Yesterday I attended the Modern Media Strategies Workshop at The Heritage Foundation.  There were many panels during the conference about how those in the political sphere can harness new and social media.

While blogging was one of many topics, many people from political organizations and congressional staffers asked the speakers about how one can find prominent blogs.  Panelists suggested Google Blog Search and Technorati, among other blog search engines, as places to get a general idea about different blogs.

I would like to add two other resources: e-newsletters and blog aggregators. 

Some newsletters track blogosphere chatter about a specific topic, and following this coverage is an excellent way to determine which blogs are influential.  The Exoro Group's Utah Policy Daily is a great example from my old stomping grounds.

Blog aggregators cull posts from a set of blogs focused on the same topic.  Thus, you can use these sites to easily track many blogs at once to determine which are the most prominent.  Staying close to my previous example, UtahPolitics.org is an example of a site that captures political blog chatter in the state. 

These are just two types of helpful resources.  What do you use to find important sites?

CBSNews.com and Washingtonpost.com are teaming up to share election-related content as a way of standing out in the increasingly crowded election news market. In a release about the partnership, CBS said:

The online relationship will join the rich tradition of both organizations, providing the combination of the most compelling video coverage from CBS News correspondents, producers and off-air reporters and the news, analysis and commentary from the Washington Post’s renowned political reporters.

The release also hints that CBS will be launching an ambitious Campaign 08 site in the coming months as part of this partnership. This come on the heals of the previously announced partnerships between the National Journal and NBC and USA Today and the Politico.

The media has always done some of its most innovative web work around elections. The election and election day sections of sites like CNN and Washington Post are some of the best things I’ve seen from the media in terms of technical execution.

I think we’re going to see some really fantastic online work in 2008 that will drive innovation for the entire media industry in the year following.

<Via Cyberjournalist>

By now everyone on the planet has heard of Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), which aims to “provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves” by providing children in developing countries worldwide with a laptop. This ambitious venture has produced an inexpensive and extremely durable machine which will be sold to governments around the world and distributed to impoverished children. The laptop, called the XO, is currently in its final beta phase and is being prepped for mass production. What you may not know, however, is that the XO is not the only inexpensive computer being produced for this purpose. There is competition. Intel has been selling its version of the “cheap laptop” since March for $225. The company recently joined OLPC in an effort to maximize the benefits of this laptop development around the world. Vice President and director of corporate affairs at Intel Will Swope stated,

“Our role here is one of how do we have the biggest impact on education and on children around the world?” he said. The chipmaker has spent more than $1 billion in education initiatives since its founding, and over the last five to six years has been investing annually around $100 million on such projects. “How could we make that more impactful and reach more children?” Swope asked. The answer, he said, was to join OLPC.

Despite its collaboration with OLPC, Intel will continue producing and selling its Classmate PC to governments, leaving it up to countries to decide which laptop, the XO or the Classmate, will best suit its children. While the general concepts of the laptops overlap, variations in design, structure and applications make each laptop best suited for different environments.

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The New York Times launched a Netvibes/My Yahoo style Ajax start page on their site called My Times a few days back.  These start pages allow users to create a custom home page that features only the information they are interested in.  In the case of My Times, users can select from a bevy of Times-related content and add RSS feeds from external blogs as well.

The reaction from the tech community has basically been a giant yawn.  Dave Winer sees it as an opportunity missed.  Techdirt reacts with derision.  Everyone seems to be noticing that these kind of start pages have been around since the mid-90s.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

They are right.  My Times is inferior to start pages like Netvibes and Pageflakes that have tons of widgets and can be customized in pretty much limitless ways.  But I’m pretty sure the folks behind My Times would answer by saying that they aren’t trying to compete with My Yahoo or Netvibes or whoever.  I doubt the Times staff expect folks without an intense, pre-existing relationship with the Times website to sign up specifically to use their start page.  My Times is intended as a value added feature for their loyal website readers - a way to get them to spend more time on the site.  My Times accomplishes that goal very well I think. 

We received some fantastic feedback in regards to my post last week about our picks for the best US newspaper websites. I'd like to take a moment here and point out some other great websites that our readers brought to our attention.

A few readers questioned why our list only referred to US papers. Due to limited resources, our initial research only addressed the websites of publications here in the US.  Last year, we conducted research on some international papers with help from our readers.  In general, however, the Guardian and the International Herald Tribune are two examples of great newspaper websites. Their designs are superior with clean and uncluttered layouts.  Both of these sites have successfully differentiated themselves from their print counterparts by combining aesthetic appeal with solid content and technological offerings.  The Guardian tends to be known for offering high quality reporter blogs, which are expanded upon on the site Comment is Free, a blog- and comment- driven site tied to the Guardian's website. 

Commenter Genevieve pretty much sums up the International Herald Tribune site in the comments from the original post:  

I’m really surprised to not see the newly redesigned International Herald Tribune on this list: http://www.iht.com

It’s really clean and easy to read, the navigation “cloud” is interesting. I love how easy Search is to get to, and the video box on the right is cool. Plus, who doesn’t love big photos and big headlines on the article pages?

'Nuff said.

Some smaller US papers also received some positive reviews:

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Micah Sifry’s post last week about YouTube metrics got me thinking about which videos produced by the campaigns have been viewed the most on YouTube. Following is a list of Dem Presidential candidate videos that have attracted more than 200,000 YouTube views. I’ve excluded YouTube spotlight videos, since they tend to attract a ton of views no matter the candidate/quality of the question.

(1) Hillary Clinton: I Need Your Advice (627,335 views)

Clinton asks for help in picking her campaign song.

(2) Hillary Clinton: Pick My Campaign Song Take 2 (337,366 views)

Follow up to video #1 above that is a mash up of responses sent in by users.

(3) Barack Obama: My Plans for 2008 (334,261 views)

Video in which Barack Obama announces the formation of his exploratory committee and discusses his rationale for running.

(4) John Edwards: Ann Coulter on Good Morning America (294,280 views)

Video of Ann Coulter saying she wished John Edwards’ had been killed by a terrorist assassination plot.

(5) Mike Gravel: Campaign Finance Reform (275,855 views)

A video posted by the Gravel campaign in response to a leftover question from the YouTube debate.

(6) Barack Obama: Opposition from the Start (239,822 views)

Clips of Obama over the years expressing his opposition to the Iraq war.

(7) John Edwards: Hair (230,784 views)

Viral video produced by the Edwards’ campaign in response to the notorious Feeling Pretty video. First aired at the YouTube debate.

(8) Bill Richardson: Job Interview (208,210 views)

Viral video that highlights Richardson’s qualifications for the Presidency.

I’d classify these videos as follows:

• Numbers 1, 2, 7 and 8 (50%) are your classic viral videos put out to draw attention to the candidate/attract page views/raise money. They are heavy on humor and not issue oriented at all.
• Numbers 3, 5 and 6 (37.5%) are more issue-oriented videos, but have viral qualities all the same. The Gravel campaign smartly piggy backing off the YouTube debate to get some attention. The first Obama video piggy backed off the media coverage of his announcement while the second potently explains the difference between Obama and the other Dem front runners on Iraq.
• Number 4 (12.5%) is a rapid response video that was distributed widely by the Edwards’ campaign as part of a fundraising pitch.

I don’t really have a big point here, but I think anyone who reviews that list sees that successful YouTube videos don’t just come out of nowhere. They are the result of good planning/production and smart timing. In other words there is a real strategy to being successful on YouTube.

Fred Thompson Disclaimer 

When the CIA began advertising and recruiting via the social network facebook, I kind of laughed since someone working in the clandestine services should keep information safe and not freely divulge it.  However, the whole point of social networking sites is to share information with your "closest friends."

Interesting, the Financial Times reports today that the intelligence community within the United States government sees more use to social networking sites than just recruitment.  As the government is trying to improve inter-agency communication that plagued it before the 9/11 attacks, the paper reports that, "Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of 'MySpace for analysts' – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community." 

According to this article, the government expects to deploy the social network – named "A-Space" – to all of its intelligence agencies by December.  This is a rather interesting development in the world of social networking sites; it's a bummer that most of us can't observe how it functions. 

The left-leaning news and opinion site The Huffington Post announced a new commenting policy to its community last Thursday.  It'll promote top commenters to regular Huffington Post bloggers. 

Community members will help determine who gets this honor by using the site's new "I'm A Fan Of" and "Favorite" links for comment and user profile pages. Paul Berry explains, "Our decision will be based on how many fans a commenter has, how often their comment is selected as a Favorite, and our moderators' preferences."

I think that this is a great idea since community driven sites need to find ways to award their members, and this is an interesting strategy.  First, commenters who earn this promotion will have to prove that they'll particiate on the site in an intelligent way.  Second, it'll encourage commenters to do their best to contribute in a constructive fashion so that they'll even have a chance to win a blogger spot on the site.  Third, promoting the best commenters is a great way to retain and encourage active participation on the site. 

Last night we launched a redesigned version of Monsanto's Spanish site made using Drupal's CMS. The site style mimics the existing style on Monsanto.com to a great extent.

The entire site is run on Drupal with some custom PHP mods. This essentially allows Monsanto or ourselves to add a new page, news article, press release or hi-res image to the image library really quickly and easily.

A significant chunk of the Spanish content was created or edited in-house here at The Bivings Group.

If you have a moment or are interested in biotech take a look around and let us know what you think!

Many people are buzzing about how snazzy 2008 presidential campaign sites are with their slick designs, multimedia content, and social networking tools, but how many campaigns are taking advantage of Internet text ads?

Awhile ago I took a snapshot at who are buying Google text ads for searches for both democrats and republicans presidential candidates and found that only Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Barack Obama bought ads for these searches.  Wired has taken a broader look at presidential campaign text ads in an article today. 

Sarah Lai Stirland reports that only the McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns are buying ads for issue and news searches. 

Text ads are incredibly useful since they are much cheaper than other forms of advertising, and since they're based on what people actually search for, organizations that use these ads can target their advertising dollars towards people they can better identify as a likely customer, voter, etc.

Richard Ball, founder of Baltimore based search engine marketing firm Apogee Web Consulting, blogged and was subsequently quoted by Wired that: 

For less than the cost of postage, a presidential candidate could have acquired a visitor to their election campaign website. How much would a direct-mail advertising campaign have cost to acquire 1,820 visitors to their site? How much would a radio or TV or print-ad campaign have cost to generate that much interest?

Stirland's article concludes with the fact that the vast majority of presidential campaigns have ignored Internet text ads and are likely missing out on a great campaign resource.  She also quotes Eric Frenchman, political Internet marketing strategist at Connell Donatelli in Washington, D.C, as saying that since people are interested in news and issues candidates should advertise on keywords that they take clear, strong stances on in hopes of luring people to their web sites.  Frenchman is a good guy to talk to since Connell Donatelli is managing McCain's on-line advertising.

As people wonder how political campaigns — perhaps even the candidates themselves — will further embrace social media tools like using videos and social networks to better connect with individuals in upcoming elections, maybe they'll also use text ads more to connect with a broader, yet targeted, crowd.

The Bivings Group's Fred Thompson Disclosure

As a follow-up to our research on newspaper websites that we published recently, we decided to break out a list of the best examples of “good” newspaper websites. Steve, Todd and I collaborated on the following list, judging sites not only on their web features but also on the design, aesthetics and general usability of the site [Note: this list only covers the top 100 US newspapers in terms of circulation, which is what our study looked at. We’re sure that we missed some great smaller papers.].

(1) New York Times: We love the general feeling of the NYT site, which is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. The site is loaded with great features, and the website is rumored to be dropping its annoying pay wall, TimesSelect, in the coming months.

(2) Washington Post: Not only do we like the design and the navigability of the Post’s website, but we really love its database applications, which provide interesting tidbits of information difficult to find elsewhere. The Post’s website has been a huge success, and is one of the best examples of newspapers creating an online product that is significantly different from its print product.

(3) USA Today: Social networking. Social networking. Social networking. Did I mention that this site has the most robust social networking features out of any of the newspaper websites we researched? Oh yeah. And this site has social networking.

(4) Houston Chronicle: We like the non-newspaperish feeling that this homepage exudes. It’s significantly different from any other newspaper site. Chron.com offers its users interactive features such as comments and blogs, has a great RSS system made available right on the homepage, and looks good while doing it.

(5) Denver Post: The homepage of this site isn’t much to write home about, but registering with the site automatically gives you your own blog and your own photo gallery for uploading and sharing photos. When you add in some interesting political features, including a voter’s guide and a poll for picking candidates and combine that with alternative content views, internal and external bookmarking features, as well as links from stories to relevant materials, you’ve got all the ingredients necessary to build a great website.

(6) Knoxville News Sentinel: I’m not sure a newspaper website could look any better than this one. When we talk about de-cluttering sites and making them look “clean”, this is what we mean.

(7) Fresno Bee: Great homepage, interesting CrimeMap feature, and overall just a solid site with lots of technology and an easy-to-use format.

(8) Austin American Statesman: We really like the unique layout and coloring of this site’s homepage. We’re also giving this site points for allowing anyone to blog and for linking to many of the site’s blogs directly from the homepage.

(9) Tennessean: The blog-like feel of this site’s homepage helped it make our list. We also like the strong presence of multimedia on the homepage.

(10) San Jose Mercury News: On this homepage, we like the simple layout of the article headlines and descriptions. I also like the inclusion of the box with blog headlines, user photos, forum titles, and podcasts toward the top of the homepage. The site loads a bit slowly and is a little light on the features, but it does have all the core elements of a good site.

What are your favorite newspaper websites? Share them below in the comments or on the Bivings Report Wiki.

Update: We edited the info about the Times dropping Times Select for clarification. It was reported on August 7th that they would be dropping it. They did not drop Times Select on August 7th.

Last week The New York Time purchased [clarification: the paper is, as Jeff Jarvis notes, "hosting it, selling ads on it, promoting it, but not buying it or hiring its creators"] the sometimes irreverent Freakonomics blog run by University of Chicago economist Dr. Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner. Clearly the newspaper saw that this informative blog had a community worth transplanting to its web site.

Was it a brave move to purchase a blog that isn't control by NYT staffers? Yes, especially since Leavitt pondered about how to maximize a terrorist attack — commenters went wild –shortly after his blog switched over to nytimes.com.

However, buying a blog is another example of how old media organizations are missing the point. Old media companies should focus on fostering innovative new media properties themselves and not simply purchasing them when it makes sense cents. [Update: While partnering with a blog like Freakonomics is definitely a wise move, it doesn't take place of the need for in-house innovation.]

As we've observed here at The Bivings Group, newspapers and their traditional media counterparts seem schizophrenic when it comes to new media. They want to succeed but are unwilling to allow their employees to do what it takes.

In fact, sometimes their current employees won't cut it as The Economist's Project Red Stripe proves. In this case, employees were given time, resources, and freedom to create something new and extraordinary but, as Jeff Jarvis explains, failed to capture the new media or web 2.0 vision perhaps since they came from a traditional background.

BBC News, in contrast, hired Ben Hammersley — who has a new media background and is young enough that he isn't bogged down by the old media model — to launch its multi platform social media reporting on non-BBC sites. Will this idea succeed? I don't know, but in this case the organization is trying and testing to develop its own new media project instead of buying one. Hopefully, the Beeb will continue to allow social media savvy folk like Hammersley and its Director of Global News Richard Sambrook to experiment.

If old media companies want to truly tap into and succeed in the new media world, they need to rethink their strategy. Instead of buying successful blogs, podcasts, or social networks, perhaps they should either hire or reassign people who are new media innovators and give them freedom to develop a successful product.

Further, it is likely cheaper to hire people than acquire established products and brands. [Update: Perhaps a partnership, as in the case with the Freakonomics blog, is cheaper, but this can come at an expense when the deal ends if The New York Times hasn't found a way to build new features and communities around Leavitt and Dubner's genius.] 

I’m a big fan of the Facebook, MySpace and Technorati stats TechPresident is keeping on the 2008 Presidential candidates. These stats are a good measure of the amount of traction each candidate is getting in those communities and on the web overall.

The YouTube stats, however, are really deceptive due to the vastly different ways candidates are using YouTube. As an example, here is the chart showing YouTube views for each Democrat’s main channel.

Pretty clear, right? Obama leads and Edwards recently overtook Hillary for second place. Edwards is getting more buzz for his online videos than Hillary.

Actually, no. Edwards’ numbers are artificially inflated because he is using YouTube as the primary player for all of his videos on his website. Meanwhile, Obama is using Brightcove to play videos on his website while Hillary is using what looks to be a player created in house.

So we’re comparing apples and oranges here: all of Edwards’ video plays are being compared to maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of Obama’s and Hillary’s views. I’d venture to guess that in terms of actual views Edwards is pretty firmly in third place.

As an aside, earlier in the campaign the Clinton campaign was slow to post videos to YouTube, hoping to make people come to their site to view all of her videos. In response, Patrick Ruffini started downloading Clinton’s videos and posting them to YouTube in an effort to divert traffic. Ruffini (and others) probably cost Hillary’s YouTube channel 400,000+ views by doing this.

The Clinton campaign has caught on and now appears to be driving traffic to YouTube by linking to the YouTube version of the video right on their site. You can see an example here. I don’t remember seeing this before.

Fred Thompson disclosure.

Like Erin, I enjoyed attending the Journalism That Matters conference this week.  Although a panel discussion that concluded with a bleak prognosis for the current mainstream news media business model kicked off the event, the dreariness only surrounded the business model, not the craft of journalism.

However, many veteran journalists felt threatened by the conference's tone towards traditional journalism as it focused on "citizen journalism's" rise, but I hope that they felt much more upbeat towards the end.  In my view the craft is doing well, and the Internet is, as one veteran journo put it at the concluding session, helping fuel what he sees as a renaissance.

As Erin mentioned there were many people who have started hyperlocal and other niche sites, and they're having varied levels of success or failure.  There was a lot of discussion of an Internet based business model for news, and people seemed to like the fact that there were many potential models discussed at the conference.  They seem excited to see what ideas not only survive but thrive along with those that fail. 

The Internet has lowered the barrier of collecting and disseminating information, and I'm thrilled that so many people are brave enough to go out on a limb and try to make their ideas work.  In fact, people who lack journalistic credentials and training — the "citizen" journalists – are also entering the fray to cover topics that they're passionate about.  Thus, more ideas for business models.  

On another note, I can see why many people can see a high failure rate of on-line news ventures as threatening to the craft, but there is a silver lining.  The business model of news is changing, and that makes it even more important to find a new set of viable models.  The Internet provides a forum to shift through the plethora of ideas out there to see which ones are viable.  That's good for journalism.

Keep an eye on Journalism That Matters, its conferences are likely hosting the people who will develop the next viable business models for journalism.

Steve Petersen and I just spent the last two days at a conference here in DC called Journalism that Matters.  I went with the intention of figuring out what the business plan will be for newspapers as we move deeper into the digital era.  I didn't quite figure this out, but I did get to talk with a lot of interesting people about their views, opinions, and predictions for online media.

A lot was said at the conference, but I will try to sum up a few points here.

• Hyperlocal isn't as easy as it sounds. There were several people at this conference trying to get hyperlocal news sites started.  Some seemed to be successful, and others less so (both in traffic and profit).  The founder of McKinneynews.net told me that even though there are no other sources for local news in her town, she can't seem to get people to participate through interactive channels (comments, blogs, etc) on her site.  In this particular case, she thinks that the town is so small that people fear what their neighbors will think of their comments on certain issues.  Advertising is also a problem for her as "local advertisers just don't 'get it' yet."  Even though it may seem like there is a huge opening for sites focusing for local news, this niche is proving difficult for people to succeed in.  Other sites, including MyMissourian.com and Paulding.com , seem to be hugely successful, focusing their efforts on citizen media and discussions within communities.  What makes one site work as opposed to any other?  Is it the demographics of these disparate communities?  Or is it something else?

• Open format conferences have both good and bad points.  JTM was an open format conference, with the agenda largely determined on the fly by participants.  This was great for getting to meet lots of people and for having the opportunity to talk about a wide variety of issues. On the other hand, discussions tended to be unstructured, a little bit chaotic, and even argumentative at times.  I got a little frustrated on the second day of the conference, and at times felt like I wasn't really getting anywhere.
  
  
• The future business model for newspapers is still up in the air.  Even after 2 days with 160 experts trapped together in a conference area, no clear was reached about how newspapers will succeed in the future.  Some see the future in citizen-centered media, others predict print will totally fall by the wayside, and still others think that the future newspaper will be a combination of print, "professional", and "amateur" journalists.  I think the model is still unproven, and a conclusion will only be reached after more experimentation.
• Journalists are passionate about their trade.  If nothing else, I learned in the past 2 days that journalists are truly passionate about what they do. For them, sharing news isn't about a business model, or getting enough ads. Rather, it's about getting an interesting and accurate story full of important information to their audience.  While news reported by citizen journalists certainly has value, society would be losing something if "professional" journalism went by the wayside.  At the same time, some journalists at the conference seemed very set in their ways and hesitant to accept new models of doing things, a common trend in the newspaper industry.

Other interesting topics of discussion included the debate over skillsets:  what should journalism students today be learning? I think that they should be taught much more than reporting and writing.  Communication with citizens is becoming more and more important, as are online and computer skills. 

Another tidbit I found interesting is that some news outlets are starting to give citizen journalists some training.  One TV station, for example, provides classes once a week for citizens interested in doing some reporting. There they learn the basics of reporting and have their writing and speaking critiqued.  Graduates of this class can then provide the TV station and its sister newspaper with content on issues that the outlet may not otherwise have time to cover.  Citizens benefit because they get to write and read about what they love, while the media outlet benefits from having inexpensive and quality content produced for them.

All in all, I am happy that I attended the conference and definitely think that it was a worthwhile event.  I will be interested to see how some of the entrepreneurs there fare with their websites after all that they learned over the past two days.