Topic-tracking e-mail alerts
May 30, 2003
For those disappointed that The New York Times’ very handy News Tracker e-mails is becoming a subscription service, here’s a good free alternative.
Deregulation 101
May 30, 2003
As the FCC gets sets to make its decision on media cross-ownership rules Monday, here’s a good guide from Poynter’s Julie Moos on how to understand the FCC’s ownership regulations, how they may change, and what that means to journalists, journalism, and news consumers. Include a “5-Minute Guide to Deregulation,” with a timeline, who’s who, and a synposis of the rules and proposed changes.
April Top News Sites
May 29, 2003
The Iraq war gave news sites a significant increase in traffic in April. Here are the Top 20 Current Events & Global News Sites from Nielsen//NetRatings for April 2003.
FCC rule changes to boost local news online?
May 29, 2003
The FCC’s proposed changes in cross-media ownership rules has the potential to increase the number of converged newsrooms that share resources to create stronger Web presences, CyberJournalist.net Publisher Jonathan Dube tells the Online Journalism Review’s Mark Glaser. “We may see more local sites like tbo.com, the excellent Media General site in Tampa that serves as the online home for both the Tampa Tribune and WFLA,” he said. “If that happens, we’d see more robust local news sites — with better ability to package newspaper and video content — but we might also see fewer local news sites and thus less competition.”
More on the FCC’s proposed rule changes from CyberJournalist.net.
Times lets readers post movie reviews
May 29, 2003
The New York Times has launched a new movies section online that’s very interesting for two reasons: It includes a complete, free archive of New York Times movie reviews dating back to 1983, as well as selected reviews back to 1929 (The Times’ charges for most of its archives); and even more notable, it allows readers to rate movies and write their own reviews.
The Times has been very good at promoting reader discussion board conversations, but this takes it’s use of the Internet’s interactivity with users to a new level - along the lines of Amazon.com’s great user review system. If this takes off, it has the potential to become the most comprehensive and useful place on the Web for commentary on movies.
News sites get racier online
May 29, 2003
When the “Bay to Breakers” community road race in San Francisco was
covered this year, SFGate.com, the Web site of the San Francisco
Chronicle, ran a photo of nude male runners — showing their bare
backsides — prominently on the home page. The print edition of the
Chronicle took a more conservative approach, publishing photos of runners
wearing underwear and fake fig leaves. In an effort to attract younger audiences, this news site and others apply looser taste standards online than in print — even though the sites are operated by the same newspaper companies, writes Editor & Publisher’s Steve Outing.
NY Times to charge for e-mail alerts
May 28, 2003
The New York Times is going to turn its popular e-mail alert tracker into a subscription service, charging at least $19.95 for a year (”a special introductory rate”). The current free service — a great service with 500,000 subscribers– called NewsTracker will be eliminated after two weeks. As a promotion, the new subscribers will be offered a $10 gift certificate to The Times’ online store.
This is an interesting idea and one many have speculated sites might try. But with 500,000 subscribers, the NewsTracker e-mails offered a lot of advertising revenue potential. Rafat Ali reports on PaidContent.org that the new service won’t have ads in it, which seems odd — the ad revenue from the free service seems to have much more revenue potential than the subscription fee from a paid service (which no doubt will have fewer subscribers).
What’s most odd about this plan is that The Times is making its breaking news e-mail alerts exclusive to subscribers of this service. Since so many sites offer comparable breaking news alerts — and since their primary purpose is to drive traffic to the Web site — it seems odd that The Times is discontinuing this as a free service.
FCC changes may not spur rash of deals
May 28, 2003
The FCC is getting set to likely change its cross-ownership restrictions, but The New York Times says easier rules may not lead to a rash of newspaper-TV deals. Here’s a good chart from The New York Times showing overlapping operations for some of the biggest newspaper and broadcast companies. And here’s another chart from The Times showing companies that already own newspapers and stations in the same cities as a result of loopholes in the current rules.
Web site offers black perspective
May 28, 2003
The North Star, an independent online news and opinion site aimed at African Americans, has gotten a lot of notice lately for its strong criticism of New Jersey political leaders’ handling of the nomination of a black justice to the state supreme court. “Instead of demanding multiple seats on the high court, we resigned ourselves to ‘one’ and then let Governor (James) McGreevey pit Blacks against Latinos in some junior high school version of West Side Story,” publisher Walter Fields wrote. “Congressman Bob Menendez called it ‘amateur hour’ at the State House. He was being kind. This is Amos and Andy.” Fields, a former state political director for the NAACP, founded the site in October 2002 to offer political coverage from a black perspective. “We don’t hide the fact that we are advocates for where the black community should be headed,” he told The Associated Press. Also worth noting is the site’s ongoing special report on the federal courts.
TV station’s scoop is MIA
May 27, 2003
From LostRemote: “With the national media following every move in the Peterson case, KOVR’s exclusive story on how Scott Peterson is writing letters from jail to his former girlfriend is a decent scoop. But go to KOVR.com and you won’t find it — well, not at first. The Sacramento station (19th market CBS affiliate) doesn’t post news stories, but entire SHOWS of news scripts, all on one page in prompter style. Now isn’t THAT user friendly?”
Scarily, many stations just post scripts on their Web sites. Not really sure why they even bother…