September 2010
1 post
2 tags
It's back to Wordpress for me.
After a short fling with Tumblr, I’ve decided to return to Wordpress for a number of reasons.
So come, rejoin the conversations at:
http://thenowledge.com/
August 2010
23 posts
jinn:
Time Inc.’s iPad Problem Is Trouble for Every Magazine Publisher Time Inc. likes to show off its iPad apps as a symbol of the company’s future. But inside the publisher, the digital editions have become a source of hair-pulling frustration…
“We’ll have young people reading newspapers,” the 79-year-old Murdoch said during...”
– Media: News Corp. plans national newspaper for tablet computers and cellphones - latimes.com
While I think the idea overall is a good one, this quote sums up just how out of touch Murdoch et all are. A device such as the iPad allows for something much more than just a newspaper, but as long as...
2 tags
Google's acquisitions in social gains momentum
Despite its problems getting traction with Buzz, Google isn’t done with social. In fact, it appears it’s just getting started.
The company has just bought SocialDeck, a mobile game startup focused on delivering games across various platforms such as the iPhone and Blackberry.
This is part of a series of acquisitions by Google in the social arena. It bought social search startup...
1 tag
Google News gets gamed by a crappy content farm →
There’s a lot of criticism on how these “content farms” work. This one nails it perfectly. In a word: woodchip — a cheap filler for search engines.
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Hot Potato to be shut down as team moves to... →
I’m sad to see Hot Potato go — but it looks like their acquisition by Facebook is now confirmed. Hot Potato was a great service that still had plenty of room to grow. It will now be shut down under its new owners. It was definitely ahead of its time.
It’s been an exciting year at Hot Potato. Since going live last November, we’ve been inspired and energized by your reaction to the...
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After a Thorough Battery of Tests We Can Now... →
thebronzemedal:
From McSweeney’s:
What concerned us most about The Newspaper was its lack of Wi-Fi. Eventually, however, we found this advantage to be overstated, even misleading. Engineers using The Newspaper typically did so 30 to 60 minutes a day. Afterward, they went outside, formed relationships, and took in what life had to offer. Those using Wi-Fi-enabled e-readers tended to stay on the...
How Google might suggest topics for you to write... →
2105:
Lots of interesting stuff in here, deep within the linked reading about Demand Media’s IPO disclosures.
2 tags
A magazine for mobile readers and freelancers
Nomad Editions is putting together a magazine that serves the growing audience on mobile platforms like the iPad. The company brings together former reporters and editors but taps a pool of freelance writers and journos with specific areas of focus. Each Friday, subscribers will get a mini-magazine tailored to their interest, in a mobile package.
2 tags
Finally, as expected -- Demand Media files for IPO
Demand Media has, as expected, filed for an IPO. The company is looking at a maximum offering price of $125 million but didn’t say how much would be up for sale. There was no mention of a date either in its SEC filing.
The filing itself reveals interesting insights into the company, especially the risks it perceives. In particular, it warns potential investors about “certain material...
“What is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is...”
– Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891. (via proverbialwisdom) (via archivedigger) (via igby)
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The app economy: a better model for publishers?
The plan by The New York Times to license its iPad/iPhone publishing tool represents a big step forward for the newspaper industry.
The platform, simply called Press Engine, will be used by the Telegraph Media Group and newspapers such as Dallas Morning News, Providence Journal and Press-Enterprise in Southern California.
The publishers will pay the NYT a one-time license fee for the...
3 tags
Tudou.com builds out production facilities with... →
This is worth watching. Tudou, China’s massive YouTube-like video service, is spending its new-found $50 million cash pool on building out its video production facilities. This is an interesting change of strategy — we aren’t talking user generated stuff anymore. This is professional production. How long before they become a TV media company?
Also — what’s...
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Is the Web dead? →
Valleywag is reporting that Wired magazine is putting together a cover story in which Chris Anderson declares that “the Web is dead.” The story is apparently based on Anderson’s view that devices such as the iPad will start to replace the Web as an important avenue for publishing and social networking.
3 tags
Has the time come to take photojournalism off...
After 25 years in the industry, Neil Burgess (whose picture agency represents Sebastião Salgado) says photojournalism is over. He explains that given the cuts in funding for photo projects, it’s time we all admit the worst has arrived, and that photojournalism is dead.
“Magazines and newspapers are no longer putting any money into photojournalism. They will commission a portrait or...
3 tags
Change of leadership at The Jakarta Post
Meidyatama Suryodiningrat is taking over the top editorial post at The Jakarta Post. According to the paper, Meidyatama represents “a generation of journalist [sic] bred in the whirlwind of ‘new media’ change.” (Sadly, however, I couldn’t locate Meidyatama in LinkedIn or in Twitter for that matter.)
Meidyatama is the English-language paper’s fifth...
1 tag
Not Dead Yet! Harman Buys Newsweek; Meacham to...
newsweek:
(And neither is NEWSWEEK!)
Yes, we know, could it have taken us any longer to comment on this? (As Don Graham put it, “We have a company tradition of announcing news “after every other person already knows what it is.”) But just in case you didn’t hear, this is the official: Sidney Harman will be Newsweek’s new owner; Jon Meacham will step down. From the release:
No decision on who...
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Does journalism need a full-time service dedicated... →
Here’s a thought I know will keep up all night:
“Digital platforms — blogs, most explicitly, but also digital journalism vehicles as a collective — have introduced a more iterative form of storytelling that subtly challenges print and broadcast assumptions of conceptual confinement. For journalists like Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald and other modern-day muckrakers, to be a...
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A quick guide to old media companies now on Tumblr →
Are you looking for a quick snapshot of old media companies who have found a new distribution on Tumblr? Gawker has the lineup. Who’s missing?
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WikiLeaks, once a renegade site, now finds... →
“By handing over the (secret field reports on the war in Afghanistan) to professionals, with no strings attached, and before the site itself could offer its own interpretation, WikiLeaks was retreating to the job of information procurer rather than information explainer.” New York Times.
July 2010
17 posts
Google says some of its services are still blocked... →
YouTube and Picasa are among the services still blocked in China, suggesting Beijing is still dissatisfied with the company.
2 tags
The Huffington Post may have figured out the... →
A profile of The Huffington Post in Newsweek. It talks about the challenges facing the company — not least by the relatively low monetization opportunities of online media in its current form. The HuffPo manages to only generate $1 in revenue per reader, per year. Is this really a viable business model?
1 tag
“Self-expression is the new entertainment. People don’t want to just consume...”
– Arianna Huffington in Newsweek
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On ReadWriteWeb: How is Yahoo!'s new content farm... →
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The real cost of a paywall
The Times got what it deserved.
According to calculations by the Guardian, the London newspaper may have lost almost 90 percent of its online readership since it forced readers to register and pay.
None of this should be surprising to Times’ executives. The editor of The Sunday Times John Witherow predicted in May that the vast majority of readers - perhaps more than 90 percent - were...
2 tags
News vs Facebook (guess who won?)
The American Customer Satisfaction Index had a big surprise for Facebook. Just days after boasting about having “over 500 million served,” it appears overall satisfaction for the social networking site is low.
But here’s the real surprise: News sites scored higher than Facebook.
Here’s a summary of the scores:
FOXNews.com 82
USATODAY.com 77
NYTimes.com 76
...
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SEO and the 'uncomfortable paradox' of content...
There was a fantastic article in the FT this week that highlighted the issues behind the obsession for SEO clicks. If you want to know what the marriage of content and search engine optimization spells, check out the article.
In a nutshell:
“The unintended consequence is that you get a lot of mediocre content getting a more prominent position than it should do,” says Shelby Bonnie, co-founder...
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Survey shows more than half of users on... →
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Co-branded Washington Post-Bloomberg site is now... →
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BBC's website gets an design update
The BBC’s new redesigned news home page went live today. There’s a video summary of all the new features, but somehow, someone somewhere in the company figured it didn’t make sense to allow users to embed their corporate video. Duh.
In a nutshell, the site features more space for the main stories of the day and a better indication of the most recent headlines. It’s...
Public Journalism and the "Coffeehouse Newsroom"
sasquatchmedia:
The Freehold, New Jersey “coffeehouse newsroom” got me thinking about the hard practicality of doing journalism as a social conversation. It wouldn’t be easy, and it would break a lot of decades-old rules about whose voice really counts. But we need look no further than public-journalism reform efforts of the late-‘80s and 1990s.
Public, or sometimes called “civic,” journalism is...
4 tags
Why Tumblr?
I’m in the process of moving thenowledge from Wordpress to Tumblr. Let’s get this straight: It’s not about the themes or how this service is more conducive to “microblogging” (or laziness, depending on how you look at it).
I want to learn more about what it means to create conversations seeded by microblogs. Wordpress isn’t particularly strong when it comes to...
2 tags
The world, according to China
Xinhua’s plan to create a 24-hour English-language news channel represents an incredible opportunity for China to influence a wider audience.
Li Congjun, the president of the state-run news agency, says the channel — called CNC World — will “present an international vision with a Chinese perspective.” To make its presence known, Xinhua plans to build a newsroom on...
“It’s free (and always will be).”
– Facebook (in response to concerns that the site will start charging users)
June 2010
2 posts
2 tags
It's official: Asian users are more engaged with...
Surprise! It turns out not everyone around the world uses social media the same way (tell me you knew this!). Analysis in the current edition of the Harvard Business Review, backed by data from the Trendstream Global Web index, mapped out how people share information of themselves online — specifically, what people are doing with blogs, social profiles, photos, videos and microblogging....
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The real threat to journalism
It isn’t as though journalism needed another threat; there are plenty to choose from. But the rise of paywalls, most recently seen in the UK’s Times, Sunday Times and Rolling Stone magazine, may be the medicine that kills the patient. Repeat after me: Traffic leads to money and in turn, is far more capable at enhancing the quality of journalism than undermine it. Putting great...
May 2010
1 post
2 tags
Death by SEO (and page views)
It’s probably too soon to call time-of-death for online journalism. But the obsession with writing for search engines in mind has destructive implications for the industry. In traditional newsrooms, reporters were judged on their ability to come up with compelling and important stories — stuff that may have been niche, but deemed crucial for the audience. In many of today’s...
April 2010
4 posts
2 tags
Year Zero: Relearning journalism, on the internet
I’m fast coming up to my first anniversary at Yahoo!. It’s been an amazing year to have been in the online industry and I’m glad I made the move from traditional media. In many ways, I’ve been forced to learn and relearn the news industry — the way content is created and distributed — and perhaps more importantly, witness the changing face of storytelling in...
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The irony and the pessimism in journalism
There were two vastly different points of view in the world of journalism today. A new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that most leaders of today’s newsrooms in the U.S. don’t believe their operations will survive another 10 years. The gloomiest: Nearly a third of those surveyed believe their operations are at risk in just five years or...
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Nikkei's content moat -- a bit extreme?
Just how far will a publisher go to protect its content assets in an online world? The Nikkei this month took the extreme (and inexplicable) step of restricting any links to its articles — even to its own home page. Under its new policy of requiring paid subscriptions, the Japanese financial news publication wants written requests for linking to the site. The Nikkei said the rules are...
3 tags
Sanity check needed on WSJ's iPad subscription...
The Wall Street Journal’s pricing for its iPad subscription offers an interesting insight into how Rupert Murdoch is looking at tablet computing — in short, a premium cash cow. WSJ’s app is free to download but costs users US$3.99 a week. For that amount, you’ll get access to the Business, Markets and Opinion sections. This is how it compares to other WSJ subscriptions in...
March 2010
11 posts
3 tags
China's Ministry of Truth and the Google affair
Ever wondered what instructions from a government censor sound like? China’s so-called “Ministry of Truth” was out in force after the Google affair this past week, issuing specific instructions to Chinese media companies about what to avoid in coverage. According to the China Digital Times, a news service run by the Berkeley China Internet Project, ordered among other things: ...
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Plug: Yahoo! seeks online reporter in Singapore
Yahoo! Southeast Asia (where I work) is looking for an online reporter to gather, produce and present daily news stories for our Singapore Front Page. You must be a dynamic and independent “go-getter” with a passion for what makes news in Singapore. You must also have a wide network of contacts within the industry. Traditional news reporting skills such as strong writing and the...