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10 Feb 2010 22:09

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Biz: Rejoice! The AP’s long absence on Google News has ended

  • 7 weeks without the Associated Press on Google; nobody noticed source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Feb 2010 22:56

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Tech: Facebook as news source: The danger of getting news from friends

  • Facebook is a unique and wonderful artery to our friends’ lives and interests. But if we define our reading by our friends’ libraries, we will all find what we already expected rather than what we need to know.
  • Atlantic writer Derek Thompson • Regarding recent reports that Facebook has become a primary source of finding news for many people. He brings up a good point, one that news like this only emphasizes: With the change in journalism to something suggested to us by friends, all cookies instead of a well-balanced meal, we end up limiting our information to what we want to know rather than what we need to know. And, considering how often it shows up in politics already, that’s pretty dangerous. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

03 Feb 2010 13:00

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Biz: The Adventures of Newsday Customer No. 36: Week in review

  • Today, they ran a story about a mannequin in the HOV Lane. For most papers, they’d think, holy crap! Perfect viral news opportunity. But not the Cablevision-run Newsday. They’re trying to make the newspaper into the Web equivalent of a cable channel. It’s designed as if it’s a TV station’s Web site, not a newspaper. And in our week of subscribing, that was the prevailing message: We don’t understand the market. Here are some quick numbers.
  • 18 number of e-mails we got from Newsday; two-thirds of those were “breaking” news
  • 8 number of text messages we got from the service; seven of them had links to ads
  • no it’s not worth the $5 a week, and no, we still haven’t been charged, either, guys source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Feb 2010 10:20

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Politics: New Yorker writer trashes Twitter even though he’s never used it

  • The truth is, I feel like yelling Stop quite a bit these days. Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop. The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell.
  • New Yorker staff writer George Packer • Complaining about the popularity of Twitter. He won’t use it because he’s scared of becoming addicted. He calls it “crack for media addicts.” He seems to not understand the appeal of the service at all. He’s a journalist – with sources who understand the need to be constantly connected – and he himself doesn’t even own a BlackBerry. Mr. Packer, stop complaining and catch up. If you want to be a journalist in this new environment, you have to catch up. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Feb 2010 20:35

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Biz: The Adventures of Newsday Customer No. 36: We’ve been counted!

  • In response to a question, Terry said that we had approximately three dozen subscribers who have signed up to pay $5 per week for access to newsday.com.
  • Cablevision President of Local Media Tad Smith • In a memo regarding Newsday’s plan for subscriptions and Cablevision’s overall media strategy. Sure, he’s full of it and then some, but we have to admit we got a kick out of the fact he noted our subscription in the note. We’re No. 36! We’re No. 36! source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Feb 2010 09:50

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Biz: The Adventures of Newsday Customer No. 36: Still no bill, kids

  • This photo turns Long Island into a cliche the way “Fargo” turned Minnesota into one. Can you guess what the story’s about? (Hint: It’s got to do with the kid.) Man, the only image more cliche than this we could think of is perhaps a picture of the Seaver family from Growing Pains – you know, before Kirk Cameron went off the deep end. Anyway, we’ve been with the site nearly a week, haven’t paid yet, and get the feeling that the paper is not offering anything close to the $5/week price tag, a price tag that’s supposed to be a deterrent to guys like us signing up outsides of the confines of Cablevision’s walled garden. Unimpressed. (Note: This article is behind a paywall, but maybe it’ll give you enough of a hint to tell you what it’s about.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 4 Comments • Permalink

30 Jan 2010 11:48

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World: Giant photos are starting to take over other papers’ Web sites

  • The Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” feature is awesome. So we’re glad to see other papers, such as the Sacramento Bee, try the idea out. This is from the Machu Picchu citadel flooding and mudslides in Peru. Very dramatic. And much bigger at their site. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

29 Jan 2010 14:40

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Biz: The Adventures of Newsday Customer No. 36: Quick, kinda useless

  • We understand what Newsday is trying to do with its “Quick Read” format on its $4 million, paywall-ridden site, but the implementation is weak. We say that as warriors of the quick-read information format. We’re like Mel Gibson in the first “Mad Max.” Newsday’s implementation is just flashy, like Tina Turner in “Beyond Thunderdome.” How does a giant image with the lead of a story and a giant photo constitute a “quick read”? There’s no bullet points. There’s no attempt to contextualize the information. It’s just an entryway into another page with another ad – something that the quick read format has a lot of, by the way. Oh yeah, one thing we want to mention: We’ve been subscribers of Newsday.com for three days now, and we’ve yet to be contacted by anyone about paying for our $5/week subscription. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Jan 2010 22:59

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Biz: The Adventures of Newsday Customer No. 36: Robo-trippin’

  • Newsday breaking news http://www.4info.com/x/bt97 Officials seek more cash to house sex offenders  *Introducing New Robitussin(R) To Go! http://4in.fo/GyeR6A
  • A text message from the Newsday paywall text alert service • Regarding news that’s apparently important enough to send us a text message about. The news itself? Relatively important (whether or not it’s breaking is questionable). What weirds us out, though, is the ad. You have three sentences to break news about something – news we’re paying for – and one of the sentences is a Robitussin ad? (We couldn’t get the link to work, by the way.) We specifically asked not to get offers. This seems sneaky. We were all about to write something positive about their site which is actually useful and worth paying for, and then they had to send us this. Newsday fail. (Note: The link to the article is behind a paywall, and we’re linking to it anyway just so you, too, feel the pain of hitting a paywall. It hurts almost as much as running into a real one.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Jan 2010 02:00

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Biz: The Adventures of Newsday Customer No. 36: This is breaking?

  • In our first piece of breaking news from Newsday since our $5-a-week paywall infiltration subscription began, we’re informed that a redhead who likes science and his classmates are going to compete for some national award sponsored by Intel. The kids are up for awards of up to $100,000, which is cool. Good luck, guys, but we’re seriously spending $5 a week on this crap? How is this even remotely breaking? There’s nothing heady about it. (BTW, if you want to read the story, you’ll have to subscribe. Them’s the breaks of a paywall.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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