Goodbye with a bang - another football site to go

Echoing yesterday’s news that Whoateallthepies.tv has struggled to get advertising, founder of outwithabang.com and myfootballwriter.com, Rick Waghorn, reports that they have decided to give up on their Colchester United site.

Waghorn feels that it would be ‘a bit rich’ if he didn’t mention their own ‘death in the family’, given that they have charted the rise and impending falls of many media organisations.

He writes, “[I]t’s not an ex-site. That’s wrong; it’s just having a rest, a breather. But it has closed down. For now…Why? Well, the reasons are many and varied, but mostly financial.”

Waghorn praises his site’s editorial strength but he says that their ‘local advertising network never caught up; never made it that far.’

In March, Journalism.co.uk reported that while Waghorn’s Norwich United site attracted 33,000 unique hits in January 2008 alone, Waghorn emphasised that the important thing was to create a ‘melting pot’ of revenue from Google, local advertisers, subscribers and content syndication.

In January Waghorn told Journalism.co.uk about his hopes for myfootballwriter.com to expand into the US with proposals for sites covering American sports teams.

Journalism.co.uk’s other blogs about Rick Waghorn can be read here.

News prediction game Hubdub launches widgets

Hubdub - the gaming website where you bet Hubdub dollars on the outcome of news events - has developed two widgets, according to the site’s official blog.

The market widget features a graph, which shows how different outcomes have been backed by users over time and what their changing probability is.

The prediction widget on the other hand lets users record their own predictions - and how much they bet - ‘for posterity’. To get this widget, users will be given a link as they post a question.

Earlier this year Journalism.co.uk interviewed Hubdub founder Nigel Eccles, who spoke of a revenue strategy that will involve partnerships with media organisations and publishers. Offering widgets is a great way to start this sharing of content and - with added trackbacks - of driving traffic back to the Hubdub site.

The European News Interactivity Index

Nicolas Kayser-Bril, contributor to the Online Journalism Blog and Observatoire des Media, has created an index of the interactive tools used by European news websites.

The index compares and contrasts which media organisations make use of tools such as Twitter, mobile alerts and social networks, as well as noting their policy on user registration for interactive services.

News sites from the UK and France, to Macedonia and Hungary are featured - entries for additional organisations should be submitted to nicolas@observatoiredesmedias.com.

Below is the index’s comparison of interactive features used by Sky’s site vs Guardian.co.uk:

The project is an extension of the work by Birmingham Post reporter and blogger Joanna Geary, who looked at the use of interactive tools by business news sites.

Rusbridger attacks Chinese ‘censorship’ as Tibetan riots quelled

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has written to the Chinese ambassador in the UK attacking China’s censoring of foreign news websites - including Guardian.co.uk - in the wake of the Tibetan riots.

Mr Rusbridger asked for the ambassador’s assistance in unblocking his website back online and ensuring that access to it remained free of interference.

“As you will be aware, the blackout has coincided with media coverage of the recent unrest in Tibet, forcing the conclusion that this is an act of deliberate and wholly unacceptable censorship,” wrote Mr Rusbridger.

“We are dismayed that Beijing should curtail international press freedom, particularly in Olympic year.”

The move comes in the wake of a violent crackdown on protests in Tibet by Chinese authorities that have also attempted to block the media from reporting what was going on.

Tibetan exiles say at least 80 protesters died in the clashes as reporters were being forced to leave.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China reported that as many as two-dozen reporters have been turned away from or forced to leave Tibetan areas and government censorship of the internet and television broadcasts was also hampering journalists’ work.

“Reporting interference is not in the interest of the Chinese government which is trying to show a more open, transparent and accountable image to the world,” said FCCC President Melinda Liu, in a piece carried on the FCCC website.

“Such interference is not in keeping with reporting regulations adopted during the Olympics period - and is especially not in keeping with the international community’s expectations of an Olympic host nation,” added Liu.

Writing for the Telegraph.co.uk Richard Spencer claimed to have been ordered to leave the Tibetan town he was staying in by local police (Spencer also points to some bloggers who are managing to get information onto the net about the crackdown)

The Honk Kong Journalists Association (hat tip Roy Greenslade) is also reporting that journalists from at least six Hong Kong media organisations have been placed under escort and ordered out of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

Social Media Journalist: ‘USG is the most overrated social media ‘news’ craze’ Jack Lail, Knoxville News Sentinel

Journalism.co.uk talks to journalists across the globe about social media and how they see it changing their industry. This week, Jack Lail of Knoxville News Sentinel.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Jack D. Lail. I’m the managing editor/multimedia for the Knoxville News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tennessee.

I am in charge of the editorial content on our family of websites that include knoxnews.com and govolsxtra.com.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
AIM, Twitter and Facebook mainly. I dabble in lots of others. Email? Is that a social media tool? Live in it. Google Reader? Certainly use it every day.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
I continue to think the unsexy RSS feed has the largest potential and is the most important tool. Twitter and Facebook have potential.

Next is blogging, if you consider that a social media tool. It is critical for mainstream media to adopt and adapt. Because it is a web native publishing platform as well as a social network, it engages and creates community in very effective ways.

Not a software tool, but the iPhone is the biggest game changer in terms of new platform. I’m actually starting to believe the hype about the mobile web.

Users get that product and every other hardware maker is improving their smart phone offerings at a more rapid pace. Did we just go from Gopher to Netscape in the mobile space?

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
YouTube and Facebook notwithstanding, user-generated content seems to be the most overrated social media ‘news’ craze or the most ineptly executed by traditional media organisations.

I think you’ll see a few sites that thrive at this and nail it and everybody else will suck. There seems to be a difference also in layering in news in social media sites and creating community around news.

Obviously, there are more social media sites being launched than can be supported by audiences or business models. Is it spring and time to prune?

Brightcove pulls plug on user-generated content

User-generated content (that is non-professionally produced videos) will no longer be a feature on internet TV service Brightcove after December 18.

Writing in a blog post, Brightcove CEO Jeremy Alliare said the aspect of the site that allows users to upload and share personal videos will cease to exist from this date.

“While the consumer-facing Brightcove.TV website has been popular… it has been dwarfed by the adoption of our internet TV platform by media businesses around the world,” he said.

Some commenting on the post accuse the service as ’selling out’, while others say this will release funds diverted to the consumer service that can be re-invested in Brightcove’s partnerships with smaller businesses.

The change by Brightcove is the same made by internet TV platform Mania TV back in October, which according to a piece on the Editors Weblog showed that professionally produced content from media organisations will win out against UGC in the long term.

Brightcove and Mania’s decisions suggest that UGC, in terms of video, may not be as significant a threat to reporters as has been previously argued. As the article on the weblog states, Mania closed its doors to UGC “because the site realized that there was little demand for UGC on what is supposed to be a site revolving around professionally produced entertainment.”

While content produced and submitted by users may provide useful supplementary material for a news story in the way of raw, first-hand footage, for more investigative and in-depth reporting, professionally produced content will still hold more value, argues the weblog.

But does the branding of a news site on video content ensure its quality or are there examples of content submitted by users that have outdone their professional rivals?