Spitzer story crashes NYTimes.com

The big story today that the NY Times broke about the NY Governor and a prostitution ring apparently caused the site to crash under the traffic, according to a spokesperson from the paper in response to the Huffington Post. According to the paper, the site has crashed two other times: 9/11/2001 and the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in Queens.

15 comments March 10th, 2008

Little problem with the comments

Our comments database keeps erroring out. Thank you for your patience as we run a repair and figure out a permanent solution (which will likely entail deleting the comments file, which is ENORMOUS.)

Update: Comments are back, but we’re still trying to solve the bigger issue.

Add comment March 10th, 2008

Local media should be compensated for exclusivity

I had a very interesting experience over the weekend tracking an exclusive story produced at my station, KING 5, which has quickly become a national phenomenon. But in the end, we’re only getting a fraction of the online revenue generated by the story. And that’s a challenge for the local media industry.

The story is about Casey Knowles, the Obama supporter who was stunned to see herself in the Clinton “3 a.m.” ad. It aired at 10 and 11 p.m. on Friday night, and it was posted on KING5.com about the same time, both text and video. We submitted the story to all the usual suspects: Drudge, Digg, Fark, HuffingtonPost and CNN.com (we’re a CNN affiliate.) Hours later, it was linked all over the place.

But not all the links were to us. A blog stole the copy, word for word, and managed to get linked prominently on Digg and HuffingtonPost. (The editor later removed it after we complained.) And a popular political blog stole the video, uploaded it to YouTube with its own logo burned over the top, and then embedded the player in his blog. Plueeze.

While theft is a problem, it’s not the core issue here…

Read the full post 19 comments March 10th, 2008

Dayport acquired by Entriq

The video setup that powers the CBS O&O sites, Oprah.com and several others has been acquired by Entriq. Dayport’s site already touts the deal, which was announced with undisclosed terms. Press release after the jump. (Disclosure: I used Dayport’s tools while I worked with CBS.)

Read the full post 1 comment March 10th, 2008