Tag Archives: USA

McClatchy editor sets up public wiki for discussions about innovation across the group

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US newspaper company McClatchy has set up a public wiki to act as an ‘online repository of ideas’ where its journalists and others can discuss innovation ideas for the group.

The wiki is called McClatchy Next and has been set up by Howard Weaver, vice president for news at McClatchy.

“It’s a wiki, the same basic format as the infinitely editable Wikipedia, intended as a way to collect ideas, argue about them and save information and reference points in ways we can all easily share and retrieve,” he wrote in the first entry on the wiki.

“If it works, it will be a more coherent version of the comments I very much appreciate at my blog – better organized, easier to follow, more accessible.”

Everyblock launches in two new cities

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Hyperlocal news mapping site Everyblock has launched in two new cities in the US.

Charlotte and Philadelphia join Chicago, New York and San Francisco as cities mapped by the site.

Adrian Holovaty, founder of local crime news site chicagocrime.org, launched Everyblock at the start of the year as a destination where users could search for civic information and news items by address, postcode or neighbourhood on an interactive map.

Holovaty started the site with a £550,000 grant awarded by last year’s Knight News Challenge competition.

In addition to the public information already found on the city maps the new sites will add extra layers of content.

The Charlotte map will include library information, updating listings with new titles available locally and chart all local 911 calls to the police and ‘significant police events’ in the city.

The location of series crimes will charted on the Philadelphia map along with areas mentioned by the local authority’s Streets and Services agenda bodies.

Any area of Charlotte mentioned in city council meeting minutes or zoning minutes will be charted on that map.

“We’re analyzing the text of these meeting minutes/agendas for all locations referenced therein,” wrote Holovaty.

“If the city council or rules committee mentions something near you, you’ll see it on your EveryBlock page.”

The AP ‘beginning to fracture’ as members form collectives, reduce reliance

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The Wall Street Journal wrote this week that the 162-year-old Associated Press (AP) is ‘beginning to fracture’ as the newspaper business in the US breaks up.

The AP last week announced a new set of ‘wire’ tools and cash back options to sweeten newspaper clients that are becoming disenchanted with the fees it demands and its increasing focus providing news and information packages for web publishing and non-traditional customers like Google and Yahoo.

However, its members have already started to seek alternatives to the AP for syndicating their stories and picking up relevant content for their publications from other news providers.

Journalism.co.uk detailed in April how eight of the largest newspapers in the US state of Ohio had begun bypassing the AP and forged an alliance to share their top stories.

The Columbus Dispatch, The Toledo Blade, the Cincinnati Enquirer, The Akron Beacon Journal, The Plain Dealer are amongst newspapers making up the membership of the Ohio News Organization (with the unfortunate acronym, OHNO).

Rather than relying to the Associated Press to decide at the end of each news day whether or not to distribute their stories, the papers now post content to private website – accessible only to those eight newsrooms – from which partner organisations will be able to select pieces to use and publish while the stories are still hot.

But it seems that OHNO is not alone in taking this kind of stance against the AP. According to the WSJ piece, Five Montana newspapers owned by the newspaper concern Lee Enterprises have also begun sharing content. In addition, editors in Texas, Pennsylvania and Indiana have inquired about how the Ohio cooperative works.

Judge could order US newspaper to hand over identities of anonymous comment posters

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A US judge is set to rule on whether to make New York state newspaper Journal News hand over the identity of users who left comments that may have libelled an ex-congressman.

According to lawyers working on the case, Westchester County Judge Rory Bellantoni will issue an order to LoHud.com for release of information to identify “SAVE10543,” “hadenough,” and “aoxomoxoa” for comments they made about former Rep. Richard Ottinger and his wife, June Ottinger.

The couple claimed they have been defamed by comments on the site that falsely accuse them of filing a fraudulent documents and bribing officials over the construction of their home.

They subpoenaed the newspaper to release the information, arguing they can’t bring a defamation suit against the three without their identities.

Gannett reorders its community publishing division

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US newspaper group Gannett is to reorganise its community publishing division.

As part of the reorganisation its current five regional groups will become four groups: East, South, Interstate and West.

“This reorganisation both refines our structure and puts our top people in key jobs with expanded responsibilities around the country,” said Robert Dickey, president of the US Community Publishing division.

“This will allow us to realign our strategic objectives and focus on top line growth as we go forward.

“In particular, I would like to welcome Laura Hollingsworth to the rank of group president. In a relatively brief time at the helm of the Des Moines paper, she has demonstrated great skill, leadership and savvy. She’s a fine example of the great up and coming management talent we have at Gannett.

“However, we will be saying good-bye to two outstanding executives who have been instrumental in the accomplishments of our division for several years. Barbara Henry and Denise Ivey will be sorely missed, but we wish them well as they move into the next phase of their lives,” Dickey said.

“We deeply appreciate all they have done for Gannett.”

The rejig also involves several executive appointments and two retirements.

Online news network VillageSoup in print expansion

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Village NetMedia, which owns community news network VillageSoup, has purchased six weekly local newspapers from the Courier Publications series in Maine, USA.

Several of the sites will be merged with the existing VillageSoup sites, which serve the Knox and Waldo areas, a release from the publisher said.

In addition, new VillageSoup sites will be set up as companion sites for two of the newly acquired locals.

VillageSoup, which was set up 10 years ago, combines local news reporting with an online forum to create a ‘virtual town hall’.

Around 26 jobs will be lost as part of the takeover.

“VillageSoup integrates a highly interactive website with traditional print, and is the future for small town media. This purchase allows us to expand our reach and breathe new life and energy into these papers, all for the benefit of readers and advertisers,” Richard M. Anderson, co-founder of VillageSoup, said.

“Our approach helps transition traditional community newspaper companies into community host companies, and that’s the future for the industry.”

MediaGuardian: Huffington Post plans local news expansion

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The Huffington Post is to expand its coverage to local news in the US.

The plans will start with a site for Chicago, aggregating news from different local sources and with contributions from local bloggers. The site will be overseen by one editor.

Ariana Huffington said yesterday around a dozen US cities would feature in the expansion plans.

Editor and Publisher: Top US News sites beat Google News for traffic

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Several newspaper networks surpassed Google News and achieved more unique traffic in May, according to new data from Nielsen Online.

Editor and Publisher reported that NYTimes.com stood out with 21.3 million unique visitors while Google News gleaned 11.3 million monthly visitors.

Tribune Newspapers and Gannett Newspapers, taken as groups, beat the online behemoth as well.

Yahoo News was the number one current events and global news destination in May with a unique audience of 35.8 million.

Rob Curley: reflections and lessons from WPNIs Loudoun hyperlocal project

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The self-confessed internet nerd from Kansas reflects on the successes and failures of the hyperlocal project his team developed while he was head of online product development at Washington Post Newsweek International.

Curley and several of his team have now moved on to develop online sweetmeats for the Las Vagas Sun – but Curley responds to an WSJ article about his development of a hyperlocal site for an area of Virginia near Washington – LoudounExtra.com.

The article headline called the project a flop – something Curley rejects.

However, he’s in agreement with the general tone on the piece, saying that the problems with the site were ‘poor integration of the site with washingtonpost.com and not enough outreach into the community’ but stands by the general aims and achievements of the site to connect to people on a local level as still being the primary focuses of newspaper websites.