Noted by the Readership Institute

Technology leaves landline phones behind?

2008-05-14T15:35:00.001-05:00

A new study by the Center for Disease Control finds that "one out of every six American homes (15.8%) now has only wireless telephones." Are mobile phones disrupting the traditional landline home phone industry the same way news on the Internet is disrupting the newspaper industry? A great quote in the San Francisco Chronicle makes us wonder: "People who live in mostly wireless homes agree the home phone no longer serves as a meaningful communication device."

The way we get news now

2008-05-12T11:38:00.003-05:00

Robert Scoble says he heard about the earth-quake in China via Twitter before it was on mainstream news sites, or even up on the USGS site. Others are reporting similar experiences. These are early adopters, sure, but they signal a strengthening of the trend toward distributed news.

The appeal of humor

2008-05-08T12:49:00.001-05:00

A fascinating study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that there is strong demand for news about serious topics - if it is presented in a non-serious way. The study analyzed the content of the Daily Show, finding its choice of news topics selective. Interestingly, the show "not only assumes, but even requires, previous and significant knowledge of the news on the part of viewers if they want to get the joke."

MSNBC's NewsWare

2008-05-06T11:44:00.001-05:00

MSNBC has launched "a laboratory for games, tools and other innovations" centering on news, called NewsWare. It includes games, interactivity, a cool visual presentation of the top news stories, and more. It has the potential to be an engaging one-stop-shop for all your news needs.

Google on design

2008-05-02T13:27:00.001-05:00

A post from Sue Factor on the official Google blog explains what makes a design "Googley." These are fundamental principles that all Google designers and researchers follow - and anyone should consider. Note that first on the list is a basic principle unrelated to design: "Focus on people - their lives, their work, their dreams."

It's all impossible until it's not

2008-04-30T13:13:00.001-05:00

Steve Safran writes about the newsroom culture (in this case, in TV) that is anti-change until, that is, change is required. The problem, he says, is that when changes are made this way, they are not internalized and the result is "unfocused and not strategic. [The changes] are 'Done,' but done poorly."

Giving people what they want

2008-04-29T15:59:00.002-05:00

The latest example of success through intense customer-focus is The Week, a heavily digested weekly take on what the busy, sophisticated person needs to stay well-informed. Jon Friedman writes that The Week is gaining while Time and Newsweek are struggling "by subscribing to the most basic tenet in business: Give people what they want." He quotes general manager Steven Kotok: "It's all about utility, not achieving an apotheosis of beautiful journalism."

Audiences not spending more time with newspaper sites

2008-04-28T16:58:00.001-05:00

Editor & Publisher reports about a new Nielsen Online study that shows most newspaper Web sites did not make gains with how much time people spent with the site, year over year. Is that bad news? Depends on whether you think time is the most important metric.

The impact of technology on teens' writing

2008-04-24T16:03:00.003-05:00

Teens "disassociate e-communication with 'writing,'" says a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, but "they also strongly believe that good writing is a critical skill to achieving success." The study finds that, "even though teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world, they do not believe that communication over the internet or text messaging is writing."

Searching for news about the elections

2008-04-23T13:07:00.001-05:00

iCrossing released a study about how Americans search for information about the 2008 elections. The report found that, as a source of information, the Internet is second to television but ahead of newspapers and that candidates' positions on the issues is a main driver for searches.

Bloggers and journalists can learn from each other

2008-04-22T11:45:00.001-05:00

Jonathan Bailey, writing in the Blog Herald, says that "blogging and traditional news reporting are actually closer to one another than many would like to admit." He offers five lessons each group can learn from the other, including: learning from bloggers to work with competitors and learning from journalists to write with radical clarity.

Your role: legitimize the news

2008-04-21T14:43:00.001-05:00

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired, is quoted in a New York Observer story as saying that now that they no longer control the flow of information, the print media is "not so much breaking news as much as legitimizing news." News organizations can add value when everyone rushes to break a story.

Misusing hyperlinks on news sites

2008-04-16T16:17:00.003-05:00

Jack Shafer writes on Slate about how many news sites misuse hyperlinks, suggesting they are more focused on increasing page views, optimizing search results, or adding advertising opportunities than on how readers actually like to use these links - which may include the competition. "I don't oppose sites serving ads or optimizing pages to improve search results," he says, "as long as the strategies don't waste readers' time."

CNN finds market for longer online videos

2008-04-15T15:12:00.001-05:00

Always On posted a Beet.TV video of Sandy Malcolm, Executive Producer of CNN.com, talking earlier this month about "how the Web has afforded her company with new ways to present video." She says that longer form and natural sound are appealing to some audiences.

Forrester Research on Groundswell

2008-04-11T15:53:00.001-05:00

A book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff at Forrester, Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, has just come out. The book includes 25 case studies of companies that harnessed the power of social applications and turned it into an advantage.

Geo-coded news

2008-04-09T10:07:00.001-05:00

The New York Times is teaming up with Google Earth to offer geo-coded news, which allows you to "see the latest news and features pertaining to [a] geographic region." Will geo-tagging catch on?

Forum on the future of newspapers

2008-04-08T16:16:00.001-05:00

The Britannica blog is running a forum this week on Newspapers and the Net discussing the state of newspapers in the digital age. The first two items (by David Carr and Clay Shirky) have been posted and are thought provoking, recommended reading.

Journalism is a privilege profession

2008-04-07T14:29:00.001-05:00

Peter Wilby, writes in the Guardian that social exclusivity among British journalists is not helping the profession: "How can journalism truly reflect society when entry to the profession relies on wealth, geography, and parents prepared to pay the wages that employers will not?"

How to get on Google News

2008-04-07T13:34:00.000-05:00

Google's news blog last week posted some myths and truths about how Google News captures a news story and why it might not. One is particular may be of interest: redesigning your site may give the Google bot trouble navigating the new design of your site. Check out the thread about this topic here.

Consumers tell the story

2008-04-03T14:54:00.002-05:00

From trendwatching.com, a fascinating article about how status stories may come to replace status symbols... "What's new in [the marketing] field? How about companies no longer inundating consumers with their 'brand stories', but instead helping customers tell a story to other consumers. Not to promote that particular brand, but to make those customers more interesting to others."

State of the media report

2008-03-17T16:50:00.001-05:00

The 2008 State of the Media report is out and, as always, full of interesting information. In particular, it concludes that people - including young people - gravitate to established old-media brands, they just use it online. "The crisis in journalism... may not strictly be loss of audience. It may, more fundamentally, be the decoupling of news and advertising."

More focus on the audience is needed

2008-03-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

A new study by the Readership Institute finds that newspaper executives are ever so slightly more audience-oriented than they were in previous studies, but they are short of the ideal level they themselves describe. Those who rate their organization as being more audience-oriented, also tend to view the nature of their business in non-traditional ways – for example, as a business that connects audiences to one another, or aggregates content.

Users vs. experts?

2008-03-10T13:40:00.001-05:00

Newsweek has an article saying that user-generated content is on the way out, citing venture capitalists who fund online efforts and relying on Andrew Keen's argument about the cult of the amateur. This has been met with quite a furor by some (see here and here and here).

Internet scores higher on trust than the press

2008-03-07T15:17:00.000-06:00

According to a new Harris Interactive poll, more people say they trust Internet news and information sites than they trust the press. This low trust curiously coincides with an increased interest in political news this election year.