Globe and Mail: Misunderstanding web metrics can cause lazy journalism

Interesting column from Roy MacGregor for Canada’s Globe and Mail on the damage that chasing ‘hits’ online can do to journalism and why circulation and web traffic should not be confused with circulation:

Why be a storyteller when a ranter will have far more traffic? Why be investigative when instigative is a far quicker route to success on the web?

(…) It is a terrible vision of what journalism could evolve into as it enters a world it so desperately wishes to own, but has little idea of what the available measures in this digital world actually mean.

Full column at this link…

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – analysing Facebook share buttons

Facebook: If you’ve got the option to share articles via Facebook on your website, look at this post on the Facebook developer wiki to find out how you can analyse who’s sharing, liking and commenting on your articles. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Journalists who call Hugo Chavez a dictator should be jailed, says Sean Penn

From last Thursday, an interesting interview in the Guardian with Sean Penn, in which the US actor criticises the treatment of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez by the US media.

Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.

Full story at this link…

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Guardian: Tax Google for carrying news, says report

Control of the media is dominated by a handful of publishers and broadcasters and the proceeds of tax for sites, such as Google, that carry news, but do not produce it, should go to local newspapers, a new report will say this week.

The report argues for levies to promote new media and encourage a diversity of news sources. Recycling money in this way, say the authors, is not new for Britain. Google could generate £100m a year for cash-starved media if it was taxed for the content it distributes.

In Making a Good Society, the report from the Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, which will be published this week, the idea of charitable funding for news gathering is also discussed.

Full story at this link…

This is not the first time that a system of levies has been discussed – a joint National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and BECTU study last year proposed a similar system of taxation for internet service providers and mobile network operators to support public service broadcasting.

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Independent apologises for ‘seriously defamatory’ headline

Independent News & Media has apologised for a “seriously defamatory” headline on a comment piece by blogger and writer Zoe Margolis published in the Independent on Sunday [see background here]. In a correction published on its site today, the newspaper said:

On 7 March 2010, we published an article by Zoe Margolis. In part of the first edition of the newspaper and online, this article carried the headline, “I was a hooker who became an agony aunt”. This was written by the newspaper not Ms Margolis. We accept that Ms Margolis is not and never has been “a hooker” or otherwise involved in the sex industry. The wording of the headline was a mistake and seriously defamatory of Ms Margolis. We offer our sincere apologies to Ms Margolis for the damage to her reputation and the distress and embarrassment which she has suffered.

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AFP: Online pay model will be ‘critical second revenue stream’ says Sulzberger

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger says that charging for the paper’s online content will provide a “critical second revenue stream”.

Speaking at the Bloomberg BusinessWeek 2010 Media Summit, Sulzberger also reassured readers that the print edition of the paper will continue for many years to come:

It’s a critical part of today, it will be a critical part I think for many years to come (…) The iPad is also going to be a critical part just the way the Kindle’s a critical part.

At the end of the day we can’t define ourselves by our method of distribution (…) What we care about at the end of day is our journalism, our quality journalism.

Full story at this link…

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Poynter: Msnbc.com narrative slideshow garners 78m page views

After researching the strange story of a very wealthy, elderly American heiress,  veteran Msnbc.com investigative reporter Bill Dedman decided to experiment with the presentation of his article. Rather than turn in a few thousand words of copy as usual, Dedman put together almost 50 photographs in a slideshow and accompanied them with captions.

The result, The Clarks: an American story of wealth, scandal and mystery, is not groundbreaking in its approach to storytelling, but the response to the story is testament to the power of visual reportage.

Dedman reported that he received 500 emails from readers about the story, more than he’s received about any other in his career, and it has had around 78 million page views, more than any other story on Msnbc.com.

Poynter’s Steve Myers has an interview with Dedman on the story at this link…

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Beta design for new BBC homepage offers more personalisation

New navigation, a ‘media zone’ showcasing the best in BBC content online, and a ‘topic tracker’ for following your favourite subjects are being trialled as part of a new beta design for the homepage of bbc.co.uk.

There’s a full breakdown at this link of what has and hasn’t changed – the movable widgets for different sections, such as sport and weather, brought in for the last redesign are still a feature – many of the changes will be fairly subtle.

Current look

Beta design

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Video: Why the Guardian is pushing for more open data

Stephen Dunn, who heads up the Guardian’s technology strategy, talks to Beet.tv in the video below about how opening up and making better use of data can provide journalistic and business opportunities for publishers:

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Marking the World Day Against Cyber Censorship

“Against the enemies of the internet”  – this is the short but incisive message for today’s World Day Against Cyber Censorship, organised by press freedom campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Jean-Francois Julliard, secretary-general of RSF, explains the day in this video:

To mark the day, RSF has published an article, ‘Web 2.0 versus Control 2.0′, emphasising the idea of the internet as a force for democracy and freedom.

The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attempting to tighten their control of the net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive ‘netizens’ demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.

Last night RSF, with support from Google, awarded the inaugural Netizen Prize to the Iranian creators of website Change for Equality, “a well-known source of information on women’s rights in Iran [...] and rallying point for opponents of the regime.”

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