Editor&Publisher: St Louis Beacon seizes Pulitzer opportunity

“We are submitting what we think is our best work, one entry in two categories,” the online-only St Louis Beacon Editor Margaret Freivogel said, according to Editor&Publisher. “It is about the mortgage crisis and explains what it is all about.”

The Beacon, launched in 2008, is one of ‘at least five web-only news outlets’ that plan to take advantage of the new Pulitzer rules, E&P speculates. Full story at this link…

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Allmediascotland : Twitter online newspaper launched by former chief-sub

An online newspaper for users of Twitter, has been set up by a former chief sub-editor of the Scottish Sun, allmediascotland reports.

“I was of the view that it would be good to bring out an online Twitter newspaper where people can message me their news and we publish the best,” explained its founder, James McIvor, former chief sub-editor of the Scottish Sun, who also runs the Scooped! online service.

Full story at this link…

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PaidContent: Telegraph looking to develop e-commerce linking project

Brian Harrison, Telegraph Media Group’s digital director, said yesterday that the group “is in the early stages of developing an e-commerce project to place links to sites like Amazon.co.uk alongside Telegraph.co.uk stories in a bid to replace some of the revenue lost from the declining interest in print ads and the slow-down in online display advertising,” PaidContent reports. Full story…

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[Release] APA: Customer publishing to grow 15 per cent over the next four years

A press release from the Association of Publishing Agencies begins: “The latest market intelligence on the customer publishing industry from Mintel, commissioned by APA and sponsored by DHL Global Mail, reveals that the communication channel has experienced impressive growth in the face of a tough economic climate for media and marketing.”

Full release…

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Search Engine Journal: 10 tips for search-engine friendly journalism

Online, keywords can play a vital role in headlines and tags. Here’s 10 tips from Monica Wright (also check out our online sub-editing wiki page). Full story…

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1981: ‘Imagine turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper’

Check out this video of a news report in 1981 covering the San Francisco Examiner’s experiments with delivering news electronically to home computers. (hat tip to TechCrunch).

“This is an experiment,” David Cole of the SF Examiner says. “We’re trying to figure out what it’s going to mean to us, as editors and reporters and what it means to the home user. And we’re not in it to make money, we’re probably not going to lose a lot but we aren’t going to make much either.”

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Digital Britain – a round-up in 10 bullet points

Today’s the UK government’s ‘Digital Britain’ interim report provided quite a lot to digest, so here’s a ten point link round-up of the most important parts:

• A BBC News video of the Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, outlining the report.

• Download the report here.

• Lord Carter called for broadband in every UK house by 2012, probably at a speed of 2Mb/second (Guardian.co.uk)

• Here’s the Guardian report on the subsequent opposition, and the Telegraph’s, broken down by topic.

• Guardian.co.uk’s Emily Bell looks at the significance of the report’s ‘interim’ nature. She examines how ‘we are caught between two worlds’.

• The Telegraph talks to Lord Carter about Channel 4 funding: “if there is left over cash from television switchover, it could be put to numerous uses, not just to fund the broadcaster [Channel 4],” the paper reported.

• Brand Republic on the possibility of a Channel 4 / BBC Worldwide tie-up.

• ZDNet gives a chattier breakdown here. And the title of the TechRadar post lures you in: ‘The Good, the Bad, and the WTF?’
  

• It’s hard to resist a good old Wordle (we’re as guilty as everyone else) and here is the Guardian’s depiction of the report, along with an explanation of how Lord Carter vows to force ISPs to crack down on piracy.

• Helpfully, the Guardian (by far the most comprehensive and easy-to-navigate news coverage of the afternoon) brings all its Digital Britain content together here.

and an eleventh:

• The BBC Trust’s reaction, which says the body welcomes the report and its proposals.

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Nieman Journalism Lab: Globe and Mail on setting up a news wiki

Matthew Ingram, communities editor at the Globe and Mail in Canada, discusses the highs and lows of setting up a Public Policy Wiki on the paper’s website.

Full story at this link…

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PBS.org: College newspapers feel impact of economic downturn

MediaShift’s Bryan Murley takes a comprehensive look at the future for college newspapers. Initially it seemed that the student papers might weather the economic storm more easily than publications in the professional industry, but “now the national economy indicates that the future might not be quite so rosy”, Murley writes.

“The widespread economic pains in the media environment are finally hitting college news outlets, and many college newspapers are scrambling to deal with the squeeze.” Full story…

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Top 10 ‘Dubious Polling’ Awards mark ‘risible and outrageous pronouncements’

Today sees the results of the first annual top 10 ‘Dubious Polling’ Awards, from StinkyJournalism.org.

George F. Bishop and David W. Moore – bloggers, pollsters and political scientists – have announced their awards, which “are intended to mark for posterity some of the most risible and outrageous pronouncements by the major media polls during the previous year,” a blog post said.

The top award, “The Absolutely Most Preposterous, But Entertaining, Myth of the 2008 Election: Rudy Giuliani Was the Early Frontrunner for the Republican Presidential Nomination!” has joint winners…

Go to the post for the full list, for all the other categories, including awards for: ‘loopiest poll’, ‘shooting yourself in the foot’, ‘over-the-top gloating award’ and ’180 degree’ award. And a few more.

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