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Kevin: An interesting article on Advertising Age about click through rates. One thing that's important beyond the narrow focus on this article is that sometimes the easiest to measure statistics aren't necessarily the most important statistics. Indeed, it might say something just about that ease of measurement rather than its relevance. The take-away from this research: "While click-through rates showed a strong positive correlation with interaction rates and brand favorability, only a minor positive correlation could be demonstrated between CTR and purchase intent. "
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Kevin: J.D. Lasica looks at an event at Google to look for ways to pay for journalism. It's a good post without a real conclusion other than "What's clear is that there's no single solution to the how-do-we-pay-for-journalism problem".
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Kevin: A good list of the 2010 Knight News Challenge winners. "Among the winning ideas are two easy-to-use tool sets for journalists and bloggers to illustrate raw data visually; tools to create “real time ads” that display a business’ latest Twitter or Facebook update; a place for the public to pitch and pay for stories on public radio; a mobile application that enables residents to geo-tag ideas for improving their neighborhood."
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Kevin: John Naughton has an excellent meditation about the internet and the pervasive search for easy answers. We're living through a revolution. Get used to it. As he writes, disruption is a feature not a bug. "By implementing these twin protocols, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn created what was essentially a global machine for springing surprises." It's an excellent piece that looks at a number of the disruptive trends online such as how to deal with information abundance, which upends traditional economics that attempts to deal with the allocation of scrace resources.
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Kevin: Laurie Penny writes in the New Statesmen about the continued prejudice shown by mainstream commentators towards political bloggers in the UK: "Cosy members of the established commentariat eye bloggers suspiciously, as if beneath our funny clothes and unruly hair we might actually be strapped with information bombs ready to explode their cultural paradigms and destroy their livelihoods.
This sort of prejudice is deeply anodyne.
Bloggers aren't out to take away the jobs of highly-paid columnists: we're more ambitious than that. We're out for a complete revolution in the way media and politics are done."
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Kevin: Martin Moore has a great post on journalism.co.uk about new developments in journalism in the US. He looks at the new round of Knight News Challenge winners and broader developments. "Much of the new development is emerging from US universities, such as MIT. At the MIT Media Lab’s Center for the Future of Civic Media, for example. It defines civic media as “any form of communication that strengthens the social bonds within a community or creates a strong sense of civic engagement among its residents. Civic media goes beyond news gathering and reporting”.
Thoughts on social media, business and journalism from Suw and Kevin Charman-Anderson
About the authors
Suw Charman-Anderson
Suw Charman-Anderson is a social software consultant and writer who specialises in the use of blogs and wikis behind the firewall. With a background in journalism, publishing and web design, Suw is now one of the UK's best known bloggers, frequently speaking at conferences and seminars.
Her personal blog is Chocolate and Vodka, and yes, she's married to Kevin.
Kevin Anderson
Kevin Anderson is a freelance journalist and digital strategist with more than a decade of experience with the BBC and the Guardian. He has been a digital journalist since 1996 with experience in radio, television, print and the web. As a journalist, he uses blogs, social networks, Web 2.0 tools and mobile technology to break news, to engage with audiences and tell the story behind the headlines in multiple media and on multiple platforms.
From 2009-2010, he was the digital research editor at The Guardian where he focused on evaluating and adapting digital innovations to support The Guardian’s world-class journalism. He joined The Guardian in September 2006 as their first blogs editor after 8 years with the BBC working across the web, television and radio. He joined the BBC in 1998 to become their first online journalist outside of the UK, working as the Washington correspondent for BBCNews.com.
And, yes, he's married to Suw.
