Managing editor of the Huffington Post Media Group Jai Singh, is leaving for a role as Yahoo Media Network editor in chief, paidContent reports.

At Yahoo, he will be responsible for increasing original content and performance across all platforms—and for all of YMN’s leading brands, not only Yahoo News.

Read more from paidContent on this here. Yahoo also reported the move itself.

• ContentNext begins UK expansion with paidContent recruitment
• Bloggers showing ‘plenty of interest’ in writing for HuffPo UK
• New Yahoo app for HuffPost Social News
• Yahoo! and CNET enter partnership to reach new audiences
• paidContent.org: GNM laying off six US employees

Users of the web-based social bookmarking site Delicious are being asked to transfer their accounts to AVOS, the social bookmarking and sharing platform’s new owners – the founders of YouTube.

Users who do not to transfer to the new service will be able to access their accounts for approximately two months, after which time they will be closed.

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who set up YouTube and sold it to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, said their “first hand expertise enabling millions of consumers to share their experiences with the world” will be used in developing Delicious.

“We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level,” Hurley said in a press release. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”

In December, Yahoo stated Delicious “was not a strategic fit” within the company and then announced it was seeking a buyer.

The sale to AVOS was announced yesterday for an undisclosed sum.

What is Delicious and why is it useful to journalists?

When it appeared that Delicious was to be shut down, Paul Bradshaw wrote an article on his Online Journalism Blog of its importance to journalists.

I am hugely sad about [the closure] – Delicious is possibly the most useful tool I use as a journalist, academic and writer.

Not just because of the way it makes it possible for me to share, store and retrieve information very easily – but because of the network of other users doing just the same whose overlapping fields of information I can share.

Delicious is a social bookmarking service for saving, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

It was started in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo in 2005.

Instead of having different bookmarks saved on every computer, Delicious allows you to save and tag news articles or interesting sites and share with others.

The Delicious logo is often displayed on the share option of a news story.

Users build their own network to follow or have their bookmarks followed by other users.

By tagging saved bookmarks Delicious users can keep track of areas of interest.

• YouTube founders buy Twitter and Facebook analytics client
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – get linking
• App of the week for journalists: Greplin
• Yahoo rumoured to be rolling out new connection feature
• Social bookmarking and UK newspaper websites

Yahoo has started to roll out a new local product offering dedicated pages of news, events and deals for a number of locations in the US, lostremote.com reported this week.

Beta pages for Yahoo Local have emerged for San Francisco, Brooklyn and Michigan, which can be viewed by city or neighbourhood and feature a list of aggregated posts.

Many of the headlines, especially at the neighborhood level, originate from neighborhood blogs. You can post an event, or sign up with Associated Content to become a paid contributor. “We have launched Yahoo! local in a few neighborhoods and towns to refine the experience while gathering more content for the next set of cities,” explains the site.

Journalism.co.uk reported earlier this week that Yahoo had launched a new contributor network which enables its users to publish content onto its sites, following its acquisition of Associated Content earlier this year.

• Yahoo rumoured to be rolling out new connection feature
• NBC and Outside.in match EveryBlock and NYTimes partnership
• Yahoo News tests new ‘Infinite Browse’ feature
• Yahoo! and CNET enter partnership to reach new audiences
• Slovakian media goes behind the paywall

New US media blog The Cutline, from Yahoo’s The Upshot, reported yesterday that the New York Times was restructuring its web newsroom as part of plans to bring together its print and online operations.

According to a memo from executive editor Bill Keller obtained by The Cutline, it was announced internally that digital news editor Jim Roberts will become the assistant managing editor for news, while web newsroom editor Fiona Spruill is named editor for emerging platforms.

Read more on this here…

• New York Times considers creating own in-house WikiLeaks
• New York Times integrated newsroom vid
• BNONews.com: NYTimes to cut 100 from newsroom
• NY Times exec ed Bill Keller sparks online comment with Darfur remark
• #followjourn: Dan Roberts/business editor

Yahoo has launched its new Weekend Edition on Yahoo News, a news package featuring original video and editorial content aimed at weekend audiences, according to a press release from Friday.

Weekend Edition programming will cover a wide range of topics, including travel and leisure, culture, family, and healthy living. In addition to featuring content from across the Yahoo! network and from Yahoo’s content partners, Weekend Edition will be anchored by an original video series with several high-profile hosts.

According to a report by MediaWeek, content will also be aggregated from sites such as The Daily Beast, Time and LiveScience.com.

• Yahoo rumoured to be rolling out new connection feature
• paidContent: Managing editor of Huffington Post Media Group leaving for Yahoo
• Yahoo News tests new ‘Infinite Browse’ feature
• Yahoo! and CNET enter partnership to reach new audiences
• Innovations in Journalism – socially referred and aggregated news from Yahoo! Buzz

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, Yahoo is preparing to launch a new feature called ‘Y Connect’ which would allow online publishers to integrate with Yahoo.

With Y Connect, users could register with and log into media sites simply by clicking on a Yahoo button. Then, users’ activity on the media site can easily be shared with contacts on Yahoo. Content on non-Yahoo sites would be shared via Yahoo Pulse, a hub connected to Yahoo Mail accounts.

According to WSJ.com, the service could also then be used by companies to “better understand the interests of users and figure out which online ads are more likely to be effective”.

There doesn’t seem to be any official word yet from Yahoo on these reports, but the WSJ report says it expects a formal announcement later this year.

• Yahoo! and CNET enter partnership to reach new audiences
• Pulse: Press Complaints Commission to investigate Daily Mail over GP pay claims
• Yahoo News tests new ‘Infinite Browse’ feature
• Online video: FT’s Stephen Pinches on opportunities for publishers with connected TV
• Storify stories now on news reader app Pulse

The Business Insider has spotted that Bloomberg appears to have started to provide its news content on the Yahoo Finance site.

According to BI’s report, a Yahoo spokesperson confirmed that the company has added Bloomberg.com content to its financial news portfolio. Business Insider adds that this is one of many deals to increase the site’s original content.

Yahoo Finance, which has content deals with dozens of financial news sites (including Business Insider), also is in the process of ramping up its original content. The site just poached outgoing Newsweek economics editor Dan Gross, and is looking for an editor to head up a new financial news blog.

• Yahoo News launches new Weekend Edition
• Business Insider: Bloomberg.com’s new look
• Yahoo News tests new ‘Infinite Browse’ feature
• paidContent: Managing editor of Huffington Post Media Group leaving for Yahoo
• Media release: NCTJ announces new business journalism qualification

Style: Yahoo has entered the style guide fray – a useful addition when deciding house style on web and new media terms in particular. Tipster: Judith Townend.

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

• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Yahoo Pipes group for journalists
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – tips for online sub-editors
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – social media profile pictures
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – creating a presentation

Yahoo has released a style guide for writing, editing and creating content in the ‘digital world’. Priced at £13.12 on Amazon.co.uk (currently on pre-order only), it promises to be the ‘Ultimate Sourcebook’.

Here’s the blurb:

Is it Web site, website, or web site? What’s the best on-screen placement for a top story? How can I better know my site’s audience? The rapid growth of the Web has meant having to rely on style guides that are intended for print publishing, such as The Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White’s, The Elements of Style, or The Associated Press Stylebook, but these excellent guides do not address writing for the Internet.

The Yahoo! Style Guide does. Writers and programmers at Yahoo!, faced with a lack of industry guidance fifteen years ago, began cobbling together a set of guidelines for Web writing.

The seeds of The Yahoo! Style Guide were planted with their first in-house reference guide, and Yahoo! content creators have built and added to the guide ever since, making it the go-to manual inside Yahoo!. Polished and expanded for its public debut, this resource will cover the basics of grammar and punctuation as well as Web-specific ways to perfect a site, such as:

• Identifying the audience and making the site accessible to everyone
• Constructing clear and compelling copy
• Developing a site’s unique voice
• Streamlining text for mobile devices
• Optimizing Web pages to increase the chances of appearing in search results
• Streamlining text so that people can read your pages at Internet speed.

The Yahoo! Style Guide will help anyone who writes, edits, or designs for the Internet accomplish their work with clarity and precision.

Via FishbowlNY

• Have your say on the AP 2011 Stylebook
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – style guides for the web
• Yahoo! and CNET enter partnership to reach new audiences
• Yahoo rolling out new US local network in beta
• Flipboard goes French with latest update

Starting this week, the editor’s blog will feature an afternoon roundup of all things media from over the pond. From the hugely important to the very inconsequential, check in for a choice of America’s journalistic goings on.

ABC president soft-peddles what look like substantial cuts

Do you want the bad news or just the news first? Bad? OK.

The bad news today comes from the Los Angeles Times in the form of an announcement by ABC that it is to make a “fundamental transformation” to its news division. “Fundamental transformation” being bad-newsspeak, of course, for ‘streamlining’, or ‘workforce optimisation’, or ‘force shaping’, or, even, ‘mass redundancies’.

Reports suggest the company may be ‘smart-sizing’ its ‘force’ to the tune of a 20 per cent reduction. The news arm currently employs 1,400 staff. The maths, or ‘math’ in this case, produces bad news whichever way you phrase it.

David Westin, president of ABC News, went with a memo that all sounded like this:

The time has come to anticipate change, rather than respond to it. We have a rare opportunity to get in front of what’s coming, to ensure that ABC News has a sound journalistic and financial footing for many years to come, and to serve our audiences even better. But we must move boldly and promptly.

Redundancies have been offered, but it seems likely that if staff don’t move as ‘boldly and promptly’ and Westin intends to, they’ll be pushed.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not all about contraction though:

In newsgathering, we intend to dramatically expand our use of digital journalists [...] In production, we will take the example set by Nightline of editorial staff who shoot and edit their own material and follow it throughout all of our programs…

So, listen up: if you can write copy, sub-edit, shoot and edit video, write code, produce an outside broadcast by yourself, mend a broken server, and all the while keep time on the big drum strapped to your back, now is the time to show your face at ABC.

Westin’s memo reprinted at the Los Angeles Times.

Washington Post Co. and A.H. Belo Corp announce Q4 profits against backdrop of newspaper arm losses

Just in from Editor & Publisher, news that the Washington Post Co. and A.H. Belo Corp (parent company to the Dallas Morning News) both had a profitable fourth quarter 2009. The Washington Post Co. reported a Q4 profit $82.2 million, or $8.71 a share, in comparison with $18.8 million, or $2.01 a share in Q4 2008. A.H. Belo recorded a much more moderate $5.6 million, or $0.27 per share, its first quarterly profit since it was spun off from Belo Corp. two years ago.

The figures behind the figures at the Washington Post Co. make for fairly grim reading on the newspaper side of things though, with advertising revenue still in decline. From E&P:

Newspaper revenue declined four per cent in the fourth quarter to $193.3 million. Print ad revenue was down 9 per cent to $92.6 million, with declines in classified, zones and retail advertising offset by an increase in general advertising.

And whilst the overall figures seem to be going in the right direction, they are nonetheless sobering:

For the full year 2009, the newspaper division reported an operating loss of $163.5 million, compared to an operating loss of $192.7 million in 2008.

Similarly, at A.H. Belo:

Advertising revenue continued to fall substantially in the quarter, with the retail down 30.9 per cent, and print classified down 31.1 per cent. Internet revenue fell 8.5 per cent, to $10.1, which accounted for 7.5 per cent, of total revenue for the quarter.

Washington City Paper editor’s second attempt to leave proves successful

From E&P again, news that Erik Wemple is leaving the Washington City Paper, where he has been editor for eight years. He will join Allbritton Communications’ new local start-up in Washington D.C.

Wemple accepted a position as editor of Village Voice in New York during his editorship of the Washington City Paper, but changed his mind before his first day, deciding instead to stay put.

Yahoo late to the Twitter party, but may have come best dressed

Today’s big social media news is a Yahoo/Twitter partnership.

TechCrunch takes an irreverent look at the embargo politics surrounding the announcement, and a sideswipe at Yahoo for being late to the party:

Yahoo and Twitter have reached an agreement to share data between their properties. That’s great. Yahoo is only a few months behind Google and Microsoft (Bing) doing the same thing.

It seems Yahoo! got so over excited at the news themselves that they toyed with their Twitter followers over the course of the day, hyping the announcement by tweeting clues, and possibly confusing its importance with your Moon landings and presidential race winners.

• Clue #1/5: Who has approx 29,000 followers as of this morning? #ybignews
• Clue #2/5: What kind of “moon” had teen moviegoers swooning last fall? #ybignews
• Clue #3/5: Who might you greet with a friendly “howdy”? #ybignews (use hashtag for previous clues)
• Clue #4/5:What’s both a sugar substitute & a mathematical symbol? #ybignews (use hashtag for previous clues-forms a phrase)
• Final clue: A little birdie told us to find them @twitter #ybignews Thanks for following us (winners notified soon)

What fun.

Mashable goes into more detail about the partnership, claiming that despite its tardyness it is more comprehensive, and a better all round deal than Twitter’s search partnerships with Google and Bing.

“This is a local blog, for local people…” Erm, I think you mean hyperlocal there love

Following on from yesterday’s US Digest coverage of the NYT’s new East Village hyperlocal venture, a small, but useful post from Lost Remote today outlines its take on some key new terms:

There is a difference between the terms “local”, “hyperlocal” and “niche” and I want to outline our editorial policy regarding the three. We see the three used interchangeably some times, and I think it’s important we all recognise the differences. ‘Hyperlocal’ covers neighborhoods, while ‘local’ covers towns and cities. We get some press releases here about how stations or newspapers are starting new ‘hyperlocal’ websites that cover their city or a given topic in their city (say, ‘moms’). A mum blog is a niche site. A neighbourhood blog is hyperlocal. A city blog is local. Disagree? Let us know.

• NYT second-quarter operating profit more than twice 2009 figure
• LinkedIn growing by two new members every second
• WSJ: Thomson Reuters reports 66 per cent profit increase
• FT: NY Times losses further highlight decline for print
• Media Post: NAA reports shows online newspaper ad revenue down 13 per cent in first quarter

Google Buzz might be the talk of the social media town right now, but Huffington Post is concentrating on Yahoo, with the launch of its new app for HuffPost Social News. Arianna Huffington writes:

We’ve also made it so you can now use your Yahoo! ID to quickly sign in to HuffPost, and to join HuffPost Social News so you can easily link up with your friends from Yahoo! who are also part of the HuffPost community. Want to check out what they are reading or make sure you see their latest comment? Log onto HuffPost Social News using Yahoo! and that happens automatically. And when you write a comment, you can, with one click, share it with your Yahoo! friends and contacts – just like you can share to Facebook or via Twitter.

Full post at the weekend…

• Huffington Post: HuffPost launches ‘social news’
• Huffington Post UK’s Facebook app clocks up 20,000 users
• Citizen journalism site Blottr launches Facebook app
• Ten ways journalists can use Google+
• Huffington Post local launches Chicago site

The ‘open content network’ Associated Content is looking to own more localised event content with advertising, its CEO told BIA/Kelsey in an interview for its blog.

Associated Content, which has over 350,000 contributors (and 60 employees),  gathers and syndicates content around the web. CEO Patrick Keane told BIA/Kelsey that the company can also develop content on a “custom” basis for commercial clients, which it has done for Reuters, Hachette, Procter & Gamble and Toyota.

Publishers – who Keane calls “the owners of audience” – can increasingly see the value of unique content creation assets, he says. AOL, for instance, owns less than 10 percent of its content. Yahoo’s percentage of ownership may not be much higher.

For such sites, local content is a key differentiator, especially since so much of it has a utility angle. We see more and more contributors contributing content on a localised basis, says Keane. Consequently, one of Associated Content’s big initiatives is to find, discern and empower contributors on the basis of local DNA.

Full post at this link…

• Yahoo rolling out new US local network in beta
• Yahoo rumoured to be rolling out new connection feature
• Sneak preview of BBC hyperlocal web service
• Yahoo! and CNET enter partnership to reach new audiences
• Yahoo News tests new ‘Infinite Browse’ feature

Sky News feeds will be built in to viewers’ TV sets thanks to a new development from Yahoo and Samsung.

The Sky News TV widget, developed by the Yahoo Widget Engine, will be available on internet-connected TVs from Samsung. Selecting the TV widget will add a menu of the latest headlines and news stories from Sky to the programme being watched:

The widget will be available in just the UK from later this month. It will feature top stories, UK news, politics, sport, business, world news and showbiz news as channels and will be free to use with no requirement to subscribe to a Sky TV package.

• News widgets in under 30 secs
• Yahoo News tests new ‘Infinite Browse’ feature
• Independent and USA Today launch headline apps
• The Straight Choice offers election leaflet widget to regional newspapers and bloggers
• Metro launches iPad app

PC World, among others, takes a look at ZDnet’s handling of serious allegations made against Yahoo – that the company had handed over account information for 200,000 Iranian bloggers to the Iranian government. Yahoo denied the claims and ZDNet has retracted the story in full, the Committe to Protect Bloggers reports.

• PC World post at this link…

• ZDNet: ‘Retraction: Yahoo and Iran’

• BBC news chief calls for pressure on Iran after threats to journalists’ families
• Spot the difference: AFP withdraws ‘digitally altered’ missile shot
• Iranian journalist suing Nokia over imprisonment
• CPJ: Call for freedom for detained journalists after releases from Libya and Iran
• Demotix photographer arrested in Iran will not face further inquiries

Newsgathering: Health Service Journal correspondent Dave West has used Yahoo Pipes to track health stories on the BBC’s Today programme. Useful for health journalists, but can also be adapted to other topics if you know how to use Yahoo Pipes. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

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

• HSJ: A Yahoo pipe for health-related news
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Yahoo Pipes group for journalists
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – creating interactive timelines
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk: Need to combine several RSS feeds?
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – dealing with medical research embargoes