Archive for May 20th, 2007
I’d like to share a couple of projects I’ve launched at Belo’s KING5.com in recent weeks. The first is called Citizen Rain. It combines a standard blog with an aggregator that displays the latest blog posts from over 100 Seattle blogs divided by category. Click on “politics” for example, and you’ll see the latest blog posts from Seattle’s politics blogs. Same with news, entertainment, music, sports, outdoors and real estate.
It soft-launched a few days ago, and we’re already seeing a positive response from the Seattle blogosphere, not to mention quite a few emails asking to be added to the aggregator. KING 5’s newsroom — which has not been reading local blogs — is also beginning to use Citizen Rain to find fresh story ideas. You may notice that it is not branded with KING 5, but we’re not hiding the association, either.
The second project is a condos section on KING5.com. Seattle is in the middle of a condo building boom, and we wanted to tap into some of that revenue. So I found a local blog authored by a realtor who’s doing a terrific job covering the condo space, and we integrated it into a new section that also combines a Google Maps mashup with new condo properties springing up around the area.
We’re even experimenting with some paid placement inside the maps. So far, the response from condos marketers has been very positive, as you can tell from the ads on the section. Both Citizen Rain and the condos section reflect a urgency I feel to expand into content and revenue opportunities outside the typical comfort zone for local TV.
May 20th, 2007
A story in the Washington Post concludes that there’s a widening gap between Democrats and Republicans on the internet. “We’re losing the web right now,” says Michael Turk, who was in charge of Internet strategy for President Bush’s 2004 campaign.
May 20th, 2007
MSNBC.com was down for parts of Friday afternoon due to “adjustments to the site’s domain name servers.” To MSNBC.com’s credit, they posted a story explaining it all. (Thanks Zack for the tip!)
May 20th, 2007
Time.com has published an excerpt from Al Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason, and Gore doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to TV’s impact on democracy. Despite the internet, Gore says TV still dominates. “In practice, what television’s dominance has come to mean is that the inherent value of political propositions put forward by candidates is now largely irrelevant compared with the image-based ad campaigns they use to shape the perceptions of voters. The high cost of these commercials has radically increased the role of money in politics—and the influence of those who contribute it. That is why campaign finance reform, however well drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the dominant means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue in one way or another to dominate American politics. And as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role.” He goes on to cite the news media’s fascination over the years with O.J. Simpson, Chandra Levy, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, among others. “In the world of television, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They hear, but they do not speak. The ‘well-informed citizenry’ is in danger of becoming the ‘well-amused audience.’”
Gore writes that the internet can “revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework” because of its interactivity, openness and low barriers to entry. He may not have invented the internet, but Gore certainly understands its potential.
Update: Broadcasting & Cable responds in an editorial, “Gore ought to be embarrassed.”
May 20th, 2007
