“Social Media Club” has Nuked the Fridge (Tiny Screenfuls (JoshB)) by Josh Bancroft

*sigh*

I heard the news today that Chris Heuer, of Social Media Club, has formed a “Board of Directors” of 42 people to, well, I don’t really know what they’re going to do…

Maybe you can figure it out. Read this paragraph, and try to make sense of it. While you’re at it, try to deduce if it came from a “social media” group, or some barking mad 20th century corp-speak organizational announcement:

The new interim board has been charted (sic) to address several key organizational and strategic deliverables, including development of membership goals, acceleration of local chapter development, increase in adoption of industry standards and implementation of a new legal structure to enhance future growth … The board will also focus on increasing its research efforts and strengthening relationships with other organizations such as the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and the International Association for Business Communicators (IABC). The interim board’s work will be completed once the club reorganizes as a new entity, and holds an election amongst its members for a formal Board of Directors.

I consider myself friends with several people on this list, but I can’t make ANY sense of this.

Good thing Social Media Club is “reorganizing into a new entity”, because it’s surely dead if it’s spewing stuff like this. And I don’t like the looks of the “new entity”. Looks like a lot of big, corporate, inhuman, non-sensical entities I already know…

Elisa [ma.gnolia] (Put together quickly (Haligan)) by MichaelBiven

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Tags: Elisa, python, video, media, htpc, fluendo, audio

War claims Post correspondent (niload (kennedye)) by erik

I do have an update in the works on what the hell I’ve been doing with my time of late, but first I feel obligated to link to this sad news for my employer from Iraq, where Salih Saif Aldin has earned the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first Washington Post correspondent killed during the ongoing war.

A divorced father of a 6-year-old daughter, he distinguished himself as one of the most fearless reporters in The Post’s Baghdad bureau. He began work for the paper in early 2004 as a stringer in his hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

In July 2005, he received a note threatening his life if he did not quit journalism and leave the city. He refused. “This is my city, and I’m a journalist,” he told colleagues.

Shortly after, he was attacked by two men, who beat him with their fists, a metal pipe and the butt of a pistol, leaving him with bruises all over his body and opening a gash in his head that required eight stitches. After he was released from the hospital, The Post implored him to leave Tikrit. When he refused, Omar Fekeiki, the newspaper’s former office manager and special correspondent, said he was told he would be fired if he didn’t leave.

Saif Aldin later moved to Baghdad, where he repeatedly braved the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, often traveling alone.

Sadly, Saif Aldin is but one of over 100 journalists killed since the beginning of the war in Iraq, and well over 600 in the past ten years. The next time someone spouts off on how the media are all cowards and refusing to report the truth or driven solely by agenda, feel free to point them to the above as an example of how wrong they truly are.

The newspaper as airbag? (niload (kennedye)) by erik

The newspaper industry has certainly been in something of a downward spiral of late, but at least there is some good news. (No, it doesn’t involve saving money by switching to GEICO.) According to a news story in the Charleston Daily Mail, newspapers played a crucial life-saving role in a traffic accident over the weekend:

[Billy] Poff, 51, of Charleston was westbound on Interstate 64 near the Oakwood Road exit when his truck collided with a vehicle coming the wrong way about 3:15 a.m. Saturday.

The driver of the other vehicle, Adriana Bailey, 27, of Madison died in the crash.

Seven bundles of Saturday Gazette-Mails packed into the cab of Poff’s 1974 Toyota pickup cushioned him from the tremendous impact, investigators said.

The bundles had 25 newspapers each.

“The newspapers are pretty much what saved him,” said Sgt. Shawn Williams of the Charleston Police Department’s traffic division.

Let’s see your fancy-schmancy websites and PDF editions try that!

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PrimeMinister.ca, the Canadian Digg (niload (kennedye)) by erik

Found this in a story on CyberJournalist; PrimeMinister.ca looks like a more politically-themed Digg.com, with options for adding “spin” to a submitted story in the Politics section and the ability to keep track of your history for social bookmarking. It’s an interesting take on the submit-your-own-news genre; I wonder how well it would work in a slightly more polarized political environment, though. Like, for instance, ours?

Tags: primeminister, Canada, digg, politics

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Two journalists die every week (niload (kennedye)) by erik

I couldn’t believe this headline when I saw it, but the numbers bear it out: according to a survey from the International News Safety Institute, over a thousand reporters have been killed in the past ten years during the course of their duties, or almost two deaths every week. Of course, reporting isn’t exactly the safest occupation in times of war, but apparently well over half of the deaths occurred under peacetime conditions. From the executive summary:

• At least 657 men and women were murdered — eliminated as they tried to shine light into the dark recesses of their societies — and only one in eight of their killers were prosecuted.
• In two-thirds of cases the killers were not even identified, and probably never will be, underlining the absence of full and proper investigations when a journalist or other news professional is killed.

To say that this is horrific is an understatement. The report gives several recommendations for governments, editors, and individual journalists on ways to minimize or eliminate the risks, but the sheer magnitude of the issue is scarcely fathomable. Sort of puts to rest those stories about how cushy a job journalism is supposed to be, eh?

source: editorsweblog.org

Tags: journalism, death, INSI

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News flash: spending money on news rooms improves a paper’s bottom line (niload (kennedye)) by erik

It’s conventional wisdom these days that in order for newspapers to survive they need to trim costs wherever possible, usually starting in the newsroom. But a new study from the University of Missouri-Columbia shows that this is actually the worst place to scrimp and save, since it has the greatest impact on the bottom line.

Murali Mantrala, who is the Sam Walton professor of marketing in the College of Business, and Esther Thorson, director of research for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and associate dean for graduate studies in the Missouri School of Journalism, recently examined the profitability of newspapers. They collaborated with marketing doctoral students Hari Sridhar and Prasad Naik, who is now a professor at the University of California-Davis. The team of researchers focused on three areas of operation - news quality; distribution and circulation; and advertising - by analyzing financial data of small- to medium-sized newspapers with circulations of 85,000 or less. Research revealed that news quality most directly affects the bottom line.

“The most important finding is that newspapers are under-spending in the newsroom and over-spending in circulation and advertising,” Thorson said. “If you invest more in the newsroom, do you make more money? The answer is yes. If you lower the amount of money spent in the newsroom, then pretty soon the news product becomes so bad that you begin to lose money.”

Who would have guessed it, eh? The study used a complex mathematical formula to model financial data from the past 10 years for a variety of newspapers. According to the results, investing in news gathering can substantially offset losses in ad revenue and actually boost circulation, two key crises facing the industry. The full article will appear in the April issue of the Journal of Marketing.

(via editorsweblog.org)

Tags: newspaper, newsroom

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PLWire: The Physical Language Workshop, MIT Media Lab [ma.gnolia] (Put together quickly (Haligan)) by MichaelBiven

The Physical Language Workshop designs tools for creating digital content in a networked environment, and the means by which the content can be leveraged as creative capital within an experimental online micro-economy that we call OPENSTUDIO. Our primary impact targets are in the areas of general digital media service architectures, global e-commerce, distance education, and visual information display systems.

Tags: physical language workshop, design, visualization, hci, media, interaction

Tampa area tabloid goes away (niload (kennedye)) by erik

Not every free tabloid out there is a success, a point hammered home rather overtly by the story of Orange, a freebie in the Tampa area which closed up shop last week after just six months on the street. The paper’s publishers claim otherwise, but a dust-up involving an article making use of a rather impolitic slang term for the female reproductive area most likely didn’t help.

Media General, which also owns the Tampa Tribune and WFLA-Ch. 8, shuttered the tabloid last week after six months of publication, citing a “failure to resonate with advertisers and readers.”

But [Orange editor Mitzi] Gordon says the incident with the vulgarity was what prompted the company to abandon a project it never seemed to fully support.

“I felt that I was poorly managed and overworked, and made the best decision I could at the time,” said Gordon, 30, who noted the tabloid had published a four-letter vulgarity referring to sex several times without incident.

Though Orange fell short of its goal to have half its pages filled by advertising each week, with a budget planned for 18 months, Gordon said she hoped to have more time to develop the tabloid.

“We’re in a saturated market … aimed at a youthful audience that’s desensitized to a lot,” she added, saying that Orange publisher Carla Floyd suggested she could use the same language featured in the free, Tampa-based weekly tabloid Creative Loafing. “They told me to be different, stop trying to fit in. I did it, and they didn’t like it.”

The article also notes that there were already a number of free papers in the Tampa area, something that (for example) Express did not really face when it started in 2003. Of course, I believe the Post also had a much longer timeframe in mind for the paper than 18 months, which really doesn’t seem like a long enough commitment for this kind of venture; I wonder if that timeframe was also communicated to potential advertisers, and if so whether that contributed to any reluctance to cough up ad dollars. I hope it doesn’t mean Media General is just giving up on the idea, though they might want to take a slightly different approach next time.

(via Romenesko)

Tags: Tampa, Orange, tabloid, newspaper

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The Onion comes to D.C. (niload (kennedye)) by erik

I’ve heard bits and pieces on this for a little while but at last it’s official: we’re getting the Onion in D.C. The Post will print and distribute the satirical paper in the area, and we’ll also be handling local ads and coverage. In fact, they’re already looking for a local editor for the D.C. section of the AV Club.

I’ve always liked reading the paper but have only ever done so online, so I’m kind of interested in seeing the print edition for the first time. I don’t know whether I’ll be involved in any of this, but given that Chris Ma, the Post VP in charge of the project is also the publisher of Express and helped bring El Tiempo Latino into the Post fold, it’s entirely possible.

Tags: Onion, washington post, newspaper

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Coming soon: a Times tabloid? (niload (kennedye)) by erik

Continuing down my list of “things I should have mentioned last year but didn’t,” there’s the New York Times’ embryonic plans for their own youth-oriented tabloid paper, similar to RedEye, amNewYork, or that other one… ahh, can’t remember its name… something with an ‘x’ in it? Anyway, it sounds like the project is still a long way from launching, but they’re definitely kicking it around:

The idea is for it to be more like a hard-copy relative of UrbanEye than an easy-read news digest. It would be a weekly, heavy on event listings—like The Village Voice, or the New York Press, or Time Out New York or New York magazine or the front end of The New Yorker, for that matter.

You certainly don’t need to convince me that projects like Express are a big part of the future of newspapers. I’m just wondering why it’s taken the NYT so long to catch on; the ones I mentioned in the first paragraph are several years old and by all accounts doing quite nicely. The Times’s take on a tabloid ought to offer some insight into whether they’re actually buying in to the same idea or just looking for any way to boost the numbers.

(originally found via Romenesko)

Tags: tabloid, newspaper, New York Times

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How not to fix the newspaper industry (niload (kennedye)) by erik

Among the many things I’m delinquent on writing about over the past few weeks, this article on how to “fix” the newspaper industry surely ranks as one of the most idiotic:

Newspapers cannot succeed as Internet ventures — not on the scale they need to survive — if they persist in using a business model predicated on giving away their news content and selling ads based on the audience that is drawn to free content.

No, that’s not the idiotic part. This is:

What to do? Here’s my proposal: Newspapers and wire services need to figure out a way, without running afoul of antitrust laws, to agree to embargo their news content from the free Internet for a brief period — say, 24 hours — after it is made available to paying customers. The point is not to remove content from the Internet, but to delay its free release in that venue.

Are you kidding me? This is the quickest way to render the newspaper irrelevant forever. Perhaps it hasn’t sunk in to Mr. Scheer yet, but newspapers do not own a monopoly on the publication of news online. When the major papers fail to report a story for fear of losing advertising revenue, they’ll immediately be scooped by weblogs and community journalists. Newspapers have enough problems with people accusing them of putting financial interests ahead of journalistic duties, they really don’t need to absolutely confirm it as fact.

Better minds than mine have long since pointed this out, but I felt the need to get it off my chest before the end of the year, at least.

Tags: newspaper, online

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The voices of election ads (niload (kennedye)) by erik

I’m on vacation again this week, and also taking the opportunity to clean up some stuff around the house, both electronically and physically (example: I finally got around to updating to WordPress 2). I have some media stuff to write about, but in the meantime here’s a rather funny bit from NPR about the art of voicing a negative election ad.

Tags: NPR, voiceover, election

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Election Night wrap-up (niload (kennedye)) by erik

Well, my second election at WPNI went even smoother than the first one. From Wednesday’s early-morning newsdesk email:

TECH ISSUES: None to report.

That’s what I’m talking about. Actually, everything ran really smooth overall, once again due to preparation work on our behalf. Although I split my time between Express and the WPNI newsroom, I might as well have spent it in the kitchen area watching the returns come in. Of course it’s more exciting to see them on eight TVs at once…

Now that the dust has more or less settled — if you can call it that after a total reversal of congressional power for the first time in over a decade — it’s time to get back to work on all the little things that got put on hold for the election run-up. One project I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head is to re-architect the WPNI newsdesk; it’s a process that I’m told we go through every couple of years or so when hardware needs change, but I’m also thinking it might be a good idea to talk to the editorial department about what they really need and/or want from the technology at their disposal. Do we need to think about relocating computers or monitors for better efficiency? Do we need to look at adding or removing network/phone hookups for redundancy? How about rerouting cables or video hookups to eliminate some of all those tangles under everyone’s feet? And so on.

It’s the kind of project that nobody else really wants to undertake, I suspect, and even though we just lost another team member (to another job, not anything serious) I’m hoping I can scrape together enough spare time to at least come up with a plan for next year. (Getting everything all set by the 2008 election would probably be a good thing.)

Tags: election, WPNI, newsdesk

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Circulation same-old same-old (niload (kennedye)) by erik

I haven’t talked much about the Post’s earnings or circulation figures in a while, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I don’t want to get caught accidentally revealing more than I should when the figures come out, although they are public knowledge. More than that, though, the main reason is that they’ve been pretty consistent of late: both are down and keep heading that way.

Now I’m certainly a big believer in the future of the online newsroom (you think?), but I personally think it’s going to be a while before we make up the majority of WPO’s news income. So the newspaper side is still going to have to play a part for years to come, even though the trends are all on the down side for now.

Oh well. At least there’s one bright spot, if you want to call it that:

With Chinese mills efficiently cranking out more print than can be used in their country, their output is expected to begin landing on the West Coast within a matter of months, according to Mark Wilde of Deutsche Bank and other industry analysts.

“The Chinese won’t just come in $5 to $10 per metric ton below the market,” says Mark. “They could come in $25 to $50 below market to buy themselves volume.”

At that rate, the price for newsprint could drop as low as $620 per ton next year, delivering a savings of approximately $450,000,000 to the industry, assuming that consumption remains near the estimated 9 million metric tons expected to be purchased this year.

Thankfully, bits are cheaper.

Tags: newspaper, circulation, Post

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Get your real-world news in Second Life (niload (kennedye)) by erik

Last week, the Reuters news agency added a rather unique bureau to its worldwide operations — in a virtual world. The new bureau is in Linden Lab’s popular Second Life simulation game. Second Life is sort of a MMORPG version of The Sims, where you can create an avatar to represent your virtual self and then interact with others in a variety of ways, all in an online community. You can buy and sell items (up to and including land) using a virtual currency, and add funds from your real accounts. It’s basically like a game of virtual Life.

Reuters will have journalists reporting and writing financial and cultural stories within and about Second Life as part of the London-based company’s strategy to reach new audiences with the latest digital technologies.

“In ‘Second Life,’ we’re making Reuters part of a new generation,” Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said in a statement. “We’re playing an active role in this community by bringing the outside world into ‘Second Life’ and vice versa.”

Second Life has been growing exponentially in popularity, and there are more and more companies trying to reach its customers, including other media companies such as CNN and the BBC. It’s neat to see media companies embracing new outlets like this; like any new market, it’s a good idea to get there first. I wonder if WPNI would consider setting up shop there?

Tags: Second Life, Reuters, CNN, BBC

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New Save & Share link options at washingtonpost.com (niload (kennedye)) by erik

This must have rolled out sometime just recently, as I haven’t even seen it announced internally yet, but it looks like the gang upstairs has expanded the link sharing options for washingtonpost.com articles. On recently-published stories, there are now options to send a link to digg and Reddit, or add to the personalized pages for Google, and Yahoo! along with del.icio.us (which has been available for some time now).

I’ve started following digg through their RSS feed, and although a lot of what ends up there is kind of lame, some of it is very informative. If we can get more Post articles up there, so much the better.

Tags: digg, reddit, del.icio.us, Google, Yahoo!, washington post

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Free newspaper update (niload (kennedye)) by erik

JournalismJobs.com posted another entry in their regular series of interviews on Friday, this one with editors of two free newspapers: Jane Hirt of the Tribune’s RedEye, and my friend and yours Dan Caccavaro of Express. Both are editors of popular free newspapers started by an already-established paper to try to reach a younger audience. Both editors also spoke on the issue of cannibalization of the larger paper:

Hirt: One of our goals is to get people in the habit of reading a daily newspaper. Whether they feel like reading RedEye or the Tribune on a particular day, the point is that the Tribune has captured that reader.

Caccavaro: I think at this point readers’ habits are pretty well established. Anyone who was going to stop reading the Post because of Express probably did so a long time ago. So at this point, I think Express actually stands a greater chance of boosting or preserving Post readership than hurting it.

Both discuss the relationship their papers have with their respective parents, and how they work in a complimentary fashion. Free papers may not be the future, but at least these two seem to be doing all right. (Good news for me, of course.)

(via Romenesko)

Tags: newspaper, journalism, Express, RedEye