Tag Archives: Seattle

The E&P Pub: Seattle Times’ new hyperlocal partners

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As part of the Networked Journalism pilot project, by American University’s J-Lab and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, local news partners for the Seattle Times have been announced this week:

“The four local producers and web sites partnering with The Seattle Times are: Tracy Record, who runs West Seattle Blog and White Center Now; Kate Bergman, who runs Next Door Media, which includes My Ballard, PhinneyWood, Queen Anne View, Magnolia Voice and Freemont Universe; Justin Carder, who runs Capitol Hill Seattle and helped create Neighborlogs, which is the platform for several neighborhood sites in Seattle; and Amber Campbell, who runs the Rainier Valley Post.”

Full story at this link…

Journalism Daily: Q&A with Growthspur, no Guardian pay walls and tools for news numeracy

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Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features:

Ed’s picks of the day:

Tip of the day:

#FollowJourn:

On the Editors’ Blog:

Reasons to be cheerful? Seattle paper, Roanoke Times and magazine publishers turning a profit

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In addition to reporting on plummeting profits for some newspaper groups, Journalism.co.uk thought it was about time we shared some better news or at least some examples of titles that aren’t making a loss.

  1. As the city’s only surviving daily newspaper since the decline of the Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times posted a rise in daily circulation of around 30 per cent for June. According to the New York Times, publisher Frank Blethen says the title is operating ‘in the black’ on a month-to-month basis now.
  2. “We are a profitable, debt-free enterprise,” says Debbi Meade, publisher of the US’ Roanoke Times, in this letter to readers.
  3. New figures from the US’ Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) suggest that 12 titles managed to attract more ad pages in the first six months of this year than in comparison to the same period in 2008. Newsweek looks at which titles are managing to buck the trend in this way.

AP: Seattle Post-Intelligencer faces closure if buyer cannot be found

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Seattle’s oldest newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was put up for sale on Friday by owners Hearst Corp and – if a buyer is not forthcoming in the next 60 days – the paper will close or continue only online. Full story…

Geo-what? Oh, it’s coming to the UK soon…

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This week saw the launch of a hyperlocal news map for the Liverpool Echo, as announced by Sly Bailey at the AOP Digital Publishing Summit (follow link for report in MediaGuardian).

It geotags news content so each user can search for news by postcode.

Nothing new there, web-savvy newshounds might think, but actually it is:

Though Archant announced plans for geotagged sites last October (it started with Jobs24 – a winner at yesterday’s NS ADM Awards – and Homes24 and has plans to roll out geotagged news content in 2008) to date we’re still waiting for the official launch of geotagged news.

Yesterday we reported that American site outside.in will be launching in the UK, which will link news with local areas (as localised as users specify). Outside.in thinks its opportunity has come about as a result of:

“The demand for personalized information on the web, and the failure of the newspaper industry to capitalize on featuring hyperlocal content” (Nina Grigoriev, outside.in)

Journalism.co.uk thought it was time for a bit of a run-down on the development of geotagging in the UK.

First, what is it?
Journalists record the locations referred to in each story and add their postcodes as metadata when uploading their copy to the web.

In that way, geotagged content allows users to prioritise the news they see online according to postcodes.

Where are we at in the UK?
The Liverpool Echo is the first site (of the large publishing groups) to do so in the UK. Although other sites have incorporated mapping into their sites, no other places has successfully incorporated news content as well.

The BBC plans to invest £68 million across its network of local sites, which will be decided upon by the BBC Trust in February 2009. Online Journalism Blog reported a sneak preview in January 2008, though the BBC have since asked us not to refer to the sites as ‘hyperlocal’.

Critics such as Trinity Mirror’s CEO, Sly Bailey, have voiced concerns over the BBC’s local video proposals, saying they will provide ‘unfair competition’ for the regional media.

Northcliffe is also developing geotagged content on its revamped thisis sites, and told Press Gazette in June the process has been difficult: “Because not all stories affect only one specific point, the company is finding geocoding challenging,” Hardie said.

According to the article: “The localisation functions will remain hidden until journalists have built up enough stories with postcode data.”

Back in July 2007 we saw reports of Sky geotagging its news, but it hasn’t developed at the same speed or as widely as in the US.

What’s happening in the US?
Everyblock is developing fast across the US. It’s a new experiment in journalism and data, offering feeds of local information and data for every city block in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC, with more cities to come. Not in the UK yet, but watch this space.

Elsewhere, the Washington Post has used outside.in’s maps for their own site, while the New York Times’ Boston.com (the online Boston Globe) uses MetaCarta’s geographic search technology for maps.

So, what does this mean for UK based geotagging?
With the arrival of highly efficient US based sites such as outside.in (who said an UK based office is a possibility) maybe it’s time for Archant, Trinity Mirror and Northcliffe to get their skates on before it’s too late.

Please send us your examples of UK based geotagged content, from formal publications or otherwise, as we want to track it as it expands in the UK.

(Then we can make a geotagged feed and map of geotagging in journalism. Then our heads might explode)

Innovations in Journalism – Instant Journalist

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today it’s flat-packed news websites ready for easy assembly and use from Instant Journalist.

image of instant journalist website

1.  Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Scott Durham, president of Instivate. We’re a small software company in Seattle, Washington building a flexible, scalable platform for powering online communities.

Our first product is Instant Journalist, which makes it easy for anyone to launch their own online news communities where the public can read and contribute news stories and events of local interest with rich media such as video, images, and documents.

2.  Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Since anyone can join and submit content to a site powered by Instant Journalist, it allows the site to cover a much wider range of news events than an individual or team of journalists could do alone.

We have an advanced set of content rating tools, automated algorithms, and editorial controls that makes it easy for the site owner to manage the content from thousands of individual contributors, and make sure that the best content rises to the top of the heap.

In addition, we have a variety of features that aren’t available in traditional blogging or other content management systems.

One key strength is that our product comes with native support for video. That makes it easy for anyone to upload video of a news event and make it available to readers of the site. Our system handles all the complexity of video processing and conversion behind the scenes, and then allows playback on any web browser.

Another key feature includes our integrated mapping technology, where any story can be placed on a map and assigned to a specific geographical neighbourhood, town, or city.

This allows users to quickly visualise the location of a news event and browse and discover other content in that specific area. Users can also subscribe to RSS feeds for specific geographic locations and track the news around them at a very local level.

3.  Is this it, or is there more to come?
Our major focus now is the delivery of a self-service advertising solution that will make it easy for site owners to monetise their site.

It will allow any advertiser to easily sign-up and create ads for the site. Also stay tuned as we roll out more advanced content management features and more interactive ways of reporting news events on the site.

4.  Why are you doing this?
We’re passionate about building systems that make it easy for people to participate in and contribute to communities of like-minded people online.

We picked the news space as our first project because there’s a huge opportunity there to empower professional journalists and regular members of the public to collaborate online and cover a much wider range of news than has ever been possible before.

5.  What does it cost to use it?
We have a range of packages that scale up according to the amount of traffic a site serves, starting at just $18 a month.

It’s designed so that a site can start small, with pricing that grows as the site does and at a very affordable rate.

6.  How will you make it pay?
Our content management system makes it easy for site owners to plug any 3rd-party advertising solution into their site, such as Google ads, etc.  And our forthcoming self-service advertising solution will take that to the next level by allowing access to a wider range of potential advertisers, and providing the site owner a higher percentage of overall revenue than other 3rd party online advertising solutions.

Have a look at Centraldistrictnews.com – it covers a neighbourhood here in Seattle and allows people to communicate with their neighbours about the news that happens right around them.

We’re also working with a major newspaper company to adapt our platform to a wide range of less newsy applications; covering topics from travel to sports and local dining we’re allowing them to quickly deploy niche interest sites and other targeted online communities that will build a rich online ecosystem of websites around their existing newspaper brands.

Tribune resorts to ‘joke’ press release for latest appointment

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Those guys at Tribune know how to have a laugh don’t they? Take this ‘hilarious’ press release I received today about the US media group’s latest appointment:

Surely You Can’t Be Serious? Marc Chase – President Of Tribune Interactive!

Randy Michaels’ run of acquiring radio-management stars
came to a screeching halt today with Chase’s appointment

CHICAGO, April 7, 2008 — Another freaking Clear Channel
Communications executive on the payroll and this one’s been
named President of Tribune Interactive.

Tribune Broadcasting’s Randy Michaels’ past finally caught
up with him when Marc Chase obviously blackmailed his way
into a position he is not remotely qualified to hold.
Insiders are irate. Chase is a fraud. A source inside
Tribune HR, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed out that
Marc Chase’s resume (below) was obviously fabricated. First
of all, his name isn’t even Marc Chase–it’s Mark Thompson.
The whole thing is a sham.

MARC CHASE
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 20500 202-456-1111

PROFESSINAL EXPERIENCE

Vocabulary Advisorist for George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
Washington DC, 2004-present

eBay
President of Buying Crap
San Jose, California 2003-2004

Google
Executive Vice President of Finding Crap Anywhere
Mountain View, California 2001-2002

Microsoft
Senior Executive Vice President of Technology and Stuff
Seattle, Washington, 2000-2001

CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX Television
Vice President of Watching TV A Lot
Los Angeles, California 1999-2000

Harvard University
Dean of School of Internetology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998

EDUCASHION

Nearly Graduated with Honers
School of Alabama in Atlanta Georgia 1985

COMMUNITY SERVICE

400 Hours (reduced from 600)
Judge gave time off for good behavior

Chase was quoted as saying, “Timing and infrared photography
are everything. I couldn’t be happier! I know Randy is
relieved to finally have me on Sam’s payroll.”

Tribune has undergone major changes in the past year, with
billionaire Sam Zell acquiring the company last April in a
complex deal that left it with $13 billion in debt. Since
then, Zell has brought in new executives to fill key roles.
This one takes the cake.

Last December, Zell hired Michaels — who helped Zell to
build Clear Channel into a radio behemoth that he could then
sell — to oversee Tribune’s broadcast and Internet
divisions. It is obvious Michaels has lost his mind with
this hire.

–By Hugh Jass – A Reputable Media Source

© 2008, Bogus Information, a division of Dewey, Cheatum, and
Howe. All Rights Reserved.

While you’re sewing you sides back together (and trying to make sense of the whole thing), you have to ask why? As Gawker points out Marc Chase has been hired – that’s about all you can determine from the message – but is it appropriate to send out a spoof release as the Tribune company faces mass redundancies?