Lessons from the web-only SeattlePI.com

A year ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer dropped its print edition and went web only — the first major metro newspaper in the country to do so. It’s a critical experiment for its parent, the Hearst Corporation, which is faced with a decision on how to transition its stable of newspapers into the digital future. SeattlePI.com — or the PI, as it’s called here in Seattle — kept a much smaller editorial staff of 20 or so people.

Today, SeattlePI.com Executive Producer Michelle Nicolosi says traffic is holding mostly steady at 40 million page views with 4 million uniques a month — quite an accomplishment for such a dramatic staff reduction and a strong competitor across town, SeattleTimes.com. “From a business standpoint we feel very positive,” says Pat Balles, GM of SeattlePI.com, adding that they’re on track to make a profit (but no details on when it will happen.)

Visiting the SeattlePI.com, you may be surprised at the volume of content, which can be valuable lesson for cash-strapped news operations everywhere. First off, the PI is careful not to duplicate coverage that’s already available — on the wires or from its stable of partners, which includes KOMO News, the ABC affiliate. Instead, the PI’s reporters focus on unique enterprise stories that can be showcased across the site, like this story on abandoned construction projects in Seattle.

Other content sources include stories from Hearst-owned newspapers as well as magazines, which range from Oprah to Smart Money. TV Guide and Film.com are key partners in the entertainment category.

Most editorial staffers also contribute to a variety of niche blogs, which contain original reporting as well as summaries and links to other stories around Seattle’s vibrant online news scene. The short-form style is tailor-made for quick publishing, short attention spans, search engine juice and social media distribution. For example, Monica Guzman, who is the main contributor to the Big Blog, is a Twitter pro, amassing 8,000 followers and driving a substantial amount of social visibility for the PI.

SeattlePI.com also hosts a large network of reader blogs. These blogs are volunteer operations spanning a wide range of niches and neighborhoods, enjoying an traffic injection from the home page as well as the SEO benefits of living on the SeattlePI.com domain. Some neighborhood blogs are standalone experiences and a couple others are partnerships with existing blogs — and the PI has plans to launch several more.

The PI has also borrowed a page from the Huffington Post (without the political lean) with its “City Brights” columns. Prominent Seattleites write about issues important to them — yet another source of free content, and a great way to drive publicity about the site.

Of course, some journalists may raise an eyebrow over the amount of volunteer writing on SeattlePI.com, but you have to admit, the site has done a great job retaining its audience with a dramatically reduced editorial staff. And techniques like these will likely become standard fare at many newspaper sites in the years to come.

(Full disclosure: I co-founded Next Door Media, a network of neighborhood news blogs in Seattle. Next Door Media and the PI have blogs that overlap in a few neighborhoods, and Next Door Media is an editorial partner of the Seattle Times.)

YouTube: Viacom uploaded own copyrighted videos

YouTube lawyer Zahavah Levin writes on the company blog that Viacom employees uploaded their own copyrighted content even as they were complaining about the company’s use. Viacom is suing YouTube owner Google for $1 billion for copyright infringement. But YouTube claims Viacom employees undertook a campaign so good at secretly uploading videos it occasionally forgot which clips it was sending:

“For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

“Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.”

Meantime, USA Today reports some of the evidence that Viacom has put into play, including clips that they claim came from emails sent by YouTube employees:

“Viacom cites emails from YouTube co-founder Steve Chen including one where he says “if you remove the potential copyright infringements … site traffic and virality will drop to maybe 20% of what it is.”

“Viacom says Chen discussed in another instance how YouTube could handle a hot news clip from CNN: “[I] really don’t see what will happen. what? someone from cnn sees it? he happens to be someone with power? he happens to want to take it down right away. he gets in touch with cnn legal. 2 weeks later, we get a cease & desist [takedown] letter. we take the video down.”

We look forward to more revelations in this already fascinating story.

Notes: ABC’s Tot Mom Money, Amanpour, Nieman

Noted, on this first beautiful day of the year outside LR East Coast HQ:

Apple iPad keyboard delayed

The docking keyboard won’t be coming out at the same time as the iPad. CNN reports the keyboard will be delayed until May (the iPad’s supposed to come out in April). LR’s Erik Schwartz and I (both Apple freaks) wonder if the keyboard was a hack – an afterthought added once Apple realized most of us hate typing on touchscreens. Apparently we’re not alone – writes CNN’s John Sutter:

“[T]he iPad’s full-size, touch-screen keyboard feels a bit goofy at first. I don’t look at my hands when I type, and on the iPad there’s no way to make sure your fingers are tapping the right keys without looking down to check. The whole screen is glass, so you can’t feel the difference.”

The keyboard dock will cost $69.

‘Everybody and their mother is humping their leg’

You can’t sum it up any better than that. Foursquare, one of the hottest tech companies in the hottest space right now (local-social), is reportedly searching for a new round of financing. As you might imagine, they’re not having any trouble finding potential investors. “Everybody and their mother is humping their leg,” says one VC.

AOL steps up aggressive local news push

AOL is going great guns with local news. We already know about Patch, AOL’s quickly-growing network of local news sites that aims to expand into the hundreds. And now AOL says it’s creating a hyperlocal venture capital fund for budding entrepreneurs in the space, as well as relaunching its “City’s Best” franchise to 25 cities. And AOL said it plans to ramp up local content on the AOL.com home page.

First, the venture fund. AOL says it will “target” promising local ventures that are “fundamentally improving the local experience for consumers, businesses, governments and organizations.” The fund stands at $10 million, and AOL says it has yet to make an investment.

“Local is the one area of the Internet that has not been built out in an extensive way. While there are companies in the local space, AOL has the technology to digitize the local space at scale,” said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. “We believe it’s an untapped market for the most part and one of the largest commercial opportunities online that has yet to be won.”

City’s Best is a best-of business directory product that focuses on local entertainment options. AOL said the plan is to launch 25 major metro markets in the third quarter of 2010.

And perhaps most interesting, is AOL.com’s plan to shift its content mix in the local direction, similar to what MSN.com has recently done. AOL says it will use its Relegence technology, “which monitors, indexes and filters thousands of news sources,” to serve up content tailored to a user’s zip code. Of course, this will likely promote AOL’s content ventures, from Patch to City’s Best.

Fwix inks deal with New York Times Company

The local and hyperlocal news aggregator Fwix has signed its first big media deal: an agreement with the New York Times Company to distribute headlines across local newspaper sites.

“We are extremely proud to be working with The New York Times Company, one of the world’s leading news companies,” Fwix CEO and founder Darian Shirazi said in the press release. “This is a vote of confidence in our technology and our unique offering to news companies.”

Fwix recently updated its API to display “nearby” streams of content, both from city and neighborhood news sources. And last month it launched mobile apps for 6 cities.

Modern day storytellers and journalists are everywhere

With the launch of iPad pre-orders,  the new media stories coming out of SXSW,  and the surge of announcements around the hyperlocal sector (ex: NY Times is working w/ FWIX), it’s nearly impossible for me to go a day without thinking about the future of news. It could be in the form of citizen journalists, swarms of college students covering breaking stories, non-profit research centers promoting our inalienable right to unbiased journalism, for-profit enterprises that blur the line between news coverage and advertising, or media entities that seize every opportunity that cross-channel distribution offers.

If you asked ten of the top minds in the media industry what the future holds for the news business, it’s possible that you would receive ten different answers. The one certainty is that the tide is shifting. How people consume media and the entities that create it are changing with the evolution of technology. Some are fighting this shift because they believe that the changing landscape will push them into irrelevance.

There are media pundits who argue that even the largest community of citizen journalists is ill-equipped to match the research and writing acumen of true newsmen and women. Then there are the creative technologists and futurists who are embracing this change as though they were holding their closest love. For them, staring into the abyss isn’t scary. It’s just the opposite. It’s exhilarating to think about the many different ways in which news media may exist in the future. From real-time news feeds to online aggregators to short-form video reels, they embrace the unknown because it represents an evolutionary shift in how we communicate and tell stories.

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Is Facebook about to go QR code crazy?

Imagine that you’re walking around a bar. Everywhere you turn you see people wearing shirts emblazoned with checkered barcodes. No one is talking to each other. Instead of dancing and conversing, the majority of the establishment’s patrons are taking camera phone pictures of those around them. Pictures aren’t being taken of people’s faces, but rather of the QR codes on their shirts.

Though it may seem far-fetched to you, this scenario could be right around the corner. It could all be thanks to Facebook. Techcrunch reported this morning that Facebook is experimenting with QR codes. Per the Techcrunch article, some Facebook users have found QR code links on their profiles and Fan Pages. While the links are not yet functional, they point to users gaining the ability to generate custom two-dimensional QR codes.

QR codes act as gateways to digital content. The 2D tags can hold much more information (links, images, videos, etc.) than traditional barcodes. There are countless ways in which the technology can be used. Quick response codes can connect people with geo-based reviews and tours, green ticketing initiatives, brand promotions, product-specific wikis, exclusive media content, and social networking profiles. The 2D barcodes allow consumers to access dynamic content, anywhere at anytime.

When questioned about the new feature, Facebook stayed mum on its use of QR codes. This, of course, leaves people like myself to speculate about Facebook’s QR future.

I think that unique QR code generation is likely to become a mass feature across the Facebook community. In giving users the ability to share their Facebook profiles via QR codes, we will see increased pollination of people’s digital profiles int the real world. The feature would promote sharing of Facebook profiles and Fan pages in the physical realm. Users could take greater “ownership” of their online identities.

I can already see it now: QR code bumper stickers tied to users’ FB profiles, QR code t-shirts, stickers, and other physical embodiments of their digital selves. Transporting one’s Facebook profile into the real world via 2D barcodes, could trigger social connections beyond the confines of the digital space. QR codes could succeed in letting people’s Facebook identities live in the real world. Even though there are a number of QR code generators out there, Facebook’s adoption of the technology would give it mainstream exposure. If Facebook were to feature a QR code generator on its site, the technology would get a massive push forward.

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A look at Seattle’s news entrepreneurs

As SeattlePI.com approaches its one-year anniversary of online-only operation later this week (stay tuned for an update on how it’s doing), it has published an overview of Seattle’s thriving independent news scene. On the list, which includes my own company, Next Door Media, there’s the West Seattle Blog, Neighborlogs, Publicola, TechFlash, InvestigateWest and Crosscut. The story doesn’t mention the big newcomer to the hyperlocal scene, Seattle-based Datasphere, which powers neighborhood news networks for a quickly-growing list of local TV stations across the country.

Marijuana legalization ad to hit Times Square Digital Billboard

The smoke has cleared, yet a suspicious odor still lingers in the air. Representatives from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Foundation (NORML) are inhaling a sigh of relief. In the end, the marijuana legalization flag is set to fly high above Times Square.

First it was on, then it was off, and now it is back on again. A 15-second digital ad promoting the financial benefits of marijuana legalization is scheduled to debut in New York City’s Times Square next week. Produced and paid for by NORML’s educational arm, the ad evokes the organization’s message that “money can grow on trees.”

“Regulating the adult use of marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol could raise over $30 billion annually in new tax revenue, while saving an additional $15 billion per year in law enforcement costs,” NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said. “This tax season, why not ask your elected politicians why the federal government continues to spends billions of tax dollars enforcing this failed and archaic public policy.”

In January, CBS and the NORML Foundation entered into an agreement to air the ‘Money Tree’ ad on the media company’s digital billboard on 42^nd Street. That agreement, however, was short lived.  Prior to the campaign’s launch on February 1, 2010, CBS abruptly pulled the ad from its schedule. CBS stated that the ad’s content did not comply with the network’s outdoor advertising standards. At that time, it appeared that the NORML Foundation’s ad would never shine brightly in Times Square.

If not for an online petition organized by political advocacy organization Change.org, demanding that CBS reverse its decision, NORML would likely have been smoked out of Times Square. Thanks to the nearly 10,000 people that signed the petition, CBS changed its stance on the advertisement.

To view the 15-second ad that will run in Times Square, follow the jump. (more…)

Local TV news audience in sharp decline

The one piece of data that jumped out to me in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual media report (that Steve posted below) is this one: local TV newscast ratings are in steady decline across all timeslots. Early evening newscasts dropped 1.7%, late news is down 6.4% and morning news has declined 5.5% during 2009.

Now, many in the local news business always have a reason for a particular year’s decline, citing some temporary or cyclical reason (Leno!). But with the exception of morning news — which has been flat until this year — newscast ratings have consistently dropped year after year after year. The chart above, pulled from last year’s PEJ report, shows steady declines from 2005 to 2008 among early evening newscasts.

This is not a cyclical decline, but a permanent one, and it may come as a surprise for many who work in local TV newsrooms. Sure, there’s still a very large audience who watches, but these declines are significant, and can’t be ignored.

As I’ve written before on Lost Remote, I believe the downward trend is not just a function of fragmentation and a shift to the web, but also because local TV news has become a commodity. It looks the same, sounds the same, is produced the same… sooner or later, as with any product in just about any business, a lack of innovation and differentiation will result in a decline in consumption. Now, more than ever, is the time to invest in innovation and re-engineer how content is created and distributed on a local level.

And it’s also time for people who work in the trenches in local TV news — where I worked for 15+ years — to push for change. Produce news that your friends and family want to watch, tailored to different screens and different lifestyles, not what your bosses, competitors or consultants say you should make.

SXSW: The iPad is better than print

Do you still run into people who tell you they like reading a newspaper or magazine or book in print vs. digital? The iPad is about to change that.

Scott Dadich, creative director at Wired magazine, says Wired measures reader engagement in hours, not minutes like online. And that allows for higher ad rates. It was one of several interesting data points from a session at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin. And it’s another reason publishers should be moving a lot faster of developing for tablet devices.

How different is the production of content for the print vs. online? He said Wired spends months, sometimes years, working on custom fonts to make reading of their content easier. thier custom typeface has 10,000 kerning pairs vs. 500 for a regular font. Conde Nast, Wired’s parent company, has 400 designers and 1,100 editors and its magazines reach 62 million Americans (about 1 in 3).It takes 24 days for each piece of magazine content to go from birth to publish at Wired.

The iPad and similar devices will allow all that design intelligence to become interactive and digital. “It’s revolution through evolution” says Jeremy Clark from Adobe. “The ads are as important as editorial content to the magazine.” Dadich says the technology is ahead of the business development at this point and declined to offer specific information about pricing models.

Wired and Adobe are working together to develop new products for the iPad and the demo was pretty impressive. The navigation goes both left-to-right and up-and-down with lots of zoom and interactivity. It makes a Kindle look like black-and-white TV in the age of HD (with 3D on the way.) Clark then showed an Android-powered tablet device that looks just like an iPad. He says there will be 40-50 of these devices coming out this year.

I plan to write more about this, and the implications for local media companies, once I have a moment to think (translation = after sxsw ends). How do you think tablet devices will change the game for local media? Add your thoughts in the comments or drop me a line.

Annual report: local media audience in rapid decline

The annual Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “State of the News Media” report is out, and it is a compendium of discouragement for anyone tied to the media. Here are just some of the top lines:

As always, this is a rich, dense report we encourage you to read in full.

California Watch rewards civility – with iPods

The genius of this… California Watch is having a contest and all you have to do is comment on the site. The site is giving away a free iPod Touch each month for the next six months. (Seems they got the Touches free when they bought computers and wanted to put them to good use.) So they’re trying to encourage a little civility and cleverness by way of a comments contest:

“You don’t have to agree with our content to be eligible. You just have to be thoughtful, focused and articulate in making your argument. Comments will be judged also on clarity of thinking and persuasiveness. And we could be swayed by clever humor. The judging is totally subjective. But we all know a good comment when we see one.”

Brilliant. They’ll get all sorts of new commenters, build a civil community and (as is evidenced) get some good PR along the way. California Watch is a not-for-profit investigative journalism initiative. (via Nieman)

SXSW: Obligatory celebrity party photos

SXSW Interactive is all about the parties, so I feel obligated to post a few bad party pics from my iPhone.

Here is Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, who did not offer any details about who owns his code, and Anna Robertson from Yahoo hanging out at the Mashable party Sunday night.

And here’s Gist founder and CEO TA McCann and Comcast social media star Shauna Causey hanging out at the Icanhascheezeburger party Sunday night.

Sorry I don’t have more. I’d never make it at TMZ unfortunately.

SXSW: Highlights from online news of tomorrow

The power of the human link, all that traffic that comes from Twitter and Facebook for example, will drive the new economy for news more than pay walls set up by Rupert Murdoch and the Associated Press.

That was one of the key observations by Jeff Jarvis from panel called Online News of Tomorrow http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/688 panel at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin today. Jarvis was joined by Adrian Holovaty (Everyblock), Brad Flora (Windy Citizen), Jeremy Zillar (NYTimes) and Andrew Huff (Gapers Block).

Brad Flora runs a site called  Windy Citizen in Chicago which is crowdsourcing the relevancy for local news. It’s a combination of an algorithm and crowd power (people voting on stuff) and Flora said it’s “profitable” and “sustainable.” It’s a very cool site that will certainly be replicated in most major cities – possibly by local media comapnies. (Hint, hint)

“The conversation is splintering,” Flora said. “We’re not a news organization, we’re just a front page that can point people to the good stuff. For local bloggers, we are their distribution. Getting a link at Windy Citizen will brighten their day. Our goal is to give them a fighting chance.”

Zilar said email is often overlooked and that the majority of Brooklyn’s news ecosystem runs on email distribution. That’s interesting since Brooklyn is often thought of as one of the local blogging hotspots and home to hyperlocal aggregator Outside.in.

SXSW: Mirror worlds are the next web, may redefine local

Mok Oh, Founder and CTO of Everyscape, says mirror worlds are the next web and his company is positioning itself to be a part of this coming goldrush.

What are mirror worlds, you ask? It’s a direct representation of our actual world replicated in the digital world. He pointed to Google Earth as the best example, but noted how poorly it does on the street level. That’s why so many companies are driving around with cameras attached to cars taking lots of pictures.

Everyscape is one of those companies. It is constructing a replication of cities to create an immersive, 3-dimensional local search experience. In his demo, Oh navigated down a street like he was driving a car, then came upon an image of a coupon in the road. Clicking on it enlarged the coupon and pointed to the store on the right that was offering the deal. (more…)

SXSW: Work smarter, and more social media strategy

Jason Fried and Erik Qualman anchored a packed morning at the Day Stage for book readings at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin this morning.

Fried, CEO and co-founder of 37 Signals, likes to dish out straight talk on business. So much so, he wrote a book about it, called ReWork. He highlighted some his favorite lessons from the book, including:

- Planning is just guessing: So just call it strategic guessing, financial guessing, etc.
- Interruption is different than collaboration: Don’t let your workday become work chunks by cluttering the schedule with too many meetings and conference calls and idle chit chat. Creative people need dedicated time to be productive. (more…)

Notes: All SXSW “Spring Break for…” edition

Noted, while wondering how you’d pronounce “SXSW.”