links for 2010-02-24

  • Kevin: Ken Doctor writes about the expected cuts of about 300 jobs at ABCNews in the US. (Out of a current headcount of 1400.) "I’ve placed ABC among the Digital Dozen companies, those with more than 500 news staffers, those with the potential of creating bigger digital businesses given their global distribution power — if they can restructure their costs in line with still-meager, but growing, digital revenues."
  • Kevin: A list of games 'with real world impact'.
  • Kevin: "At first glance, a start-up social media company with a focus on bar reviews and meeting up with friends might seem like an unlikely partner for newspapers as established as The New York Times, or as widely distributed as the freesheet Metro. But at this stage, the deal seems to be less about news and more about the restaurant reviews so key to Foursquare's appeal. "
  • Kevin: The New York Times has collected all of their interactive graphics for the 2010 Winter Olympics on one page. It's a great collection showing off some excellent techniques in visual story-telling.
  • Kevin: Brilliant visual of 'blogosphere'. (I hate the term. It's not a monolith.) It's a very useful bookmark for relevant statistics about blogs. The one stat that surprises me is that the US represents 48% of the global blogging population. That really surprises me. I'd like to see the underlying data. That aside, still very useful.
  • Kevin: In the satirical column Grey Cardigan about newspapers in the UK: “The daft thing is, we all knew that it was going to end. We knew that the internet would eventually take away our ad revenue; that classified would go first, followed by property and sits vac. And yet we did nothing about it. We didn’t plan for the future or invest in innovative content and means of delivery. We just carried on snuffling up the profits like pigs around a trough.” How close to reality is this? (Answer: Probably damn close.)
  • Kevin: This reminds me of the US Air Force social media strategy. It's important to be able to determine what kind of feedback you're getting. "The number one rule when responding to all criticism, even the negative type, is to stay positive. Adding more negativity to the conversation by letting yourself be drawn into a fight with a customer or user will only reflect poorly on your business."
  • Kevin: Chris Brogan makes a really important distinction in this post, which he expands on in the comments. "First, let’s be clear: the pursuits of journalism and the pursuits of publishing aren’t the same.

    Journalists seek to create compelling information that is helpful and news-worthy.

    Publishing seeks to push more product, deliver higher circulation value, and create more value for sponsors/advertisers/money-holders."

  • Kevin: Frédéric Filloux of the Monday Note looks at the issues surrounding the iPad for publishers. Publishers agree that Apple is difficult to work with, which Frédéric says Apple needs to reconsider. "nlike the iPhone, the iPad will leave or die by the content it will deliver." It needs to treat publishers better. Lots of good questions here. Will content providers subsidise the iPad as mobile phone operators subsidise the iPhone? What kind of market data will publishers be able to capture from the iPad?
  • Kevin: Charlie Beckett, the director of the journalism and politics think tank Polis at the London School of Economics, writes about th difficulty that serious journalists will have in covering allegations that Gordon Brown has 'bullied' his staff and has a volcanic temper. The journalists reporting the story have not been able to get their sources to go on the record. Charlies says: "If they don’t report these things then they stand accused of keeping secrets in the cozy club of the lobby. If they use journalistic conventions then they face the bluster of people like Prescott. You decide."
  • Kevin: Mark Jones of Reuters writes about the very interesting campaigns online in the UK that parody the political posters of the parties. He says: "t’s early days in the run-up to the general election and no-one is expecting this bout of social media satire to entirely kill off the art of political billboard posters. But something has changed and campaign managers have one more thing to think about — the scope for online corruption of their messaging. And might it at least add some fun to the campaign?"