OhmyDebt

OhmyNews is struggling to make money out of editorial innovation and the big bad consultants think citizen journalism isn’t really a go-er, at least not on its own.  Do we agree?

Add comment November 6th, 2006

Online newsrooms

Don’t know how I missed it before but take a look at Carl Sessions Stepp’s piece on a long tour of online newsrooms up the east coast of the US from the April/May issure of the American Journalism Review.  It provides quite a few insights to the process of making a paper online and on print, not least this quote from Houston Chronicle front man Jeff Cohen:

The endgame is to have all our excellent journalists producing content, and air traffic controllers putting it on the various platforms.

Add comment November 6th, 2006

Local web

Two interesting sites that are pushing local news in innovative ways.  Both of them lack the following to be incredibly useful but they are examples of platforms that I can see working.  It interesting to note that most of their information still comes from local newspapers (they are built for the states where ‘local’ newspapers still means hundreds of thousands of readers).  Topix.net offers search capability on location and keyword, its basically an aggregator with the ability to zoom in on particular places or subjects.  Its good and its professional–the best I have seen thus far. Outside.in offers hyperlocal news via Google-map based navigation, its not very well populated and the user interface leaves a lot to be desired but one can see an inkling of genius here, its needs another year to be worthwhile though.

Add comment November 6th, 2006

More Monday Media

I have been gone for so very long courtesy of a 7 day plague that left me in bed suffering through endless daytime TV (is it just me or have things really gone downhill?) but now I am back and so are the Monday media sections.  Its time to be honest here though, the Independent’s latest weekly supplement is hardly worth mentioning all, especially in comparison to the Guardian’s consistently modern section.  Let us look at what the Indy has decided is important enough to make it this week (warning: its all boring and all soooo 10 years ago): a straght-forward interview with BBC correspondent Ben Brown, the same for Archer’s dame Vanessa Whitburn, a visually boring centerspread on Vogue, more boringness on comic duos that I can hardly even bother to read  plus a huge contingent of useless columns that parrot last week’s headlines almost verbatim, Stephen Glover is  useless though Claire Beale warrants special mention for her advertising column that, as far as I can tell, is about ‘effectiveness’. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  I won’t even link to the stories because they all disappear behind a paywall in about 10 hours.  The Indy may have the best front pages this side of the Atlantic but good lord what century are they in?
Thank god for the Guardian which is spot on, mixing together well thought new ideas (not old facts), light fluff and a little naughtiness to form the perfect little polenta of a media section.  Start with Owen Gibson’s piece on user-generated content which is a little late and a little sparse but is a at least about an modern idea and deserves its place on the front page.  Continue on to Richard’s column which, through my slightly less than objective eyes, looks like a well-formed piece filled with ideas to think about and just the right amount of venom to get you churning.  Its too bad Emily Bell’s column is so derivative and light, it could have been a masterclass on the meaning of copyright and information protection in the digital arena or even a fun-filled piece about the state of the “free internet” especially with all of the Netscape controversy and Edelman/Wal-Mart and PayPerPost and so much else.  Instead it was a fluffed out last minute piece of malarky that mentions Lawrence Lessig and his Creative Commons License and then sits back contentedly as if the world’s problems are solved.

In some way, this week’s sections make me wish I was back in daytime TV hell, maybe Diagnosis Murder isn’t so bad after all…

Add comment November 6th, 2006