Content Wise

Notable Links: May 16, 2010

iPad usability: First findings from user testing: iPad apps commit some of the same errors as early Web sites, says Jakob Nielsen's first report on the device's usability, including confusing navigation interfaces and inconsistent interactions. (Nielsen's Alertbox)

How to save the news: James Fallows says Google is the problem, er, the savior. (The Atlantic)

New Consumer Reports mobile website offers complete Ratings: In a smart move, Consumer Reports now allows users to tap into all the latest ratings wherever they are, free with a subscription to the main site or $5 per month. (ConsumerReports.org)

Putting a price on words: A primer in entrepreneurial online journalism models, where search and demand set the fees paid to contributors. (New York Times)

Notable Links: March 20, 2010

ABC Redefines Digital Magazine: Planning for the move from print to digital e-reading devices, the Audit Bureau of Circulations has expanded its definition of a digital magazine (though it may still be too narrow). (Media Week)

Print Your Own Newspaper: The Newspaper Club, a London-based online start-up, enables anyone to print a customized 12-page newspaper. (BBC News)

Society of Professional Journalists Digital Media Handbook, Part I: Practical advice on everything from using social media as reporting tools to creating slide shows, interactive time lines, and better video. (Scribd)

The Future of Publishing--a Surprising Video: A very cool presentation by book publisher DK/Penguin. Be sure to watch to at least the halfway point. (Penguin)

10 Tips for Launching Almost Anything: Susan West, who spent the last year launching Afar magazine, offers useful guidelines for starting a magazine, a story, a writing career, etc. (West Gold Editorial)

Successful Site Redesign: Nine steps for a smooth, successful revamping of your website. (West Gold Editorial)

Does Farmed Content Threaten "Wild-Caught" Journalism?

by Susan 

My Smithsonian pal Beth Py-Lieberman hipped me to a piece from Time magazine about Demand Media, which is a "content farm" that uses the Web's most popular search terms to decide which topics to cover (hence "demand"). The company's thousands of freelance writers--many of them newly unemployed, top-notch journalists--are paid just pennies per word to crank out articles such as "How to remove dents in a hair dryer" and "How do I donate a car in Dallas?" Editing and fact-checking are minimal. The pieces end up on Demand Media's popular sites eHow.com and Livestrong.com, as well as in print outlets such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Demand is valued at $1.3 billion.

The Time piece got me thinking about the debate over farmed vs wild-caught fish, and how journalism/content production seems to be in a similar fix: Sure, the farmed stuff meets the market demand, but it's less tasty, less nutritious, more likely to be tainted, and may threaten wild stock. What happens to "wild-caught" journalism--investigative stories and unexpected, richly reported narratives that take months of research and dedicated work by writer, editors, and fact-checkers--when farmed content floods the market?

Take NYU's nominees for The Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade. These stories, many of which you'll recognize as news-breaking and ground-shaking, are the result of curiosity, dedication, and independent thinking. The topics they cover may end up among popular search terms, but they didn't start out that way. And many of the news organizations that published these stories are struggling to survive.

What do you think? Does farmed content threaten wild-caught journalism? Or is there room for both?

Ad Execs to Supervise Editors--a Really Bad Idea

Here's a scary juxtaposition of articles about the upheaval in the publishing industry--or maybe it's a useful warning sign.

In today's New York Times, just beneath the coverage of National Geographic's decision to end regular publication of Adventure magazine (the latest victim of the pandemic of dwindling advertising) is a story about a bizarre management change at the Dallas Morning News. The News has decided that some of its editors should report to advertising sales executives.

Media ethicist professor Loren Ghiglione (my first boss in journalism) told the Times that while the need to sell ads has always helped shape news coverage to some extent, "this does seem to me to take it to a slightly different level."

Slightly?

Assuming that the ad folks aren't actually dictating editorial coverage (we can hope, can't we?), there is still the critical issue of perception, as Ghiglione points out. No matter what the details of this new structure really are, it just looks like a sell-out. Editors are being managed by the people who sell advertising. How could that not undercut the perceived independence, credibility, and value of the newspaper's articles among its readers?

As newspapers and magazines go through the agonizing process of reinvention, we are all scrambling to survive. But let's not shoot ourselves in the foot, people. Anyway you look at it, this is a bad idea.

Agree, disagree? Please chime in.

Notable Links: July 10, 2009

• NYTimes.com: European Publishers Call on E.U. to Protect Copyright - They want better control of—and the chance to generate online revenue from—search engines’ and aggregators’ use of their content.

• Poynter.org: YouTube Launches Reporters' Center to Foster Citizen Journalism - and to facilitate collaboration between citizen video journalists and mainstream news organizations.

• MediaPost.com: Mag Bag: 279 Mags Fold In First Half of '09

• Manolith.com: The Story (so far) of Twitter - An illustrated history of Twitter; it stops short of the recent Iranian demonstrations, but captures other milestones.

Notable Links: June 12, 2009

• NYTimes.com: Magazine Researchers Explore New Ways to Weigh Ad Impact - Much needed--but only incremental--improvements. It's still a black art.

• WSJ.com:True/Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism - Journalists paid to act like publishers? Advertisers creating content? Hard times breed novel schemes at this online news site.

• MediaPost.com: Digital Newspapers Increase Reach, Politico, 'USA Today' - Politico joins QuadrantOne newspaper ad network, which now has 45 million unique users. USA Today readies paid e-edition for August 3 debut.

Magazine for Newspapers Quits Print;One on Luxury Guitars Starts Up

Presstime, the magazine of the Newspaper Association of America, has just published its last issue in print. Beginning in June, Presstime will cover its industry—including the painfully relevant story of how hard it is for publications to survive as hard-copy products—in a digital format only, on the association's Web site. The New York Times has details.

While the perceived value of newspapers continues to swoon, the magazine company Future US believes there's a substantial pool of potential readers out there who value pricey guitars—and cars, watches, wine, and "the deluxe life," in general. The company has just launched Guitar Aficionado.

This looks like a smart business move. Coverage of celebrities, investments, high-end lifestyle, and big-ticket travel is probably a magnet for advertising.

We take any launch these days as a hopeful sign. And we wish Guitar Aficionado well. Still, we can't help wishing there were room in this economy not only for a magazine that serves up guitar porn and luxury but also for one that serves the people who put out the nation's newspapers.

What do you think?

Newspaper Ignores the Web--and Prospers

"I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper," Dan Jacobson, the publisher and owner of the TriCity News of Monmouth County, N.J., tells David Carr of the New York Times. "The Web makes no business sense for us."

Jacobson's strategy is to "aggressively ignore" Web publishing, which puts him decidedly out of step with the industry. But as publications are dropping like flies and survivors are scrambling to find ways to generate income online, the TriCity News model may be worth examining. As Carr reports:

[The newspaper] just published the biggest issue in its history. The product is double-digit profitable, and it has been growing at a clip of about 10 percent a year since it was founded in 1999, right about the time the Web was beginning to put its hands around print’s neck.

NY Times Upgrades Online Video, Powered By Brightcove

When the New York Times upgrades its whole approach to video, it's worth noting what's on the back end. The answer is Brightcove, an online video platform whose name we see more and more next to successful video content on publication-related Web sites.

Video is an increasingly valuable—and expected—form of content for Web publishers. It's both an effective way to keep the audience engaged and a promising source of ad revenue. We've heard anecdotally that video advertising isn't shrinking as fast as other online ads.

MediaPost has details on the Times strategy and the capabilities of the Brightcove technology. Tech Crunch covers other Brightcove customers, video viewing stats, and more technical bits.

Smart Strategy: Send Visitors Away From Your Site

Nice to see The New York Times gave some ink this morning to our colleague Scott Karp and his crusade for "link journalism," a strategy designed to send Web visitors away from your  site.

The Times reports that mainstream media sites—including those of the Times itself, The Washington Post, and NBC TV—are starting to embrace the idea.

Scott has long championed link journalism through regular postings on his incisive blog, Publishing 2.0. The basic idea is that you can provide a great service to your audience by filtering and aggregating links to the most interesting and relevant content that is scattered across other sites around the Web.

Many magazines, newspapers, and other nervous Web publishers still question the wisdom of pushing visitors away. Scott offers this one-word rebuttal: Google.

“It’s all about sending people away," he told the Times, "and it does such a good job of it that people keep coming back for more.”