User-created ads create rights conundrum

Ad Age had an interesting piece about companies creating ads using content from online users. One example was when an ad agency used photos from Flickr users with Creative Commons licenses but never asked permission, creating a dust-up.

"For commercial use of photos, videos or text, you should cover yourself legally by asking. Not to mention it's polite," said Josh Peters, a social-media consultant who has written about the Toyota misstep. "It's an ethics and courtesy issue. In 30 seconds they could have saved face by asking him ... but they didn't bother."

Using Twitter feeds is another matter, however.

It's legally still a bit of a gray area, but generally when a person puts content out there using the social-media tools where content can be syndicated, they grant the world an implied license, said Evan D. Brown, attorney at Hinshaw & Culbertson.

AP, News Corp bosses tell search engines to pay up

The comments from Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch come as the media industry struggles in the Internet age. Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material.

"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Curley, the AP's chief executive, told a meeting of 300 media leaders in Beijing.

Snapshots of papers that charge for content

PaidContent has an interesting piece that looks at how papers that began charging for online access are fairing. Most of the papers are small dailies and seem to be charging to protect their print edition.

Newspaper: Newport Daily News
City: Newport, R.I.
Circulation: 12,000
Pricing plan: Online-only subscriptions cost $5 a day, $10 a week, $35 a month, or $345 a year. Print and online combo subscriptions cost $11 a month or $100 a year. Obituaries, classifieds, blogs, and a copy of the front page are available for free online.
When pay wall was introduced: June 2009
Results: Publisher Buck Sherman told us that the goal was to “drive people back to the printed paper” and not to bring in online revenue. He says that so far “we have done well,” adding that single-copy sales are up 8 percent. Website traffic is down by about 30 percent since the paper began to charge, according to Compete figures.
Comment: The Daily News model grabbed headlines earlier this year because the paper was charging substantially more for the electronic edition of the paper than the print one. Competition is limited, with the much bigger Providence Journal pulling back on statewide coverage.

The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition)

WaPo reporter Ian Shapira wrote an opinion piece about how Gawker borrowed heavily from his article about a business coach who teaches business leaders how to deal with Millennials in the workplace (she's running a racket, in my opinion, but that's another issue). He said he felt triumphant at first and then his editor told him they ripped off his story. He spent a considerable amount of time and effort reporting the story and a Gawker writer spent an hour or so cutting-and-pasting and re-wording it — generating more than 9,500 page views for Gawker.

I started thinking about all the labor that went into producing my 1,500-word article. The story wasn't Pulitzer material; it was just a reported look at one person capitalizing on angst in the workplace. With all the pontificating about the future of newspapers both in the media and in Capitol Hill hearings, I began wondering if most readers know exactly what is required to assemble a feature story for a publication such as The Post. Journalism at a major newspaper is different from what's usually required in the wild and riffy world of the Internet. And that wild world is killing real reporting -- the kind of work practiced not just by newspapers but by nonprofits, some blogs and other news outlets.

Here's Shapira's original story and here's Gawker's post about it. Anyways, something to chew on.

AP Sets Up News Registry To Track And Protect Content Online

PaidContent.org has an item about AP's plan to track its content online.

Following up on its spring promise of an industry initiative to protect news content online, the Associated Press board today approved an ambitious plan to tag and track every piece of text content for the co-op and its members—and eventually photos and video. The news registry will start by tracking AP content and is expected to add AP member content in early 2010. AP will fund it through 2010; it’s then expected to be self sustaining. One feature of the registry, which is being designed to work on payment models ranging from free to pay walls, is a “beacon” that will let the AP know how the content is being used.

Public Radio is Killing Public Radio

Rafat Ali writes on paidcontent.org that the new IPhone app, which aggregates most public radio stations across the U.S., will hasten the demise of local public radio stations. I'm not sure I buy his argument, but its an interesting view of how technology that's supposed to widen an audience can also end up hurting the program provider.

PS: the view from NPR is that a number of local public radio stations are making money from successful fund-raisers. There are only a few that are on the ropes....

Close J-schools?

Richard Sine writes on Huffington Post:

"Do not fill up two years of anyone's time with bush-league "news services" (Oh boy! A clip in The Daily Supplement!) or mandatory classes in media history, communications theory or journalism philosophy. Do not charge so much money to walk through the door that the program is open only to the rich, the idle, or the financially illiterate. That's not a journalism school; that's a gold-plated welfare program for your old newsroom buddies, built on the backs of starry-eyed naïfs."

whoa -


thoughts?

Michael Jackson traffic melts entire Internet

Valleywag had an interesting post about Internet traffic spiking because of news about Michael Jackson's death. Some of the figures include:

• CNN's traffic grew fivefold in one hour and the site clocked 20 million pageviews.
• Twitter had its biggest spike in traffic, to 5,000 tweets per second, since Barack Obama's election as president, according to co-founder Biz Stone.
  
• Facebook status updates tripled.
  
• AOL Instant Messenger went down for 40 minutes.
  
• TMZ, which broke the news of Jackson's death, crashed several times amid a surge of traffic.
  
• The LA Times, which got early confirmation of the death, went down, as well.
• For about half an hour, Michael Jackson queries weren't working on Google News.
  
• Wikipedia froze amid an edit war on Jackson's page.

Amazing.

Media columnist rails against HuffPo

Advertising Age's media columnist, Simon Dumenco, takes a shot at the Huffington Post by saying it de-values content and drums up page views by featuring risqué pics of celebs.

What it comes down to is this: What is the Huffington Post, really? It likes to pretend that it's a respectable voice in the mediasphere, but it shamelessly pumps up its traffic by being just as trashy as, say, Maxim. It also likes to masquerade as a forward-thinking, paradigm-shifting journalistic institution, but it pays only a handful of actual journalists, and its idea of "journalism" is often downright parasitic of the work of real journalistic institutions.

Any thoughts?

Is Twitter Overrated?

Hundreds of people are battling each other for a job as "lifestyle correspondent" for Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma. They want a wine enthusiast to promote the vineyard on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. But others are wondering if social media really affects the way people buy. An article by Joe Mandese on Media Post says social media is overrated as a means to deliver consumer dollars.

Why journalists deserve low pay

This opinion piece by media economics professor Robert Picard has been making the rounds. He makes his case in the Christian Science Monitor on why he thinks journalists deserve their low pay.

Today all this value is being severely challenged by technology that is "de-skilling" journalists. It is providing individuals – without the support of a journalistic enterprise – the capabilities to access sources, to search through information and determine its significance, and to convey it effectively.

Shepard Fairey Ripped Off My Picture First

Filmmaker and journalist Ed Nachtrieb posted a piece on Salon's user-generated site, Open Salon, about how artist Shepard Fairy appropriated a picture of Nachtrieb's to create a piece of art. As many of us already know, Fairy is the artist behind the famous Barack Obama "Hope" poster that was based on a photo of Obama taken by the Associated Press. Nachtrieb's photo is of an armed Chinese soldier at the onset of martial law in Beijing 20 years ago. Nachtrieb doesn't address the fair use issue that Fairy is claiming against the AP's lawsuit, but Nachtrieb does say he'd like Fairy to at least credit where he gets the photos used to inspire his art.

Law students teach Scalia about privacy and the Web

Here's a story from the NYT about what a class at Fordham Law School was able to find online about SC Justice Antonin Scalia. Speaking about privacy rights and the Internet at a conference, Scalia was quoted by the AP as saying:

“Every single datum about my life is private? That’s silly.”

The professor saw it as a teaching moment. The class was able to find Scalia's home address and phone number, his wife's e-mail address and what foods and movies he likes. The 15-page dossier they compiled wasn't meant to be made public but the professor spoke about it at a conference and the news was reported online at Above the Law. Scalia's response to Above the Law:

“I stand by my remark at the Institute of American and Talmudic Law conference that it is silly to think that every single datum about my life is private. I was referring, of course, to whether every single datum about my life deserves privacy protection in law.

“It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg’s exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.”

Would You Pay $13,000 for an Internship?

The Huffington Post is auctioning two- to -three month internships.
The bids are actually up to $13,000.

Do you think it's worth it? Yes you will get experience at a reputable media outlet. You will no longer be out of the job market. You can expand your skills. And if you do well, I guess you can land a job after the internship ends.

Why Newspapers still dont have the answer....

Nat Ives argues in "Advertising Age" that Frank Rich's idea - newspapers should charge for their offerings just like cable companies - is flawed because the product just isn't the same.

The American press on suicide watch

Interesting piece by NYT columnist Frank Rich, who brings up a number of things we've discussed in classes about the future of media.

In the Internet era, many sectors of American media have been re-enacting their at first complacent and finally panicked behavior of 60 years ago. Few in the entertainment business saw the digital cancer spreading through their old business models until well after file-sharing, via Napster, had started decimating the music industry. It’s not only journalism that is now struggling to plot a path to survival. But, with all due respect to show business, it’s only journalism that’s essential to a functioning democracy. And it’s not just because — as we keep being tediously reminded — Thomas Jefferson said so.

Stepping Aside

Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen has written her last
columnn.

She wrote about stepping aside for a new generation of voices.

Obama's Facebook News Feed

So much written and said in the past few days about Obama's first 100 days -- I think Obama's Facebook news feed on Slate.com sums it up quite nicely in a very clever approach to the story.

NBC Tries to Cut Costs

http://www.observer.com/2009/media/nbc-exploring-possible-changes-its-longtime-headquarters-washington-dc

Personal Branding Is Not An Option - It's Crucial To Success

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. ... You're every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop… To start thinking like your own favourite brand manager, ask yourself the same question the brand managers at Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my product or service does that makes it different?

Read more here.

Bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers

Sen. Ben Cardin introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act to allow newspapers to restructure as nonprofits. In addition to getting a variety of tax breaks and having a similar status as public broadcasters, the papers also would be barred from making political endorsements.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."

Thoughts?

Changing the Conversation

Writer Jon Anne Willow examines the journalistic landscape. The piece includes issues we've talked about in class.

Is this what we'll be doing in the fall?

American Observer's tech issue looks a lot like a package we all could put together at this point, too! Weell maybe in a few more months :)

Why Teach Journalism if Newspapers are Dying?

Here is an interesting piece from Salon.com.

Last day for the Seattle P-I

The final edition of one of my hometown newspapers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, came out today. Today's online edition is full of stories about the 146-year-old paper, including an indictment of the newspaper industry by one of its business columnists. Even though the P-I will continue online, I still mourn the loss of the paper I grew up reading.

• "The pioneering P-I slips into the past"
• "Class final: How to kill an American newspaper," by business writer Bill Virgin.
• P-I memories page, with stories, photo galleries and video.
• "P-I reporter: 'It hasn't really sunk in yet' " (Seattle Times)
• "The P-I's globe will keep on spinning" (Seattle Times)
• "Inside, and outside, the P-I" (The Stranger)

Images from the Seattle P-I, cartoon by David Horsey

Thinking the unthinkable.

The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses.

Read more of Clay Shirky's thoughts here.

Internet start-ups

In case you missed it, a New York Times article on Sunday about an Interactive conference in Texas seems magically timed, considering those group projects you're working on. One thing that is obvious from this story -- whatever it is that you are developing needs a really cool name, or at least something catchy.

Valley Exec Twitters Through Home Break-In

So funny. Read the story here

Newspapers make move to online only

A good summary from the Seattle Times about newspapers halting their print editions to publish only online. The Times' crosstown rival, the Seattle P-I, will likely do this. Papers in Cincinnati and Madison, Wisc., have already made the switch.

Teaching Online Journalism

I found this site on the web:

Mindy McAdams provides detailed tutorials on how to use online tools - soundslides,
blogs, RSS feeds, audio recordings - things we've already learned.

But I still thought it would be useful, if only for a refresher.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

The life and times of The Rocky Mountain News

Anger and aggregation

The Seattle alt weekly The Stranger had an interesting piece on what might be in store for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if Hearst doesn't find a buyer by mid-March for Washington state's oldest business. A Hearst exec interviewed reporters to hear their ideas for an online-only version of the P-I.

In a significant departure from longstanding P-I practice, the new website, as currently conceived, will become, in part, an aggregator of links to interesting stories and blog posts elsewhere. If that sounds familiar, it should. The model has been pioneered by sites like HuffingtonPost.com, which takes an eclectic, opinionated, and often celebrity-focused approach to information gathering, mixing reports from its tiny staff with blog posts by notable actors and politicos, photo albums of fabulous people, and a constant stream of links to the hot news stories of the day (almost all originally reported by other publications).

Community newspapers

Not all is doom and gloom in the media world. Consider this piece by Chris Stadelman, who went from being the managing editor of a daily, and later as a reporter for the AP, to being an owner and operator of the Parsons Advocate in West Virginia:

I had a choice when I left both Charleston and AP, something many mid-career journalists don't have right now. Reading the list of cutbacks on Romenesko every morning reminds me of the old Monty Python scene: "Bring out your dead, bring out your dead."

Community newspapers, especially weeklies in rural markets, are like the defiant character: "I'm not dead yet!" The ad bases are stable, the readers dedicated, the future solid if not spectacular.

Can Research be Fun?

If you must do it, you might as well have a little fun. I did with European NAvigator. It is the coolest research tool I've stumbled across in a while. I found it while trying to pinpoint the exact spots in Cuba where the Soviets were building missile sites back in the early '60s. I didn't find the answer. But I certainly enjoyed the search. I found ENA to be well-organized and very engaging. Choose your preferred language at the top of the page -- and have a little fun.

Linking in google map info bubbles

I think most of you have figured this out already, but just in case here are the instructions on how to add outside links to the information bubbles in a google map:

When creating the info bubble, go to the "Edit HTML" view. Add your links in HTML (using the standard "a=href" linking language.

Below is a screenshot of what my HTML looked like. I put in links and horizontal rules to separate the links from the rest of the text.

Journalism training in Montana

Asbestos, Vermiculite and W.R. Grace have been in the news, off and on for several decades. The company is back in court and back in the news again in Montana.

The University of Montana's law and journalism schools have joined forces to cover the the latest Grace trial on the Web.

I think it will be interesting to follow their live online coverage of what's likely to be a tedious trial. And I want to see how the students' work stacks up against the AP.

Chimpanzee attack

Link to story about the chimpanzee attack in Stamford, Conn.

very cool interactive feature

From the NYT (again):
Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl

'Is there life after newspapers?'

The question was asked in an article in the American Journalism Review. A graphic designer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, using a variety of sources, counted 15,000-plus job cuts from newspapers in 2008. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics showed payroll at newspapers decreased by 22,400 from January to October 2008. Scary stuff.

An unscientific poll conducted by the piece's author found:

• Just under 36 percent said they found a new job in less than three months. Add those who say they freelance full time, and the total jumps to 53 percent.
• Less than 10 percent say it took them longer than a year.
• Only a handful – 6 percent – found other newspaper jobs. The rest are doing everything from public relations to teaching to driving a bus and clerking in a liquor store.

The article also includes some personal anecdotes from former journalists after they left newspapers, including some who saw losing their jobs as opportunities.

The power of the slideshow?

It depends on what kind of story you're trying to tell.
Poynter's Al Tompkins interviews the Boston Globe's online editor David Beard about how a slide show set to audio can have more impact than other forms of multimedia.
Something useful to read as we continue to explore sound slides.

Publisher tries new approach to newspapers

Interesting article about an attempt to merge newspaper and internet sensibilities.


PUBLISHER RETHINKS THE DAILY: IT'S FREE AND PRINTED AND HAS BLOGS ALL OVER IT.

More on that crash photo

Here are more details about that plane crash photo taken with an iPhone. Thanks Cameron, for sharing the image.

Good Audio Slideshow from NYT

Fashion and the Inauguration
Designer fashion took a back seat at the inauguration. Dressing was all about surviving the cold and reflected the multicultural taste of a democracy.

Thanks for the invite!

I've signed on as a blog author and will share insights here.

LA Times Front Page: User Generated

The Los Angeles Times ran a photo taken by a passenger on board the first ferry to arrive at the site of the US Airways crash in New York City.

DIFFERENT INAUGURAL PERSPECTIVE

The press release below not only offers a different perspective on the Inaugural, but also a lesson on re-invention. Kara Briggs is a former reporter for the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

The Navajo Times announces plans to host a live blog about the inauguration of the President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday, Jan. 20. The blog is a collaboration between the Navajo Times and the NMAI E-Newservice, which is a publication of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. It will be available starting this weekend at http://navajotimes.com/inauguration/.

"This site is for everyone to find out what Native Americans are doing at the inauguration of the 144th president of the United States," said Navajo Times editor Tom Arviso. "This is a service that people won't see anywhere else." Kara Briggs, Yakama journalist and editor of the NMAI E-Newservice, will post live from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. where leaders from across Native America will gather to celebrate the inauguration. "Four-hundred yards from the U.S. Capitol, the museum will be the hub of inauguration day activities for Native Americans," Briggs said. Stay logged on Tuesday morning for a Native perspective on the historic day.

The End of Newspapers

Sad and cynical commentary on the end of an industry. But it is thought provoking. I disagree on several points: I like the portability of newspapers, I love the inserts - but I also loved the TV show "Pushing Daisies" so I'm once again in the minority......

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/when-newspapers.html

On the other hand, on Inauguration Day, I'm not going to go out and buy a commemorative blog.....

Interestingness roundup

There have been a multitude of things that I've read over the last few weeks that made me think, "Hey, I should share this with everyone!" So following is a list of all the "interestingness" (word borrowed from Flickr) that readers of this blog might find useful.

One in 8 Million from NYTimes.com :
This might be particularly relevant for our next class. The New York Times is featuring one "character" per week in a multimedia presentation (photography slideshow with narration by the subject from interviews). I thought the photographs in the slideshows were phenomenal, and the stories the subjects told were really interesting. It says they are adding one new person per week, so I have it bookmarked to look at periodically.

10 Journalists You Should Follow on Twitter from the 10,000 Words Blog:
Interesting coverage on a number of journalists who post on Twitter, including short descriptions of each journalist recommended. I haven't had the time to look through each of their Twitter feeds yet, but what they post might be interesting enough to follow. At a minimum it will give you an idea of how other journalists are utilizing Twitter.

100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes from Smashing Magazine:
For those of you who are either considering starting a Wordpress blog or who have already started one and want a design change, this post shows a multitude (100 to be exact) of free themes available. There is also a new theme announced by Wordpress on Jan. 12 called Grid Focus.

15 Journalists' outstanding personal sites from the 10,000 Words Blog:
I looked through the Web sites featured on this list to get ideas for a possible Web site of my own. There are lots of different design ideas here -- take a look and see what you like and what you don't.

How to start a Twitter hashtag from contentious.com:
This post gives basic information on the theory behind and etiquette of starting hashtags for Twitter (hashtags are used for categorizing "tweets" for particular events so that they are searchable).

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and a happy new year!

All-platform journalist

Poynter's Romenesko had a link to a fascinating story by Philadelphia Week about a former Philadelphia Daily News photographer who is basically an all-in-one journalist covering the city on his site. He promotes his work through social-networking sites, but has yet to turn his labor into a money-making enterprise. He writes about his endeavors here. Apparently lots of people are paying attention and viewing MacMillan as an example of the future of journalism.

Did anyone else see Michael Flynn on AU's SOC webpage?

So what did I see in my RSS feed this evening? A picture of Michael and a few of his comments on the IJ program on American's School of Communication home page, that's what!

His final project for our last class was posted to NBC's Web site.

Note - there's no direct link to the brief from Michael on the SOC page, so it will probably eventually drop off the front. Try clicking the 'Read More SOC News' link at the bottom if you don't see the piece on Michael.