Eubie's notes

What digital dimes from print dollars looks like

Posted in journalism on February 28th, 2011 by eubie – Comments Off

From Monday Note byFrédéric Filloux: The Publisher’s Dilemma

Let’s face it: the online advertising business model, when applied to the transformation of the newspaper industry, is largely failure. The reasons are well known:
- The profusion of free, news-related contents diluted the perceived value of editorial-rich “trusted brands”.
- More agile competitors, quite adept at using sophisticated audience-catching techniques (that are implemented at a fraction of the cost of a modern printing plant).
- The endless stream of pages with hundreds of URLs added each day ended up destroying any balance in the supply vs. demand mechanism.
- The resulting pressure on prices, as “premium” ad formats slowly yielded to bulk fire sales.
- An unreliable audience measurement system that rewards cheating instead of editorial quality or relevance.
- The advertising community’s inability to base their purchases on solid market analyses.

And on GigaOm by Mathew Ingram: Memo to Newspapers: Incremental Change is Not Helping, which buils on Filloux’s article:

That should keep both journalists and the business side of newspapers awake at night.

8 Ways Publishers Can Protect Users’ Privacy — MediaShift

Posted in journalism on February 20th, 2011 by eubie – Comments Off

From Mediashift: eight recommendations and best practices on user privacy

Be Open
Put Users First
Explain the Value While Allowing Opt-Outs
Anonymize The Data
Make Personal Data Subpoena-Proof
Use Strong Security Protocols
Use Third Party Fulfillment
Participate in Industry Groups

Two days later MediaShift published On Facebook and Online, Privacy Is Only an Illusion.

NY Times examines black-hat SEO by JC Penney

Posted in journalism on February 14th, 2011 by eubie – 1 Comment

The New York Times story “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” is describes the various ways JC Penney employed through a hired SEO company to get itself to prime places in Google search for phrases ranging “area rugs” to “dresses”.

Now that the results have been disclosed, Penney will pay a penalty. Google is not amused when its system has been tricked. Google seems more regal when portrayed in articles like Wired’s “Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web“, which was awe-inspiring in the attention given to search results and to make them as useful as it could. Oh to see Google’s results compared to its competitors. it’s easy to see why it continues to dominate over Yahoo and Bing.

But black-hat SEO companies mock Google. The techniques they use take Google’s efforts and ridicule them and use them against Google itself. The methods have been around for years, but it’s been mostly discussed in the tech circles. The NY Times articles just brought it to the general public and embarrasses Google more publicly.

Since the NY Times story, Penney has dismissed the SEO company, SearchDex, and other companies are expected to look over the SEO practices they use and hire. The reward of prominent Google listings is too much for some companies to rely on the vague and uncertainty of white-hat SEO efforts.

See

NY Times: The Dirty Little Secrets of Search
Wikipedia: Search engine optimization
SmartCompany: SMEs warned to grill SEO managers after Google penalises JCPenney for using black hat techniques

Where we spend our time online

Posted in journalism on February 7th, 2011 by eubie – Comments Off

Sneak Peak: 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review

In 2010, Facebook surpassed each of the top three largest web properties for share of time spent, capturing the #1 ranking in August 2010. Facebook now accounts for 11.1 percent of time spent online in the U.S., up from 5.5 percent a year ago.

AOL SEO and content strategy

Posted in journalism on February 3rd, 2011 by eubie – Comments Off

BusinessInsider: LEAKED: AOL’s Master Plan.

Also: We have a copy of “The AOL Way.” Gives a peek into their CMS too.

Two tools I used — Vox and Bloglines headed for the dead pool

Posted in journalism on September 10th, 2010 by eubie – 2 Comments

Bloglines announced today that they are closing Oct. 1. I’ve used them since 2004, and while it’s trailed Google Reader for several years, it’s remained my favorite. Also I still have some marked items since 2004, I haven’t gotten around to reading.

So I’ll switch to Google Reader, but even that’s a twindling market.

From paidcontent.org:

But people no longer seem to be abandoning certain readers for others—or for other ways to access those same feeds. Instead, they appear to be abandoning RSS readers as a way to read the news altogether. Hitwise, for instance, tells us that visits to Google Reader are down 27 percent year-over-year, while visits to Bloglines are down 71 percent year-over-year. comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) figures show that traffic to Bloglines has largely stagnated:

TechCrunch summarized Bloglines’ demise this way:

Bought by IAC’s Ask.com in February 2005 for around $10 million, the site has been in jeopardy ever since the launch of Google Reader long ago, compounded by the shift from RSS to realtime news streams. Over the past few years, the site hasn’t launched any new or innovative features to boost usage. While we’ve heard in the past that IAC was considering shutting down the site, the company held off on killing the site permanently and was looking for ways to refurbish Bloglines.

Last week, the blogging service Vox, owned by Six Apart announced it was closing Sept. 30. I’m still preparing for that close. Vox launched at a time when blogging was hot, but people were concerned about privacy. It’s strength was a family-friendly blogging system where posts could be shared either to anyone on the web, to family, or to friends. That concerned seems to have passed, or it’s such a small group that it cannot be success as a business.

Both products launched with lots of promise, but being mildly successful compared with wildly successful means eventually they ended up in the dead pool.

Talking Biz News reports business journalist salary study

Posted in journalism on August 18th, 2010 by eubie – Comments Off

Talking Biz News: SABEW releases salary study results

The median salary for a business reporter was between $60,000 and $65,000, while the median salary for a business section editor was between $75,000 to $80,000. An editor of a business print publication makes a median salary between $95,000 and $100,000.

Salaries are about 75 percent of the actual cost to the employer. Benefit costs and employer taxes add to salary expense.

Journalism startup specializing in aggregation funded

Posted in journalism, small business on August 18th, 2010 by eubie – Comments Off

BringMeTheNews screenshot

BusinessJournalism: Business-media company, PR firm invest $1 million in Minn. news aggregator.

The aggregation site is BringMeTheNews, founded by Rick Kupchella, former anchor and investigative reporter in Minneapolis. He was profiled by Poynter in December 2009, only 12 weeks after the business had launched. At that time, the site employed 5 full-time and 4 part-time workers. The About Us page at BringMeTheNews showed four people, and I did not see a breakdown of news, technical and other groups among the employees.

Kupchella’s founder in the business was Don Smithmier of GoKartLabs.com). New investors are Dolan Media and Padilla Speer Beardsley.

Aggregation is a touchy subject with journalists. It can generate traffic and good story choice and story package can bring real value to readers, which means the come back to the site and become an appealing audience for advertisers. But some view it as assembly-line work. Some of that is snobbery.

An old newspaper equivalent is the rewrite desk. They would take various wire stories, notes from stringers or assorted other sources and craft a story quickly and typically without bylines. Working the rewrite desk was a respected and necessary job.

Compete says BringMeTheNews had 7,890 visitors in July.

WSJ: the value of reader’s clicks

Posted in journalism on July 31st, 2010 by eubie – Comments Off

The Wall Street Journal began a multi-part series today on the value and use of the data collected from reader’s search and web clicks. Cookies and other data-tracking methods have been around for years, but the article notes that much more data is being collected and cross-referenced now.

In an ad-driven world, it’s important that advertisers reach the most effective audience they can, which means getting ad message in front of consumers at critical times. Showing me Barbie ads, even the new video Barbie, is not going to get me to buy it.

The package’s timing is comes days after Senate committee hearings on privacy, whick were viewed either as a joke by some, see ars technia Congress ponders privacy of your underwear, immortal soul or a serious development in the industry, see Politico.com Senate eyes online privacy rules.

Privacy is a flash subject, where readers get very upset when the alerted to the data collected, but time after time, they are willing to give away sensitive information for trinkets.

Other pieces of Saturday’s WSJ package:

Sites Feed Personal Details To New Tracking Industry

TrackerScan to learn of privacy policies of web sites

The Internet is rife with surveillance technology, but you can cover some of your tracks