Culture Still Haunts Online Journalists

My friend Kevin Anderson, an online journalist, wrote an interesting post titled "What is an online journalist?" yesterday on his blog Strange Attractor.

The gist of the post focuses on how it is still common in contemporary journalistic culture to feel that the Internet is not a medium suited for unique quality news reporting and analysis.  Of course, it is a great place to repurpose, publish, or post reporting from other media, but true journalism supposedly cannot originate in the digital realm.

With newspaper ad revenue and dropping, radio and television audiences declining in both quantity and attention paid to specific sources, and a burgeoning amount of sources providing news, news companies and journalists cannot afford to ignore the value of online journalism.  Beyond the fact that the medium lends its well to more up to date and in depth reporting in ways that print and broadcast outlets can't match, more and more people are turning to the Internet as a primary news source.

Hopefully, in 2008, more journalists will realize this and value the online medium by viewing it as a complement to their work and not a threat.

Should The Economist Launch a Social Network?

Last week, NewMediaAge.co.uk reported that The Economist magazine intends to launch a social network.  This partly stems from its Project Red Stripe that aimed to produce something innovative with the company's expansive library of quality content but then fizzled with hopes of an altruistic social site.  While the idea is noble, there are many other sites out their now that connect people those who they can help.

For awhile I thought that news sites creating their own social networking site was great since it would help them lure audience members back more often, but now I'm wary of another social networking site.

The concept is not flawed; it is just the idea that I'll have to create another profile, remember more usernames and passwords, and try to woo my associates to do the same that seems so laborious.

Perhaps the magazine could partner with an existing social networking site that many of its readers are either members of or would benefit from joining.  I understand concerns about relying on another company to handle your information and that of your customers as well as branding issues, but if my sentiments are shared by many other people, forget the success of a social networking venture.

Now, who could The Economist partner with?  MySpace and Facebook probably aren't great possible partners since neither are designed for sustained conversations and debates.  The same goes for LinkedIn, but its professional networking emphasis does should jive well with Economist readers.  On the other hand, Gather is centered around conversation, yet, tries to appease a wide variety of folk.

Are there any other sizable social networks that would suit The Economist well?

Google News Tweaks Algo

Loren Baker of the Search Engine Journal reports that Google News has tweaked it algorithm (hat tip: MediaPost).  The search engine hopes to its users more relevant results about breaking news stories.

One of the tweaks aims to better identify the news source that was first in reporting information about a story.  Further, the tweak will better highlight fresher reporting as the story develops.

Another tweak that I find really interesting and helpful to local media outlets is that Google aims to place more emphasis on providing users with reports from media outlets whom are local to breaking news.  Thus, if there is flooding in Houston, Google wants to highlight reporting from, say, the Houston Chronicle instead of a wire report picked up by the Los Angles Times.  That is if the local coverage is at least equal in relevance to articles from elsehwere.

I think that this is great news for local news outlets since Google is explicitly trying to promote them.  Of course, this does not negate the need for local sources from working harder than larger organizations that have more resources and enjoy a larger presence on-line, but the search engine's changes could level the playing field.

New York Times Traffic Surges

Mathew Ingram yesterday proclaimed that "free is better" when it comes to news sites, and he offered new evidence to support this assertion.

He pointed to web traffic data of the New York Time's website that TechCrunch analyzed.  According to comScore data, traffic to the paper's site has surged since it ended its Times Select subscription pay wall back in September. 

Between August and October this year, site visitors increased by an impressive 64 percent along with a 52 percent growth for page views.  Clearly dropping the pay wall has boosted the traffic to the site.   

The web analytics geek in me would love to see how the average time on site per user has changed in this time period.  One would think that Times Select subscribers would spend more time on the site since they're paying for it and are probably Times fans.  If that's correct, then perhaps the average time spent on the site has dropped since people who come for free are: 1) not paying for it and 2) aren't proving loyalty already by paying a fee.

What do you think?

LA Blogger Heads to MSM

I read today that an editor for the blog LAist, Tony Pierce, accepted a position running about 25 blogs over at the LA Times. I thought it was interesting to see such a huge paper, with such a mixed record in the online world, making a blogger an important part of the paper's team.  There's some pretty extensive coverage about this on Friday's edition of LAist, but I thought I'd pull out a couple interesting points from an interview with Tony Pierce.

Zach: Day one, what would you like to start doing?
Tony: On day one I would like to throw out a bunch of ideas to my new boss and find out which ones she likes and which ones she thinks are lame. And then I would like to do the cool ones that we agree on. But I'm not insane, the Times is an old, established, successful organization. Things don't change as quickly as you guys probably think. LAist was a different beast. One Monday last year Jake said he wanted Food every day. Two weeks later we had food every day. I'm pretty sure a huge organization like the LAT works a tad slower.

Andy: You've been successful as the lead editor of a group blog — LAist. How will you motivate / approach the Times people to absorb your inspiration and ideas and go with it, considering the general resistance to change within age-old publications?
Tony : That is the big question. Can someone from outside of journalism inspire real pros? And can the MSM break through in the blogosphere. Currently there's not one newspaper blog in the Technorati Top 100, which is a challenge that I'm more than happy to take on.

Andy: Are there any news sites that particularly impress you as far as their approach to blogging and attracting UGC?
Tony: The Houston Chronicle has led the way for newspaper blogging and user generated content. And I really like the NYT's City Desk blog – City Room. But the entire industry has only just started to really wake up because they had resisted the whole thing for so long. Rightfully. And now that they know that digital is the way to go, it's right for them to get it together. But as that Elvis record sorta said: 100 million blogs can't be wrong.

Andy: Will you be restricted by any Times policy from what you can write about (aside from the obvious)?
Tony: Probably. I'm joining a huge corporation. Something that I am used to. I've worked for huge places before. And even being editor of LAist I toned down what topics I wrote about on my personal blog, so i have no problems with that. Since 8/11/01 when I started blogging, I've written about 7,500 posts. I've had plenty of time to rock the mic. Now I'd like to help others reach the blogosphere, because it's a great audience.

Andy: Do you have any plans to create blogs of general — not just localized — interest? For example, NYT has things like an Open Code blog, WSJ has All Things D ….
Tony: The one thing that blew my mind while I met with the Times is that they really are open to many many ideas. One of the things that we were very successful at on LAist were expanding our coverage to things outside of LA. That pissed off some readers but sometimes you just have to shrug and say **** the haters. So yes I hope the Times continues to think outside the box and continues to trust new perspectives, because now they are on a huge playing field – the web – that has a lot of wide and varied competitors who aren't restricted to certain boundaries or rules or pasts to live up to. So to compete with them you really have to play a slightly different game to a point. But the Times has had no problems going outside of LA for a lot of their best stories They are a leader in International news, therefore they should continue to learn from that success in regards to blogging about things outside of LA. Believe it or not I think that will be easier to do at the Times than at LAist.

Andy: What about hyperlocal?
Tony: Likewise they can do hyperlocal better than even the LAist because they have a full time staff of people who are used to covering the metro beat and they know who to talk to, how to get there, and how to get it written in a professional manner. At LAist I couldn't get anyone to go to that lameass Hollywood Santa parade even though a few of us live a few blocks away. So there are pluses and minuses to an all volunteer blog staff, and that night was definitely a minus.

I'll be interested to see how Tony's transition to MSM goes.  What kind of effect will he have on the LA Times?  And conversely, what kind of effect with the LA Times and MSM have on Tony Pierce?