November 2009

• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
  Kevin: A compilation of visualisation methods with brief examples of each. It's a good starting point when you've got data that you want to visualise.
  (tags: data design visualization visualisation analytics information howto graph charts)
• The Sun's social network tools should add revenue as well as readers | Opinion | New Media Age
  Kevin: "From this month the News International-owned title’s MySun community gives users the ability to make friends with each other, add comments to friends’ profile pages and send private messages. And, in a similar vein to Facebook, users can upload pictures and add comments to articles and upload videos."
  (tags: Sun UK socialnetworking newspapers)
• Kristine Lowe: Do we need rules for journalists’ use of social media?
  Kevin: Kristine has a great roundup of some of the views in Norway of whether news organisations should create rules for their staff about social media use. Great quote to kick it all off: "'The home alone party is over, now the adults are back and they want rules,' said Jan Omdahl, internet and technology commentator for Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet. He said Dagbladet’s journalists had been playing around with social media from an early stage, but now the media executives had entered the arena, demanding rules."
  This discussion is happening in news organisations across Europe and United States. Kristine has done a great job of reporting the state of the disussion in Norway.
  (tags: journalism socialmedia Norway)

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• More emerges on Microsoft’s dance with newspapers
  Kevin: Mike Butcher adds more detail on Microsoft's discussion with Rupert Murdoch's News International about 'de-indexing' their content from Google and being paid by Microsoft as an exclusive search provider on Bing. The most interesting tidbit: "Money talks, obviously, and we understand that the payments could be a) part in revenue share from advertising on Bing b) the inclusion of news partners in adverts for Bing. In other words, you’d start to see ads with “You’ll only find The Wall Street Journal on Bing.com” etc."
  (tags: bing microsoft murdoch google searchengines paidcontent)
• Group of Publishers Is Said to Be Building a Newsstand Online – NYTimes.com
  Kevin: Brian Stelter reports: "A consortium of magazine publishers including Time Inc. and Condé Nast plan to jointly build an online newsstand for publications in multiple digital formats, according to people with knowledge of the plans." It's a so-called iTunes of news. I wonder if this will follow the eMag model that Axel Springer is following in Germany with additional digital content beyond
  (tags: business journalism magazine print model)
• Interview with William Lewis, editor-in-chief and MD of digital at Telegraph Media Group | News | New Media Age
  Kevin: "William Lewis, Telegraph Media Group editor-in-chief and now MD of digital, has outlined the strategy behind the newly created division."
  (tags: Telegraph, UK, digital, strategy, innovation)
• Sources of subsidy in the production of news: a list
  Kevin: Jay Rosen is compiling a list of sources of subsidy in the production of news. It's a brilliant list that looks in great and growing detail at revenue sources for news production. It is well work bookmarking and checking as Jay and others add to it.
  (tags: journalism news businessmodels funding nonprofit business jayrosen subsidy)
• Playdar
  Kevin: Investor and tech watcher Fred Wilson points a new technology from the developer of audioscrobbler, the technology underpinning last.fm. Richard Jones has now released a technology called Playdar. "Playdar is a "music content resolver" platform. You put the Playdar software on all the machines you have with music on them. And then Playdar makes it so that you can play your music via the web whenever and wherever you want."
  Open platforms and ecosystems are powerful and the music web needs more of them. I am excited to see where Playdar goes. I'll be following it closely and if you are into web music, you should too."
  (tags: music access opensource platform playdar web lastfm)
• Headlines and Deadlines: Why a local newspaper's court and council coverage won't persuade readers to pay for news online
  Kevin: An excellent post with some great data and analysis from Alison Gow, Executive Editor, digital, for the Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Daily Post. She takes newspaper to task for claims that 'nobody else scrutinises our public bodies'. She says that the average local newspaper isn't a regular visitor to magistrates courts in the UK. She is working with the Press Association to look at new models of producing local accountability journalism, and she has the numbers to prove it. She also answers the charge from a commenter that newspapers local council and courts coverage is dominated by recycled press releases. Not so. It's great to see this kind of blogging and research going on from within journalism. It's inspired me to do more of it.
  (tags: local, journalism, accountability, courts, hyperlocal, revenue, businessmodels)
• The WoW Paywall: What Newspapers Can Learn From Orcs And Dwarves | paidContent
  Kevin: My colleague Patrick Smith, writing for PaidContent, has a brilliant post on economic models that work online. Offline models transfer imperfectly to the internet. It makes sense because geographical isolation and the natural monopolies they grant aren't in operation. Content is both plentiful and searchable, and the high capital distribution economics of broadcast and print media aren't in play.
  Patrick offers alternatives and makes a succinct but compelling case. Engagement, not just marketing to drive page views, and rewards for loyalty could address inadequacies in the existing digital models for news organisations.
  (tags: journalism socialmedia gaming monetization community content news)

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• FT.com | Tech Blog | Roku opens TV app store for OTT channels
  Kevin: Consumer electronics and television is starting to look a like the computer-driven home media centres that have been around for a few years. Roku and XBMC port Boxee are going head-to-head, but we're also starting to see connected televisions with their own applications. The battle for the living room is going to get interesting.
  (tags: television apps socialmedia connectedhome)
• News Inkubator
  Kevin: A Knight News Challenge 2010 proposal to develop business services and a collaborative newsroom for hyperlocal news sites in Philadelphia. Some very interesting ideas here.
  (tags: knightfoundation newschallenge 2010 proposal)
• How Google Wave is Changing the News
  Kevin: I have to say that I'm still struggling with Wave. I find the interface inscrutable, and apart from group working on a project or story, I'm still looking for useful applications that are better than what I have now.
  However, Leah Betancourt at Mashable looks at ways that news organisations are already using Wave, including a virtual 'town hall' or 'town square' by the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman and as a content planning tool. I can see how the latter works. As I said, I can see how it might be good for collaboration, especially with either staff outside the newsroom.
  (tags: journalism newspapers beatblogging googlewave internet collaboration tools)
• While Microsoft Is Talking to Publishers, Paying Up to “Rent” Content for Bing to Thwart Google Is Unlikely | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD
  Kevin: Kara Swisher at All Things D (a Wall Street Journal Joint) is throwing cold water that Microsoft might pay publishers for content exclusive to Bing. "While it might be a dream of publishers–hard hit by the digital tsunami and blaming Google for the crisis–Microsoft is not likely to fork over the big bucks they’d need for exclusive indexing of their content." She quotes a source saying: "…it's not going to be bank for publishers".
  (tags: digital media bing google AP newscorp licencing)
• Mark Your Calendars: Planning for Facebook’s Platform Changes Over the Next Three Months
  Kevin: A thorough rundown of changes coming up at Facebook. This is especially useful for developers creating applications for Facebook and any publisher who is using Facebook to help promote their content and engage with their audiences.
  (tags: socialmedia facebook development roadmap changes 2009 socialnetworking)
• Microsoft and News Corp in Discussions to Remove Newspaper Content from Google
  Kevin: Pete Cashmore says that Rupert Murdoch is scoring an own goal on his attacks on Google. "News Corp is merrily making itself irrelevant to web consumers, while continuing to use Google as its punch bag rather than addressing the radical transition of media into the online world."
  (tags: journalism newspapers newscorp murdoch google microsoft bing)
• Local TV News: “Burn the Place to the Ground” « LocalNewser
  Kevin: This is an introduction for a video interview with Michael Rosenblum about local television news in the US. "Michael Rosenblum believes local television news as we've known it for decades is dead. News directors, station managers and broadcast group owners "just don't know it yet."

  Rosenblum believes the only way to make the video storytelling model work–profitably–is to cut costs far closer to the bone than any old media company's going to be willing or able to do."

  (tags: news hyperlocal tv vj)
• News organizations need mobile-first strategy « Pursuing the Complete Community Connection
  Kevin: Fascinating post by Steve Buttry and interesting comments about the need for 'mobile-first' news strategies. Steve writes: "News organizations are belatedly, reluctantly and often awkwardly pursuing “web-first” strategies. As we fight these web battles, I am increasingly coming to believe that “web first” is what the military would call fighting the last war. News organizations need a mobile-first strategy."
  (tags: journalism news strategy mobile businessmodel)
• Announcing my new startup: Plato’s Forms (+ funding, yay!) | :Ben Metcalfe Blog
  Kevin: Ben Metcalfe (a friend of ours) has launched a new venture called Plato's Forms. Ben lays out the problem: "Well, the problem space we are addressing is the perpetuation of of miss-information and inaccurate information within the online news environment. " This is coming from a PR/product perspective rather than a news and information perspective.

  I think about this from a slightly different perspective. It's pretty easy for inaccurate information to perpetuate through the news system (there is increasingly less distance between online and print). We often quote other sources (according to the AP, BBC, Reuters.) At any rate, interesting project with concepts that have other application.

  (tags: journalism startups pr accuracy)

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