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Posted 3:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ernie's Final Call on MLB.com Sunday
Steve Klein on online sports content
The official website of Major League Baseball, MLB.com, will provide fans with a free, live audio webcast of Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell's final game call Sunday against the Toronto Blue Jays from the SkyDome. Harwell, who spent 55 years calling games, 42 of them with the Detroit Tigers, is one of the most recognized voices in American sports. Fans can access Sunday's game on MLB.com and detroittigers.com.
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Posted 6:57 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Salon Tweaks Paid-content Model
Steve Outing on paying more or paying less
Salon editor David Talbot is still swinging, trying desperately to get his celebrated webzine to make money. In a letter to readers published today, he touts the notion that Salon publishes "the news that no one else will print" — and backed up the statement with a long list of scoops. (Of course, alternative newsweeklies have long been doing that.)Talbot's pitch was designed to get more people to sign up for Salon Premium, the site's paid-subscription service. He announced a change in the service: an $18-a-year "lite" plan that gives access to premium content, but also includes ads that $30-a-year Premium subscribers don't see.
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Posted 10:44 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Highlighting Articles Upon Readers' Behavior
Eva Domínguez on presenting news in a different way
The Spanish newspaper ABC, which was acquired by Grupo Correo some months ago, recently redesigned its website. It is now cleaner, clearer, and more organized than it used to be. What I want to emphasize is a little feature that is not original but useful in the way it is presented. Many sites include options such as printing, e-mailing, or scoring an article — and the reader can check how many times the page has been visited, printed, and e-mailed, and how high it has been scored by other users. Besides this individual possibility, ABC has created a pop-up window that contains four different lists, ranking in the same page the most visited, printed, e-mailed, and scored articles of the entire site. The pop-up window can be accessed from each article as well as from the home page. It is called "Lo más destacado" (Most highlighted).It is interesting to see that rankings do not always match, and it gives more clues about how users read the site. The most visited article is not necessarily the most printed one, nor the most e-mailed one. Good to know, good to think of.
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Posted 10:15 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Still Growing: 1:1 Print Editions Online
Katja Riefler on e-paper trends in Germany and Austria
Although online newspapers are suffering hard from cutbacks this year, there is one exception: PDF or "e-paper" versions of the printed edition get more and more popular. In the last six months, more than half a dozen newspapers in Germany and Austria have started using or testing such systems; more plan to do so soon. They either use home-grown technologies or vendors like Olive Software, Newsstand, or Rhein-Zeitung. Very soon the papers can evaluate an additional system: MSH Medien System Haus, a technology company in Stuttgart owned by several publishing houses in the southwestern part of Germany, has announced that it will present a fully interactive online newspaper edition at the IFRA Expo in Barcelona in October. Pilot customers will be Stuttgarter Zeitung and Stuttgarter Nachrichten. The implementation is scheduled for early 2003.
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Posted 8:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Hail the Tablet
Steve Outing on portable computing and media
I enjoyed The Guardian writer Jack Schofield's article on the future of Tablet PC devices — coming soon to a retailer near you. He focused on the idea that Tablet PCs will change how we use computers in the office — bringing them into meetings to take notes and having Internet access in places where bringing a laptop isn't practical, for instance. He didn't spend much time discussing the media-consumption aspects of the devices, but I think that will be a huge draw for Tablet PCs in several years. I do NOT think that more people will be reading Time magazine on Tablets than in print — even in five years — but in that time I do think that Tablets being used for reading as well as other computing functions will be as common a sight as Palm Pilots are today.
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Posted 2:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Hey, Google, It's the 'World' Wide Web
Steve Outing on Google News
We've been discussing Google News this week, and I've praised it. A dissenting view comes from Europe, where the service may be viewed as too American-centric. Chris Smith of the Rosetta Stone Consultancy writes me: "Google News is of course, a very local service, for Americans. Here in Europe (I'm English, living in the Netherlands), everyone I know who has checked out the new service wouldn't dream of using it for news. The Dutch people will continue to use Dutch language news and I'll just look at the BBC and my local Dutch newspaper on the Web, as usual." Google News is still in beta, of course; as it evolves, it would be possible for Google to create other versions catering to other markets.
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Posted 1:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Playing Ball Online Internationally
Steve Klein on online streaming sports content
Here's some good news for non-U.S. fans of American baseball. Post-season games, beginning with the start of the American and National leagues' Division Series on October 1 through the the World Series, will be streamed live online through Worldwide Webcasts on MLB.com and WorldSeries.com. Internationally, fans will be able to watch post-season baseball every day that at least one game is played — and they'll have a chance to see it live or archived. MLB.com's Worldwide Webcasts are streamed in high-resolution 300K broadband video. The entire post-season package will cost US$19.95 and is available for purchase on MLB.com. The package will have at least 24 games, possibly more, depending on how long each series lasts.As far as the American mainland, however, in order to protect television broadcast rights, post-season webcasts will not be available to fans attempting to connect domestically or from Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Japan.
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Posted 10:04 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Europe's Multimedia Landscape
Martha Stone on a MUDIA study
A 100-plus-page report on Europe's multimedia news landscape has been published at MUDIA.org. The study, funded by the European Commission, reports on the efforts of 16 newspaper companies and 10 broadcast companies in four countries: Sweden, UK, France, and Spain. The study showed that media-company executives admit that they are facing a crisis of circulation, viewership, and advertising, and many are combining resources to improve journalism and business outcomes. While some companies have invested millions of Euros (or British sterling) on building multimedia empires, like the BBC, Stockholm's Aftonbladet and Madrid's Marca, most are taking baby steps toward integration.
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Posted 6:59 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Few Awards for Scandinavian Websites
Ernst Poulsen on website vs. print design
The Society for News Design/Scandinavia had trouble finding news websites worthy of awards in the "Electronic Pages" category this year. The jury — which is used to evaluating newspaper print design — fortunately decided to give content, ideas, and functionality a higher priority. Comparing newspaper print design (where every page is different) with news Web design (which often is a template product) is truly like comparing apples and oranges.The only "medal awards" went to Aftonbladet and Verdens Gang/VG, which won silver and bronze for fast news and excellent usability. The jury decided to be generous with the awards of excellence in order to appreciate the details of some of the websites: Internetavisen Jyllands-Posten — news agent that lets readers monitor keywords; Aftenposten's Oslopuls — city guide; Dagens Næringsliv — wine guide that includes every wine sold in Norway; and Frederiksstad Blad — local news.
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Posted 5:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Google and AP ... and AP ... and AP ...
Steve Outing on when computers are dumb
Gary Price complains that Google News (see item directly below this) has a problem with AP and other wire stories: It can't get enough of them. If you look at GN's story categories, you'll find that many links go to the same AP or wire story as presented on many different news sites. They often carry different headlines, or have been edited differently. (Here's a comment about this on Price's weblog.) Meanwhile, Morris Digital VP Steve Yelvington complains: "I don't want our sites serving AP Online content to Google News readers in Peru. Ain't no business model there. We'll be implementing ROBOTS.TXT exclusion directives on non-local content."Yelvington's suggestion, if implemented widely, would solve GN's problem. Better would be for Google News to tweak its algorithms to exclude AP and wire content from all but one or two major news sites. Remember, GN is in beta, so glitches like this are excusable for now.
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Posted 2:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Google News Is Grabbing Your Photos
Steve Outing on search engines and journalism
The new and improved Google News grabbed a lot of headlines this week (including from me; count me as an early fan of the news aggregation service). One interesting component of the service is the thumbnail photos that are included. Google News' product manager told me that the service grabs images matching top headline stories from leading news sites, converts them to thumbnails, and posts them on Google News. Remarkably, this is all done by computer algorithm — no human intervention is involved. Isn't grabbing photos from news sites a copyright violation? No. Google says it's "fair use," and within the bounds of current copyright law. (Intellectual property lawyer Jessica Friedman reported in a post to the Online-News list that a recent U.S. Ninth Circuit decision in Kelly v. ArribaSoft held that making thumbnail sketches of a photographer's work for the purpose of including them in search-engine results was fair use — which probably applies in Google's case.)If you think Google News is cool, also take a look at a British news aggregation service, NewsNow.co.uk. Not quite as nice as Google's news entry, but quite a good service. Thanks to Internet library guru Gary Price for alerting me to it.
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Posted 11:51 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Getting It Backward: When Online Lags Print
Peter M. Zollman on a website's credibility
This is backward: The newspaper has a full-blown news story; the website only has an outdated brief with few details. It happened this morning with the Orlando Sentinel. Two acquaintances of mine were killed in a plane crash, so I checked OrlandoSentinel.com for details. Nothing there at 7 a.m. but a sketchy brief. At some point later, I happened to glance at the print edition that landed in my driveway between 4 and 5:30 a.m. It had a full story, about 400 words, with identities and obit information. (At 9:15 a.m., the old story was still on the site.)By this gaffe, the Sentinel has just destroyed the credibility of its Web operations with me. This is how it's supposed to work: The Web is updated more frequently and has the most current information, not the print edition. Unfortunately, one has to wonder if Tribune Co. — the world's smartest media company when it comes to the future of media, convergence, and multiple-platform news delivery — has cut back so heavily on its Web efforts that it's sacrificed quality that will never recover. (I hope not.) Or maybe it was just a one-time glitch. Or maybe the new automated Web publishing system hiccuped. Or maybe ...
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Posted 11:27 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Hunger and the Internet in Argentina
Juan C. Camus on social campaigns on the Web
La Nación, a major newspaper in Argentina, is collaborating with a social campaign to get 400,000 citizens' signatures, using its website as a creative tool. The signatures will, it is hoped, force the Parliament to discuss a law that will make it a state obligation to give food to children under five years of age. In a country that became poorer very fast in the last two years, and where seven out of ten children are born in poverty, this law could make a huge difference. The website is not only publishing news about the campaign, but it also lets you download the forms to sign, see Flash animations about local poverty numbers, and review the text of the proposed law.
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Posted 7:28 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Is Columbia Clued in to Technology?
Steve Outing on journalism education
You probably know that there's been a debate about the future of the premier journalism school in the U.S., Columbia University's — which appointed a task force of professors and journalists to ponder the new direction of the school. But Dan Gillmor in his weblog today suggests that there may be a problem with that task force, because its members are drawn from "journalism's priesthood," and don't appear to have much background in new media and its considerable influence on the path of the profession. Here's Gillmor's critique.
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Posted 3:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Knight Ridder Digital Gives Back Local Control in Texas
Steve Outing on city.com vs. newspaper.com
A while back in my Editor & Publisher column, I wrote about Knight Ridder changing its Internet strategy and allowing its metro news sites to decide if they want to be a "city.com" or a "newspaper.com." Previously, the company had opted for a city.com strategy for all its sites. Now comes news that DFW.com, the city site of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas, is becoming Star-Telegram.com, effective immediately. According to the press release issued today, additional changes will "upgrade site navigation, better reflect the needs of the local market, and identify more closely with the trusted offline brand of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram." KR's experience would seem to suggest that for a newspaper company, too much control of Internet operations at corporate headquarters is not a good thing.
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Posted 12:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Danish Deep-Links Case Far From Over
Steve Outing on Internet law
Journalist Ernst Poulsen, who is chairman of the Danish Online News Association, offers an update on the deep-linking case of the Danish Newspaper Association (DDF). He reports that DDF, since winning its case against deep-linking site Newsbooster, has convinced another site, Newz.dk, not to archive any deep links to Danish newspaper sites. But "this may be a first — and paper-thin — victory," says Poulson. Here's why: news aggregator Visator.dk/Visator.com has sold its operations to a Singapore company; another similar site, WiseEye, has chosen to operate out of Switzerland. "The story has all the aspects of the battle between the music industry and Napster," comments Poulson. "The Danish Newspaper Association may have won the battle — and be in for a long war."
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Posted 10:29 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Video on Demand – Via Postal Mail
David Carlson on the Internet economy
Who'd have thunk it? The medium of choice for distribution of video on demand is — the U.S. Postal Service. Yes, dear reader, companies such as NetFlix, CafeDVD, QuickFlicks, and DVD Avenue let customers choose their movies on the Web, but they send them out by mail or FedEx. The cost is less than $20 a month for as many films as you can watch. Peter Wayner writes in Monday's New York Times that it would take an average consumer with a 56K modem nearly two weeks to download a movie. A DVD can be sent from coast to coast by mail in three days. Wayner also writes that it would cost the above-mentioned companies as much as $20 to distribute a data file the size of a movie on the Net. It costs 39 cents to mail a DVD. NetFlix alone, Wayner writes, sends about 190,000 disks every day to its 670,000 subscribers. Maybe there's a future for the Postal Service after all.
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Posted 4:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Look, Ma, No Wires!
David Carlson on wireless publishing
It's a bit of a kludge, I'll admit, but you are at this very moment reading a document that was created and sent with a wireless device — a Pocket PC with 802.11b connectivity. I wish I could tell you that I was sitting on a beach somewhere sipping Corona, but the truth is that I'm sitting on the couch in my living room — and there is a perfectly good wired PC with a real keyboard about 30 feet away. Even so, I am untethered and communicating via high-speed wireless ethernet thanks to a Toshiba 740e Pocket PC running Windows CE.Is it as good as a wired system? Sadly, no. The screen allows me to see perhaps one-quarter of an average 800 by 600 Web page at a time, and the little screen-based pop-up keyboard makes typing cumbersome. But when you consider that it was only a few years ago that the idea of a pocket-sized PC connected wirelessly to the Internet sounded like some sort of Rube Goldberg device, it's pretty amazing. The school where I teach, the University of Florida, is setting up a wireless network that already covers a good portion of the campus, so it is a useful device here. Perhaps this weekend I'll send a blog from the football game. ... Time required to write this message on soft keyboard: 19 minutes.
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Posted 12:57 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Reporters Who Blog, Get Scoops
Steve Outing on weblogs
As I've suggested in my writing before, reporters should seriously consider maintaining weblogs. In the New York Times today, David Gallagher writes about the advantages and pitfalls of reporter/columnist weblogs. Gallagher did not cite it, but Ben Silverman, a columnist for the New York Post and publisher of DotcomScoop.com, maintains a weblog about the Worldcom scandal (As the Worldcom Turns) — and it's a fine example of the value of reporters maintaining weblogs. Silverman debuted the weblog the day after Worldcom's initial disclosure about overstating its revenues by billions of dollars.Silverman says the weblog has become a "source magnet" — introducing him to sources in and around the company, some of whom have sent him dozens of internal documents. "These documents and sources have led to more than a dozen stories I've written about the company for the New York Post, including numerous 'scoops,'" he says. "The weblog has also been an outlet to help those affected by the scandal or covering it. ... Privately, WorldCom executives and their PR people tell me they read the weblog."
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Posted 9:53 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
New Google News Opens to All
Steve Outing on search engines and journalism
As mentioned here last week, Google has a new version of Google News, a fully automated news-aggregation site featuring links all over the Web. Library/Internet consultant Gary Price notes that today the service becomes available to all and summarizes what's different on his ResourceShelf website.
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Posted 9:38 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Trend to Make TV Less Enjoyable to Watch
Steve Outing on the future of advertising
As a TiVo user who rarely watches commercials any more, I wonder what will happen to commercial television advertising once personal video recorders are in the majority of homes. Product placement in entertainment is likely, of course. (Show's star conspicuously drinks Diet Coke.) The other likelihood, as an article in Friday's Wall Street Journal suggested, is that "pop-up" ads will appear on more and more TV programs. It's the same, annoying concept of Web pop-up ads, applied to an old medium. In the typical scenario, several times during a show, the programming shrinks and a Web-like ad is placed on the bottom and/or side as the show continues.Annoying? You bet — just like Web pop-ups. But TV pop-ups will probably be an inevitable result of the growth of PVR usage, as the traditional 30-second spot's usefulness is destroyed by changing TV viewing habits. Alas, under such a pop-up scenario, watching TV will be a less enjoyable experience. Perhaps TV viewing will go down as a result (which I think would be a good thing), and other media usage will rise. TV executives should embrace pop-up advertising with caution.
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