Howard Owens

Great lede from Vin Crosbie:

Let's peek under the blanket because there's a lot of people in the dark there. A widespread misconception is that taking printed or broadcast content and putting it online or wireless is new-media. This misconception blankets even many new-media executives.

No, taking printed or broadcast content and putting it online or wireless is as much new-media as microwaving hamburgers is new cuisine. It's just the same old beef reheated a new way. (bold added)

As they say, read the whole thing. Vin, as always, serves up good food for thought.

Here's an interesting bit of news: The Knight Foundation is putting up $25 million to help foster news of a local nature.

Mindy McAdams offers five categories of tips for driving site traffic. It's all good stuff.

Jay Small has a link-filled post related to design and usability.

Tribune may be getting ready to go private.

David Geffen is serious about buying the Times.

Note: If you're planning to publish a free paper with home distribution to non-opt-in subscribers, make sure you have a rock solid system to let people opt-out.

Jon Fine on why the Times won't pass to private hands. My previous related thoughts here.

Mark Cuban says only a moron would buy YouTube.

Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, also said YouTube would eventually be "sued into oblivion" because of copyright violations.

"They are just breaking the law," Cuban told a group of advertisers in New York. "The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue."

I've said before, copyrighted material is YouTube's poison pill, in a manner of speaking. Who wants the headache?

Cuban doesn't see a revenue model, but he's got a conflict of interest in that matter with his new venture. I think there is a way to make money in this space.

We are posting two jobs in my department this week. Both positions are full-time and are based in Fairport, NY (just east of Rochester).

First, we’re looking for a great Web artist to serve as our Senior Web Developer. This key position will lead our Web site design efforts. We have designs for more than 450 sites to develop and manage, so we’re looking for somebody who has both the creative vision for building a variety of options for site managers, but can also conceptually view Web site design in an object-oriented, module manner. Our designs will share common templates and themes, but use modular concepts to allow for variety. User-focused design, usability and standards compliance is vital to our business model. Our ideal candidate is motivated to build the best information-service sites in the business, has at least three years experience, and never stops trying to improve his or her chops.

The second job is also vital to our plans. We are looking for a Deputy Multimedia Editor. This position will oversee our universal news desk and help us develop the GateHouse News Service, which will not only serve all GateHouse Media properties, but a variety of non-GateHouse publishers, both online and in print. The job entails developing the best content (text and multimedia) for our news service, managing the news flow, and working with our local editors to understand their needs and deliver to them content that helps them serve their readers better. The editor will supervise a multi-person staff of multimedia editors.

If you are interested in either of these positions, or know somebody who might be, I can provide you full job descriptions. Write to me at howens – at – gatehousemedia dot com.

For more information on GateHouse, visit www.gatehousemedia.com

A few days ago, Steve Outing put out a call for newspaper new media executives to share their insiders view on the key things newspapers are not doing. Here's the resulting column.

Nothing, I would say, too surprising -- too many decisions driven by print revenue concerns, editors who remain clueless about online, not enough programmers and complaints about pay walls.

When I look around the industry, I would add: We're not doing a good job yet at building connections between people; and with only a few exceptions, not enough video.

Sometimes I get a sense that there is this large group of newspaper publishers who operate under the notion: "OK, we've got a Web site. Now I've done my innovative duty and I can get back to fretting over circulation and classifieds." And that Web site hasn't changed since 1998. Surf around to a few dozen newspaper.coms. It's real obvious which sites are ghettos of shovelware.

I saw a video recently where Laura Rich Fine (tangentially related link, because I can't find a bio page for Laura) talked about the need for newspapers to start spending more money on technology. I think Wall Street is ready for newspapers to cut into revenue growth and profit margins, if necessary, to fund innovation. And for a privately held company, there's no excuse.

I stumbled upon this on YouTube -- Gary Brolsma is back. The original Internet viral-video star has a new, slick and professionally produced video, with a marketing-drenched companion Web site.

Clearly, Gary is cashing in. Some (see the comments on YouTube) saying he's selling out. I say good for Gary.

Gary taught us all a powerful lesson about the drawing power of entertaining video on the Web. I've used the Numa, Numa Dance video in every presentation I've done on multimedia over the past two or three years. It's wickedly funny and engaging. It's popularity is an accident, a coincidence of broadband explosion and and audience readiness for video on the Web in the pre-YouTube days. Gary should take full advantage of his cyberfame while he can.

The new video isn't really entertaining, despite Gary's powerful personality, but that's almost beside the point now.

More interesting is the Rocket Boom interview.

Bonus link: American Idle.

In 1978, Elvis Costello sang:

... the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel

He debuted on Saturday Night Live with that song, even though (allegedly), he wasn't supposed to.

Rumor has always had it that with one song, Elvis alienated himself from radio programmers the world over with his angry statement of bile and truth.

I don't know if all of that is true, but I do know that in 1978, I loved "Radio, Radio," because it blasted the lack-of-imagination, formulaic and possibly payolized nature of AM and FM commercial radio. The world was exploding with good music as punk and new wave crested, but good luck hearing any of it on most radio stations.

And radio was so important. For a high school kid like me, radio was the only connection with music outside of my bedroom. I didn't own a cassette player yet, and the Walkman hadn't been invented. A year or two later, I could produce my own mix tapes, but in 1978, if I were away from my LPs, I only had the radio. And radio sucked.

Tonight, I'm watching Elvis on Austin City Limits and he opened with "Radio, Radio," and it struck me how in a manner, that song has become totally irrelevant. An relic of the past like 8 tracks and magic 8 balls. And not just for me, but the whole world. Now I have my iPod, XM Radio and disks that can hold more than 100 MP3s. What do I, or anybody else, need radio for? Radio still sucks, but so what?

Then I was reading over the lyrics of the song tonight -- there is a way "Radio, Radio" still matters. What is interesting, it is a meaning that Elvis could not have anticipated in 1977/78. The relevance is this -- vapid talk radio, which is the only kind of talk radio there is (on both the left and the right). The song fits even better as an anthem against Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken as it does the mindless radio programmers of the Top 40 era.

Talk radio has come to dominate the airwaves, but with all the good current affairs blogs out there, does it really matter, either?

Friday evening I returned from two weeks on the East Coast. My swing took me through New York City (on 9/11, no less), Rochester/Fairport, Fredericksburg and Boston/Quincy. Of course, I took pictures.

In NYC, I stayed at the New Yorker and saw the Empire State Building.

In Fairport, I spent my Saturday driving around and saw an old barn, a train, a church and I found a cigar shop. I also drove to Batavia for a gathering of master gardeners, where I learned that growing roses in upstate NY is hard. There are some great buildings in Batavia such as this one and this one.

Then I spent one day in Fredericksburg, Va. There I saw a building with a canon ball in it.

The last stop was Boston, where I made my first visit to Fenway.

Mark Glaser is good at letting his mind jump outside of the box once in a while, and if nothing else, his ideas are worth a little contemplation.

His latest column Glaser gets a little wild on the topic of alternatives to public ownership of newspapers.

I'm still not convinced this is a public vs. private debate. The structure of newspaper ownership is not an either or proposition. There are private ownership models that suck, such as the single owner of the single newspaper. Many years ago, I worked for a one-owner newspaper where the drive for profits and the complete disregard for ethics was much worse than any public newspaper I know of. On the flip side, I have high regard for E.W. Scripps and McClatchy, two publicly-traded newspaper companies with great ownership models that to this point, at least, have worked very well at keeping Wall Street out of the newsroom.

Structure is important, but no structure can save you from bad leadership. It takes smart people making smart decisions with a clear vision of where to take the business. That's why the St. Pete Times works. It has nothing to do with the non-profit status of the paper. Some of Glaser's suggestions, such as "citizen ownership" could potentially muddle the lines of leadership. And the minute you set up a clearly defined leadership structure, you're going to offend some people, which leads to a break down of citizen participation.

As for white knights putting up the initial financing for a citizen buy out of the LA Times -- that's a lot of money. I don't care how altruistic they feel about the community, they are going to want to protect their cash. If they have even a single capitalistic bone, they are going to want to grow profits. Even if that were to happen, the subsequent small investors, such as the Pasadena grandmother putting up her last free $100, will not want to lose money. Fiscal responsibility requires a steady hand and sometimes leads to decisions that newsrooms find distasteful. In abstract, I'm not sure this model is the answer. I see more conflict and inertia than I do a return to glory. That's not to say that with the right structure and leadership in place, it couldn't work, but it would be easier to get cats all running in the same direction than to manage the LAT by citizen committee.

My wife calls Trevor Hoffman "Candy Ass." She's never fully understood why one guy on the team only pitches once in a while and then for only one inning at a time. He rarely pitches in tie games, and almost never when the Padres are way ahead or way behind. She's not really a baseball fan and the the deeper importance of a "save" is apparently lost on her.

Minutes ago, she said, "Now I feel bad for calling him a candy ass all these years."

Mr. Hoffman is now the all-time saves leader and we just watched it live thanks to Directv and MLB Extra Innings.

The Pittsburgh broadcasters were exceptionally professional, giving Hoffman all due credit. They didn't even break to commercial prior to the bottom of the 9th inning. We got to see the whole spectacle of "Hell's Bells," with one of the broadcasters remarking on how Hoffman's entry into a game in San Diego never fails to give him goosebumps.

They also stuck with the post game celebration for several minutes.

Thank you, FSN.

Vin Crosbie is once again pretty pessimistic about the prospects of the newspaper industry.

I remain optimistic, but Vin makes some good points, and newspaper companies that don't heed the warning signs and respond appropriately are in jeopardy.

Greg Sterling tells directory publishers afraid of user ratings and reviews: Get over it.

No doubt. The argument over UGC in media is over. UGC won.

Belardes gets some digital love from TBC.

NOTE: As of approx. Sept. 22, 2006, this issue had been resolved. Live Search is now sending referrer information to Web servers.

Microsoft has taken Live Search out of beta. It apparently has all kinds of promise, but here's the weird thing: It reportedly is not passing referrer information to Web servers. This is apparently a bug and not a feature. Let's hope so.

Until MSFT fixes it, it's worth speculating on why Live Search might not pass referrers, because maybe it's not a bug. Right now, based on what I can find, I would classify the "it's a bug not a feature" response an unconfirmed rumor. There is no offical MSFT announcement or discussion that I can find.

It could be that MSFT has suddenly become concerned about protecting user privacy. In the wake of the AOL search database scandal, maybe MSFT wants to do its part to protect the aggregating of personal search data. This doesn't seem plausible from a couple of perspectives, but we might as well consider it.

A more plausible explanation is that if Live Search doesn't show in referrer logs, then SEO specialists will find it hard to optimize for Live Search. This is bad for legitimate SEO, but potentially good for a search engine, because black hat SEO will find it harder to figure out the secret sauce of the search and implement exploits. Organic search results, then, should contain less spam or even questionably relevant results.

The decision may also be tied to Live Search's "text mining" algorithm, with the goal of making it harder to suss out how text mining works from search strings passed through a referrer. I don't know.

If this feature sticks (again, speculating that it's not a bug), it's going to make life much harder on metrics analysis. We won't be able to figure out what percentage of traffic is coming from Live Search -- in fact, it will put referrers way out of whack because the part of the pie chart that reads "other" just got a whole lot bigger. That other slice used to be pretty reliably a mix of e-mailed links, bookmarks and people who use anti-spyware software to block referrers, which in aggregate is a good portion of the referrer pie; however, in in most cases, you could figure a good portion of that traffic was bookmarks or people who type in addresses -- in other words, people who made up a substantial part of your loyal audience. Now you've got this search engine that is going to be sending you a significant amount of traffic (most of it drive-by and not loyal) getting batched in with bookmarks. This doesn't help a traffic log system that is already imperfect and jumbled.

We should all bow our heads and pray that this is a bug, and a bug that will get fixed quickly. It's possible, even, that if it is a bug, it will be fixed by the time you read this. If you hear anything, let me know.

I've always liked SignOnSanDiego's "Today's Paper" page. It's been part of the site as far back as I can remember.

While SOSD maintains its own brand, the TP page is banded with the print publication and maintains the print metaphor for sections and daily publication."

Newspaper Web sites should not think of themselves as newspaper Web sites. They should forget the print product even exists, and concentrate on constant and continuous, Web-first, written-for-the-Web stories. But, and this is an important but, many users still think of a newspaper site as a newspaper -- they want the metaphor, section by section, day-by-day. I can't count the number of times I've had readers call me and ask, "How do I find last Sunday's paper on the Web site?" Or even more specifically, "How do I find last Thursday's sports section online?" Many readers simply expect the online site to mirror the print publication.

But mirroring the print edition is no way to grow readership, to reach readers (such as young readers) who want the Web to work like the Web. That is a big and growing part of the audience.

So SOSD found a way to strike the perfect balance. The home page is Web centric. The TP page is print centric. Both audiences are served.

When the NYT rolled out its new design in April, they also included a "Today's Paper" tab.

The new SavannahNow site also includes a print-centric section.

I like both NYT and Savannah for its use of front page images on the print page, but I think SOSD makes it easier than both at finding page-issue archives. All three have the feature, but for NYT, you must scroll to the bottom of the page.

If you know of any other sites with this feature, please post the link in the comments

NYT: Video is big and getting bigger

Still, a few things are clear from the recent news flow. First of all: yes, the world has gone batty over video. Thirty-second clips, three-minute spoofs, half-hour sitcoms, TV dramas that haven’t been shown in decades, rap videos, Hollywood blockbusters and feeds from TV news outlets big and small are flooding online. The term video itself is already starting to sound old — the equivalent of songs before the advent of MP3’s and downloads.

The good news — and my second point — is that there’s gold in them there hills. Video delivered over the Internet is clearly shaping up to be an actual business that advertisers are interested in.

Now that Knight-Ridder is sufficiently splintered into oblivion, the most interesting newspaper industry drama these days is the slowly escalating war between the Los Angeles Times and its parent company, the Tribune Co. You have the shareholder Chandlers (former LAT owners) fighting Trib over the fate of the company, while there seems to be ongoing pressure on the Trib to divest itself of the LAT. Now, you have the editor, with support from his publisher, defying the Trib over mandated staff cuts -- and to top it off, going public with his rebellion. This should be the best fall entertainment to come out of Los Angeles this year.

This is the weekend of the big series -- the series that could decide the fate of the Western Division -- and the Wall Street Journal takes notice.

If you think you need to spend some time investigating Web 2.0 companies (not a bad idea if you're a media exec), this site should help a lot. (via TechCrunh)

Come on, admit it: You love a good television commercial. We all do.

Advertisers and marketers have discovered that good commercials are good content, so they are posting them more frequently to their own Web sites, according to thisNYT piece.

Google is looking into helping local Web sites with video upload, especially user-generated content.

Maps are great on the Web, and can be a window into all kinds of information. Google sees the potential. They’ve added video to Google earth.

Wired writer Jeff Koyen ways in with some positive thoughts on the new NYT/Microsoft News reader:

BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis was notably hostile. Without previewing the software, Jarvis wrote, "The only reasons to do this are to feed editorial ego, to think you’re maintaining editorial control." Jarvis is working with craigslist's Craig Newmark on a yet-to-be-released software platform to organize daily news.

However, it could be argued that someone should maintain editorial control. While some news organizations are grappling with fantasists, plagiarists and Photoshoppists, that doesn't make a trustworthy journalist of the kid with a SureShot and a laptop. As ever, the best news diet boasts traditional outlets, independent publishers and maverick journalists. Appreciating one needn't discredit the other.

Many smart bloggers acknowledge the importance of professional journalism, which predisposes some form of hierarchical editorial decisions. It’s hard to believe that sort of publishing will ever recede completely. The question is, how will it be different, if different at all, from what we have today?

There are a few books that I think every programmer should own, no matter the favored language. One of them is Mastering Regular Expressions. This Slashdot post, then, was heart-warming to find. Personally, I never mastered RegEx, but I learned enough to be awed by the power of the concept.

So how big is MySpace? Well, check out what HitWise says are the biggest successful search terms.

The Salt Lake Tribune has launched a redesigned Web site.

If you’re a fan of newspaper branding, you will love the masthead. Circ directors will love the prominent play to the subscribe link. The nav is horizontal, as it should be. Of course, tabs would be better. I love the right-side special features nav – good looking, essential information with nice icons. The play of text stories is reasonable, both for top stories and other coverage (side note: I can’t let it pass without notice – they have a whole section dedicated just to polygamy). The calendar placement is appropriate. Finally, search is nice and big and at the top of the page.

Unfortunately, the search is not integrated. My test search terms are always “ford mustang,” which should return both articles and classifieds. Sltrib.com returns only articles. The results search page is attractive with a cool tree view of the results set on the right side of the page, but that doesn’t help me if I’m trying to find something in classifieds. And if I want to navigate to obituaries through search? Forget it. It won’t work.

And there are other problems, as I see it: The feature/photo story rotates through too many choices. I question the whole rotation without letting users decide if it should rotate. Tabs would be better. Verticals (cars, housing, jobs) are pretty much lost on the page. Also, multimedia is nothing more than a link to photos – no video or Flash I could see. Video should be linked right from the home page. Kudos to the Tribune for a number of staff blogs, but where are the citizen blogs?

Overall, great color scheme and nice layout with a quality visual treatment.