Aug
14
Reading and enjoying:
- RSS, Video and Registration All Up On Newspaper.coms. Going through the numbers in a report on what newspapers are up to with their online sites. Among the most interesting bits: “95 percent of papers offer at least one reporter blog. Ninety-three percent (88 papers) of these blogs allow comments.”
- Province blogs. Speaking of which, one of the two daily newspapers in my city appears to have made a two-footed leap into blogging, with several, including The Newsroom, a city-room driven effort. And, for the first time in Vancouver, CanWest (owner of both dailies) has unleashed RSS.
- Merger makes Sun Media Canada’s largest publisher. The company now claims 6.4 million readers, more than a million more than CanWest, it’s nearest competitor in the media baron steeplechase.
- Atlanta J-C to launch new free broadsheet this fall. It’ll be a weekly, home-delivered and primarily filled with “repurposed” stuff from the big newspaper. Sounds like what they are delivering is non-subscribers to advertisers, or vice versa.
- Heathrow protests see more mobile/social media reporting. The media, it seems, has tumbled to the idea of publishing to Twitter, Flickr and the like. One more barrier to a stronger online performance — the in-house technological one — is weakened.
- TV journalist gets a year in prison for a fake report. In China. Absurd.
- Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press. This should have been at the top of the list: Jay Rosen with a sharp, pointed takedown of the political press and it’s defining posture: savviness.
- News as a Commodity. Terry Heaton’s latest essay is as solid as his earlier efforts and worth a slow, thoughtful read. Note: I think he should retitle this continuing series. It’s currently called TV News in a Post-modern World, but Terry is writing about much, much more than TV news.
- When it comes to newspaper video, focus on the bigger picture. William Hartnett will really like it if those controlling newspapers’ slow dash to the future are able to avoid the temptation to lock their focus on trends-of-the-moment.
- There’s still no evidence that ‘big and huge’ is the right video strategy. Howard Owens has some thoughts about why user generated content is still in play in the world of online video.
