Archive for Media
V-loggers edge closer to prime time
September 23rd, 2007 • Internet, Media, Video
Tags: publishing, Video
I think we can all draw this curve. Technology gets to a point where creating and distributing your video is open to everyone. Shortly after, Darwin strolls into the room, makes a declaration, and some fall by the wayside. But those left after natural selection has done its thing begin to grow.In particular, they start crawling uphill, toward the big piles of money on the crest. As they do, they sprout the trappings of their established peers, with advertising, distribution deals and a whole world of star-related swapsies.So no surprise today to hear that one of the original and best v-logs, Rocketboom, has cozied up to one of the hottest video networks, Blip.tv:
Rocketboom joins a growing crowd of other top videoblogs that can be found on Blip.tv, including Wallstrip, TreeHugger TV, Alive in Baghdad, and Goodnight Burbank. As with most of those shows, the relationship between Rocketboom and blip.tv is not exclusive.
Rocketboom Moves to Blip.tvI’m hearing that. When we launched the Stuff.tv Show, it was an experiment - include it in the new site, and see if it floats. Nine months later, and it’s in the iTunes Top 20, and has just gone live as a channel on Joost.
Headline juxtapositions: as bad online as off
September 20th, 2007 • Media
Tags: , asides
I grew up in print magazines, where the first rule was to watch for elements on a page - you’d be amazed how easy it is to miss a crass clash of headline and image or advertising message.So I felt a wave of deja vu when I spotted this over at Valleywag…
FoxNews: sensational
September 5th, 2007 • Journalism, Life, Media
Tags: asides, TV
A few days back from the San Francisco holiday, and I still have FoxNews’ television coverage of the Larry Craig story rattling around my head.
Even as a humble Brit, I know that Fox has a reputations for eye-catching news delivery. But although a good number of US media pundits are less than kind to Craig (who, if you’re unaware of the story, is a senator accused of immodest behavior in a gent’s loo), there was an edge to Fox that left an acidic taste.
I caught one round-table group of pundits discussing the senator’s fate. I can’t recall the names, but I can see the glee on their faces: he had been weighed, measured and found wanting - slightly premature, perhaps, given that he had yet to officially climb onto the scales.
To my surprise, I became addicted during the holiday to a half hour of Fox before retiring for the night - it was the same addiction I developed to LBC radio, back in the days when it decided than anything less than 11 was showing a lack of commitment. I’m just not sure I’d want to base my reality on what it told me.
Mr Web 2.0 on a new form of news breaking
August 30th, 2007 • Internet, Journalism, Media
Tags: blogging, Journalism, newspapers
Or is it so new? Tim O’Reilly (the chap credited with coining the term ‘Web 2.0′) tells of his admiration for one blogger’s handling of a breaking news story…Journalism is Burning Or How Breaking News is Broken: “It wasn’t the subject of Scott’s story that stood out; it was the way he was telling it on his LaughingSquid blog. He reported the story by updating the blog over time. The practice is not unusual for bloggers. Revising or appending an update after the main or original story is fairly common. However, as this particular story grew and grew, Scott decided to keep adding more and more updates to the same blog post instead of creating new and separate posts each day.”He’s right, of course, but I work with an editor who does this every day, and has been for the last two years minimum.Her particular tipple is Formula 1, and I’ve always admired the way she pieces together race coverage as it happens - you can watch the jigsaw assemble as you hit the refresh button.An hour after the race is over, and you have a wonderful, completed picture. I’m not quite sure where I’m headed here: perhaps it’s to say that while O’Reilly’s praise is well placed, I’m unsure where the ground is being broken.
Three out of four searches driven by ‘offline’
August 29th, 2007 • Media, Search
Fairly gobsmacking research released yesterday by iProspect / Jupiter, suggesting that a whopping 67% of search queries are prompted by ‘offline channels’ - which in English means television, word of mouth and magazines / newspapers.
Even Jupiter expressed surprise at the findings, with the organisation expecting a 50/50 split between on- and offline influences.
‘Though iProspect (the company that conducted the research with Jupiter) is not surprised at the finding that television and word of mouth are the two most frequent offline drivers of search, we are a bit stunned that both of these channels influence over one-third of online search users to perform a search. But even more surprising is that a full 67% of online search users are driven to search as a result of some offline channel.’Search Engine Marketing Research: iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study
Wired: how to run a corporate blog
August 22nd, 2007 • Business, Internet, Media
I should have read this months ago. Wired has a guide on how to run a corporate blog without being launched into space by your MD. Wriiten by Edelmann PR VP Steve Rubel (who’s own blog, Micro Persuasion, is a personal fave), the guide offers a few gems.
Rubel has obviously walked the hard miles, judging by the tips given. He warns that your words need to be written with your entire peer group in mind (including senior management and advertisers, not just your MD), and that your business has to come first:
It’s important to know what your blog is about and where it can impact your business. Figure out your mission and know where you can and can’t go. In my case, I learned that it’s very difficult for me to blog substantively about our clients, their competitors or individual media outlets. I largely stick to big trends, insights and how-to’s and pepper them with small examples
Google News: now with video
August 20th, 2007 • Media, Video
Google News came one step closer to the BBCs and CNNs of this world yesterday, with the addition of video to many of ‘its’ stories.
I’ve yet to find any examples in my Google News, but the search giant says that the service is already running in the US, UK and Ireland, with video news from the likes of Reuters and CBS.
Add the recent announcement that the company would give a right of reply to people featured in Google News stories, and it looks as though the site is on a major offensive.
Online news: Americans want ‘viewspapers’
August 18th, 2007 • Internet, Journalism, Media
Where do online news sources head next? According to the leader on today’s San Jose Mercury News, US web readers are hungry for ‘viewpapers’. And in the process, they’re heading for the British press, including The Guardian and The Times.
The Mercury’s Tim Rutten predicts a future in which online editions packed with fact and service partner with print editions offering opinion and analysis. He also delves into the polarisation of the marketplace, where consumers can access material that’s more precisely tuned to their tastes…
As Joseph Epstein, a commentator of generally conservative predilections, points out in a forthcoming essay on the future of newspapers, “Not only are we acquiring our information from new places but we are taking it pretty much on our own terms. The magazine Wired recently defined the word `egocasting’ as `the consumption of on-demand music, movies, television and other media that cater to individual and not mass-market tastes.’ The news, too, is now getting to be on-demand.”
San Jose Mercury News - Younger Americans want views, not just news, in print
USAToday records massive traffic hike
August 15th, 2007 • Best sites, Media
File this one under ‘What The Hell Do I Know, Anyway’.
I admit to hating this year’s re-launch of USAToday. In particular, I hated the panel from hell that dominated the home page - 30 seconds to load in the early days of the re-launch, and determined to hide a good headline behind a small picture. I also took an instant dislike to the OTT inegration of social networking, if only because it allowed people to post ‘AGhhhgGGG…jrrrr’ (or something like that) on the home page.
Which only goes to show that I obviously have no taste, because the site has just annonced a 20%-plus leap in traffic year-on-year - or does it…
The release is careful to point to a big Simpsons competition and an exclusive JK Rowling interview being ‘major drivers’ behind the boom. I wouldn’t mind seeing the Neilsen/NetRatings figures with those two events factored away.
In the meantime, I’m happy to share my news trawling between the rather wonderful new CNN and the stalwarts at the Beeb.
USATODAY.com Reports 20% Year-Over-Year Increase in Traffic: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
The journalist as Swiss Army Knife
August 15th, 2007 • Journalism, Media
What does the ‘new journalist’ look like? Back in May, I listened as one of the best known US media lecturers described the new beast: capable of working in any medium, and driven to deliver the story any hour of the day or night. This creature had a mini camcorder in one pocket, and a miniature laptop packing a 3G card under their arm.
I returned to the office wondering where we would find these mystical animals. Then I realised I was surrounded by them - one group were posting live coverage of an F1 race using their Blackberries, while another group had started a weekly video show that was racing up the iTunes charts.
These were journalists who in most cases had grown up in weekly or monthly print, but were greeting the minute-by-minute demands of online as a thing to be relished and exploited, not as a source of fear.
So I was fascinated by this post from Guardian Unlimited’s editorial guru, Neil McIntosh. He’s spotted report that suggests that many new entrants to the field of journalism have already defined their role, either as a radio, print or TV person. McIntosh pleads with aspiring hacks to at have a blog as a showcase for their talents:
If you enter the jobs market without one, no matter how good your degree, you’re increasingly likely to lose out to people who better present all they can do, and have the experience of creating and curating their own site.
Complete Tosh, by Neil McIntosh: A journalism student writes…
If the report is anywhere near correct, I couldn’t help but spot the irony: fledging journalists ring-fencing their roles before they’ve told their first story, while the more ‘mature’ hacks happily greet any tool that helps them relate the tale.
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