Do sponsored posts belong in a newsroom?

Turn on any talk radio station you’re likely to hear one of the on air personalities giving a testimony for an advertiser. Bloggers, in my mind, are very similar to talk show hosts; they share their opinion, have a dedicated following, usually focus on one subject area and always seem to go off point. But [...]

Five things newspaper employees can do to help save their company

Usually we focus on ways to increase user engagement and sales, but there is nothing more frustrating then busting your butt to make your failing company a couple thousand dollars and then turning around to see the wasteful spending going on by so many employees. Here are five things you should really think about if [...]

Do page view goals hurt local sites

Most folks in newsrooms across the county seem to be measuring the success of their website in page views (some incorrectly use the term hits). While page views can be helpful and in the end sales typically sells page views (if their are three ads on a page and the page gets 10 page views, [...]

Watch as TV ends

When around 400 local TV stations turned off their analog signal most TV watchers were asleep, but Orlando performance artist Brian Feldman decided to make this moment into an event. Feldman setup a group of televisions in a downtown storefront as part of “The End of Television: Part II.” I didn’t see any coverage of [...]

Newspaper troubles, a product of the bad economy?

Take a look at the headlines on Editor & Publisher or talk to any newspaper employee and it’s easy to see how bad the situation for newspapers is getting. No one seems to argue that point, but what seems up for debate is why. In a recent newsroom discussion about changes at our paper, one [...]

CNN uses CSI technology for inauguration coverage

We usually assume that most of the technology we see on CSI isn’t real. But this time CNN is using the same technology that CSI used to recreate the crowd at a high-school prom (YouTube Video) to recreate Obama’s inauguration. CNN is partnering with Microsoft and using their Photosynth technology to create a 3-D version [...]

Blogs on their way out?

Wired magazine had an interesting and humorous article about how blogging is so 2004. It’s all Twitter now. It’s timely because so many newsrooms are trying to figure out what to do with their blogs. Most are still yet to take off and many contain the same type of content you would find on the rest of the site. It’s also timely considering Lost Remote’s one week redesign.

I’m not so sure that blogs in newsrooms are going away. They have an important role to play and when done right, are very valuable. So, here’s my list of six things you can do to help your newsroom blogs

Google launches voter information mashup

It’s pretty simple. Type in your home address at maps.google.com/vote and Google serves up all the relevant voter information. Current information includes registration, absentee and early voting information. By mid-October they say they’ll include polling locations. This is more information then what I find on most newspaper or TV station websites. Oh and if you [...]

Poor use of Twitter #358

Ok, so it’s not #358 but you could make a blog about how people poorly use Twitter (if there already is one…please forward to me). The latest installment comes to us from the Rocky Mountain News. After recently discovering Twitter, they twittered from the memorial service of a 3-year-old. Our friends over at Social Media [...]

Tapping the potential of online video advertising

We all know by now that online video advertising has a lot of potential, but how do you go about tapping that potential. Some recent numbers showing that less than 20% of SMB’s are using video online got me thinking about the options for online video advertising and what works best. Pre-roll – This has [...]

Merchant Circle provides instant website for SMBs

Part of making Local Search successful is going beyond just listings. Merchant Circle is doing a lot to prove they are more than just the yellow pages online. They already have coupons, deals, blogs, reviews and newsletters, but now they provide websites with custom domains. Greg Sterling has all the details on the “instant” websites [...]

Classified Ventures down 13%

Cars.com, Homescape, Apartments.com, RentalHomesPlus, and HomeGain aren’t immune from the dip in ad revenue. Classified Ventures LLC which runs those sites is now valued at $338 million down from $382 million in December 2007. Classified Ventures is owned by McClatchy, A.H. Belo Corp., Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and The Washington Post Co. All this according [...]

Zvents partners with MSN City Guides

Zvents, a local search/events website, will now provide the event listings for MSN City Guides. While MSN’s City Guides aren’t a huge competitor for local eyeballs, they could easily be. It’s very easy to add the City Guide widget to the MSN home page (probably one of the most used home pages thanks to Internet [...]

SocialMedian now in public beta

For the past couple of months my main source of news was a new site called SocialMedian. The site had been in Alpha, but as of Friday it is now in open beta. The basics of the site is that you can join news networks (iPhone, Campaign 2008, etc.) and then clip (post) news to [...]

Qik now in public beta

Qik, a video streaming service moved into public beta today. You’ve read about Qik on LostRemote before. I thought it was pretty cool when we started streaming via a SlingBox but imagine a newsroom full of reporters who can in an instant turn their cell phones into a live shot. Oh and by the way [...]

Google unveils Knol, a Wikipedia/media competitor

Today Google announced that they are opening Knol (short for Knowledge). The Wikipedia like site allows users to create articles about anything. The twist is, they allow the author of the article to manage the updates. That means various articles on the same topic but a different perspective. Some bloggers are saying that Knol is [...]

LinkedIn partners with New York Times

If users don’t find business news relevant because it’s local, they typically find it relevant because it’s about their industry. LinkedIn will begin showing headlines from the NYT’s business and technology pages. Editor and Publisher reports, the headlines will be selected based on their profession. Just one more example of hyper-personal news.

Newsroom cuts hurting quality?

According to an AP story about a study done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, newspaper cutbacks are affecting the quality of their product. When you actually read the story or the results (as opposed to just the CNN headline) it tells a different story. They say that “nearly two thirds of papers surveyed [...]