Sky News sourced live questions via its website for Saturday’s (May 16) television debate with the Guardian associate editor, Michael White, and the former independent MP for Tatton, Martin Bell.

Questions were posted on the Sky News website and the feature could be watched live via video streaming or on the news channel.

Speaking ahead of the event, Phil Wardman, head of Sky News Online, said: “It’s a great way of harnessing a huge response from web-users. Hosting a simultaneous live debate online and on TV encourages viewer interactivity and gives them a forum to have their questions discussed.”

Replay the Cover It Live chat at this link, and the video is embedded below:

• Event: Reuters hosts social media Q&A with Lib Dem’s Nick Clegg – take part!
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• Innovations in Journalism – live streaming video from mobiles developed by Qik
• Round-up: London Mayor candidates get web-savvy
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A look at how mainstream media (MSM) is seizing upon, or resisting technological changes.

A panel chaired by Wired Magazine’s Ben Hammersley. He is joined by:

• Guido Baumhauer, director of marketing, sales and distribution at Deutshe Welle.

• Pat Loughrey, head of BBC Nations and Regions

• Hans Laroes, head of news at broadcaster NOS News

• Simon Bucks, associate editor, Sky News Online

• Neil McIntosh, European editor, Wall Street Journal

• Peter Vandermeersch, editor of the Belgian newspaper, De Standaard

Hammersley points out this been happening for a long time. So why are we still having the same conversations about the mainstream media reacting? There wasn’t really an answer to that one but there were some other big questions raised:

Are ‘publishers’ and broadcasters ending up in the same space?
It’s not really a relevant distinction, the BBC’s Loughrey tells Journalism.co.uk after the discussion.

“I do not see myself as part of the established media,” Hans Laroes is keen to point out at the beginning.

The broadcast enterprise is still quite a separate one from the web at Sky, says Bucks – although web users already have some influence on television content, and maybe, the future could see online increasingly dictating television content.

What on earth is ‘database journalism’?
Neil McIntosh said that while ‘it has to be said it’s being used for extremely boring journalism,’ it’s about pulling together raw material in exciting ways, such as in crime mapping. There is lots of potential for the Wall Street Journal, he added.

How do we manage editorial, strategy and sales relationships?
Following on from his keynote speech, Vandermeersch stresses that editorial, sales and strategy will have to work closer together.

However, how far that goes is up for debate he says: for example, do you drop stories which are less good commercially?

Meanwhile, at Deutsche Welle, marketing team, editorial and media sales representatives are meeting in small ‘competence teams’  in order to address monetising and editorial issues in different countries (they have 4,500 media partners worldwide), explains Baumhauer.

• Editor’s Weblog: Review of Guardian Unlimited’s development in the build-up to integration
• NMK: ‘What happens to newspapers?’ – place your bets, please
• Press Gazette: ‘Many millions’ more visitors needed to Guardian.co.uk before it can stop relying on print
• #followjourn: @nmcintosh – Neil McIntosh/editor
• NMK: User-generated content ‘is not cheap’, says Guardian.co.uk development head

It seems that more and more people are eschewing television in favour of online content, when it comes to obtaining and providing coverage of important events.

According to the Associated Press, eight million users watched the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States in Washington D.C on Tuesday, via AP’s Online Video Network (OVN).

At its peak, AP claim that as many as 374,000 streams were accessed concurrently.

This is a significant increase from the 80,000 live streams AP recorded during its coverage of the presidential election night in November.

In addition, 160 media outlets subscribed to their premium service, which provided a video widget allowing for multiple viewing angles of the event.

Static media also enjoyed a healthy rise, with AP Images and AP Exchange together recording an 80 per cent peak over regular traffic to their sites during the event.

In total, over 1,400 inaugural images passed through their services from around the globe.

AP were not alone in their online triumph. CNN shattered its own record four-fold, by attracting 136 million views of its website and 21.3 million viewers to its live streaming coverage.

Web users were so busy watching President Obama sworn into office that Google noticed a distinct drop in the number of searches performed during the inaugural address.

• BBC’s online Olympics coverage draws 4.4m
• CNN.com sees 400 per cent traffic spike by Tuesday afternoon
• CNET: Traffic surge to news sites as web holds (just) for Jackson memorial
• CNN wins battle of online inauguration broadcasters, according to Omniture stats
• Digital developments at CNN: Gustav raises traffic, as new international digital role is created

• Video: Jeff Jarvis and the Future of Journalism part 2 | Media | guardian.co.uk
  It’s a link economy, stupid

  In part two of his seminar to the Guardian, as part of the Future of Journalism series, Jeff Jarvis argues that links are worth more than content

  (tags: guardian jarvis)
• YouTube home to nearly half web clips watched in UK, comScore reveals | Media | guardian.co.uk
  YouTube accounted for almost 50% of the 3.5bn video clips viewed by UK web users in March, well ahead of the 1.2% share of the BBC and its iPlayer service, according to research firm comScore.
  (tags: youtube comscore)
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  The new CNET home page includes a carousel highlighting several stories across News, Reviews, and Downloads, as well as an integrated video player for CNET TV content
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• Why journalists must learn the values of the blogging revolution | Greenslade | guardian.co.uk
  The debate over blogging’s usefulness to journalism tends to get stuck in a cul de sac, mainly because too few people – well, too few journalists – treat it seriously.
  (tags: greenslade blogging)
• Interview: Rob Grimshaw, MD, FT.com: New Niches, Pinker Pages, No More Subscribers | paidContent:UK
  Paid Content UK chats with FT.com head
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• IPC buys Mousebreaker website | Media | guardian.co.uk
  Magazine publisher IPC Media has bought the casual gaming website Mousebreaker in an effort to increase its access to an audience of young male internet users.
  (tags: ipc)

• links for 2008-07-15
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• MediaWeek: YouTube connects news organisations with cit-j video
• More analytics for YouTube
• Cnet News: Newly prominent videos on Google News

ACAP was designed to be a system that allows content publishers to embed into their websites information that details access and use policies in a language that search engines can understand.

Over on Currybet.net Martin Belam has outlined some of the major flaws, as he sees them, of ACAP – which launched in New York last week.

Here’s a brief outline, but you have to go to his blog to get the necessary full picture:

It isn’t user centred

“On the ACAP site I didn’t see anything that explained to me why this would currently be a good thing for end users.

“It seems like a weak electronic online DRM – with the vague promise that in the future more ‘stuff’ will be published, precisely because you can do less with it.”

It isn’t technically sound

“I’ve no doubt that there has been technical input into the specification.

“It certainly doesn’t seem, though, to have been open to the round-robin peer review that the wider Internet community would expect if you were introducing a major new protocol you effectively intended to replace robots.txt”

The ACAP website tools don’t work

“I was unaware that there was a ‘known bug in Mozilla Firefox’ that prevented it saving a text file as a text file.

“I was going to make a cheap shot at the way that was phrased, as it clearly should have been ‘there is a known bug in our script which affects Mozilla Firefox’.

I thought though that I ought to check it in Internet Explorer first – and found that the ACAP tool didn’t work in that browser either.”

Update:

Ian Douglas, on the Telegraph, seems to have similar feelings about ACAP being too publisher-centric:

“Throughout Acap’s documents I found no examples of clear benefits for readers of the websites or increased flexibility of uses for the content or help with making web searches more relevant.

The new protocol focuses entirely on the desires of publishers, and only those publishers who fear what web users will do with the content if they don’t retain control over it at every point.”

• ACAP answers its critics
• Eric Schmidt – Google resistance to ACAP based on technology
• Google European Public Policy Blog: On working with newspapers
• UK national newspapers neglecting sitemaps for better search indexing
• Google introduces option for five-a-day free click limit