Guest Post: Establishing news sites from the ground up
This post is by Polly Kreisman, the self-described “editrix” of theloopny.com and mind behind InvestigateNY.com. The sites are trying to help define new journalism, and are grassroots efforts. We asked Polly to tell us more about her adventures. – Steve I am an obsessive journalist the way some people kayak or collect star trek trinkets. [...]
Guest Interview: The Twitter Times
Today is guest day. As always, we invite you to send in your ideas for a post. Ideally, we would like the post to be topical. And both of today’s entries are right on the mark. First up is an interview, via email, with Maria Grineva. She is one of the minds behind the excellent [...]
Should journalists learn programming? An easy flowchart
Courtesy of 10,000 Words, this handy flowchart: (via Journerdism)
NBCU launches online ad network for O&Os
NBCU has built an online advertising sales network, in another strike against third-party ad sales. The Universal Audience Platform (UAP) group will sell display ads on NBCU’s 10 owned and operated station sites as well as NBC.com and other sites on its network. Mediaweek reports that NBCU “will ‘sharply curtail’ selling its inventory via third [...]
“Dream Team” launches Salt Lake news site
A group of former anchors and reporters is teaming up in Salt Lake City to launch a new web-based initiative called Salt TV. The journalists used to be competitors at three stations. Now they’re colleagues in the effort, which has some startup money behind it. Salt TV (at the awkward URL salttvnet.com) is betting that [...]
Houston station dumps anchors and on-air reporters
Anchors away. A Houston TV station is doing away with anchors and on-camera reporters in favor of a new format called “NewsFix.” The Houston Chronicle reports that KIAH will launch the new show this fall. “NewsFix” will be a pilot program for owner Tribune Broadcasting. Tribune Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams developed the format, which [...]
Start your week right with a new job
We have a bunch of new jobs posted here at LR, so check them out. I know people think that summer’s a lousy time to look, but we’re seeing more jobs posted here than we have in a while. For those of you employers looking for new staffers, simply post a free listing right here. [...]
YouTube teams with local TV station
As speculated a few weeks ago, YouTube announced today a citizen journalism partnership with KGO-TV — the first-ever partnership with a local TV station. In essence, it’s a new application of YouTube Direct, which gives publishers the ability to use YouTube to power video uploads. Called ABC7 uReport, it integrates a map with YouTube videos [...]
About the Old Spice social media campaign…
It was brilliant. It was fun. It was funny. And it may or may not have worked. The Old Spice Guy viral videos were a testament to what social media advertising should be. However, there appears to be conflicting reporting whether the videos did the one thing that was most important – sell more Old [...]
Flipboard: promising new iPad app, but having issues
The best new proof of concept of magazine-as-iPad app has got to be Flipboard. It brings together stories from your social network into an interactive, magazine-style environment. The idea here is that your “lead” stories are those your friends found most important and interesting. (Watch the video below to get an idea of how it [...]
Blogger notices BP had Photoshopped picture
A great example of how a blogger spotted something that traditional media failed to notice… The AMERICAblog analyzed a picture of the BP crisis command center and noticed plenty of bad photoshopping. I don’t want to steal too many of his great observations, but here’s just one example of how they changed the shot (note [...]
Public station KQED rolls out local news initiative
San Francisco’s KQED Public Media has announced a major undertaking to expand its news and “provide more high-quality original coverage of Bay Area civic and community news. According to the company’s press release, the initiative will be cross-platform, with original reporting elements on KQED’s radio, television and new site KQEDnews.com. And at a time when [...]
Avoid “mission statement creep” with the Cereal Box Exercise
I’m at the NPR/Knight Digital leadership summit (hashtag #nprpi) on the future of local news and public media this week, and there are lots of great ideas coming out of here. But one of the best I’ve heard came from NPR’s Eyder Peralta and Patrick Cooper. It’s “The Cereal Box Exercise.” Simply put, The Cereal [...]
DC political site takes top prize in Knight-Batten awards
The DC-based website Sunlight Live from the Sunlight Foundation has won the top prize in the Knight-Batten awards. Sunlight Live won $10,000 for “…add[ing] journalistic punch to a carefully orchestrated government event, adding context and insight to the proceedings… they don’t stop at merely shedding light on the behind-the-scenes proceedings of government – they go [...]
MedCity News growing fast, ready to expand
With a team of six veteran journalists and a powerful board of advisors (including Lauren Rich Fine), MedCity News focuses on medical industry news in Ohio and and Minnesota. The site is only one of three “products” offered, however. MedCity News Service and MedCity News Custom give the company a diversified revenue source, in addition [...]
Yahoo partners with Gannett for local advertising push
Even though Yahoo has a lost a significant amount of its luster over the last decade (picture steel rusting in a 10-year rain storm), the online company is still fighting for market share. On top of the company’s recent acquisition of Associated Content, a content production platform for semi-pro freelancers, Yahoo announced this morning a [...]
Local paper charges readers to browse obituaries
Fresh on the heels of a story posted by my LR colleague Cory Bergman about paying fees to leave online comments, is news that a local paper in Pennsylvania is charging readers to view death announcements. The obituary section of LancasterOnline.com now has a paywall. LancasterOnline.com, the online news affiliate of Lancaster Newspapers Inc,. launched the [...]
Community paper to charge for… comments!?
That’s right, the Sun Chronicle, a small Massachusetts paper, will begin charging users a one-time fee of 99 cents to post comments on the site. The user’s real name, from the credit card, will appear on the comment. The paper has struggled with comments in the past, and the publisher says he hopes the new [...]
