Predictions for 2007 in Media/Tech/Pop
Scott Karp: 2007 Predictions
Barry Graubart: Themes for 2007
Michael Cairns: Predictions for 2007
Susan Mernit: Paying attention in 2007: what's hot and upcoming
Kevin Nalty: Top 10 Online-Video Predictions for 2007
Juan Lopez-Valcarcel: A look ahead at 2007 (I): The return of Old Media
ITWire: Twelve Predictions for 2007
Lightspeed: 2007 Consumer Internet Predictions
Dr. Tony Hung: Predictions 2007
Tags: predictions | 2007 | trends
Just like people use Xerox for photocopies and Google for search, people are using SoundSlides to describe an audio photo slide show.
Joe Weiss's software to create audio slide shows is that ubiquitous for Flash audio photo slide shows -- thanks to being good and cheap.
The suggestion comes today that, well, SoundSlides, aka audio slide shows shows, are just so 2006.
Michael Bazeley, a senior Web editor at the San Jose Mecury News, says he's bored with 'em.
Howard Owens suggests he is too and recommends ....
... do the slide show and add the audio, but make the pictures move. Use the iMovie "Ken Burns Effect" or learn how to simulate this in Movie Maker or your other video tool.
I'm not jaded on them yet. I liked the ones Online Editor Jigsha Desai produced for our year end packages and the ones our photographers did of their picks of their 2006 work.
Still vs Video? Not going there. A great still photo is a great still photo. Slides shows are huge traffic drivers. People do love them.
But I do think there is a need for a tool as simple to use as SoundSlides that also includes "share it," "rate it" and even "get a reprint of it" tools. Sure, all those widgets are available, but I haven't seen something that is as easy as SoundSlides is to use. Is it out there?
Tags: SoundSlides | Joe Weiss | slide shows | video | online video
Old Crow Medicine Show's Wagon Wheel keeps playing in my head today. It's addictive and a great video, too!
(You may have to click the start button twice to play.)
Tags: O.C.M.S. | Wagon Wheel | Old Crow Medicine Show
Technology won't save newspapers, but telling a good story might.
Gary Goldhammer in his Below the Fold blog says newspapers have been revamped and "Tivoed" to appeal to our "cultural Attention Deficit Disorder" so that we get snippets instead of nuggets.
Just using the technology doesn’t make you relevant or hip ...
I agree with Goldhammer that tools don't create the substance. But learning to tell the story in video or audio or flash or whatever is next does make good journalism. A medium that allows video and interactive story telling demands its use. Our early efforts KnoxNews.com at news Web video and audio often find the multimedia piece -- especially video -- will get greater traffic than the same's reporter's text piece.
The trick, as Goldhammer notes, is that the technology be used to tell the story. For newspaper journalists, we're still learning to do that one in the digital world as well as it can be done with print. It's about doing journalism.
Tags: newspapers | online media | social media
A youth play: Food!
So says BusinessWeek in its Jan. 8, 2007, issue in story about how the Food Network is attracting the youth market.
Course it may not be all about heatin' up the stove. The story quotes a 21-year-old Binghamton University student who says he and his buddies are into Giada De Laurentiis, the Everyday Italian host, and record her so they don't miss episodes. The same guy says he and his buddies are into the Food Network for cooking tips, too: "Any time a girl sees guys cooking something delicious, it definitely helps out."
Young women also are taking a greater interest in cooking, the article notes.
A Scripps Networks exec did say there were no plans to MTV-ize the Food Network.
Food for thought: Winning the youth audience isn't about the hokey features and dumbed-down content that often pass for "youth content." If cooking shows can attract a young audience, then lots of topics have the potential too -- with the right ingredients.
Tags: Giada De Laurentiis | Food Network | youth audience
