Tag Archives: Washington Post

While we were away… EveryBlock, LoudounExtra, BBC plans and more

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In case you hadn’t noticed, Journalism.co.uk was in Sweden last week covering the World Association of Newspapers annual conference and the World Editors Forum.

So no one misses out, here’s a round-up of what went down while we were away:

Guardian: BBC ends ‘licence fee’ plans for international news website
The Beeb has dropped proposals for subscription-based access to BBC.com

WSJ.com: Analysis of hyperlocal news site LoudounExtra.com
Following the departure of Rob Curley, chief architect behind the Washington Post spin-off site, WSJ asks if the site has found its audience a year into the project.

Editor&Publisher: 94 newspapers join Yahoo partnership
A total of 779 newspapers now have access to the search engine’s advertising technology and HotJobs ads.

Daily Mail: Sir Ian Blair advocates use of celebrity news videos as evidence in drug trials
Footage, such as the Sun’s infamous Amy Winehouse video and of Kate Moss snorting a white substance, should be presented to the jury in such cases, Blair has said.

Guardian: BBC’s new plans for personalisation of website
Plans to create a new rating, recommendation and personalisation system across bbc.co.uk will be put to the BBC Trust, according to the corporation’s latest programme policy statement.

Editor’s Weblog: Washington Post launches online publishing company
The Slate Group will feature a host of digital titles including Slate and The Root, with additional launches planned.

Telegraph.co.uk: Update on revamp of community blogging platform MyTelegraph
Communities editor Shane Richmond says a relaunch date will be announced by the end of next week.

Matthew Ingram: Globe and Mail removes pay wall
Number of subscribers was not enough to maintain the wall, says Ingram, who works for the paper. Some readers remain unconvinced, he says, pointing out one comment: “You can’t shut us out for a few years and then expect us to come back just because it’s free.”

MediaShift: Everyblock releases first special report
The hyperlocal data and news site has mapped information from a recent Chicago police bribery investigation as part of its first special report.

Washington Post wins record six Pulitzer Prizes

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The Washington Post scooped a record six award at last night’s Pulitzer Prize ceremony including the Breaking News prize for its ‘multi-faceted’ online and print coverage of last April’s Virginia Tech shootings.

As the tragedy unfolded, the Washington Post covered the event in print and in multimedia online, providing what the Pulitzer Board described as ‘exceptional coverage’.

The Post provided profiles of each of the 32 victims as well as the killer, Seung-Hui Cho, and wrote about the failure of the university’s mental health services to react to warning signs or help Cho.

It also won prizes for public service, feature writing, national reporting, international affairs and commentary.

Washington Post Facebook app attracts 350,000 downloads

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Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, discusses widgets, podcasts, vodcasts and live streaming in the interview with Beet.tv below.

Brady says the Post’s political application on Facebook, which has been downloaded around 350,000 times, was a simple and relatively inexpensive way of promoting the WaPo brand.

However, he says that when experimenting with any new distribution methods – whether widgets, audio or video – it’s crucial to get the editorial content right first, regardless of what technology is in place.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpWWrFA7Nfw]

Washington Post site attracts record traffic figures

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According to an internal note posted on Fishbowl DC, Washingtonpost.com broke its personal best for web traffic last month.

Political stories were particularly popular, writes Jim Brady, executive editor of the site, with traffic to politics articles almost doubling and a 60 per cent increase in unique users to this section.

Brady reports an increase in traffic across all sections – something he puts down in part to a big news month and a new design for the site’s story pages.

Washington Post maps local blog coverage

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The Washington Post has created a map of local blog coverage as part of its local blogs directory.

The Buzz Map, which has been developed in partnership with Outside.in, plots the most blogged about stories and issues by location and provides links to this coverage, as wells as WaPo articles on the topics. The bigger the circle on a location, the more blogging there’s been about that spot.

buzz-map.jpg

According to a blog post from Outside.in, the map shows the top 10 locations ‘based on overall volume over the past week’.

Outside.in sees mutual benefits from the project: “The Post gets an easy way of integrating blog content onto its pages, and the blogs get traffic from — and the fun of appearing on — the Washington Post’s pages.”

What’s more, says Outside.in, creating the WaPo’s map ‘takes five minutes’ – so expect similar blog mapping to be rolled out on other US newspaper sites in the not too distant future.

AOP: Hyper-local sites have to be news driven – Washington Post Interactive chief on the failure of some sites

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Hyper-local sites have to be driven by news the chief executive of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive told the AOP conference.

“Some of the hyper-local sites that have failed, in my view, there isn’t any hard data there, there is just people commenting or talking to each other,” Caroline Little told delegates.

“If it’s not structured around something that is changing then it may as well be on Facebook or email or something else. We need to provide something to make it interesting.”

Speaking about the databases and Google Maps mash-ups that drive the Post’s Loudoun hyper-local site, she added:

“Publishing news is important to people locally, even if it’s a crime database, what happened last night on what street, people want to know that.

“We also have local bloggers who live in the community. But I believe without that local news piece, which is fresh and updated constantly, you’re just not going to build habit locally.”

AOP: What the Washington Post will do next – mobile, Europe and a relaunch in the Spring

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Caroline Little, chief executive of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, told the AOP conference, in London today, that the Post would be focusing its attention on developing its mobile offerings as a way of expanding its audience.

“We’re really far behind in mobile compared to Europeans, that’s one area that we are really focusing on right now,” she said.

“Not just on mobile phones but also being able to read stuff on your Blackberry or iPhone, or whatever else. We are really far behind. It’s an area that we are really pushing forward on.”

During a Q&A session she was asked if the Post was looking actively at other markets internationally.

“We are in the UK, we have advertising offices here. But in terms of editorial, we’re not looking at hyper-local content outside of our market.

“You have to do what you know, but we would like to do more in Europe and we have some plans to do that.”

The Post, she added, is planning an entire redesign in the Spring next year.

Why are news providers on Facebook?

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Bit of a follow up to the piece I wrote last week about news apps on Facebook – I quoted Rob Curley, from Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, quite heavily in the piece.

He has since updated with this post expanding on why Wash Post is developing Facebook apps. One of the main reasons – he claims – is marketing, getting Wash Post name and values out there without necessarily having just to rely on news apps to try and drag some of Facebooks page views back to the Wash Post news site.

But the value of the marketing, it seems, comes down to the usability of the app in question. Wash Post had a good start with Compass, which lingered in the top five apps on Facebook for some time, and plans are afoot to revisit the device with some updates and add-ons.

Appaholic.com or a similar device can then be used to measure use/success of the app: how many are looking at it, what time of day, etc, etc – but what this all means and what good can do the news producer is still seems rather arbitrary.