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November 2005
Online magazine a way for youth to reconnect with Indian roots
2005-11-01By Natasha Mehta: "I wanted to cultivate a positive view of Indian Youth," said Vivek Bhatia, founder of the online magazine Generation India. "But in a way that was truthful and honest."
Generation India provides information regarding the Indian community within America on topics including culture, people and geography, with a focus on family.
Bhatia’s inspiration to start the publication stemmed from his own personal relationship with the Indian community growing up.
"I didn’t feel a connection to the Indian community, and I didn’t want to," he said.
Negative stereotypes of the Indian community fueled his disconnection from his culture until Bhatia began his undergraduate studies and decided he wanted to break the misrepresentations.
Bhatia said he felt the best way to promote his culture in a positive and legitimate light in America was through a publication. Lacking the funds for a print magazine, Bhatia looked to the Internet.
"[Getting the magazine rolling] has personally been a strong growing and learning experience," Bhatia said.
Generation India focuses on a number of topics that serve to inform Indian youth who possibly have lost many of their cultural traditions and values through assimilation into American culture. The website is geared towards the future, for those that "won’t know India now," Bhatia explained.
The site contains articles ranging from profiles on prominent figures in the Indian community – such as Alpana Singh, one of seven women in America to have earned the title of Master Sommelier in wine service – to issues in India on health care, oil and past regimes. Readers can also read editorials written by fellow Indians in the community on topics that speak to Indian youth in America.
The site also features articles on the different organizations founded in America that work to help underprivileged children in India such as ASHA and Make-A-Wish foundation.
While Bhatia, with the help of his cousin, have put in great effort to create the Generation India website, he hopes that the publication will eventually become a print format magazine.
Covering the Big E-pple: What's hot at the Gotham Gazette
2005-11-03By Kristina Mariano: Since 1999, the Gotham Gazette has made New York City news and policy accessible to the world. In the city that never sleeps, neither do the site’s unique, diverse features.
Site editor Jonathan Mandell recently filled in OJC about recent developments at the Gazette.
A database of all laws passed by the New York City Council since January 2002 has become one of the site's most popular features. Mandell attributes its success to organization and language.
"Our database is organized by topic," Mandell said. "It is easy to search because it is written in plain language, not law language. Plain language makes things clear to the reader, not just to the specialist."
Database searches allow readers to select a bill by year, topic or bill number. There is an interactive quiz to help users understand how to use the database, an explanation on how a bill becomes law and a link to the city council website.
Another addition to the site is Today's Report. Every weekday a topic is summarized and links are provided to reports or surveys from a government agency, advocacy group or think tank. Some recent topics include unemployment, health care and art education.
When asked about Gotham Gazette’s future, Mandell joked, "If I could predict the future, I would have a much bigger apartment," but he does have some ideas on what the site will cover.
Campaign coverage will continue to be prominently featured, and Mandell said that in the future, he hopes to highlight New York races that are important but that do not garner much national attention.
First post
2005-11-03By Robert Niles: It's Rafat Ali's fault.
My fellow Indiana University J-school alum asked last weekend at the ONA conference, "Why don't you start blogging?" I demurred, rationalizing my absence from the blogosphere by the number of other sites I publish or edit. "I just don't have the time," I said.
But... I am setting a lousy example for other Web editors, asking them to be transparent and communicate with their readers, when I, as OJR editor, don't do the same via a blog on this site. Yes, I've written notes and articles on the site, but sometimes there are things that are best said in a blog. So here... I will say them.
Thanks, in advance, for reading,
Robert
Thought for the weekend: Love what you do.
2005-11-04By Robert Niles: My initial goal with this blog is to craft short tips and positive lessons for online journalists and publishers. So I will leave you with this thought for the weekend:
Ya gotta love what you do.
Passion animates writing. It compels you to make that extra phone call, browse deeper into a database, or find one more source to complete a story. It lures you into thinking about how various facts and events fit together, even as you try to fall asleep at night. And it has been passion – not business plans or committee meetings – that has prompted the development of so many communication innovations online, from blogs to wikis to video mash-ups.
How can you expect readers to care about your story, or your website, if you don't? Readers will sense your indifference, and click away.
Secure your future in online journalism by focusing on what you love. What topics do you want to learn more about? What do you wish you could spend more time doing? Interviews? Coding? Databases? Discussions? Design work?
Rich Gordon is right. There's no better time to be a journalist. And the Internet is the best medium yet for exploring niche topics using specialized techniques. Focus on what you want to do, and do it. If you work for a large organization, and your bosses won't let you innovate on their dime, find a cheap Web host someplace and experiment with new tools, designs and topics on your own Web server. Then see if you can win their support with a developed project. And if you can't, don't forget that you can make money doing journalism on your own, too.
It's the weekend – recess for grown-ups. Go play.
'Cosmic' blog impacts media, perceptions of science
2005-11-04By Eric Lindberg: Once or twice a day, University of Southern California physics professor Dr. Clifford Johnson takes a break from trying to understand how the universe works to let the rest of the world in on the secret lives of physicists.
Since joining four other physicists and astrophysicists from different universities as a contributor to the group blog Cosmic Variance, Johnson has discovered many advantages of blogging.
By writing about science issues in an accessible forum like an Internet blog, Johnson said he hopes to raise the public's level of science awareness and bring science discussions into everyday conversation.
"One of the things scientists complain a lot about is the fact that the journalists who write in the media about science don't do a very good job," Johnson said. With the blog, readers can "just hear it directly from the scientists."
The blog, launched in July 2005, gets about 2,000 hits daily and has already had an impact on coverage of science in the media, Johnson said.
"Science journalists are now coming to our blog to see what we're saying about stuff," he said. His posts have received comments from various members of the media, including Annabelle Gurwitch from National Public Radio and K.C. Cole, a science writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times who is now joining the USC Annenberg School for Communication as a visiting professor of journalism.
Johnson said he hopes he will be able to collaborate with Cole to create "better training of journalists in this specific area of science coverage."
Reading Cosmic Variance also allows site visitors to understand physicists' lifestyles.
"People have a strange view about who scientists are," Johnson said. "All the images of scientists in the media ... are that scientists are the 'other,' scientists are not normal."
"We're just doing regular, stupid stuff like everybody else," he added. The posts on Cosmic Variance are often observations and commentary about everyday things, from shopping in Hollywood to the political news of the day.
"I actually don't like to call it a science blog," Johnson said. "I think of it as a blog that happens to be written by scientists."
Blog extols the fruits of the vine
2005-11-07By Katie Besse: Offering "wine and food adventures in San Francisco and around the world," Vinography is a wine blog that gives readers an education in wine without having to buy a wine magazine or book.
Alder Yarrow, the palate behind the blog, started the site two years ago when blogs were just starting to gain visibility.
The site profiles and reviews wines and various restaurants where Yarrow has dined and sampled wine. It also offers online wine shopping and gives readers links to Yarrow's favorite wine blogs and to wine stores in San Francisco.
Yarrow's articles are featured in his "Rants and Rambling" section. There, readers can find articles like "Celebrating the design of the wine label," where the gourmand writes: "In reality, that small square of paper is a beautifully constrained space for design, an opportunity to use the restrictions of a small piece of real estate ... to create a real emotional impact and embody something of the personality of the wine or those who made it."
Yarrow said he has loved wine and fancy restaurants his entire life, and now his site allows readers access to his expertise.
The idea for the site came from his friends constantly asking the gourmand for advice on wine, food and fancy restaurants.
"I found myself giving the same advice over and over again,” he said. "I'm 31, but I started drinking wine when I was 19 overseas. After 10 years of paying attention to wine I learned a lot."
Yarrow said his wine blog is a creative outlet. He said the work has taught him a lot and has begun to transform him into a journalist.
"Before I started, I Googled ‘wine blogs’ and the idea was virtually defunct—there were two hits."
Nearly two years later, Vinography gets anywhere from 4,500 to 6,000 a day, and it continues to grow, Yarrow said.
"A few years ago the only people who could give advice on wine were old men with white hair, and that just isn't the case anymore," Yarrow said.
HappyNews.com an alternative for consumers looking to get a lift out of news
2005-11-07By Adriana Padilla: If every cloud has a silver lining, then HappyNews.com might be the silver lining of online news.
The brainchild of web-entrepreneur Byron Reese, HappyNews.com provides a daily dose of positive news stories overlooked by mainstream media.
The website, launched in July, offers inspirational stories as well as positive health, sports, business and technology news. Managing Senior Editor Patricia Meyer said part of the site's appeal is that it offers a balance to the many unhappy stories in the mainstream media.
"Our idea is not that we think people shouldn’t be told negative news," Meyer said. "People need a place to go to be reminded that people are good and there are not only negative things happening in the world."
Most of HappyNews’ stories come from the major news wires. Since automatic uploads cannot be programmed for happy stories, the news staff must manually pore through hundreds of articles for stories, Meyer said.
HappyNews also receives many of its stories from non-professional citizen journalists. In exchange for bylines, experience and a little cash deposited into a Paypal account, citizen journalists provide local news stories that are unique to the Web site.
HappyNews’ citizen journalists come from all walks of life, from grandmothers to graduate students, Meyer said. They also come from all over the globe, including countries such as Scotland, India, Croatia, Thailand, South Africa and Iraq.
To encourage writers, HappyNews holds a monthly contest in which the site honors the best of citizen journalist submissions.
The use of citizen journalism is only the start of HappyNews’ community involvement, Meyers said. This month the site unveiled a $1,000 essay contest with the topic "Why I am optimistic about the future."
HappyNews’ unique news slant has already gained coverage in several major news sources including NPR and The Washington Post. But Meyer said the best endorsement comes from teachers who distribute HappyNews’ stories to their students. Meyer has also received letters from a warden who passes out HappyNews to his inmates.
Meyer said she believes there is a journalistic value to providing happy news stories.
"It’s the responsibility of journalism to provide an accurate picture of the world," Meyer said. "Positive news keeps things in perspective."
Online story idea: Check the advertisers, too
2005-11-07By Robert Niles: Today's post is for our self-appointed media watchdogs around the blogosphere. Don't forget you can check out a publication's advertisers, too.
After years of cajoling, my wife's convinced me to get my wretched, non-functioning nose fixed. (Stay with me, I'm not changing the topic. Really.) But before I picked a surgeon, I did some online research to confirm that he was board-certified.
Here's the story idea: Your readers might be surprised to discover the number of plastic surgeons advertising on billboards and in newspapers and magazines in your town who are not board-certified in their field. Why not grab the local paper and look up the status of the physicians advertising there?
Check those names against the list of diplomates of the American Board of Plastic Surgery, which you can find on the American Board of Medical Specialties website at http://www.abms.org/login.asp, or the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, at http://www.abfprs.org/certified/index.cfm. (A physician need not belong to both to be board-certified. One's good enough.) A couple minutes on these sites revealed that a very prominent local physician in my hometown of Pasadena, Calif., one who's had billboards up all over town, is not board-certified. Funny how that detail isn't mentioned in any of his ads.
(And if you're looking for a graphic take on why patients should choose a board-certified surgeon, allow me to recommend "Skin Tight," by the Miami Herald's Carl Hiaasen.)
Take it up a level and check out the physicians' state medical license status, too. You can look those up at http://www.docboard.org/docfinder.html. Are there any advertisers who've been in trouble with the state medical board before?
The same concept works with other types of physicians and state-licensed professionals, too, including dentists and attorneys. If you try this story on your blog or website, let me know and I'll link back to it. Good luck!
Washingtonpost.com launches competition for digital political cartoonists
2005-11-08By Eric Easter: Washingtonpost.com has launched a competition to find the "Editorial Cartoonist of the Future" for digital animators interested in exploring the world of editorial cartooning.
The Editorial Shorts Digital Animation Competition is looking for digital artists and humorists to submit short-form (3 minutes or less) animated commentary focused on current political or topical issues. Entries must be designed, edited or distributed in digital form.
Entry details may be found here.
Hal Straus, Opinions editor for washingtonpost.com, said, "The Washington Post print edition has a rich tradition of editorial cartooning that has influenced opinion and covered both the drama and comedy of news and politics. We thought it would be interesting for washingtonpost.com to see who out there is interested in picking up the mantle for the digital age."
The winner of the competition, to be announced in January 2006, will get visibility for his or her entry in a special Opinions section in washingtonpost.com.
Deadline for entry is December 31, 2005.
Entries will be judged on humor, originality, use of the medium and topical relevance.
Judges for the competition include representatives from the editorial divisions of washingtonpost.com and The Washington Post, as well as RES Media Group, the publishers of RES digital media magazine and coordinators of the multi-city RES Digital Film Festival.
Media or competition inquiries, contact:
Eric Easter
Sr. Manager, Communications
Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
eric.easter@wpni.com
Defamer and L.A. Observed visit USC next week
2005-11-08By Robert Niles: Here's a USC Annenberg online journalism program note: Next Tuesday at noon, I'll be hosting a roundtable lunch discussion at the school with Mark Lisanti, editor of Nick Denton's Defamer.com, and Kevin Roderick of L.A. Observed.
These talented writers edit what might be the two most popular blogs about Los Angeles, though an innocent reader would never suspect they write about the same city, given the wide gulf between the topics they cover. (I've yet to read the name "Antonio Villaraigosa" on Defamer, and I think "Paris Hilton" has shown up once on L.A. Observed.)
We'll talk about niche blogging, gossip shamelessly and bloviate on whatever else we feel like in the hopes of coming up with something conceivably profound. If you'll be in the L.A. area next Tuesday, I hope you'll join us.
'Free Culture' site a news source for copyright watchdogs
2005-11-09By Alexis Johnson: The current system of copyright laws is "inherently anti-democratic" with its "copyright nobility," said Nelson Pavlosky, co-founder of Free Culture, a student organization trying to ensure that culture and its creation remain uninhibited by copyright laws.
In an effort to "democratize creativity and innovation," Free Culture is raising awareness about copyright legislation as well as attempting to affect it, Pavlosky said.
FreeCulture's news blog is an active force in uniting the nine national chapters of the organization, Pavlosky said. The blog features news about copyright law and about the different chapters' activities.
The organization strives for a participatory culture where everyone is free to contribute, Pavlosky said. Free Culture is building the tools to allow people to get their voices out there, he added.
After hearing a talk by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture was established at Swarthmore College in October 2003 and was named after Lessig’s book Free Culture.
A free culture is the opposite of a "permission culture" where an individual would have to ask copyright owners for permission to create—a potentially real situation, Pavlosky said.
The problem occurs, according to Pavlosky, when existing copyright protections stifle creativity because companies, in particular, buy enough copyrights to essentially establish a monopoly on a certain idea, thus hindering its development, he explained.
Although Pavlosky said that the organization still needs more national centralization, the news blog allows events to be publicized throughout the Free Culture network and sometimes leads to national campaigns based on local issues. The Cereal Solidarity campaign is one example of the ‘local to global’ possibilities of the news blog.
The blog "brings people and issues down to earth," Pavlosky said. It keeps people on the same page and helps get more people interested in joining.
"Apathy really makes me angry," he continued. "The biggest cause of apathy is that no one has a stake—they don’t care. If people feel they have no power to change things, why bother?"
Marshall provides a model for the new online journalist
2005-11-09By Robert Niles: If you're not reading Joshua Marshall on a regular basis, start.
He's got a smart analysis of the various forms of blogging on his site today, which segues into a vision for using reader contributions to power a new type of narrative political blog. Marshall provides one of the better models for journalists publishing independently online, and is someone all forward-thinking online journalists ought to be tracking.
(By the way, I'll have a long piece tomorrow on how online journalists can better harness the power of reader-contributed information. Stay tuned.)
CBS SportsLine, now 24-hour broadband, sports new online-only features
2005-11-10By Janelle Morgan: CBS SportsLine.com embarked on a new course this past September by becoming a 24-hour broadband website.
Alex Riethmiller, manager of corporate communications for SportsLine, said the time was right for SportsLine to add the broadband content because more and more site users have high-speed Internet connections.
According to Riethmiller, the site expanded so that it now features free streaming original video produced by CBS SportsLine.com exclusively for the website as well as live video captured by CBS Sports at sporting events.
Viewers can go to the Video Programming Guide and select videos of interest. They can then add specific videos to their playlists and stream them in The EyeBox video player.
CBS SportsLine is also producing three shows exclusively for the web: the NFL Highlights Show, the Post Game Show and the SEC College Football Highlights Show, all hosted by Jason Horowitz.
The site has also added a feature called "glogs". According to Riethmiller a glog is a game log in which viewers can track the progress of a particular game with live color commentary provided by SportsLine writers.
Other content available for viewing is commentary on the top stories in sports, game day highlights as well as expert picks on the day's games. The new format also allows users to view full-length versions of CBS-produced interviews after they have aired on television. For instance, at an NFL game, players are interviewed by CBS reporters with only a couple of minutes of that interview making it on air.
"We are able to run an entire 30-minute interview on the site. We don’t have the same constraints that they have on television, so we are able to show the content in its entirety," Riethmiller said.
SportsLine also allows people to create "fantasy teams." Members pay a fee and create leagues in which they draft players onto their teams and score points based on those players' performances in that particular week's games. Once the season is over, the team with the best record wins the league. To aid fantasy football team owners, SportsLine has created three original segments: Who's Hot, Who's Not, Roster Trends Report and Start 'em & Sit 'em where expert SportsLine writers provide viewers with advice on creating the best possible lineups for the upcoming scoring week.
SportsLine, which provides scores, standings, statistics, schedules and news for professional and collegiate sports, was founded in 1995 as SportslineUSA and merged with CBS Sports in 1997.
V-logging in Knoxville: A glimpse into the everyday
2005-11-10By Carly Goldsmith: The producers and editors at KnoxNews.com – the website for the Knoxville News Sentinel – decided to add an online-only section featuring "v-logs," or video stories, about life in Knoxville.
RandomThis features short video stories that profile events or places around Knoxville, according to one of the web producers, Jigsha Desai.
"There are four producers and we all film random things and life in Knoxville," Desai said. "Anything goes."
The producers come up with their own ideas for what to film and then head out with a small digital camera to create the v-logs.
"It's random videos with a cheap camera on the fly," Desai said. "There are no fancy gimmicks. We're showing life through our eyes."
RandomThis posts video stories weekly. In addition to the videos by the web producers, RandomThis also accepts submissions from amateur v-loggers in the area.
"What we have on the site is community journalism done by citizen journalists," Desai wrote in a follow-up e-mail. "If [the readers] find something important, we find it important too. And if they find it important to post videos of their children, pets or flowers, then we will do our best to give them the forum to do so."
She also wrote: "In my personal opinion, the Hannah Belle's Hootenannies is the best in terms of citizen journalism. It's a glimpse into a newish part of American culture (the Red Hat Society), and shows in a simple way, activities pursued by the Red Hat ladies. Plus, the singing is great!"
Of her own videos, Desai’s favorite so far is a feature on the Time Warp Tea Room, a local tea house that offers drinks and food amid a display of antiques and motorcycle memorabilia. She said the video exposes a part of Knoxville that many residents may not know about.
Finding new and interesting aspects of Knoxville is a goal that Desai and the other web producers share. They want to show that news can be fun and exciting, not just dull and sad, she said.
The producers also hope to attract more submissions from viewers and broaden their video library.
"Anyone can do what we're doing," said Desai. "We're just showing life through a camera lens."
Proposal: New standards and tools for distributed online reporting
2005-11-10By Robert Niles: One of the Internet's strengths as a medium for journalism is its ability to support widely distributed, grassroots news reporting. Whenever a significant earthquake hits Southern California, tens of thousands of residents log on to the local U.S. Geological Survey website to report what they felt. The USGS site processes these surveys in real time to generate zip-code level shake maps that depict the intensity of the quake throughout the region.
There's no need to install sensors all over town. And no wait for a costly phone survey. The Internet enables the USGS to engage a small army of citizen reporters to collect their information. Journalists, of course, can do the same with their reporting projects.
But such efforts run into problems when there's no single obvious source for grassroots reporters to submit their information. We saw this with the dozens of websites that attempted to compile missing persons lists after Hurricane Katrina. No one publication had a comprehensive list of the missing. And attempts to aggregate the lists required either finger-numbing cutting and pasting, or equally tedious RegEx coding to parse the data from the various websites.
Sure, the USGS managed to establish its website as the place to go to report earthquakes. But, for most stories, readers and journalists face the “Katrina conundrum” -- too many sources trying to collect the same information, without coordination.
It doesn't have to be that way. Of course, some journalists always will want to go their own way, searching for a scoop. But others see the value in cooperation, in working together to best provide comprehensive information for the public. To do that, website publishers need:
- A simple online tool with which to collect fielded information from the public.
- A way to share that information with others collecting similar information, and
- A way for all those information collectors to know when other collectors have gathered fresh information.
Today, I want to propose that OJR lead an initiative to address these three needs.
Right now, to collect information like the USGS, or a Katrina missing persons list, you need to be a coder who can put together an HTML input form and a script to dump that information into a database. What online journalism needs is a free, open-source tool that does for grassroots reporting what Blogger.com did for online journals – making it easy for a non-coder to set up a grassroots reporting input page with no HTML or database experience.
Second, the information that tool collects ought to be recorded in a standard fielded format, so that it can be easily shared with other collection efforts. There's no need to build a common database or central server to support this. All that's needed is for each site collecting data to be able to export it as XML, using a common set of fields. Tools can be written, along the lines of RSS aggregators, to collect those XML fields and aggregate them into comprehensive databases.
Personally, I believe that the RSS standard itself does not support nearly enough fields to transmit an entire database of incident reports. We need something more expansive. Dave Winer's OPML moves in that direction, but I don't know that it offers the granularity needed for this project. The point is, I think a common XML format is the solution to the problem, but that we need to have some industry discussion as to what that format might be. Obviously, it ought to be flexible enough to accommodate everything from missing persons lists to fraud reports to (my pet project) theme park accidents. Let's start talking on what that format might look like. (And, rest assured, I don't want to recreate the overkill of NewsML.)
Third, we need a weblogs.com-type destination site that information collectors can ping to let identically tagged information collection projects know that they've been updated.
We could build a development tool that handles issues two and three itself. But I think that it is important that any development tool work with collection efforts that do not use the tool. That's why the blogosphere works so well. You don't have to use Blogger, or any other specific individual tool, to link to and aggregate other blogs. Our distributed reporting efforts should work the same way.
So, who's interested in helping me refine this idea, and build these tools? The development of blogging tools showed us the power that could be unleashed when we liberated online narrative publishing from the HTML coders and opened it to everyone. Let's do the same with distributed data reporting. E-mail me at rniles@usc.edu, and let's get started.
Making the news 'bland and safer'
2005-11-11By Robert Niles: Thank you, Los Angeles Times, for doing your part to increase the readership of independent online media.
Today the Times announced [BugMeNot for Firefox] that it is dropping liberal Op-Ed columnist Robert Scheer and sacking conservative editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez. The Times will not hire a new editorial cartoonist, continuing the newspaper industry's mind-boggling effort to kill off a type of feature that people actually like to read.
Scheer, a frequent target of right-wingers, had the quote of the day in the Times write-up of his dismissal: "The owners think they can improve circulation by making the paper bland and safer."
Well, Tribune ownership's done a bang-up job in building circ at the Times over the past five years, hasn't it?
Ramirez still will be syndicated, so look for him on Daryl Cagle's online editorial cartoon round-up. And watch for Scheer at his new TruthDig website. The march of lively voices from print to the Web continues.
Hey, why shouldn't they go where the readers are?
Golden State: LA Times veteran cuts loose in the blogosphere
2005-11-14By Heather Hart: Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik officially carved out a space for himself in the blogosphere last week with the launch of Golden State, a blog he said is sponsored by the paper, but independent in its content.
While Hiltzik writes a California-centered business column for the Times, the subject matter of his blog will be nearly unlimited, he said.
"It’s a very personal blog," he said. "It can be about whatever I feel – music, politics, literature."
Hiltzik got his first taste of blogging this summer as a guest blogger at the Washington Monthly website – known as Political Animal – and said that he thought it was a great opportunity when the Times approached him about starting a blog of his own.
"There is great value in it," he said. "There are a lot of opportunities to do things I can’t do in my columns."
Recently, the Los Angeles Times has become especially interested in breaking into the blogosphere, Hiltzik said. So far, though, he is the only columnist at the paper to have a blog. Unlike much of the Times’ content, the blogs do no not require registration.
"I look at it as an experiment," Hiltzik said.
"Can a company that derives economic value from its reputation for literacy, judiciousness and taste comfortably lend its imprimatur to an unfiltered online diary? Blogs are by nature almost impossible to censor," he wrote in his inaugural post.
It is also an experiment in the future of a blogosphere that is growing astronomically, he said.
"Life is too short and even broadband too slow for most readers to check out thousands of blogs in the hope of tripping randomly over a few that they find consistently interesting and amusing," he wrote.
Hiltzik hypothesized that, eventually, economics is going to require the evolution of blogging into something much more like the "mainstream media."
"The audience is looking for guidance," he said, citing record labels and movie studios as examples of companies that exist to help talent find an audience and an audience, in turn, find a particular talent.
In fact, Hiltzik admits, Golden State may be one such example of this brand-name blogging. "A blog published by the LA Times adds a sense of what [the blog] will be like."
But he insisted that his blog will not be a mouthpiece of the Times.
"I really wanted to reflect the culture of blogs. ... I am completely free," said Hiltzik, who works on the blog alone. "The understanding we have is that there are no limits. [The Times seems] to appreciate the variety."
The main difference between writing his column for the paper and writing for the blog, Hiltzik said, is the speed. "There don’t need to be more than a few moments between having a thought and seeing it published," he said.
"The informality [of a blog] is great," he added. "Even my column has to conform to certain standards."
A look back at 10 years of Salon
2005-11-14By Robert Niles: Indulge this webhead a moment of nostalgia and click over to Salon, which celebrates its 10th anniversary today. Salon's long provided one of the more visible examples of independent online journalism, and has won a slew of well-deserved awards along the way.
The site continues to deliver compelling investigations and features, even as it has had to experiment with variety of income models to survive.
Excutive Editor Gary Kamiya recaps the online magazine's first 10 years today. It's valuable reading for anyone who wants to marvel at the chaos of the past 10 years in online publishing, or for newbies who want some tips on what to do to prosper -- or not.
Active readership defines popular news site
2005-11-15By Elizabeth Kusin: Fark.com creator Drew Curtis began posting weird and humorous news articles on the Internet to amuse his friends in 1999. He said he had no idea that within six years, his modest website would explode into a monster success, currently averaging 1.8 million page views a day.
"I was just looking to entertain a few people," said Curtis, a self-proclaimed "computer geek, athlete hybrid" from Kentucky.
Curtis no longer needs to search for amusing articles himself, as the site's huge following of "Farkers" and "Farkettes" submit more than 1600 articles a day from various sources.
Administrators, including Curtis, hand pick 50 of the articles, or pieces of 'Fark,' and post the news links on the website, tagging each link with one of almost 40 topic tags, ranging from 'asinine' to 'interesting.' Readers are then able to post comments about the articles.
The website is characterized by Curtis’s quirky sense of humor, evident with the in-jokes, known as Farkisms, which regularly appear in the daily Fark.
With the top officials of the website readily accessible, and Fark Chats, Fark Personals Forum, and Fark Parties organized by Farkers nationwide, fans are an important part of the Fark.com community.
According to Curtis, Farkers are all ages and from an amazing array of professions. While Curtis noted that Fark.com appeals to people who are "generally smart and well informed," he also mentioned that the website often attracts more cynical personalities.
"I think it appeals to people who feel a little disenfranchised by the establishment, ... who have the general idea that everything in the world is pretty fucked up."
It's not just the newsroom's fault -- Ad sales must change, too
2005-11-15By Robert Niles: Every day I become more convinced that the key to economic success online lies in minimizing the expense of selling and placing ads. Look at how retailers like Wal-Mart and Target destroyed the big department store chains in the United States. With so many media sources going after advertisers' money, you've got to keep your expenses down to compete on price. As a journalist, I'd rather cut expenses in ad sales and placement than newsgathering.
I thought about this this morning when I read in the LA Times that the paper was shutting its Outdoors section as a cost-cutting move. Forget for a minute the wisdom of an industry obsessed with attracting younger readers cutting a section about stuff that young people do during daylight hours. The fascinating information, to me, came toward the end of the Times' story, where the report said that "over time, the section failed to attract advertisers. Readership surveys indicated that only about 28% of Times readers perused Outdoors regularly."
Twenty-eight percent of the Times' circulation translates to more than 230,000 readers. Are you telling me that no one in the outdoor recreation space wanted to reach nearly a quarter million Southern Californians? I call B.S. on that.
No, more likely, not enough advertisers wanted to reach those Times readers at the ad rates that the Times charged. Yes, I know that reporting is expensive. But every newspaper I've worked at, Times included, had a slew of sales reps driving BMWs, taking clients to lunch at expensive restaurants and entertaining advertisers in skyboxes at sporting events. Those sales commissions and expenses inflate ad rates, too.
That's not the only way to sell advertising anymore. With companies like Google and Yahoo selling billions of dollars of ads through low-overhead, automated systems, the Macys of the publishing world are going to have to start acting more like the Wal-Marts online. If the newsroom has to reinvent itself to compete in the new media age, so should advertising departments.
I thought about that, too, this afternoon when reading about the debut of Open Source Media (formerly Pajamas Media). The centerpiece of what this group of (mostly) conservative bloggers appears to be an advertising network. Here's hoping that as this new group challenges mainstream media in its reporting, it challenges the mainstream media's advertising sales and business models as well. If online media is to prosper, we've got to do better.
Debate over blog credibility called 'a false controversy'
2005-11-16By Diana Day: Although the subjects of their sites differ, L.A. Observed blogger Kevin Roderick proposed Tuesday at USC's Annenberg School for Communication that he and Defamer's Mark Lisanti are probably not all that different, particularly when it comes to the journalistic sensibilities that inform their work.
At the lunch discussion "Blogging Los Angeles, from Two Very Different Perspectives," Roderick said he doesn't see much value in the debate about whether blogging is journalism. He said he uses the same kind of reporting skills and ethics as a blogger that he used during his long tenure as both reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times.
Both bloggers at least partly rely on reader-supplied tips and information to carry off their own brands of insider news -- Lisanti's on each day's happenings in Hollywood, Roderick's on Los Angeles media, culture and politics.
Lisanti agreed with Roderick that he tries his best to confirm tips and to avoid being used by tipsters with hidden agendas by applying a "smell test and common sense."
But Lisanti also pointed out that the Defamer reports "gossip and on gossip."
"I try [to check things out.] I also don't pretend that I'm authoritative or the last word on anything," Lisanti said.
"The standards are different" for what's written online, Roderick said, mainly because posts can be instantly updated. Roderick said he applies a sniff test too, but added that he is very comfortable posting something "partially reported" -- as long as he clearly tells readers when a rumor is a rumor, for example.
Roderick stated that so far, by using his journalists' instincts when writing for L.A. Observed, he has not had to make any major corrections.
"Many blogs are being written by journalists," and they're using their journalistic standards. The issue of blog credibility is "a false controversy to me," Roderick said.
Google Base(d) on Craigslist?
2005-11-16By Robert Niles: Like many webheads, I've been playing with Google Base today. Short review: It's Google's effort to duplicate Craigslist, minus the cheek.
The User Interface is deceptively simple, as one has come to expect from Google. Just the same, single-field text search. But if you hit on something in one of Google Base's predefined categories, such as people, jobs or recipes, you encounter the ability to browse through the search results using various fields.
In this way, Google Base begins to resemble Northern Light and other search engines that tried to sort results into topical folders and categories.
It's a neat app, but needs to be incorporated into a customized Google front page, with saved and favorite searches, to be most useful. Right now, the UI is geared more toward people uploading information than those looking for it.
My main hope was that Google Base could be used to help support the distributed reporting concept I outlined last week. But, despite repeated efforts, I couldn't get Google Base to accept a bulk upload from an RSS 2.0 feed I tried to submit. (Google Base claims to accept RSS 2.0-format uploads. I even cut-'n-pasted Google's sample format, but it wouldn't take.)
If anyone's managed to get Google Base to accept an RSS 2.0 feed, let me know the trick, will you?
Regardless, given the limitations of Google Base's UI, I doubt that the service, as it stands now, could become the backbone of a serious distributed reporting project. Custom data input's too difficult and there's no simple way to quickly access filtered data from one project.
An API would solve the problem. We'll have to wait and see, I guess. (Unless anyone inside the GooglePlex would like to drop me a few juice hints....)
Daily lifestyle newsletter: 'A little piece of candy waiting to be read in your inbox'
2005-11-17By Jillian Ukropina: In 2000, Dany Levy saw that more and more people were accessing their news online, so she left her print journalism career and became a successful entrepreneur by starting the e-mail newsletter DailyCandy. The publication filled a void Levy saw in the growing online news marketplace -- there was no single portal providing lifestyle news, according to Dannielle Romano, DailyCandy’s Editor-at-Large.
"Before everything business and school-related begins, our newsletter is meant to be a little piece of candy waiting to be read in your inbox," Romano said.
DailyCandy is a free daily e-mail newsletter that reveals the trends of the moment, including new boutiques and restaurants, hot spots, fashion and whatever else is popping up at the moment in a certain city, Romano said.
Today, DailyCandy publishes nine daily e-mail newsletters. Eight are tailored for audiences in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Washington D.C. and London. The ninth is an all-encompassing "Everywhere" daily digest; the company also publishes the weekly "Kid" and "DailyCandy Travel" newsletters.
Each newsletter is a tightly edited selection that is no more than 150 words, taking the average consumer 30 seconds to read from beginning to end, according to Romano. Although they don’t target a specific audience, readers of DailyCandy are usually 18 to 34 year-old women.
"The woman who is interested in knowing 'the latest' gets DailyCandy. She is a fashion-forward lady who has sensibility and a sense of humor," Romano said.
City editors and writers scout cities and decide themselves what they want to cover.
"We find young, unknown talents and we help them get the attention they deserve. In turn, producers and magazines all read us and get ideas. We help to catapult these new creators," Romano said.
Romano said that they strive to make each DailyCandy newsletter like "receiving a little note from a close friend."
FEC issues smart decision for political bloggers
2005-11-17By Robert Niles: Congratulations to the folks at FiredUpAmerica.com for getting an advisory opinion from the U.S. Federal Election Commission granting the website operator a press exception to U.S. federal campaign contribution laws. The exception allows journalists, even partisan ones, to cover and comment on candidates without their positive comments being counted as campaign expenditures.
The FEC based its opinion on the commission's long-standing test: Is the publisher owned or controlled by a candidate or party? Is the publisher's material available to the public and is it similar to other legitimate press entities as described in the commission's regulations?
Newspapers have been endorsing candidates for generations. Opinion journalism is an important part of our business. Would-be Web publishers ought to be encouraged to add their voice to the public debate, and not intimidated by the threat of FEC fines for illegal campaigning. Here's hoping today's ruling does that.
TravelBlog: A journey from personal site to travel story blog for thousands
2005-11-18By Kevin Ueda : World traveler Alistair Watters created a personal blog in 2002 for he and his friends to record their experiences from around the world. Since then, his blog has expanded from a few travelers' experiences to more than 8,000 travelers worldwide.
"TravelBlog.org exists to provide an outlet for the travel stories, tales and photos of those on the road," Watters wrote in an e-mail. "[The site is] free to use and will remain so."
Watters and more than 8,000 TravelBlog members write from all over the world, including some politically sensitive areas. According to Watters, some of the bloggers' experiences do reflect what is covered in the major media.
"Impressions that I get from the blogs about the Middle East lead me to believe that -- by and large, away from the tourist traps -- people in these countries have a culture of welcoming travelers, being inquisitive about them and due to the negative media coverage, being surprised to see them," Watters wrote.
Watters also indicated that whenever there is disaster or death involved, the media tends to concentrate on countries' negative aspects.
"Nice articles on culture and history don't sell newspapers or attract ratings as much as reports of hurricanes or terrorism. I personally feel that the risk of being caught in a terrorist attack is far lower than being fatally injured in a traffic accident," Watters wrote from Kuta, Bali, a country that has faced recent terrorist-related attacks.
One of TravelBlog's members, "kps," was recently in Basrah, Iraq, as part of the reconstruction project. In response to another user's comment, the blogger stated that it is good to have first-hand experiences in a country, beyond what is in the news.
"You can make your own mind up about what's going on here without the distorting lens of the international media circus," kps wrote in his journal on TravelBlog.
It would be great if travel stories and reports on world culture took a higher precedence in modern newspapers and magazines, Watters wrote, although he is aware of the shareholders that these media outlets must report to. With the increasing popularity of blogs and the Internet as ways to get news, the future of media coverage will reflect consumers' choices, Watters added.
"I believe that we are seeing the beginnings of a massive paradigm shift in publishing. ... People are going to be far more in control of what they choose to read and the information they seek out than the traditional media allows at the moment," Watters explained.
"So priority given in newspapers will gradually become obsolete and choice will take over. Whether generally we see more educated and enlightened, or more scandal and consumerist audiences, remains to be seen."
Sticks and stones: ArchNewsNow a news source for all things architectural
2005-11-18By Elizabeth Waugh: Kristen Richards, editor-in-chief of ArchNewsNow, launched the site in February of 2003 with the goal of making it "the place to go for architecture news."
Since then, it has become a major source of information for students, journalists and those working in architectural fields.
Richards said she scours the web for four hours every morning for architecture news to include in an e-mail briefing that goes out to 7,000 people daily. Additionally, more than 10,000 people visit the site each day to get their fix of international architectural developments.
The site also offers a search engine so that students, journalists and researchers can comb the site for articles of interest.
"The search page is now the number two page hit," Richards said. "[The site] is used as a search engine in itself when people are researching something."
ArchNewsNow also produces its own full-length feature articles. One current feature, High Tech High-Los Angeles, discusses the innovative design of a specific high school in Van Nuys. An array of descriptive photographs accompanies the story.
Another feature discusses how the architecture of Tracey Tower in New York relates to a recent news event in which a Chinese food deliveryman went undiscovered for days in one of the building’s elevators.
ArchNewsNow also offers news about architecture-related events and links to architecture news articles on the Web.
Crain’s Detroit Business named ArchNewsNow one of its Best National Internet sites in 2003.
Thought for the weekend -- Turn down your internal editor
2005-11-18By Robert Niles: Telling that little editor in your head to shut the heck up might seem a frightening prospect. After all, it's that voice which prompts journalists to double-checking the spelling of a source's name, to call a phone number to make sure it is correct and to find an extra source to verify a story.
But that internal editor can just kill you when you're trying to blog.
Okay, the fact-checking stuff is fine, but too many good blogs die when experienced journalists can't silence the inner voice that keeps them from writing anything the voice considers unworthy of 20 inches on the front page. The blogosphere thrives on that which doesn't make the front page, or even the paper.
If all that readers needed and wanted was on the front page, newspaper circulation wouldn't be tanking and online readership would not be growing. Indulge your readers the little details in your life and your reporting that will engage and inform them.
A post on L.A. Observed this morning reminded me of The Ambassador's Last Stand, a local blog devoted to the final days of the city's famous Ambassador Hotel, site of the Robert Kennedy assassination as well as a few Academy Awards ceremonies.
A day-by-day account of the hotel's demolition wouldn't make any local paper, but it captivates me. The Ambassador stands (well, for the next few weeks, at least) down the street from my first home in L.A. It was the celebrity-chic of the hotel that helped draw my parents to the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood from Kentucky a year before I was born.
Surely, any journalist interested enough in online publishing to be reading this blog is close to a similar topic that he or she can document on a regular basis, even if it isn't big enough news to make the front page. Some readers, somewhere, are interested. Don't let that skeptical inner editor keep you from connecting with them.
Transitions Online offers news of life in post-Communist countries
2005-11-21By Vojtech Horna: Anyone who has ever wondered how 28 countries in Central and Eastern Europe have handled the challenges of becoming democratic since the early 1990s might be interested in Transitions Online magazine (TOL), the only English-language online news magazine that covers all the post-communist countries, from Poland to Mongolia.
"We see ourselves, in effect, as a bridge between the emerging and the established democracies: we try to provide Western readers with fuller information than they might get from other news media and in a more accessible form than they would in an academic journal," said Andrew Gardner, managing editor of TOL.
TOL concentrates on political, social and economic issues, as well as cultural transformations. Gardner said that each article presents "the big picture on an issue."
"We hope that readers won’t just pick up news from us, but will find a rounded and in-depth exploration of a key issue," he said.
Most of the articles TOL publishes come from their contributors spread all over Central and Eastern Europe. They are generated more often than not from young journalists and analysts, according to Gardner.
"That is part of a mission ... to provide a local angle on key issues and to nurture a younger, more open and better equipped generation of local journalists," he added.
TOL currently has about 50,000 readers a month, mostly made up of journalists, experts, consultants, academics, students, policy-makers, NGOs, as well as the professional institutions that serve these groups and individuals, noted Gardner.
Transition Online wasn't always an online endeavor. It switched from print to the Internet in 1999 in order to cut increasing printing and distributing costs.
"Operating on-line means that operating costs are reduced, distribution costs are effectively eliminated, our readership has expanded. ... And we reach a larger pool of contributors," said Gardner, discussing the effects of the change.
As stated on TOL's website, the international media have recognized the strength of TOL, which has published over 10,000 articles about post-communist countries over the years. TOL provides CNN.com with Eastern European coverage, and it has partnered with Time Europe magazine to improve Time’s regional reporting.
In 2001, TOL won the NetMedia award for its outstanding contribution to online journalism, and just recently, Gardner and TOL’s Deputy Director Tihomir Loza were jointly nominated by the EV50 Europeans of the Year organization for the prestigious Journalist of the Year Award.
Ban all robots to stop the rogues?
2005-11-21By Robert Niles: Almost all Web publishers successful enough to have to pay bandwith charges have struggled with how to deal with traffic from robots. These are the automated programs, sent by search engines, crackers, spammers, sloppy developers and even overeager handheld owners, to scan, index and even download thousands of pages from your website.
When I arrived at OJR, I was surprised to find that more than half, almost two-thirds, of the site's traffic was not from human readers, but from robots. Some of that traffic was welcomed, such as robots from major search engines like Google and Yahoo News. But much of it was from rogue spiders -- spammers trolling for e-mail addresses, attempts to download the entire site for duplication on various scraper sites, and such. I spent a fair amount of time tweaking OJR's robots.txt file to ban identified rogue spiders, and OJR's stats software to filter hits from the rest.
Well, this week WebmasterWorld.com has taken the radical step of banning all spiders from its site. In a post on the site, administrator Brett Tabke reported that despite spending five to eight hours a week fending off rogue spiders, the site was still hit with 12 million unwanted spider page views last week.
The move, presumably, will result in WebmasterWorld disappearing from major search engine results and would eliminate the site from archive searches, as as Archive.org.
WebmasterWorld has established a large and loyal audience. One could argue that the site doesn't need search engine traffic. But how loyal will its readership turn out to be if members can't search for the site, or its archives, through Google, et al?
As Brett titled his post announcing the change, "lets try this for a month or three..."
Then we will see.
AnnenBlog: Class project becomes tool for sharing news, making connections
2005-11-22By Jennifer Sun: Anyone who thinks that class assignments can be impractical and disconnected from real-world experience has probably not seen AnnenBlog, a class project developed by four graduate students for a communications class at USC's Annenberg School for Communication.
Through AnnenBlog, communications management students Johanna Holan, Tze Wei Leong, David Schlosberg and Eddie West have been providing their fellow graduate students a venue to share information and news about a wide range of topics. From tips on the hottest places to go in LA to prospective jobs and internships, site visitors can create blog entries and share information about anything.
Most recently, posts about what classes to take next semester and which professor to pick are popping up. Holan said professors are even providing feedback for student-generated discussions. This sense of community, according to Holan, is exactly what students need.
"Other than meeting in class and with project team members, we hardly have a chance to network with students of other classes and share our academic journey. We hope that AnnenBlog gives communication management and global communication students this platform for discussion," Leong wrote in an e-mail. "We are currently still testing the site and building in more content based on what fellow students would be interested in," she added.
"Early signs are very encouraging," wrote Eddie West, also in an e-mail.
Holan said posts by regular guest bloggers and student discussions are growing rapidly and that over 200 people have posted to the site so far.
"It’s definitely in our long term plan to have AnnenBlog grow into something that is maintained on a permanent basis, and we hope in the future, more people [will] volunteer to take on more responsibilities and manage the site as well," Leong wrote.
"With ASCMA, the Annenberg School for Communications Masters Association, sponsoring AnnenBlog, AnnenBlog will be a featured website for ASCMA and will be maintained in the future," Holan said.
West indicated that after he graduates, he also hopes AnnenBlog will continue as a student-maintained site that Annenberg and USC will introduce to prospective students as an outreach tool as well as a source for alumni to remain ties with the USC community.
"I think we are all envisioning it as a space that should and will constantly evolve to help meet the Annenberg community's online communications needs," West wrote. "It's an open source effort to create an open source communication space!"
But for now, the founding four's focus is to create more awareness for AnnenBlog and to invite more faculty as guest bloggers.
Happy Thanksgiving week from OJR
2005-11-22By Robert Niles: It's a holiday week here in the U.S., and at Annenberg. So allow me to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.
OJR will not publish this week, as our students are away (or soon to be on their way out of town). But we will be back next Tuesday, Nov. 29 with an article from Mark Glaser as well as daily blog entries from me and from our Annenberg students. We'll continue on a more-or-less regular publishing schedule for three weeks, before taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Year's.
I'm looking forward to launching some new features over the semester break, too, as we prepare OJR for 2006.
Have a very happy holiday!
New news aggregator includes blogs alongside big media sites
2005-11-28
By Micah Kawaguchi-Ailetcher:
Inform.com is a news aggregator that lists news stories from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal alongside stories from popular blogs such as BoingBoing and Daily Kos.
The site, launched by Inform Technologies LLC in mid-October, currently has about 100 blogs in its system, but the company is working on including more, according to Julian Steinberg, Inform.com's project manager.
"We 100 percent encourage bloggers to contact us to include their blogs," Steinberg said. "We don’t want to be the arbiters of what blog content comes in."
Additionally, the algorithms utilized by Inform.com categorize the text of news articles by common semantic elements. A search for "John Roberts," for example, yields more than just articles with those words included in the text. Instead, "John Roberts" is a defined topic as the Supreme Court chief justice.
The site is run almost entirely on these mathematical algorithms with only the Top Stories chosen by a human editor.
Another unique feature is each story's Discovery Area, which helps users find related stories without doing further searches.
"It allows you to dig deeper into the news" Steinberg said, adding that it is "an example of the next generation in online news reading."
Also included in the news searches are results from registration-required and paid-content sites like the Wall Street Journal. Stories are viewed in a frame on Inform.com, and the content within the frame is exactly how it would appear to readers if they had accessed it through the publisher’s site. So, if a user is not registered with a site, a registration prompt will appear before continuing on to the story.
"What we’re trying to do is increase their readership online," Steinberg said. This allows people to "discover content that they wouldn’t have come across before." Inform.com hopes to attract publishers this way by increasing their traffic while keeping their brand loyalty.
Currently, the site lacks a tool bar but Steinberg says that it should be fixed by the end of the year. The company also intends to add extras such as a video search and play and what Steinberg calls "passive personalization options" which will suggest content based on the reader’s preferences, likening the site to "TIVO for news."
Historical papers connect to new audience on the Web
2005-11-28By Helsa Irizarry: Two of the longest running family-owned African American publications in the nation have found a home on a single website, Afro.com -- a perch from which they can compete for a larger audience, according to Khalil Abdullah, the managing editor for The Afro in Washington.
"The Afro-American Newspapers are 113 years old. We have a loyal following, but the loyal following is getting older and they might not be passing on the legacy to the younger generation," he said. "We have found that the site has allowed our readership to diversify and grow."
Afro-American Newspapers runs The Afro in Baltimore and The Afro in Washington, two print publications that reach out to two different target markets, according to Abdullah.
"The cities have different economic statuses: the Baltimore readership is comprised of blue collar workers, while most of the Washington D.C. workforce is employed by the government," Abdullah said.
But by establishing Afro.com, Afro-American Newspapers has been able to combine the contents of both papers in order to reach out to a national audience.
"The site consists of news story postings that the national African American audience would benefit from," Abdullah said. "Since there is no single national publication that targets the black community, we try to create that with the site."
One of the things that Afro.com prides itself on is its archives. Since the papers were established in the late 1800s, they have a large database of original images and documents that can be drawn on to complement current stories, according to Abdullah.
"When we covered the death of Rosa Parks, we were able to use photos that were published in our publications from the 50s, when Ms. Parks was first recognized for her actions," he said. "Our history allows us to add a dimension to a story that other sites can’t."
The Afro-American Newspapers were established in 1892 by former slave John H. Murphy. Fourth generation members of the Murphy family, John J. Oliver, Jr. and Frances M. Draper, continue to manage the papers today.
Maybe Nick Denton was right....
2005-11-28By Robert Niles: Last summer, Gawker Media's Nick Denton told the Interactive Media Conference in New Orleans that newspapers should not bother trying to blog.
They don't get it, he said. After reading a spit-take-inducing quote in Los Angeles magazine while flying cross-country last weekend, I see better Denton's point of view.
In the magazine, Steve Oney profiled Mark Lisanti, editor of Denton's Defamer Hollywood gossip blog. In the piece (not online that I could find, sorry), Oney revealed that Lisanti's been in talks with the Los Angeles Times about blogging for latimes.com as well as writing for the paper's Calendar section.
Here's the quote:
"If Mark cleaned up his language and tightened up his fact-checking," says a Times editor, "everything he does could appear in the paper."
And if he just grew feathers and learned to quack, he'd be a duck.
Um, isn't the point of a salty, irreverent gossip column to have, you know, salty, irreverent gossip?
Upon further review... it's time for the dictionary
2005-11-29By Robert Niles: I'm sure ABC sportscaster Al Michaels meant to praise retiring "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel during "Monday Night Football" last night. But his choice of words surely left careful listeners cringing.
Michaels lauded Koppel for "25 years of unbelievable, fabulous and incredible work" on the network's late-night news program.
Unbelievable? Fabulous? Incredible? Not exactly the three adjectives that any journalist would want to hear applied to his work.
Still, my Colts destroyed the Steelers to go 11-0. After watching this team stumble through most of the past two decades, that's something unbelievable, fabulous and incredible.
Scheer, Kaufman launch new 'anti-blog' news site
2005-11-29By Jennifer Sun: This item has been corrected from its original version. The quote in the fifth paragraph has been corrected to reflect that Scheer said he does not control the direction of TruthDig writers' work.
"Integrity" will be the first and foremost criterion for the newly launched Truthdig.com, an online news magazine that editor in chief Robert Scheer described as "anti-blog."
Scheer, a clinical professor with USC's Annenberg School for Communication and former editor of Online Journalism Review, said the current World Wide Web is a "food-fight" and claimed "people are suspicious of the Internet ... due to the lack of trust."
After an entire year of preparation with a handful of staff, Scheer and the site's publisher -- Los Angeles entrepreuneur and reporter Zuade Kaufman -- have unveiled Truthdig today.
"There is truth for any given subject. But you have to dig for it," Scheer said.
Scheer described his position as editor as "turning strong writers to dig leaders, but not controlling the direction of the digs."
The site also adheres to its archeological dig theme with sections such as Uncovered, which presents the most important issues of the day; Digs, which unveils weeks of investigations to uncover underlying truths; and Scheer’s weekly column Ear to the Ground, which covers what’s hot and happening anywhere around the globe.
Scheer said he hopes his reputation as a reporter and columnist with 30 years of journalism experience will help successfully launch the site. He said he hopes to attract about 30,000 viewers upon first launching Truthdig and that the quality of the stories will attract his goal of 70,000-80,000 viewers after the first year.
Scheer said he plans on advertising Truthdig where he regularly appears -- on KCRW's "Left, Right & Center" and his new Wednesday column at the San Francisco Chronicle.
"I don’t want to oversell [the website]. I want it to be content rich. With good will, good context, word of mouth will [advertise]," Scheer said.
Mark Glaser leaving OJR.org
2005-11-29By Robert Niles: I'm sorry to report that Mark Glaser is leaving OJR.
We'll be posting his final column for us, a look at podcasting at National Public Radio, in a couple hours. Mark's leaving us to work on a book, and then to launch a new project with PBS.org.
Actually, I'm being quite selfish in expressing regret. Mark's done great work for us over the past few years and has earned all the opportunities that have come his way. I'm grateful that he's stuck with us as long as he has. (And, yes, I'm twisting his arm to come back now and then and file an occasional piece for us.)
Best wishes on your new ventures, Mark.
As for OJR, we're going to be running pieces from a variety of freelance writers in Mark's Tuesday slot, in addition to the features and commentaries we run on Thursdays. (And, of course, I'm here blogging each weekday, along with our USC student writers on the daily news blog.) We're also working on a new online journalism website that we'll be launching after the New Year. Finally, we at USC Annenberg are excited about the possibility of someone many of you know joining the school (and, I hope, appearing regularly on OJR) in 2006. Stay tuned.
More papers should publish bloggers' critiques
2005-11-30By Robert Niles: Somebody at the L.A. Times does get it, after all.
In its Calendar section today, The Times ran excerpts from several movie industry blogs that responded to Patrick Goldstein's Monday column attacking the blogs, including The Times's own GoldDerby, for their obsession with the Academy Awards.
Feedback in the Internet era no longer comes exclusively through letters to the editor. People more often respond through their own blogs and websites. The Times deserves credit for seeking that feedback and including it, not just on its website, put in the print edition as well.
Newspapers ought to consider establishing a daily or weekly feature where they print the most insightful comments from the blogosphere about the paper's coverage. Such features would go a long way toward demonstrating the paper's responsiveness and rebuilding goodwill with its readers.
Dissatisfied with media coverage, Congressperson resorts to blogging
2005-11-30By Caitlin Mattias: Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) embraced the idea of starting his own blog because his conservative outlook is often misrepresented by mainstream media outlets, according to Tancredo's communications director Will Adams.
The plan was to cut out the middle man – i.e. the mainstream press – and speak directly to the people.
Almost two years later, Tancredo’s website boasts two separate blogs: a general blog, which allows readers to post their own responses and questions, and Reform Now, which focuses on immigration reform.
Reform Now, launched in September 2005, doesn’t allow readers to post their responses, but takes a significantly different tone from many politicians' blogs, Adams said. Adams describes the Border Bluff of the Day, a segment that features a quote or statement from an opponent and then refutes it, as "smart-aleck."
Because Tancredo's blogs are based in his official government website, the responses on his general blog must be closely monitored to prevent posting of obscene and offensive content. But having someone assigned to reviewing responses is "draining," according to Adams.
Adams says this is one of the reasons that other politicians have hesitated to create blogs of their own.
However, Adams says that the Republican Party leadership is taking blogs more seriously.
"When you get a lot of politicians seeing people pay attention, you start to see competition for interesting content," he said.
Adams cited Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) as an example. Hastert started his own blog, titled "Speaker’s Journal" at the end of October. Entries so far have focused on a variety of issues, including economics, the War on Terror and online freedom of speech.
Ultimately, the nature of a blog’s content differentiates between "who’s serious versus who’s just advertising [themselves]," Adams said.