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?"

Kevin: A fascinating interview with Michelle Leder of Footnoted.org, a financial news site that was recently acquired by Morningstar. Footnoted digs through securities filings to find nuggest of interesting information. She challenges a number of assertions made about the web and journalism. She challenged Jeff Jarvis on the sustainability of the advertising only model for blogs. For entreprenuers, she says that they need a safety net and a backup plan. Excellent advice based on some experience and success. One take away for me is that if you add value to information, you've got a product that you can sell. If you don't, you'll struggle.

Kevin: If you're working on a hyperlocal project, you'll want to read this. Howard Owens, formerly of GateHouse Media launched a hyperlocal site in Batavia New York. It just won the New Frontier Award from the Inland Press Association. Very interesting. Look at the answer to the second question: "First, that online advertising works. Second, the way the typical newspaper.com handles online advertising doesn’t work.

Ads are content."
The other thing to do note is that this is a two-person flat out operation. He says he works 16 hours a day, which might be an exaggeration, but it still shows how lean the organisation is.

Kevin: If you look at your web stats, your site probably has a lot of 'drive-by' visitors. Visitors who either came from a search engine, an aggregator or your front page expecting one thing and getting something else. They stay a second and leave. This post has some good ideas on how to reduce the 'bounce rate', how to keep people on your site longer by showing them other things they might be interested in. Related content works, but it has to be more.

Kevin: Tim Beyers says that the infighting at the New York Times Company "will be lucky" if infighting over pricing for its iPad edition doesn't destroy the venerable newspaper. Gawker has reported that the print subscription department wants to charge £20 to $30 a month for the Times iPad app. As Beyers points out, News Corp only charges $12.50 a month for web access to The Wall Street Journal and Barron's.

Kevin: A good list of web data and visualisation tools from Matt Stiles of The Texas Tribune, a new news site and service focusing on Texas politics.

Kevin: A good look at the difference between the traffic stats of websites and those of companies like Compete, comScore and Nielsen. Some of us joke that there are lies, damn lies and web metrics. This article is a thorough look at the business of web metrics and also what impact it can have on businesses.

Kevin: A great interview with Matt Haughey of Metafilter. Freelance journalist Sue Medha writes: "At the heart of web journalism is the opportunity to engage, respond to, and learn from the community. Successful entrepreneurs have been able to figure out what online communities want and then give it to them." That's a great point, and it's a great interview. It also shows that online size doesn't necessarily matter as much providing a valuable service to a focused audience.

Kevin: My Guardian colleague Martin Belam has flagged up this excellent and very useful linked dataset cloud. He points out, "None of our major UK print-based news organisations featured on it, and that fact is yet to change".

Kevin: Well known citizen journalism site, NowPublic, will recurit 1000 paid 'citizen producers' for a new 'select' editorial model. The pay model will give users 20% of ad revenue earned from the content, giving up to "30% with 'quality and quantity'".

Kevin: "Jeff Israely, a Time magazine foreign correspondent in Europe, is in the planning stages of a news startup — a "new global news website." He lists lessons that he's learning. "Plan 'A' will not work". I've spoken to a lot of entrepreneurs, and one thing that is clear is that plans evolve. He suggests holding on to your day job, if for no other reason to stay on top of news (assuming your startup is news focused). Some good points.

Kevin: Gawker is reporting a conflict between the print circulation folks and the digital folks at The New York Times over the pricing of the upcoming iPad subscription. The print circulation folks want to charge $20-$30 a month, fearing that people will cancel their print subs. The digital side is pushing for something more like $10.

Kevin: Very interesting. The Federal Communications Commission in the US is going to offer a new broadband plan to the Congress. The plan aims to provide 100Mbps to 100m households by 2020. One thing that the FCC should be commended on is admitting currently the US doesn't have the spectrum to provide high-speed mobile broadband. There are some very good recommendations in the plan.

Kevin: "Associated Northcliffe Digital (AND) wants its hyperlocal network of websites to reach 50 per cent of online households in its catchment areas by July." To increase their reach, they will look at both online and offline promotion.

Kevin: The US Department of Homeland Security releases some information about the public sources of information that it is monitoring on the internet. Fascinating. They monitor the Danger Room and Threat Level blogs on Wired. "Other sites monitored by DHS include Wikileaks, Cryptome, Homeland Security Watch, and “Borderfire Report, an anti-immigration blog which includes postings related to internal frictions inside the Tea Party movement."

Kevin: Adam Tinworth looks at the potentital for the iPad. He calls on the publishing industry to think of the device independent of what came before rather than trying to replicate a magazine experience on a digital device. However, with the track record of the publishing industry, he expects it to look more like the CD-ROMs of the early 1990s.
I expect he is right. We're still thinking in analogies, adapting what we do now to digital platforms rather than looking at the unique opportunities offered by these devices.

Kevin: This is deeply geeky but very, very interesting. "RadioDNS is a collaborative project to enable the convergence of radio broadcasting and IP-delivered services." This is pulling together over-the-air radio with internet delivered services.

Kevin: Harsh words from entrepreneur Patricia Handschiegel but words that the media should take notice of. "Media, media. You never get it. Value to yourself is eyeballs, value to your readers is something different. This is why your failure is so spectacular and constant."

Kevin: Anthony Painter has posted a fascinating presentation about the 2008 Obama campaign and how the Tea Party movement in the US and compares it to the politics in the UK. I agree with him. In the UK, the internet and social media has changed the way that people who do politics do politics, but it's not changed the way that politics is organised to the extent that it has in the US.

Kevin: Recently, Chris Condron, the head of digital strategy at the Press Association in the UK, said that there isn't one public on Twitter. It's a important thing to remember. Alan Wolk at AdAge looks at one of these publics, these subgroups on Twitter. "The main thing to note here is that, unlike many of the Silicon Valley and Alley Twitterati, who take themselves and their tweets oh-so-seriously, this crew is having fun. The tweets are meant to be funny, and the funniest and most outrageous of them will wind up getting retweeted."
One of the things about Twitter is that allows these different groups to carve out spaces for themselves with hashtags. The replies and direct messages allow for privacy gradients to be easily formed. The simplicity but extensibility of Twitter has been its strength.

Kevin: Google has released its 'Living Stories' news topic pages technology as open-source. In the release, they say: "Since we launched this proof-of-concept test on Google Labs in December, 75% of people who sent us feedback said they preferred the Living Stories format to the traditional online news article."

Kevin: The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists said that freelancers and local reporters were more at risk of attack from dictators, oppressive governments and militant groups. They said that social media such as Twitter and blogs can help fight censorship, although they highlighted China as an exception.

Kevin: Greg Sterling looks deeper into the numbers of whether Facebook is driving more traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN than Google. Well worth reading including the conclusion: "But before we can assess the meaning of the data above, we need to know a good deal more about consumer usage of Facebook and whether the Compete data are validated by others. It’s still premature to pronounce Facebook the top or most important traffic source on the internet."

Kevin: John-Henry Barac is a former colleague of mine at the Guardian. He helped design the Guardian iPhone app. Joshua Benton with the Nieman Lab asks John-Henry about the iPad. Among the topics they discuss:
Among the topics we discuss:

— Will a more print-like screen push designers to build more print-like interfaces?
— How can surprise and serendipity be brought back into the reading experience?
— Will the iPad make reading longer pieces more interesting — or tolerable?

Kevin: From Jon Fildes at the BBC: "Google has admitted to BBC News that testing of its controversial social network Buzz was insufficient.

The firm has had to make a series of changes to the service after a ferocious backlash from users concerned about intrusions of privacy."

Kevin: Panel discussion on Education of the Entrepreneurial Journalist. Jeff Jarvis as moderator. Rafat Ali, Editor/Publisher, ContentNext Media
Phil Balboni, President and CEO, GlobalPost.com
John Harris, Editor in Chief, Politico.com
Geneva Overholser, Director, School of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
John Thornton, Chairman, The Texas Tribune.org

Kevin: Panel discussion on Education of the Entrepreneurial Journalist. Jeff Jarvis as moderator. Rafat Ali, Editor/Publisher, ContentNext Media
Phil Balboni, President and CEO, GlobalPost.com
John Harris, Editor in Chief, Politico.com
Geneva Overholser, Director, School of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
John Thornton, Chairman, The Texas Tribune.org

Kevin: Showing my age, I've been thinking and writing about media convergence for coming up on two decades. However, it finally looks like it might happen. "Steve Plunkett explains how milestones such as Project Canvas will bring together broadcast television and online media." He says, "While the hybrid model has been discussed for some time, this year is when it is actually going to meet the public. Analysts are predicting that 20% of televisions sold in Europe in 2010 will be internet enabled. Combine this with the fast-growing range of digital receivers and games consoles that are starting to offer television and video content delivered via broadband and it becomes clear that a new model is emerging."

Kevin: Another type of 'social payment' programme like Kachingle that allows people to pay a flat rate every month and then spread that money to contribute to the creation of content they like.

Kevin: Phil Balboni from GlobalPost, John Harris of Politico, Rafat Ali of ContentNext (paidContent, et al), John Thornton of the Texas Tribune and Geneva Overholser of USC Annenberg all answer the question: : What is the one skill or approach that journalists need to have, and develop, right now? Business savvy. Entrepreneurial drive. 'Find your distinctive value'. Expertise. Collaboration and openness. (I like the last two)

Kevin: An interesting call for a "Google newsroom". It's an article in translation so it's a bit difficult to understand in places, but my take away was rather than have a "bi-medial" newsroom with journalists having to focus on the web and on print that there were greater possibilities with a web-focused newsroom with focus on aggregation, curation, data and original reporting. It's an interesting idea, and I think it's another reaction to the mixed record of print-digital newsroom integration.

Kevin: Om Malik looks at the CXO mud wrestling match at MySpace. That's old news, and the FT took a deep dive into larger issues at MySpace last month. The really interesting lines in this story deal with whether News Corp is tired of the web and is going to refocus on its high margin businesses. "In many ways, News Corp and Murdoch have lost any and all interest in the web. The fire sales of Photobucket and Rotten Tomatoes are clear indicators that any-and-every digital property is up for sale. I bet if you showed up with a decent offer for say IGN or MySpace, News Corp would be willing to make a deal."

Kevin: Good post by Robert Hardie asking what newspapers really sell in the age of digital content. Is it the content or the experience? (I might substitute service for experience, but that's largely a semantic distinction.) He says that he paid for the Guardian's iPhone app because he finds the experience superior to viewing the standard mobile site on his iPhone. However, he wonders whether the distinction holds true for regional or local news? He thinks it does.

Kevin: An interesting bit of comment/blog roundup with some very interesting graphs looking at the costs and the operating margins at Guardian Media Group Regional Media, most of which was just sold to the Trinity Mirror Group. The sickening collapse in 2009 was a predictable result of the Great Recession, but the collapse in earnings started well before then. With the profits shrinking since 2004 while the British property bubble soared, it's hard to see how the predicted return to economic growth (albeit very anemic) will help restore the fortunes of regional newspapers in the UK.

Kevin: The BBC's Brian Wheeler looks at Twitter and its potential role in the upcoming UK General Election. "Experts … agree: Some hapless candidate will say or do something which will make them an instant, if unwitting, internet star – bringing instant shame and embarrassment to their party." With such risk aversion amongst politicians here in the UK, I don't think it's going to deal with the trust deficit they have after the Paliamentary expenses scandal.