Video of the Citizen Media Project’s David Ardia explaining why – under US law – editors are not legally liable for changing comments left on their news sites.
As Pat Thornton points out:
“This falsehood must stop now. It’s been used — knowingly and unknowingly — by news organizations for years as justification not to allow user comments.”
US firm Mixpo has created a DIY video platform to enable small businesses to create video advertorials. The company has now partnered with US broadcasters NBC Local Media, Tribune, Fisher, Freedom Communications and TownNews.com.
…well, at least that’s how Journalism 2.0 describes the recently launched fully-searchable database of US government spending.
According to USAspending.gov:
“The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act) requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:
1. The name of the entity receiving the award;
2. The amount of the award;
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. The location of the entity receiving the award;
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.”
Great for research, mash-ups and story leads.
An On The Media interview with Glen Elin, from The Sunlight Foundation, is at this link explaining the benefits of the site (hat tip Journalism 2.0).
Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today reported a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008.
NYTimes.com was the number one online newspaper destination in December 2008, with 18.2 million unique visitors. USATODAY.com and washingtonpost.com took the second and third spots, with 11.4 million and 9.5 million unique visitors, respectively. Download PDF release
Jeff Jarvis argues against government subsidies for the print industry, but backs President Obama’s pledge to increase US broadband penetration.
The Washington Post has launched a new beta site Whorunsgov.com to build profiles of US politicians, law makers and government officials using a specially created Post editorial team.
The site and its news blog will also feature contributions from external experts, a release from the paper said, and will be expanded into a moderated wiki later this year.
At this stage users will be encouraged to edit and add to profiles on the site with submissions moderated by the editorial team.
Interactivity – in particular allowing users to discuss profiles on the site – is a key part of the project:
“This is the first phase of a new venture to create a uniquely collaborative and rich information resource that demystifies the individuals behind Washington’s policy-making process,” said Rachel Van Dongen, editor of WhoRunsGov.com, in the release, adding that the site is intended as a free-for-all resource.
Those featured on the site will also grow to include think tank members and state officials.
Despite partnering with more than 800 US newspapers, Google has decided to end its Print Ads scheme, which saw the search engine help partners run traditional print-based advertising campaigns.
According to a post on the search engine’s Let’s Take It Offline blog, the service wasn’t having the desired impact and resources behind the project will be reinvested in finding other revenue sources for publishers through Google’s products.
“We believe fair and accurate journalism and timely news are critical ingredients to a healthy democracy. We remain dedicated to working with publishers to develop new ways for them to earn money, distribute and aggregate content and attract new readers online. We have teams of people working with hundreds of publishers to find new and creative ways to earn money from engaging online content. AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Earth, Google News and many other products are a part of our significant investments to innovate in this space,” said Spencer Spinnell in the post.
“These important efforts won’t stop. We will continue to devote a team of people to look at how we can help newspaper companies.”
Google began trialling print advertising in 2005. The ads will no longer be available from February 28, though campaigns already planned will be run until March 31.
Today’s Hitwise report showing that UK internet traffic to the website has increased by 974 per cent over the last year (now the 291st most popular website in the UK), brings with it significant statistics for media and news sites:
(Hitwise report, January 2009)
As PaidContent flags up, Twitter is proportionally more popular in the UK than in the US. “This frankly could be because there are more websites or more diverse interests in the US,” comments Robert Andrews.
It seems that – for President Elect Obama – ‘Change’ will come at the cost of incredible scrutiny.
American newspaper journal Editor & Publisher has posted news on its website of a new addition to feature on the PolitiFact website: The Obameter.
The idea is simple: to keep track of the progress made by the 44th President of the United States on every single policy promise made during his electoral campaign. According to PolitiFact, that’s 510 promises in total.
Three status rankings, ‘stalled’, ‘in the works’ or ‘no action’ will be used to indicate how well these promises are developing. Once the action is deemed to be complete, PolitiFact rates whether the promise has been kept or broken.
Even though the President Elect doesn’t officially take office until tomorrow’s inauguration, already PolitiFact claims two promises have been kept, while one is stalled and nine are ‘in the works’ (including Promise No. 502: ‘Getting his daughters a puppy’).
The Obameter will run in parallel to PolitiFact’s established, Truth-o-Meter, which examines official statements from Washington DC and public official consistency yardstick, the Flip-O-Meter.
The site, developed by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, won the National Press Foundation’s 2008 online journalism award last month.
In the build up to the inauguration of Barack Obama, US newspaper the Meridian Star has published an apology for the paper’s previous coverage of the civil rights movement.