US political news site Politico will launch a subscription news service early next year, reports the New York Times.
The new service will focus on healthcare, energy and technology and run alongside the existing website and free daily publication.
The idea behind the service, which will cost subscribers $1,495 to $2,500 a year for the first topic and $1,000 for each subsequent topic, is to provide coverage at the microlevel of what Congress, federal agencies and trade associations are doing.
As part of its Talking Shop series, editors, moderators and Comment is Free users are debating how moderation should be handled and what could improve the quality of comments and debate on news websites. More than 500 comments on the debate so far flag some interesting suggestions from readers on how moderation should be handled – a useful read for anyone working on a moderation and interaction policy for their site.
Missed this story from last week – the Daily Beast’s attempt to crack Facebook’s algorithm for who and what it puts in users’ news feeds. Interesting reading for any news organisation or brand attempting to use Facebook as a promotional tool.
The Daily Beast set out to crack the code of Facebook’s personalised news feed. Why do some friends seem to pop up constantly, while others are seldom seen? How much do the clicks of other friends in your network affect what you’re shown? Does Facebook reward some activities with undue exposure? And can you “stalk” your way into a friend’s news feed by obsessively viewing their page and photos?
Telegraph Media Group (TMG) has appointed Mike Seery as its new chief information officer. Seery, who was heavily involved in the Economist’s launch online, will take up the post on 8 November 2010.
Richard Halstead, who is already at TMG, has been promoted to group chief technology officer, reporting to Seery.
The group is replacing Paul Cheesbrough, who joined News International as CTO and is one of a host of digital executives to leave TMG for its Wapping-based rival this year, led by the departure of former Telegraph editor Will Lewis.
Meanwhile, the Guardian Media Group (GMG) has named Darren Singer as its chief financial officer. Singer takes on the role from Andrew Miller, who was promoted to CEO in July following Carolyn McCall’s departure. He joins GMG from WPP-owned global agency network GroupM where he was chief financial officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
As reported by Journalism.co.uk last Tuesday, the Guardian has introduced a new set of blogging and commenting guidelines for its journalists.
The eight guidelines offer advice on “best practice” for Guardian journalists and writers when blogging for the site or responding to comments on Guardian.co.uk.
It’s something the site has been considering for a while – but we asked the Guardian’s head of digital engagement Meg Pickard to explain how the new guidelines were developed:
For a couple of years now we’ve had a dedicated intranet site (“Really Social Media”) providing training, resources, case studies, best practices and guidelines for digital engagement (covering social media, blogging, commenting and so on), to be used by staff in conjunction with established company policies about internet use. As this is an evolving field, we regularly update the guidelines to reflect best current knowledge and to help staff navigate the changing landscape of sites/services, skills and situations.
During the summer, the editorial management team worked on the current refresh, which includes interaction guidelines, as well as legal notes and editorial best practice. When publishing the updated guidelines internally at the Guardian, we thought it would be interesting and appropriate to be transparent with readers about the advice we’re giving to staff members, so we published them on guardian.co.uk as well, as part of our extensive and recently relaunched info section.
Independent business publisher Excel Publishing will launch new regional digital editions and e-newsletters in 32 English cities and regions, according to How Do.
The expansion will take Excel beyond its north west roots, where it is best known as the publisher of monthly business magazine EN, says the report.
Time Out has launched a global advertising team, fronted by former BBC World Service sales director Nick Carugati, to work across its network of 35 titles, reports Marketing-interactive.com.
Time Out licence holders across the world will share the costs of the new unit. According to M-I.com, new editions in China and a digital edition in Japan could be in the pipeline.
I gave a presentation last week at the Social Media Academy’s Journalism in a Social Media World conference. I was asked to give an overview of some of the best practice examples of social media use by journalists and news organisations. It’s not an exhaustive list, but I thought I’d share the presentation and my notes (please forgive any typos in the Scribd document).
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger was in Berlin this week discussing the future of journalism with Zeit Online’s editor-in-chief Wolfgang Blau.
Rusbridger covers experimentation in the newsroom, Guardian journalists use of social media, collaborative journalism and – the elephant in the room – money and funding for journalism.
Being an economic realist I think it is likely that we’re going to have to operate with a smaller staff in the future because the money is not going to be there in the medium to long term. I think what I’m describing is economic realism too because if you an get over this hurdle where we have to produce all the content and we are the only people who are the authorities and the experts and other people can go along with us on this journey, you’re harnessing a lot of people who’s primary motivation might not be money…
I think we underestimate in journalism the value of publishing and having a voice. If you don’t understand that then you miss one of the most profound things about the web and the social web.
“We’re not opposed to charging for anything,” he later says, making particular reference to apps and the Guardian’s revenue of £40 million last year from digital products.
While it isn’t unusual to see press releases or even a company blog on some firms’ websites, Intel has created an editorial team separate from this newsroom to run the site freepress.intel.com, reports Memeburn.
Why have they taken this step?
With all the changes happening in media, journalists are having to cover a lot of beats and they don’t have the time to do in-depth reporting on Intel, or much in-depth reporting at all. It is frustrating because there are some great stories within Intel that aren’t being told.
We know we have the expertise in-house to report on these stories so we thought “why not do it ourselves?” We have people on Intel’s communications team that are former journalists so we put together a team, that includes us and one or two others, to try and tell these stories.
Our communications team, for good or bad, is very focused on product launches. But there are so many other stories to tell. Intel is a very large company with many interesting projects, and people.
All reasons that suggest we’ll be seeing a lot more of this type of venture in the future.