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Al Jazeera is testing the Ushahidi open-source, crowdsourced crisis reporting engine for the current conflict in the Gaza Strip. News organisations need to have these labs areas to try technology and reporting methods.
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The Ushahidi Engine is a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline.
links for 2009-01-03
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It's great advice on how to run a business, whether you're in technology or journalism.
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The Airforce has created a process flow diagram that indicates very succinctly how the Air Force can and should respond to blog posts.
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"What should be Barack Obama’s resolutions for the New Year once he takes office? He needs to look no further than his transition Website, Change.gov, where more than 74,031 people have submitted more than 53,369 questions (and counting) for his administration and voted 3,122,015 times to prioritize the questions in a Digg-like fashion."
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Put the web to good use in setting and keeping your New Year's resolutions in 2009. Here are our picks for best free web applications for managing your New Year's resolutions; and if getting fit and healthy is at the top of your list, check out how to track your fitness goals with free tools.
links for 2009-01-01
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John Robinson takes newspapers, including his own, for not linking to original source material. Scott Karp, head of journalistic link service Publishing 2.0, says on Twitter: Failure to link to original sources should be seen as failure of practice of journalism generally, not just online.
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It's a lovely tongue-in-cheek post that newspapers finally get some of the US bailout money as auto giants place full page ads thanking America for believing (and investing) in them with taxpayer dollars. Trickle down economics is alive and well I guess.
links for 2008-12-31
UPDATE: Jay Rosen sent me a message via Twitter saying that it was the comment he was referring to as his clearest explanation and not the original del.icio.us link. We regret the error.
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Jay Rosen says of this comment: “My clearest explanation of the difference between “closed” and “open” editorial systems and why their ethics differ.”
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And the news really in this post is that: “Former Washington Post military reporter Tom Ricks, who took a buyout from the paper in April, will soon launch a blog for Foreign Policy magazine, FishbowlDC has learned.”
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“Jimmy Wales in response to Jason Calcanis trying to bust his chops about not paying the people who create wikipedia – as quoted by Jeff Jarvis in his book – What Would Google Do?”
links for 2008-12-30
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Daniel Victor says: "So journalists: Let’s stop complaining about the fact that we’re getting our asses whooped at today’s news model. … This round is over. Journalists lost. But lucky for journalists, there are plenty more rounds to come. Time to invest our money and expertise into focusing on the next ones."
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For those of you using the iPhone as your primary camera phone, here are some good photo taking tips. Journalists should be looking to smartphones as breaking news tools, and the more proficient that a journalist gets with one, the better.
links for 2008-12-29
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WordPress plugins, Firefox plugins and other tools to make it easier to write, tag and code posts for WordPress. Journalists need to try WordPress to see how easy creating content for the web can be.
links for 2008-12-28
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In the US, the internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as a main source for national and international news.
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I'm always interested in new ways to tell stories. It's one of the reason that I got into and have remained in online journalism instead of taking a more traditional path. This project from The Atlantic reminds me of some of the experimentation going on at the dawn of broadband, many projects that were cut short or abandoned after the dot.com collapse. As The Atlantic pursues and develops this project, I hope that they learn in public and allow us all to see what is successful and what isn't and ask why. Please, Think Again about digital journalism.
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China, some economists say, lulled U.S. consumers and leaders into complacency about their spendthrift ways.
links for 2008-12-24
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Steve Yelvington does an excellent job of rebutting Joel Brinkley's 'if only newspapers charged for content online everything would be OK' arguments with examples, many from his own experience, of how people coming late to the game don't really know the history of the online content business. Check out the Borrell Associates report about internet pure-plays and how they are taking almost 60% of local online ad share, more than newspapers and broadcast TV. Steve knows his numbers and knows his newspaper industry history.
links for 2008-12-23
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Doc Searls sees a high-def two-way future for video and huge possibilities for telcos if they "get on the side of all producers — including the people they now call consumers."
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In the first era of the web (after NCSA Mosaic but before MySpace), "Technology was permanent — but conversation was transient." But now, "Today, technology is transient – but conversation is permanent." The nugget from this post is that the web is now not a technological but a social construct.
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A well crafted illustration says more than a thousand words. This is a fascinating statement on the bailout and how it could have been and still might be.
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Derek Willis, a member of the New York Times web development group, explains how to use GeoDjango to create the Represent project. All it took was Ubuntu, GeoDjango and some good design work. It's another argument for wise use of open source software.
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Breaking: Sina Acquired Focus Media For $1 Billion | China Web 2.0 and Asia Tech News, Open Web AsiaFrom Kaiser Kuo on Twitter: "Sina, one of the biggest Chinese portals have acquired Focus Media, a media company which operates the largest outdoor advertising network in China."
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Valleywag says: "(Digg's financials) are frightful, even for a startup." Last year, they lost $2.8m. "…it's worth thinking about Digg's numbers amidst the litany of complaints about the ink-on-newsprint business: newspapers coast to coast are seeing devastating declines in advertising revenue. The New York Times has mortgaged its headquarters. The Tribune Company has declared bankruptcy. And yet, even in their decline, newspapers remain prodigious generators of cash. This moribund industry generated $13.7 billion in profit in 2007."
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"Chrysler’s crippling difficulties in North America are forcing the company to largely cut its overseas business, which has been suffering heavy losses."
Digital versus print and apple and oranges analysis
David Carr at the the New York Times has written a story that must cheer the hearts of newspaper owners as they struggle to find a way to go back to the days of fat returns. Under the headline “Newspaper Shuns Web, and Thrives“, he speaks with a small community newspaper publisher who is enjoying 10% growth by almost choosing to “aggressively” ignore the web.
Ryan Sholin said on Twitter:
Yo, David Carr, apples & oranges is a pretty fricking basic concept, isn’t it? You’re comparing them.
I’d agree. Carr’s analysis is simplistic and just plain wrong. Carr says:
A few caveats before we turn back the clock on publishing history. TriCityNews employs 3.5 people (the half-time employee handles circulation), has a print run of 10,000, and has a top line that can be written in six figures.
A caveat is an outlying piece of data that can be ignored and not threaten the main thrust of the analysis. This is just one piece of data that destroys the analysis that it is the choice of the publisher to ignore the web that has made his business successful. The publisher also has negotiated long term deals with advertisers so that he doesn’t have sales staff, and he has six part-time columnists. I could make a very successful digital or analogue news business on that cost basis.
This isn’t about digital versus print. This is difference between having zero legacy costs, a small building and I’m guessing no print plant. This is a minuscule cost basis versus the high legacy costs of existing newspapers in terms of staff, paper and distribution. As any one knows, US newspapers still make piles of money, just not enough money to cover their costs.
And it’s not just the buildings, printing presses and distribution costs that the newspaper companies are groaning under. It’s the mountains of debt that they accumulated through aggressive, highly leveraged acquisition strategies. McClatchy took on debt to acquire Knight-Ridder. In September, they had to renegotiate a $1.175 bn debt deal to account for their declining revenue. Gatehouse is drowning in debt to the tune of $1.2 bn with a preciptious drop in their stock value, and we know the result of Sam Zell’s highly leveraged buy-out of the Tribune Corporation. To compare a 10,000 circulation start-up print news operation with a media conglomerate like Tribune Corp with $7.6 bn of assets and $12.9bn in debt is ridiculous. It’s about as ridiculous as comparing Digg with a newspaper. They just aren’t comparable creatures in economic scale, business model or editorial mission.
I would argue that the more accurate analysis is that Dan Jacobson, the publisher of the TriCityNews of Monmouth New Jersey has an incredibly lean news organisations with no legacy costs. It has more in common with Nick Denton’s Gawker than the Tribune Corporation. This is not an issue of digital versus analogue but rather the result of Jacobson’s focus on exclusive local content, a recession-proofed revenue strategy and aggressive cost containment.
Newspapers used to be the most efficient way to advertise. Now they aren’t. In the first half of 2007, Google pulled in 39.8% of all online ad revenue in the US. In 2007, Google was 241 in the Fortune 500. In 2008, it leapt to 150. No, Google’s business is not to create journalistic content, but it is competing with newspapers for advertising dollars.
Digital could support a news organisation on its own, if they were willing to radically reduce costs, and I don’t mean simply cutting staff. First, let’s look at the revenue side. There are still too many people running and working for newspapers that believe the 1990s chestnut: The web is great but how do you make money with it? The LA Times web revenue now exceeds its editorial payroll costs. As commenters on Jeff Jarvis’ Buzzmachine point out, that’s not the only cost a newspaper has, but it definitely challenges the view that the web is simply a money pit. The problem isn’t that the web isn’t making money, but that it’s not making enough money at most newspapers to compensate for the decline in the print business, which is still the primary revenue generator for most big city newspapers. (Jeff just got an update from LATimes Editor Russ Stanton on their web success.)
But we also need to look at cost containment. Newspapers can still radically reshape their businesses to take advantage of digital efficiencies. I often talk about when I worked for the BBC in Washington. About 8 years ago, the bureau set up its first digital editing suite with a blue-and-white Power Mac and Avid video processing, storage and software. The total cost was around $80,000. In 2005, they replaced the system with a PowerBook, Final Cut Pro and a portable RAID array for roughly $12,000. Faster, better, cheaper and portable. Expensive equipment and production doesn’t necessarily mean better quality, and a good professional can produce 80-90% of the quality at a fraction of the cost. This may sound odd to people who know me, but invest in the people, not the kit. I’d rather have a job than a shiny new computer any day.
For many large chains neither the web, print nor anything short of selling porn would dig them out from underneath the mountain of debt they have accumulated. Highly leveraged consolidation is the problem and will be the death of some of these chains. This isn’t an issue of digital versus print. Now that the credit bubble has bust, leaner and more efficient will always win the day over highly leveraged and highly costly.