Author (#1)April 2004 Archives

The blog Holvaty says Google News deserved being a finalist in this year's ESpy Awards.

"Please note my bias as a professional programmer, but I'd say a news application developed by computer scientists is just as deserving of journalism awards as a collection of news stories produced by traditional journalists," he writes.

The list of this year's finalists is here and winners will be announced May 12.

If Google is a finalist this year, will Topix be a finalist next year?

Both sites should worry local newspapers and TV stations. Google News and Topix give traffic and take traffic from local sites. They drive traffic when people click from a link, but reduce the need to go as many individual local sites. Long-term, I think will siphon away most site's traffic.

Headlines are key in online stories. The headline is often the only way a reader can decide whether to click on the story or not.

Headlines are too often written at the end of the process rather than the beginning. Readers read headline, lead and then the rest of the story. Too often reporters write lead and story, then someone else writes the headline.

"Breathe life into headlines" at Poynteronline. In a presentation at the March 2004 American Copy Editors national conference Jenny Montgomery, local news editor for HoustonChronicle.com offers these suggestions (near the bottom of the article):

• be specific enough to hook readers
• have key words that refer to past stories in the news that are on people's minds during watercooler chat
• be written in a conversational tone
• be simple and straightforward
• give the pertinent information since online hedlines don't typically follow newspaper design strategies such as drop heds
• find a blend of sensationalism and exaggeration
• use "magic" words that everyone is curious about (e.g., babies, spam, the Web, viruses, taxes, reality TV).

Also another proponent of well-written headlines is Howard I. Finberg's "How Headlines Can Help". Best line: I believe that websites are missing an opportunity to attract and retain website visitors with better and more interesting headlines.

Charlotte Business Journal: Duke eyes entry into Internet market. Testing broadband over power lines in my part of town. Also from Monday's Christian Science Monitor -- Power lines set to carry high-speed Internet.

Mother Jones -- The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged: To see beyond their own little world and get a sense of what's really going on, journalists and readers need to get out of their pajamas. First line: First, a confession: I hate blogs. I'm also addicted to them.

More reaction today to USA Today's report and editor cleaning: Washington Post's Howard Kurtz "In and Out of the News: Vanishing Editors" includes why USA Today and N.Y. Times editors resigned, but Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post did not resign when the fabrications of Janet Cooke emerged after she had won a Pulitzer Prize.

Kurtz' view on the current scandals: "In both cases, the deceptions of a single reporter triggered newsroom revolts in which angry staffers insisted that bad management was to blame for the climate that allowed the fraud to flourish."

Also Leonard Pitts: "When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw-up. When a black person screws up, it ignites a debate on race.

St. Louis Business Journal: 7 Cards players account for 72 percent of payroll

Almost two years ago, I began listening full time to audio books on the daily commute. I stopped feeling guilty about not listening to NPR.

The book that convinced me was Guns of August by Barbara Wertheim Tuchman. It was a book that for several years I had wanted to read, but never found the time to sit down with it. But sitting in the car was "found" time. There's not many other things you can do in the car on the commute, though I do see people reading newspapers, books, putting on makeup, shaving and changing clothes on their commutes.

Thanks to the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, I've listened to lots of books. I stay with non-fiction, which means I can enjoy the mysterys and other fiction books when I have time to read.

I've listened to many books I would never have considered and found that many were enjoyable. Kevin Kelly recently wrote in Cool Tools about Books on Tape and salvaging the commute.

Kelly discusses the importance of the book's reader, and I agree. Recently I set aside Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man because of the drone of the reader.

Dropped into a camera store to again look at digital cameras. I am content with what I have, most of the time, and I don't want to be the last person shooting film.

Pentax's compact cameras are so small they can fit into an Altoids' tin. These cameras, including Canon's PowerShot S410 and Casio ExilimZ4U are not low-end, the have 4.0 megapixels and 3x optical zoom.

But are they too small? I'm not used to holding a camera the size of a credit card. They're so light, I'd be worried I'd forget and leave it somewhere.

USA Today has investigated itself looking for reasons why reporter Jack Kelley was able to make up stories for so long without anyone speaking up.

Reading the stories from USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, the most stunning reading was the descriptions of the newsroom. Kelley was considered "protected" by the top editors. Other reporters and mid-level reporters learned it was best to say nothing at all about Kelley. The Wall Street Journal used "virus of fear" from the internal report to describe the USA Today newsroom.

It's a dangerous thing when higher ups don't want to hear bad news. It's also dangerous when people in an organization no longer care about the quality of their work.

The problems at USA Today sound worse than the problems Jason Blair caused for N.Y. Times with his made-up stories. Kelley was making up stories for more than 10 years, Blair was at the N.Y. Times a shorter period. The report makes the resignations of Karen Jurgensen, editor and Hal Ritter, the managing editor, understandable since they were at the top. Lax editing and newsroom leadership were among the problems cited in the report. An AP story reporting Ritter's resignation says another top editor, Brian Gallagher, the newspaper's executive editor, has said he's leaving.

There is irony that The Atlantic is running in the current issue Howell Raines' recollection of his time as executive editor of the N.Y. Times, which ended because of Blair. Atlantic has excerpts of the article online. The online excerpts include Raines' view about the effort to reform the newsroom and the strong resistance he met.

With the latest Pew Research Center report, Broadband Penetration on the Upswing: 55% of Adult Internet Users Have Broadband at Home or Work, NY Times looked at those who still use dial-up connections. Those interviewed didn't seem to have the urgency for high-speed delivery and some felt it would compel them to spend more time on line.

Motley Fool: Saving in a Nation of Spenders. From Census data no age group had a median net worth above $32,000 when the value of their home was excluded. When home values were included the age group 70-74 had the highest median net worth at $120,000. More details are available through the Census Bureau. After homes, the next largest category of net worth assets are stocks and mutual funds.

Also the comparison of couples showed a married couple 55-64 had a median net worth, excluding equity in home, of $73,962, the highest amount of any group of couples. That's 7 times greater than male or female households.

Those amounts are unbelievably low, especially give that more and more workers retire now without pension plans.

Current: Crispin: the cross of lead by Avi. On my list of Newberry Award books to read.

Finished: The Last Goodbye by Reed Arvin

These high, green hillsby Jan Karon

The Murder Room by P.D. James. Denser than most mysteries, but good read.

Audio
Current: Elizabeth and Mary (cousins, rivals, queens) by Jane Dunn

Finished:
Genome war (How Craig Venter tried to capture the code of life and save the world) by James Shreeve. Good story and makes stripping wallpaper and painting go much faster.

Library (an unquiet history) by Matthew Battles.

Set aside: Flashing before my eyes 50 years of headlines, deadlines & punchlines by Dick Schaap.

April is the month for some online anniversaries. Steve Yelvington lists the things online or "new" media should do in the next 10 years in reflecting his 10 years. Brian Chin compares the difference in his eight years online.

This is my eighth year working online too. It's exciting that so much has been accomplished, but so much more seems about to happen. We're still trying to figure this business out, and it's exciting to write the rules as you go. What looked like the "next and greatest" two years ago, isn't now. But there's always something just over the horizon to be excited about.

What I like is the dynamic relationship with the readers (users). You can see the reaction to good work and high interest from the traffic reports and the reaction from readers with their comments and email.

Our site feels more alive than print edition. People often skip the page one stories from our print editions and choose stories from inside the paper to read some piece they find interesting or informative.

A hot story gets instant reaction. Old stories live on finding new readers each week. Something is added to the site and readers' react, it's a great feeling. Or, if it doesn't work out, it becomes a learning experience.

This month, the N.Y. Times closed a door on its archives that many bloggers, including myself, used to point to articles past the 7 days the N.Y. Times allows for open access to articles. Now those links point to an archive summary of the story.

Dave Winer says the Times should have given more warning or allowed all previous links to remain open. He also bemoans the loss of a newspaper of record for the Web.

It's inconvenient, but the Times had the right to close its door. If regular Web readers did not have special access, why should blog readers?

Reuters, another source of news items for bloggers and others, plans to cut the material it gives to organizations such as Yahoo! and CBS MarketWatch, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. (Link works only for paid subscribers.) Reuters' plan is to offer more its content through subscriptions.

News organizations have wanted to charge for access to their archives and premium content for awhile after it became obvious that advertising revenue alone would not cover the costs. They have increased registration requirements on their sites to boost their appeal to advertisers.

But will readers pay? The belief is most will not. How many other local papers or regional organizations could reach the almost 700,000 online subscribers that the Wall Street Journal has?

Interesting column by Joan Silverman and blog item by Amy Gahran on Contentious Weblog about the loss of comprehension of reading online compared with the printed editions. Tip: Smart Mobs

Silverman writes: "When I canceled my subscription to the hard-copy edition of the newspaper, I never looked back -- that is, until a recent morning. I opened my e-mail headlines from the daily paper and spotted a half-dozen stories of interest. As I looked at the articles, however, I found that several were fairly long. Suddenly I felt a sense of dread, as if reading had become a form of punishment.

"And there's the rub. For anything beyond casual browsing or skimming, I think I may hate the computer."

"Yes, I'm much more of a skimmer than I was a decade ago," Gahran writes. Then concludes: "There is no shame in being a news skimmer, as long as you still know how to dive deep when it matters, and are willing to take that plunge."

The Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint is my favorite send-up of the software. Now Slate has The Pledge of Allegiance, It's a distant second. For a previous entry about PowerPoint see PowerPoint: Art or info fog?