Plea:
Jay Rosen has the beatblogging with a social network thing worked up pretty clearly at this point, but if the project doesn’t leave behind tools (a WordPress theme, a Drupal module, a useful set of forms — something more tangible than good ideas that other news organizations can use), it’s just twelve more reporters with a blog and a bunch of know-it-all commenters. [UPDATE: Wow, that sounds pretty harsh, doesn't it? I'll write something more practical about it later and add a link here.]

More:
The NYTimes.com tech aggregator thing is cute, but first of all, isn’t this space a little crowded? And second of all, can’t you just use the frigging Blogrunner algorithm to add headlines to your stories from blogs that link to them? It was doing that when you bought it.

Seriously:
Why did my house get two calls in one day from circulation salesfolk from the Mercury News? Could it be because there was an earthquake on their front page for the last two days and someone thought it was a good time to blitz Santa Cruz? Or because the local paper moves out of downtown this weekend? Or do they just hate children and want to wake up sleeping babies every chance they get?

Fact:
I have worked in a newsroom where the circulation employees (not their fault – I blame the software) would call newsroom employees — at their desks in the same building — trying to sell them a subscription.

Opinion:
Scott Adams is a wonderful, wonderful man.

Thanks:
To Rex for the clue about Hype Machine when he blogged (or twittered?) its redesign launch. If all I got from it was the song stuck in my head right now, that would have been enough.

Related Posts

• Looser than average ends
• Don’t even try to get that story on A1
• Meeting story hydraulics

The most intriguing link on the new NYT site is right on top of the page, just to the right of the “Home Page” button. It’s the one that says “My Times.”

Whoa. That looks like a New York Times personal homepage, or maybe an aggregator, or more likely, a memetracker. The tagline is “Where the best minds in journalism help you edit the Web.” Hmm. Interesting. You can even sign up for the beta to be notified when the service goes live. How very Web 2.0.

More along these lines:

• Khoi Vinh, a web designer for the NYTimes who came on board after the redesign was already underway, gives some details about the operation.
• Anil Dash of blog software compant Six Apart writes that the new NYT borrows from blog layout, including the new 1024 pixel width.
• Mike Arrington of TechCrunch is patiently awaiting the arrival of blog content published directly on newspaper sites.
• Dave Winer isn’t impressed…“…because it ignores most that has been learned about reading news on a computer screen, and instead models the front page of the print pub. Not a good use of the screen, it ignores the fact that they can produce a new document for each user every time they visit.”
• Steve Outing says the new width on the NYT site means it’s finally time to ditch your outdated monitor and upgrade to a higher resolution. Amen to that. I fought this change early this semester at the Daily, but then quickly saw the Knight Ridder sites and CNN both stretch out their pages. Seriously, even the cheapest of cheap monitors these days should be able to handle 1024-pixel-wide pages. (Note to self: Should this blog page get wider?)
• And finally, James Cramer writes this week in New York Magazine that the Times should ditch the print edition entirely and go all-digital.
  

  “That’s right. It should abandon newsprint and force everyone to the Web. It should make a stand against Google, using its About.com division—something with real growth, and which is actually working out despite the $410 million in debt taken down to buy the thing—to lead the way. Maybe it should even take the revolutionary step of blocking Google from accessing its content, something no one else is willing to do. Or maybe it should at least say, “This is the deal: You want our stuff, you must share much more with us than you are willing to share with others.” It is worth it to preserve value for the future, to make it so our kids don’t think, Let me go to Google for all the news that’s fit to print. Heck, in another couple of years they won’t even know that the New York Times exists as anything but private-label news source for an Internet portal.”

What would your dream newspaper homepage look like? (And with that, I admit that I daydream about this sort of thing. Sigh.)

Related Posts

• The fundamentals of structured data
• 10 things I heard at the AEJMC convention today
• Search drives serendipity, a continuing conversation

Bottom line?  Expect to see the NYT linking to bloggers writing about its stories, pronto, a la WashingtonPost.com’s use of Technorati links.

Good move on the part of the Times.  Maybe someone over there has been listening to the Gillmor Gang.

Personally, after touting it right here, I stopped paying attention to the Annotated Times page, probably because it still felt like I was reading the conversation through the lens of the NYT.  I’m not a huge Memeorandum fan, although I do subscribe to the technology feed. I haven’t looked that closely at Tailrank, although the popular stories feed it puts out does look rather useful to me.  Too many clicks to get past the filter to the story though.

All of these…memetrackers (anyone have a better word, please?)…serve the purpose of bringing together all the most relevant and timely commentary on a given news item / blog post.  The problem, of course, is that the filtering process is still very human-based.  I want a better algorithm, kids.  I want the algorithm to be based on everything and everyone, not just what Gabe thinks is most relevant.  1000 sources isn’t enough — I want it all.

Technorati Tags: nyt, new york times, memeorandum, tailrank, memetrackers

Related Posts

• Clay Shirky: ‘Paywall will underperform – the numbers don’t add up’
• Do your reporters have OCD or ADD?
• RateMyProfessors.com – the ultimate student media vertical?

Here’s a few links that go with my presentation in our graduate class tonight:

Baghdad Burning: Iraqi woman blogging about her life in Baghdad – she was 24 when she started the blog in August 2003.

The Annotated New York Times: Putting the content of the NY Times together with the commentary and criticism. Anyone who links to a NY Times story in their blog should end up here. Check out the long list of feeds or search by NYT writer.

Current TV: Taking back TV? Let’s see how it goes. There’s already “viewer-created content” online here, and they seem to mean business.

Bloglines: a pretty simple feed aggregator – just register and start adding feeds. Try adding a “subscribe with bloglines” button to your browser to make it really simple.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger online.
We The Media by Dan Gillmor online.

Related Posts

• RateMyProfessors.com – the ultimate student media vertical?
• The best thing about being on a team…
• Journalism students need new heroes; Journalism heroes need new students

The Annotated Times throws together aggregates a page of NY Times stories along with a link to blogs that are linking to each story.

What’s more, there’s a list of about a zillion RSS Feeds, where you can subscribe to either the NYT on a certain subject (as broad as “Elections” or as narrow as “Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations”) OR the blogs that are linking to/commenting on the NYT stories on said subject.

It’s the coolest news & commentary site I’ve seen yet.

Related Posts

• Clay Shirky: ‘Paywall will underperform – the numbers don’t add up’
• Do your reporters have OCD or ADD?
• RateMyProfessors.com – the ultimate student media vertical?