|
Posted 4:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Foul Ball
Steve Klein on sports credentialing
Newspapers seem to be taking more interest in the sports credentialing process as it applies to the online part of their brand. Newsday and Associated Press Sports Editors, a group composed of about 500 sports editors from newspapers across North America, are not happy about conditions Major League Baseball is including in its standard credentials agreement that would limit how they're able to cover games, especially on the Internet. A Newsday story cites language in the agreement that reads "failure to adhere to the conditions could result in loss of credentials for members of the media." Those conditions include that a credential holder "shall not transmit or display any video, audio, pictures, photographs or other non-text based accounts or descriptions of [games] in any media while [the games] are in progress," except with MLB permission, and a a clause "limiting transmission of game information to no more than once every half-inning, except in cases where the league has granted license to do so."Says Newsday editor Anthony Marro: "We aren't going to sign this as it is, obviously. We'll cross out the things we object to and then we'll sign." APSE President Tim Burke has sent a letter to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig expressing concern and about ironing out the differences.
Posted 3:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
TV Offers Some Hope to Web Writers
Jade Walker on online content jobs
A year or two ago, news of a growing dot.com caused cheer in the online writing community. Today, the downturn in the economy and the stream of layoffs announced by everyone from WSJ.com to Oxygen Media have left Web writers and editors a bit more pessimistic when it comes to signing on with a start-up.Yet according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, not everyone is making staff cuts. In fact, one company, TechTV.com, is growing by leaps and bounds. Owned by Vulcan Ventures, TechTV is "the on-air and online network dedicated to the digital lifestyle." For the past few months, TechTV has built a new studio and doubled its cable programming, which includes reports that stringers around the country file using Webcams. The company has also been on a hiring binge. In fact, right now it's looking for news staff in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Posted 2:43 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Will They Pay?
Rich Gordon on charging for content
Inside.com has a good story today about The New York Times' plans to introduce premium, paid online content. New York Times Digital CEO Martin Nisenholtz seems to be saying that content that's now free will remain free, but new services will be added for which people will have to pay. The long-term goal: half of all revenues from subscription services. A number of other sites have announced some form of online subscription concept in the past few weeks.Can it work? My own view: only for services that directly affect users' pocketbooks (a la the Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports) or that closely tie to people's careers (and that people can make their employers pay for).
Posted 12:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Publishers Combine Strengths
Katja Riefler on a new German newspaper job portal
German publishers have started a new effort to win back the online job market. This week they announced JobVersum. The new portal presents job offers from 88 regional newspapers as well as some original news content and services. More newspapers have been asked to participate. A Real Estate and an Automobile Portal will follow later this year. The "Versum.de Aktiengesellschaft" was founded in March 2000 by 10 big German newspaper companies and is located in Duesseldorf. They have a budget of 50 million EURO and 44 people working for them. They have ambitious goals. The competition in Germany is tough. Sites like Monster.de or Jobpilot are well established. Let's see what the old economy is capable of in Germany.
Posted 3:55 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Another Victory for Freelancers
Steve Klein on freelance rights
Just in case you missed it, a freelance photographer won a significant copyright case when the Eleventh Circuit court concluded that the National Geographic Society had infringed the copyrights of Jerry Greenberg when it republished his photos on a CD-ROM. The case is almost identical to Tasini v. The New York Times Company, which the Supreme Court head on Wednesday. The critical issue in both cases centers on whether CD-ROMs or electronic databases are revisions of a collective work, like a magazine or a newspaper. The publishers in both cases have argued that electronic databases constitute a "revision." The Eleventh Circuit court argued that the CD-ROM was a separate product.
Posted 3:29 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Marginal Argument
Kerry Northrup on cross-media ownership in Canada
Further defining the new publishing marketplace, a Canadian newspaper company argues that if the government does not allow it to purchase a TV network in which it is interested, based on concerns about media concentration, officials will in fact be marginalizing the newspaper industry. "Whether we like it or not we are living this new era of convergence. Media companies, wherever they are, have increased their realm of activity," Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau told Reuters. "Letting our businesses operate separately in Quebec without the benefits of this convergence would be probably putting them in peril."
Posted 3:22 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
March Madness Ratings Are a Slam Dunk
Steve Klein on online sports content
The early results are in, and the Internet ratings report from Nielsen/NetRatings for the week ending March 18 shows that traffic to FinalFour.net grew 167 percent during the first week of the NCAA Tournament. Traffic to the official NCAA site, which is produced by Quokka Sports for the college basketball championship, totaled 300,000 unique visitors during the week ending March 18, compared to 112,000 unique visitors for the previous week. More men than women logged onto the site at a 65/35 gender split. Surfers spent an average of six minutes at the site, with most visitors checking out the tournament bracket page.
Posted 7:36 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Different Approach
Kerry Northrup on newspapers in Asia
Asian publishers who gathered in Singapore this week for the Newspapers Asia 2001 (see Reuters coverage) conference present a definite contrast to their American colleagues in how they intend to react to tight economic times. Where as most U.S. news organizations -- both traditional and new media -- are announcing layoffs, cutbacks and all manner of bunker mentality, media from India to Japan are treating such times as an opportunity for careful advancements.It's not that they intend to be wild with their money. But as the proverb goes, it is unwise to stop swimming especially when the current gets stronger. The Asian publishers have a bit more practice at dealing with adverse financial environments, having just gone through five years of a down economy that America did not share and coming out the other end stronger for it.
Posted 7:22 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Right Place, Right Time
Norbert Specker on timing
Liselotte Lyngso of The Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies told the audience at last years Content Summit how the age of the storyteller is the key future trend. Out of the same group comes this little item on timing: the right place, the right time. Here it is applied for decision making, persuasion and personal interaction. It would be safe to say that timing when dealing with interactive content is a subject much in need of discussion.Any well-timed content anybody? Let me try this one on you (tip o' the hat to Peter Adler).
Posted 5:08 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Tasini Hits the Supreme Court
Steve Klein on freelance writing
If you're a freelance writer and still don't know about Tasini v. The New York Times, Wednesday's Washington Post has an excellent story with all the background on the same day the case is being heard by the Supreme Court. In a nutshell, freelance writers believe that publishers such as The New York Times, Newsday and Time (the magazine division of AOL Time Warner Inc.) have illegally re-sold their articles to electronic databases and CD-ROM companiesfor the past 20 years without their permission. This amounts to several hundred thousand articles that first appeared in newspapers and magazines and now are being sold in electronic forms. "The freelancers argue that they should be paid for the electronic recycling of their work," writes Christopher Stern in the Post. "The publishers say they already compensated the authors and should not have to pay twice for the same material."In the article, Peter Jaszi, a law professor at American University, likens the case to the battle between the major music companies and Napster, the online music site, which has allowed users to download songs without the permission of the copyright owners. Says Jaszi: "We are struggling to adapt rules written in an analog environment to a digital environment."
Posted 6:56 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Elusive W-2
Jade Walker on dot-com American tax issues
As if getting laid off from your dot-com wasn't bad enough, now you have to try and track down your W-2 form. Each year, Americans obtain a W-2, a form that lists how much income was earned during the previous year, and how much was given to the government for taxes. These forms are snail mailed to employees in January. Unfortunately, as this article in The New York Times shows, many pink-slippers haven't received their W-2s from their now defunct dot-com employers, and they're having trouble finding the people who used to pay them for their work.
On a more humorous note, one Web site has taken the 1040 Tax Form and updated it to satirize the troubles of "laid off dot-com employees with no job prospects."
Posted 4:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Wrestling with Privacy
Rich Gordon on what Tivo knows about you
The Privacy Foundation has come out with a critical statement about the privacy practices of TiVo, the leading player in today's generation of personal video recorder devices. TiVo is defending itself, of course. And the conflict is getting media attention (in The Industry Standard, among other places). This is one more sign that the tension between customization and privacy is one of two fundamental conflicts that will shape the future of interactive media. (The other: free flow of information vs. copyright profection.)In both cases, the real problem is human nature: convenience or greed outweighs principle. Most people, in the abstract, want their personal information to be private. But they willingly give up their privacy for the convenience of credit cards or the opportunity to get a discount or win a prize. Most people, in the abstract, would want artists to be compensated for their creative work. But if they can get music for free from Napster, they happily do so. It's interesting that judges and government bureaucrats have to find answers to questions that most individuals can't resolve just for themselves.
Posted 1:01 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Napster Use Is Down
Steve Klein on online music
We haven't quite reached the day the music died, but the number of Napster users has fallen by 25 percent since the music-swapping Web site began filtering out copyrighted songs, according to the survey firm Webnoize in the Washington Post. But Napster Inc. says there has been no decline in users, even though the service has blocked more than 225,000 songs. That accounts for about half of the files available for sharing. Napster is under court order to stop aiding the transfer of copyrighted music, something it did for tens of millions of people until the Recording Industry Association of America sued the company.
Posted 5:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The future of Content is 3-D
Norbert Specker on how content is escaping flatland
Maybe you have heard of Edwin A. Abbott 's "Flatland, A Romance of many Dimensions" (full text of 2nd Edition, 1884). If not, take a look. It describes the difficulties of imagining another dimension. In this particular case: If you lived all your life in two-dimensional flatland, how in the world could you ever envision a Third Dimension? We are at a similar point within the content industry. We have lived in a two-dimensional flatland for so long that we can not really imagine how it will be out there in the 3rd Dimension.But content takes place within the real life of consumers who live in a range of real spaces. Successful content will mirror that reality more and more. It will have to come from many directions, on may devices, and always be there one way or another. That's a staggeringly demanding task for content producers. In the meantime, content will have to be represented in three dimensions on the flat screens in order to keep the vast amount of available information accessible.
So, expect to be part of a three-dimensional Internet fairly soon. Adobe is showing off Atmosphere, a web-authoring tool for 3-D sites. It's very fancy, sleek but probably too early to go mainstream because the approach looks at each single site rather than the Internet as a whole. More promising in the short run seems to be 2ce (treat yourself to a demo). The concept builds on existing sites and pages. All it tries to do at this stage is show an additional four pages around the chosen homepage and emulate peripheral vision. There are certainly other ways to do this, and I'd be interested in comments.
Posted 7:25 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
ESPN.com Leads the Field
Steve Klein on online sports content
It shouldn't surprise anyone that ESPN.com continues to dominate the online sports world in unique users. According to PC Data, which lists the top sports Internet sites based on Web usage, ESPN.com had 4,200,000 unique users from March 4-10 (preceding the NCAA men's basketball tournament). Rounding out the top 10: 2, Sportsline.com, 1,896,000; 3, NASCAR.com, 1,725,000; 4, NBA.com, 1,221,000; 5, CNNSI.com, 1,150,000; 6, Rivals.com, 810,000; 7, NFL.com, 781,000; 8, FansOnly.com, 527,000; 9, SportingNews.com, 435,000; 10, FoxSports.com, 366,000. Usage is tracked through a panel of more than 120,000 home Internet users. A unique user is a member who visits a site within a given time period. If the user visits the same site more than once, it is counted as one visit only.
Posted 7:22 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Shaking a Nation
Vin Crosbie on what original online reporting can do
Precious few newspaper and magazine web sites in North America and Europe perform original reporting. Most simply shovel their print stories online. And even fewer offer original reporting in multimedia other than text and still images. The situation is different in India, where a team of former newspaper and magazine journalists started Tehelka.com, a "news and views" portal that has shaken the Indian government.
Posing as defense contractors who were offering bribes, Tehelka.com's journalists used hidden cameras to videotape army officers and political party officials accepting bribes or demanding even greater bribes. Tehelka.com then webcast those tapes and sold the rights to broadcast the tapes on TV. The Tehelka Expose has led to resignations of the Indian defense minister and of the president of India's governing party. Though India may have tiny Internet penetration, some of its online journalists are setting huge standards for their Western compatriots to follow.
|
