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Monday, September 17, 2001

Posted 10:17 PM US Mtn Time:

Ummm, You Forgot to Promote the Web Site!

Steve Outing on newspapers' omission
On the discussion list Online-News, Anchorage Daily News online editor Roger Price made an important post today: "I was just glancing at all the front pages that Poynter has posted on its site and was surprised to see how few newspapers even mentioned their website on the front page. The events of last week seem to be the ideal situation for cross-promotion between print and online. Why are so few papers telling their readers that updated stories are available on their website?" Indeed. They missed an important opportunity. Websites are newspapers' way to compete with TV news for immediacy. Most papers blew the chance.

Posted 8:28 AM US Mtn Time:

Pew Report: The Internet Supplements TV

Steve Klein on the value of the Internet in a crisis
For American news consumers hungry for news and information about the terrorist attacks last week, the Internet remains a supplemental rather than primary source for news, according to a report issued by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project. Not surprisingly, 81% of all Americans got most of their information from TV and 11% from radio. According to the report, 3% of online users got most of their information from the Internet. "For many online Americans," reads the report, "the Internet played a useful supplemental role as a communications tool — through their use of e-mail and instant messaging — and as a news source. The general picture of many Internet users ... is that they were aggressively using all the means at their disposal to get information about the unfolding crisis and make contact with their networks of loved ones and friends."

Posted 8:02 AM US Mtn Time:

Terrorized by Fear of Layoffs

Jade Walker on fiscal viability of online media
Before terrorists decided to attack America, online journalists worried about the little things, like copyright violations and the troubling stream of dot-com failures. We all hoped the second half of the year would bring enough advertising and subscription revenue to keep us employed for just a while longer. Now the hope for a future recovery has also crashed. In order to adequately cover this tragic event, Web sites all over the country turned off their ads, canceled subscription requirements, and jammed their staffs into 24-hour work cycles.

No revenue coming in. Tons of overtime being filed. Millions of users turned to the Web for their news and none of them saw any advertising. Even as the online news media showed its usefulness and humanity, it also offered the higher-ups a glimpse at how much such news organizations cost to run. I wonder ... once this story trails off, and the news returns to normal, how many of us will still have jobs? Will our tireless efforts to cover this tragedy lead to our own demise?

Posted 7:57 AM US Mtn Time:

How Good Was Web Coverage of the Terrorist Attacks?

Paul Grabowicz on online news
There's been a lot of discussion about the performance of online media sites covering last Tuesday's terrorist attacks and whether community sites like Slashdot did a better job. Here's a list of stories on those topics and others related to the role the Web played in disseminating information on the attacks. (The list is part of a page of resources I put together for students and faculty at my school who were following the story.)

Posted 7:55 AM US Mtn Time:

Paying the Freight in Arkansas

Steve Klein on online newspaper revenue models
While looking at an excellent resource compiled by the Newseum of newspapers' online coverage of last week's terrorist atack of the United States, I happened to click on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's link and got this little surprise message: "If you choose not to subscribe, your access will be limited after October 1 to section fronts, classified ads, and the archives." Yet another example of a newspaper going to a Web paid-access model for non-subscribers in order to boost print circulation. If you subscribe to the print edition, you get free online access. If you're a displaced Razorback and want full online access, you'll have to pay for it. Seems shortsighted to me.

Friday, September 14, 2001

Posted 10:41 PM US Mtn Time:

The Importance of User-generated Content

Norbert Specker on photos from around the world
Never has user generated content been so important for the people. Not the least to those who submit it. This site from Victoria displays photos of sorrow as they come in from around the world, as the world stops to think about victims of this week's terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Posted 3:13 PM US Mtn Time:

Hear What They're Saying in Afghanistan

Amy Gahran on shortwave radio
One intriguing source of information about the world is shortwave radio. Lately, shortwave frequencies have been abuzz with news and perspectives on the attacks of September 11 and their possible consequences. If you don't have a shortwave radio, Glenn Hauser's DX Listening Digest offers a good roundup of what's happening on that part of the spectrum, reported by broadcasters and listeners from around the world.

Posted 2:28 PM US Mtn Time:

Watch for Critical Infrastructure Plan

Amy Gahran on shifting national priorities
In the wake of the September 11 mayhem, U.S. priorities have been shifting. Later this month, the Bush administration is expected to release a new critical-infrastructure plan that will likely include a strong push for improved security in federal informations systems, which are often criticized for poor security in reports by the GAO and others. Today, the Industry Standard published an article about shifting legislative agendas on several technology and communications issues. See: "Information Security: A New Priority," by Patrick Thibodeau.

Posted 1:51 PM US Mtn Time:

Terror Infographics on Parade

Norbert Specker on having pictures do the talking
Paul Nixon has collected, and is still collecting, infographics related to the terrorist attack on September 11. Please provide him (nix@nixlog.com) with links to your Flash animations and at the same time feed webmaster@contentsummit.com with screen shots (reported here yesterday) of September 11/12. Not only journalism professors and their students will profit from extensive collections, but so will the whole industry.

Posted 10:41 AM US Mtn Time:

Read the World's Newspapers Free This Week

Steve Outing on NewspaperDirect's offer
NewspaperDirect, an Internet company that digitally publishes newspapers from around the world, this week has opened up its beta service for free use. Go to the site and click on "Read online now!" The site offers a wide variety of newspapers from around the world, which you view on screen in the same format/presentation as their print editions. These are not test papers, these are today's editions — and it's not just the front pages, but the entire papers. At commercial launch this will be a paid service, but during this crisis period the company is making the papers' content free on the Web.

Posted 10:25 AM US Mtn Time:

The Net Impact

Steve Outing on news site traffic
We all know that Web news site usage went through the roof on Tuesday morning, and stayed up through the week. A Los Angeles Times report offers a few numbers: "MSNBC, the Internet's largest news site, saw a tenfold increase in traffic, with as many as 400,000 hits at any point. CNN.com surged to 162.4 million page views in 24 hours from a 14 million average, and CNET.com's traffic tripled on its news.com site. By Wednesday, the sites were more prepared, and congestion eased. By early afternoon, some sites reported even heavier traffic than Tuesday."

It's interesting that even technology-news sites like CNET got hit hard with traffic. CNET's director of editorial operations, Kurt Oeler, told me on Wednesday that his site saw five times normal traffic on Tuesday, after the attacks on New York and D.C. CNET covered the story with wire accounts.

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Posted 7:33 PM US Mtn Time:

Attack: Screen Shots of Online News Sites

Norbert Specker on online news
The online news community receives nods of appreciation on its reporting in this time of tragedy. Deservedly so. A collection of at this stage 150 screen shots of entry pages from online news sites around the world on September 11/12 can be found at my website. It offers the chance to compare the visual and topical approach of the many news entities that struggled with the enormity of the event and will help to further competencies within the industry.

I invite further screen shots of entry/home pages to be submitted. Send them to: webmaster@contentsummit.com. I'm aiming for general interest online newspapers, magazines, portals, and broadcasters. The local date should be September 11 and/or 12. Please include URL, date/time, town, country, and if possible a contact. Submissions will be included in the next release. I hope that at the same time the scroll may serve as a little pebble to the memorial of the innocent victims of this attack.

Posted 2:34 PM US Mtn Time:

Donating Edition Prices to Disaster Relief

Vin Crosbie on the worthy example of an Oregon newspaper
Like many other American newspapers, the Medford, Oregon, Mail Tribune on Tuesday published a special print edition about the New York and Washington, D.C., terrorist attacks. But rather than selling that special edition for the regular newsstand price, it offered it for half that price and announced that all sales proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross for disaster relief. The initial 7,000 copies sold out, raising nearly $5,000 for the Red Cross. One charitable individual even bought one of the $0.25 editions for $2,000! Another special edition of 10,000 copies was printed on Wednesday.

Posted 12:07 PM US Mtn Time:

Telling the Story — With New Media Tools

Rich Gordon on MSNBC's animated retrospective
MSNBC has produced an effective Flash animation of the terrorist attacks. It's the first thing I've seen that has attempted to integrate words, pictures, and animated graphics to tell the story. I think it's a fine first effort — but it illustrates both the limitations of today's tools and the amount of time it takes to produce real "new media storytelling."

Posted 11:56 AM US Mtn Time:

Bigotry Paints With a Wide Brush Online

Steve Klein on hatred on the Internet
At its worst, the Internet can be a free-flowing, unedited medium of hatred and bigotry. And across the Internet — on websites and weblogs and in chatrooms — there were distastful outpourings of anti-Arab hate speech in the wake of Tuesday's acts of terrorism in the U.S., according to a story by Julia Scheeres on Wired.com. Despite numerous cautions from government officials and in the media to avoid blaming any group, anti-Muslim speech was rampant online. Now, as evidence mounts pointing to the potential involvement of Arab terrorists, America's estimated 7 million Muslims are bracing for the backlash.

"We've got reports from all over the country," said Joshua Salaam, civil rights coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations, a nonprofit group that promotes a positive image of Muslims in America. "People are reporting stuff to us from chat rooms that is absolutely hateful. Our own website has been bombarded with death threats." In a column on the Muslim-oriented Iviews website, Muqtedar Khan wrote: "If Muslims are responsible for the attack on America, then Muslims as never before will be in desperate need of American protection. Muslims in America will need the U.S. to defend them from the rise in xenophobia and hatred that may arise."

Posted 10:17 AM US Mtn Time:

Life Goes On

Peter M. Zollman on our bad week
Another surreal scene from September 11: Inland Press Foundation was holding the second day of its three-day Online Management Conference in suburban Chicago. About 30 of us were in a morning presentation when word filtered in slowly about the terrorist attacks. What do you do? ... Life goes on. With great difficulty, Mike Blinder of the AIM Group (my business partner) completed his session on revenue generation; I did my afternoon workshop on classifieds revenue; and Ron Dupont of the St. Petersburg Times proceeded with critiques. Why? Because what else could/should we do? Some people left; some were glued to the tube. But most of us soldiered on.

What Tuesday's events reminded us — or certainly should have served to remind us — is how remarkably important media (broadcast, print, online) are to all of us in this age of communication; how they knit the fabric of our communities and our country and world together, in good times and bad, and how much people feel the need to connect, collect information, and receive pertinent details from a reliable source.

Posted 9:44 AM US Mtn Time:

Slowly, We Return to 'Normal' Things

Steve Outing on e-publishing's halt
Excluding news-related sites, I noticed a lot of publishing on the Internet halted this week due to the U.S. terrorist attacks. Many people publishing on topics unrelated to the news felt that it would have been disrespectful or unseemly to go on as if life was normal. This morning, I started seeing my normal flow of e-newsletters return to life.

With E-Media Tidbits, my colleagues and I focused on topics obviously related to the terror attacks and the media angle. While we'll continue that for some time, no doubt, I've also started posting again on non-terror topics — such as Carla Passino's item below, which she wrote before the attack on New York.

Posted 9:26 AM US Mtn Time:

The Return of the Big Buck

Carla Passino on Dennis Publishing's £2m website launch
Dennis Publishing is investing £2 million ($2.9 million) on a new games portal, reported The Guardian earlier this week. The site, which will be associated with Computer & Video Games magazine, will make extensive use of sophisticated personalization technology. "On top of our investment in content and talent, we have made a significant investment in technology to guide users through what will be one of the largest and most comprehensive games sites ever built," said the managing director of Dennis' interactive division, Guy Sneesby. Either Dennis Publishing is stuck in a time warp (circa 1999) or the Internet depression may be about to end.

Posted 9:21 AM US Mtn Time:

PGA.com Gets Its Eye on the Ball

Steve Klein on online sports sites
To update my item on Web sports sites in yesterday's E-Media Tidbits, late Wednesday PGA.com got its online act together with a package of three stories related to Tuesday's terrorist acts in the United States. The first story was about Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik, who had to flee his hotel near the World Trade Center and spent the day in Central Park. The PGA Tour canceled all of this week's events, and Tiger Woods met with Tour officials about whether the Ryder Cup should proceed.

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