From small news projects to ambitious advertising products, there’s some cool stuff here. Among the winners of this year’s Knight News Challenge – which means that the Knight Foundation gives tech-leaning journalists money to chase their dreams – are the Windy Citizen (which has a pretty cool real-time ads platform), CityTracking (which hopes to make city visualizations interesting and embeddable), The Cartoonist (which hopes to make editorial cartoon games), and LocalWiki (which is seriously the kind of idea we’ve heard bandied about more than a few times). Oh, and lots more. Check out the video and the full list to get the scoop. source
Smart synergy USA Today’s most brilliant move was brokering deals with hotels to give free copies of the paper to patrons. It helped them build their brand. Starbucks’ deal with the WSJ could be the modern equivalent of that, except more effective.
People do this already If you’ve ever been in a coffee shop, you know that copies of the newspaper are already sitting around for people to read if they so choose. This is the exact same thing without the paper waste. (Or the social elements, but alas.)
New business model If this works, it could effectively turn into a new revenue model for the newspaper industry, one that could be replicated in bookstores, restaurants and other public meeting places. Hope the WSJ is getting paid well for this.
This Dude wants to license journalists in Michigan. Michigan State Sen. Bruce Patterson submitted a bill to do just this, saying that with the rise of blogs and other varied content sources, the standards for journalism were lowering. “I thought you had to have a degree in journalism but apparently not,” Patterson said recently. “I could retire and be a journalist.” Or you could retire and give free mustache rides, something you’d actually be good at.Take your pick. source
If the FTC truly wanted to reinvent journalism, the agency would instead align itself with journalism’s disruptors. But there’s none of that here.
Journo-expert Jeff Jarvis • Regarding a recent Federal Trade Commission report on how to save journalism. He notes as sort of a key fact that the entire document only mentions the word “blog” once, despite the fact that many blogs are as “real content” as you’re going to get. And the document, overall, seems skewed in favor of establishment journalism, with suggestions that could seriously damage innovation in the industry. “Here, the internet is not the salvation of news, journalism, and democracy. It’s the other side,” he writes. source
Hey, it’s like we’re looking at us. Except not as good. Time’s new Newsfeed blog has a similar news+short approach to us, except with one major difference. (OK, two; it has a budget.) It’s super-cluttered. The headlines are too bold. There are too many images. The bar on the left gets in the way. And it doesn’t do anything interesting with the idea. There are other sites that do way more interesting things with this idea. The Atlantic Wire, for example. source
£1the cost for an online copy of the paper each day
£2the cost for a weekly subscription
for the titles source
» The first two months are free: If nothing else, Rupert Murdoch’s charges for the Times and the Sunday times won’t hit users right away. This mirrors our experience with Newsday to some degree. The major difference? It costs around half as much. It’s $2.88 versus $5 per week.
A little secret about us: We’ve grabbed more than a few article ideas for ShortFormBlog from Publish2‘s pretty excellent Link Newswire (and its corresponding WordPress plugin) and have enjoyed seeing what other journalists come up with. And many of the people involved are smart guys whose names we see everywhere on the Web, like Greg Linch and Ryan Sholin.
their new thang: “News Exchange“While we feel like certain things about Publish2’s system could be slickened up and simplified, they’ve got a pretty great thing already going. And it’s something they’re expanding, big time, with their new “News Exchange,” which expands the basic idea of Publish2 to something where your blood, sweat and tears can end up in print. It’s kinda like the AP, except without the false sense of superiority or the budget for a foreign bureau.
we’ll try it. give us a chance.Which leads us to say: We’ll try this out when it opens up to us plebeians. If any newspapers would like to use any of SFB’s content somewhere, let us know. We’d totally be wiling to throw you a bone or two if you throw us a link. We realize we’re a tad opinionated for some of you jerks, but we also think that there might be some pretty cool things you could do with a bunch of numbers. One request: Don’t cut our copy. It’s already short, jerks! source
This bearded dude may not look like much, but he’s kind of a big deal. This guy runs a YouTube channel called MoxNews.com, which has posted hundreds of political videos like the kind we post here every week. He’s a bit of an obsessive about it (and argues the world might end after 2012), but he finds some really great news content. (And he needs money. You should donate.) The guy who ran the similar NewsPolitics YouTube channel got a job as a video editor for the excellent Mediaite and has turned that site into a huge hit. Why shouldn’t this guy get hooked up by Dan Abrams too? Just sayin’. Here are some recent clips from Mr. MoxNews’ YouTube channel.
Can Jesus be funnY? This priest on “Fox and Friends” seems offended by the idea that one can make fun of Jesus Christ, as Comedy Central is currently planning. He hurts his cause by suggesting a funny comedy couldn’t be made about presidential infidelity. Did this dude forget the Clinton years?
Oops, wrong guy!This MoxNews clip of a Seattle beating drew nearly 50,000 views in just two days. In the clip, police officers hold a man who was possibly a suspect in an armed robbery. Before they even know if he’s their guy, officers kick and stomp on him, injuring him. By the way, he wasn’t their guy.
Ron paul: I called it! The congressman and 2008 presidential candidate has been going on and on for years about overspending and too much debt causing the downfall of the world, so guess who Fox News called when they needed to talk to somebody about the Greece debt crisis? That’s right, Ron Paul.
“Jack Meoff” ≠ Jake Tapper. The other day, the poor ABC News political reporter got mis-bylined by the computer-driven service, instead calling Tapper by his real name. The article was about some topic we don’t care about, but the second we realized it got turned into a childish prank, we immediately showed interest. Good show, Google News, getting regular people like us interested in the news. source
