Thursday November 19, 2009
“The highlight for me was seeing the founder and editor of West Seattle Blog, Tracy Record, positioned on stage next to msnbc.com president Charlie Tillinghast. Two years ago, who would have believed that a neighborhood news site would warrant the same consideration as one of the giants in the online news world.”
— Mark Briggs blogging about a local panel at the MIT Enterprise Forum in Seattle.
Thursday November 19, 2009
Twitter lights up its geolocation API: It’s here, but it only works 1) if you turn on geotagging in your account settings on Twitter.com and 2) you’re using a Twitter mobile application with the geolocation feature, like Foursquare. Both these factors will combine to make this a rather specialized use case, but as Twitter says, “These are only the beginning.”
Thursday November 19, 2009
Fox Sports launching local sites, too: Joining the ranks of ESPN and Comcast, Fox Sports is quietly rolling out a network of a dozen local/regional sports sites, like FoxSportsArizona.com. In less than a year, local sports has suddenly become an incredibly competitive field, with local media feeling the squeeze from both national players and the sports leagues themselves.
Thursday November 19, 2009
AOL hiring journalists, laying off just about everyone else
AOL announced today that it’s planning to lay off 2,500 employees — about a third of its staff — but the company is still hiring journalists in a plan to beef up original content. That’s a change.
Thursday November 19, 2009
“What’s happening?”
— What Twitter now asks you, instead of “What are you going?” — a subtle change to try to encourage more newsy Tweets. “People are witnessing accidents, organizing events, sharing links, breaking news, reporting stuff their dad says, and so much more,” explains co-founder Biz Stone.
Tuesday November 17, 2009
YouTube offers news organizations APIs for user uploads: YouTube continues its push into citizen journalism with the launch of YouTube Direct, a set of APIs that allows news organizations to use YouTube as the platform for user video uploads. “Users can upload videos directly into this application, which also enables the hosting organization to easily review video submissions and select the best ones to broadcast on-air and on their websites,” explains Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics. And of course, all this video lives on YouTube.com, which continues to build out its news presence. Among the first to use YouTube Direct: ABC News (see here), the Huffington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle (here) and WHDH-TV in Boston (here).
Monday November 16, 2009
“By using your call letters, you’re automatically limiting yourself to those who follow your newscast. Why not open it up, make it more inclusive and pull in a whole new audience online?”
— Lost Remote emeritus Steve Safran talking about local TV website branding in a Broadcasting & Cable story about the topic. Many local TV stations are beginning to loosen up to the idea.
Monday November 16, 2009
Comcast launching local sports sites: Comcast is pouring some serious cash into an effort to compete with ESPN.com in local sports. The first site, Comcast SportsNet New England, will ultimately hire 40 staffers. San Francisco, DC/Baltimore and Chicago will soon follow.
Monday November 16, 2009
1 noteA crazy idea on how newspapers can take on Google: Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis suggests that news media companies team together and propose that Bing pay them a fee to block Google from indexing their search results. Interesting.
Adds Don in comments: “So you’ll have a pocket full of cash and no users? How does that make sense? … It would be like only having your news available to Mac users.”
Monday November 16, 2009
2 notesGonzoCamp sparks entrepreneurial ideas for news
The second annual GonzoCamp — a brainstorming and prototyping session to generate new ideas around news — just wrapped up here in Seattle, and TechFlash has a summary. GonzoCamp is the brainchild of Mark Briggs. “Instead of panel discussions lamenting the demise of the way things were, we prefer to roll up our sleeves and build something,” he explains. Among the projects that came out of GonzoCamp: a “Yelp for journalists” and a community-powered story “PitchMap.”
Monday November 16, 2009
How blogging has changed in last 3 years: A new survey shows that the way users engage with blogs is shifting more to off-site experiences, thanks in part to social networks and bookmarking/voting sites. (The graph above measures engagement for top blogs.) This reminds me of that timeless quote from a college student, “If the news is that important, it will find me.” There’s a new ecosystem of content sharing, which may or may not drive referrals — a new universe of content consumption that many media companies are just beginning to understand.
Friday November 13, 2009
Fwix unveils revenue-sharing plan for hyperlocal blogs
Fwix founder Darian Shirazi says just sending a little traffic to blogs isn’t going to cut it anymore. So his team has launched a new “ad wire” that mixes ad messages with local headlines, sharing revenue with not only the publisher that hosts the headlines, but the original news sources, too.
Of course, you have to sign up to get paid.
Thursday November 12, 2009
Belo's Moor to head up local news at Yahoo
DallasNews.com’s Anthony Moor says he’s just accepted a position at Yahoo to head up their growing local news efforts. Moor tweets, “Moving to Yahoo! and SF to build staff of editors around US who will improve the local news experience on frontpage.”
Thursday November 12, 2009
2 notes
A very cool way to watch a TV newscast: One of the big struggles in TV news is how to provide viewers with an easy way to find and watch specific newscast segments on the web. (“I saw it on TV around 5:30 p.m., but I can’t find it on your website….”) Here at msnbc.com, we just launched the TODAY Video Timeline on TodayShow.com, a nifty Flash experience that lets you chronologically scroll through TODAY segments labeled with the exact air times. Beyond finding a specific segment, it’s also a great way to browse the show, clicking on the clips you want to watch.
Wednesday November 11, 2009
Local digital channels could be the new TV wasteland: “Do you watch any of the new local digital channels?” asks Tom Petner on TVWeek.com. “No, neither do I.” I must confess, though, I do record and occasionally watch old episodes of Magnum PI on a random digital channel in Seattle. But I can’t tell you which one. (That’s a screen grab of an episode of Sea Hunt above, via ThisTV. )
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