Huffington Post: Early signs of success for citizen journalism investigation

The Huffington Post claims that one of its first investigative projects shows evidence of a ‘new alliance between professional reporters and citizens who have a high interest or expertise in a particular topic’:

“Several weeks ago, as one of our first investigative projects, we set out to explore how insurance companies decide which claims to approve or deny. Regulators, lawmakers and policy makers seem to be in the dark about that important aspect of the health care system, since insurance companies generally are not required to disclose their rules, methods or records about claims. Investigative Fund reporter Danielle Ivory wrote about this lack of available data and invited citizen journalists to help us investigate. Hundreds of people volunteered. And they’ve already helped us extend and deepen our journalism. Many have volunteered personal tales about their dealings with insurers. Others are health professionals and insurance insiders with direct experience in the claims process.”

Full post at this link…

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MSNBC’s Charlie Tillinghast: ‘There are no TV journalists anymore. There are videojournalists’

HuffPost’s ‘Game Changers’ feature is selecting 100 ‘innovators, visionaries, and leaders’ who are ‘harnessing the power of new media to reshape their fields and change the world’.

One of its picks is Charlie Tillinghast, president and publisher of MSNBC.com; HuffPo picked out this quote of his:

“There are no TV journalists anymore. There are videojournalists. When somebody from NBC News goes out in the field (…) they’re shooting a piece that will show up on ‘Nightly,’ on MSNBC cable, on MSNBC.com, on a mobile device. The point is it’s all about video and all the places that people can watch video.”

Via LostRemote.com.

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Nieman Journalism Lab: HuffPo’s A/B headline testing

The Huffington Post is applying A/B testing to some of its headlines, reports the Nieman Journalism Lab.

“Readers are randomly shown one of two headlines for the same story. After five minutes, which is enough time for such a high-traffic site, the version with the most clicks becomes the wood that everyone sees.”

Full post at this link…

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – HuffPo Tech

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BeetTV: Interview with editor of HuffPo’s new tech section

Beet TV recorded this interview with  Jose Antonio Vargas, the former Washington Post reporter now editing the Huffington Post’s new technology section that launched on Monday. Technology is anthropology, Vargas says.

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New local site and verticals for HuffPo

The Huffington Post has launched its third local site, as expected, for Denver, Colorado.

An introduction from Ethan Axelrod, HuffPo’s Denver editor, explains the thinking behind launch in Denver and not another US city – namely the political importance of the state and Denver’s position as a destination for young professionals and businesses, he says.

The site is also planning launches of new technology, sport (end of October) and books (October 5) verticals – a move examined by the New York Observer:

“The advantage to adding verticals ad infinitum to general-interest websites is simple: they make it easy for web designers to mimic that familiar feeling of pulling out the business pages or flipping to the top sports story in traditional print newspapers. Drilling down on one topic at a time and carefully tailoring content by subject makes it easier for visitors to read what they want to and for advertisers to reach a specific, targeted audience,” the Observer reports.

Being able to roll-out new sections and topic pages quickly may suggest a landgrab approach towards attracting users.

As usability expert Jakob Nielsen tells the Observer, these sections allow sites to ’scoop up’ users with specific interests and perhaps attract them to other parts of the site. To do this however, the content these sections offer must be more than just a filtering of the broader site.

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Huffington Post seeks headline help on Twitter

Wow. The Huffington Post is taking the crowdsourcing news strategy one step further still:

Josh Young (@jny2), recently appointed social news editor for the HuffPo, tweeted:

“We’re crowdsourcing our latest Joe Wilson hed at http://huffingtonpost.com We came up with “No, YOU Lie” Can you do better? #headlinehelp”

(Via @jayrosen_nyu / Mediaite.com)

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Huffington Post: HuffPost launches ’social news’

The Huffington Post has signed up with Facebook Connect to offer its users the ability to comment on news stories from the site and share them on Facebook via new profile pages on the HuffPo site.

The ’social news’ service will also allow users to find out which of their Facebook friends are also reading HuffPo.

The launch is part of a bigger move towards personalised news, says founder Ariana Huffington, and more personalisation and social features are in the pipeline.

“The explosive growth of online social networking has fundamentally changed our relationship with news. It’s no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, react to news, and share news. News has become an important element of community – something around which we gather, connect, and converse,” writes Huffingotn.

Full post at this link…

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All Things Digital: HuffPo to expand into New York and Denver

Following the launch of its news pages for Chicago, the Huffington Post has continued its local expansion with a new site for New York.

The local sites are a combination of curation, blogs and opinion, says Ariana Huffington.

In an interview with All Things Digital, the HuffP also confirms plans to cover Denver with a new vertical:

Full story at this link…

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Bloggasm: How much original reporting on HuffPo’s front page?

Simon Owens has done a spot-check on the front page of the Huffington Post site, at 8pm on Tuesday June 2, to ascertain how many HuffPo headlines are of the reporters’ own making.

He explains how he defines ‘original reporting’ in the Bloggasm post, and here’s what he found:

“There were a total of 77 headlines on the front page of the Huffington Post when I conducted the survey. Of those, four headlines simply linked to news outlets offsite. There were five HuffPo stories that contained original reporting. There were 55 HuffPo stories that simply expressed opinion and/or summarized content from other outlets. The remaining 13 stories were reprinted wire copy.

“So this means that approximately 6 per cent of the HuffPo stories on the front page tonight contained original reporting. This is likely significantly fewer originally reported stories than you’d find on most major newspaper websites, including the New York Times, LA Times and the Washington Post.”

Full post at this link…

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