Comments on: Two obstacles to improving online newspapers

By: The ethic of the link « The Future of Journalism

The ethic of the link « The Future of Journalism — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:37:45 +0000

[...] The ethic of the link Published September 15, 2008 Uncategorized Here again is what we watched at the end of class Friday, as we connected Web 2.0, journalism, and blogging. As Jay Rosen mentions, the Web—at its core, in its inception—is about people, about connectivity and sharing via human interaction across networks. Thus, linking—that is, linking out—becomes so essential … and yet has been so elusive for some legacy media organizations to grasp (or, perhaps, it’s a technical issue). [...]

By: tish grier

tish grier — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:58:03 +0000

Hi Ryan…

haven’t stopped by in awhile, but this one caught my attention….and, you’re right. These would manifest in a perfect world, but, sadly, our world is super-imperfect and there are entrenched ways of dealing with “the people” that are hard to break…

One big complaint about bloggers and linking to them is “how do we know these bloggers are credible”–the answer, for anyone who spends time online, is pretty easy. Is there an identifiable person connected to the site? Are they linked other places and who links to them? If they’re anonymous, how long have they been around and what’s their community like? or are they just hanging out there, diary-style?

Ah, but these finesse points would take time and they’d need to pay someone who understands the “soft skills” inherent to interpreting blog content….

Unfortunately, like a lot of companies looking to do word-of-mouth marketing in the blogosphere, newspapers aren’t going to hire a person, but rather look for an alogrithm (maybe) to help them complete the task. And if they do that, they’ll run into the same problems that marketers run into, and end up back at square one.

By: Joe Wikert

Joe Wikert — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 16:46:06 +0000

Regarding the lack of links in my local newspaper’s site, I couldn’t agree more. I was interviewed by a reporter 2 days ago and the story ran today. It would have been very easy for them to embed links to the companies and blogs they talked about, but they didn’t.

How about this solution: Just set up your print and online layout scripts to understand one new code for a url. The reporter simply embeds it when they want a link in the online version. When the print script sees it, it ignores it, but when the online script runs into it, boom, a link is created! Pretty simple.

Regarding your other point about local blogs, why not just run RSS feeds of the headlines from the best local blogs/posts? The newspaper site should be a resource, meaning it’s OK to have a bunch of links to blogs outside its own domain. I really think the loss of eyeballs as they click away is the biggest fear on this one, which is too bad.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:21:55 +0000

Then again, there might be some bloggers who want the best soapbox to speak to their community. A local historian would probably prefer to be on a local news site, with the intendent publicity that generates, than sending out posts into the great wide yonder. Publishing under another banner won’t suit everyone, but it might well suit some.

By: Information Architects Japan » iA Notebook » 10 Newspaper Myths deconstructed

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:47:08 +0000

[...] Ryan: Two obstacles to improving online newspapers [...]

By: Howard Owens

Howard Owens — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:06:10 +0000

Good post, Ryan.

Ellington isn’t the only answer. There’s also Zope.

By: Damon Kiesow

Damon Kiesow — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:44:36 +0000

To continue the theme – most newspaper CMS’ stink. They are by-and-large written with the ‘article’ as their central organizing paradigm, which is just useless when it comes to multimedia, databases, rss feeds, widgets, and interactivity in general. If API or NAA wants a nice $1m project, they should develop a great CMS and give it away to all newspapers. Or, they could just buy the rights to Ellington and help us all install it. That would be a start.

By: Joe Murphy

Joe Murphy — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:11:01 +0000

Got one more, Ryan: online newspapers don’t have the tools to harness and build local communities. Registration systems, when they exist, are for the benefit of the ad departments, not the people. The means of community interaction now are paltry and unimaginative.

Online newspapers don’t have the tools necessary to thrive on the internet. Part of this may be because the folk in the newsroom and in the community aren’t asking loud enough, or they don’t know who to ask.

By: Joe Murphy

Joe Murphy — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:54:28 +0000

I’ve got just one: We don’t know how to handle our content online.

A printed paper displays photos, graphics, articles, columns, Q&A’s, reviews of all sorts, calendar items, sidebars, statistics of all types, classifieds, ads, letters to the editor, and photo essays (I’m sure there are more). Our CMSes (for the most part) handle articles, ads and photos. Many newspaper-dot-coms don’t have an online calendar app yet — I was cutting and pasting into the calendar HTML file at the Winston-Salem Journal well into 2006.

I’m a little curious why newspapers are so eager to focus on all the online extras (video and podcasting) — it’s like they don’t care / don’t want to think about all the information they publish daily. Hey newspapers! Look inside — there might be something valuable in there.