Kevin: An interesting look at content through the eyes of the seed funders at Seedcamp. Jos White writes: "The Internet over the last few years has been about getting as much content to as many people as possible – bringing an incredible range of content to our screens like never before. The problem is that we are now surrounded by too much content that takes too much time to find, qualify and consume." Out of the 12 winners at Seedcamp, "seven are involved in optimising content in some way and making it more personalised to the user".

Kevin: Robert Andrews at paidcontent.co.uk looks at a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau report on the first half 2010 ad revenues in the UK. Online ads are up by 10%, but TV has edged ahead of the internet. Cinema and outdoor increased, but print, classified, direct mail and directories were down. One interesting thing to note about the survey is that search accounts for just shy of 60% of digital ads. That sector was up 8.8%, however online classifieds were up 11%. Display was up by 6.4% by comparison.

Kevin: Tanja Aitamurto at PBS MediaShift looks at Aftonbladet in Sweden and their freemium strategy. The premium part of the freemium model is called Plus. "The Plus service includes lifestyle material, such as over 200 different travel guides, health articles, and reviews of cars, gadgets and other products and services." One interesting element of her analysis is looking at the introduction of micropayments in what had previously been a subscription-only paid content strategy. The subs went down after micropayments were introduced.

Kevin: Megan Garber does a review and a bit of a live test of Storify, a new tool for collecting social media elements into a story format. It's been created by former AP reporter Burt Herman. She concludes: "And, for breaking news, where journalists might just be interested in the quick curation of tweets and videos, Storify’s drag-and-drop simplicity could be amazingly useful. It’s a simple mechanism for curating and contextualizing the atomized tumult that is the web — a little lifesaver for selected bits of information that otherwise might be lost to the news river’s rapids."

Kevin: More details on how to use the open-source Geodict tool to extract location from text. It lists some very useful details on how to get the most out of this tool and also comparing it to other tools such as Yahoo's Placemaker and also more general semantic APIs such as OpenCalais and Alchemy.

Kevin: A listing of some of the six and seven-figure salaries being paid in the US to star 'talent'. These hires are described as the top 1% of the talent pool in the article, but the reporter is clearly sceptical that such star power can help the ailing print media.

Kevin: Simon Dumenco at AdAge says that Rupert Murdoch is waging a war against reality in his attempt to put his general news sites behind paywalls. "I mean the reality of free vs. paid in the web's general-interest news ecosystem. Murdoch is currently engaged in a quixotic quest to get online newspaper readers to pay up, sealing News Corp. papers, tomb-like, behind paywalls — including, starting next month, News of the World (hilariously enough)." News Corp isn't letting media buyers know the numbers at The Times (of London) and The Sunday Times since they put up the paywall, and media buyers are striking back, with Publicis owned Starcom MediaVest cutting its ads on the sites by 50%. It's a simple issue of knowing what they are buying. If times were good at The Times, they would be crowing from the hills. They are being mum, and the market is punishing them.

Kevin: A report from Bloomberg quoting a media buyer from Starcom Mediavest Group, part of Publicis, saying that they have cut their buying from News Corp's Times and Sunday Times by 50% because News Corp's refuses to reveal online figures to media buyers. “I can go to the Guardian or CNN and get an audience,” said Chris Bailes, digital trading manager at Starcom MediaVest. That's a corporate kick in the teeth to News Corp. The Guardian is seen on the other side of the paid versus ad-supported news argument in the UK, and CNN competes with News Corp's Fox News in the US. Them's fighting words.

Kevin: A harrowing tale reported by David Carr of the dysfunctional and misogynistic culture under Sam Zell at The Tribune Corp. It is a depressing story of a cowboy corporate culture that equated sexual harassment with innovation and creativity. It also paints an almost comic picture of Tribune management that seems straight out of some sitcom about the media. Apart from the misogyny, the other depressing fact is how executives brought in as FOS (Friends of Sam Zell) have enriched themselves while destroying the Tribune, its sister papers and its flagship radio station, WGN. Just depressing.

Kevin: A report from Jan Schaffer, the executive director of the J-Lab at American University in Washington, looking at 46 community projects funded from 2005 to 2009. A third have shut, and of those still operating, they endure because their founders are willing to work for little to no pay. She is very frank that there is still no sustainable business model for these community journalism projects.

Kevin: An absolutely must-read post by Alan Mutter looking at community news projects funded by Knight in the US. Of 46 projects under its New Voices programme between 2005 and 2009, a third have shut and the "remainder endure because the founders are working for little or no pay". Jan Schaffer of the J-Lab at American University said: “Community news sites are not a business yet."

Kevin: A great post on how to use Yahoo Placemaker and open-source technology Geodict to extract location from content. Geodict has about 2m locations in its database. This is a great tutorial showing just about anyone who is comfortable with the command line in Linux how to use these services.

Kevin: Patricio Robles at EConsultancy looks at the imminent release of Google TV. One of the interesting things here for news organisations is that Google TV is working with The New York Times and USA Today to optimise their content for the platform.

Kevin: An interview with John Ridding at the Financial Times about their paid content model. "When times get tough, there are two ways you can respond, including, as lot of publications have done, by trying to cut newsroom costs. The danger of that is you get into a death spiral by reducing the quality of what you’re doing and exacerbating the sales and readership issue."