Monthly Archives: May 2006

Television stations around the nation are getting more aggressive on the Web, but Cincinnati seems to be an exceptional fertile market.

Up until now, newspaper Web sites enjoyed certain competitive advantages against television sites:

• Newspapers generally have larger staffs and produce more content
• They already have content that works well on the Web such as calendar listings and classifieds
• Most newspapers are the biggest media in town, so they can better promote their sites

But in all but a handful of markets, newspaper Web sites have a tenuous hold on their market share lead.

Video is going to play an increasingly important role in attracting Web users. TV stations that get aggressive now could start taking over their markets in a few years. Newspaper sites should be ramping up their video offerings.

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Lost Remote reports that tech-focused social media site Digg is planning to expand into general news coverage. Well, here’s another disruptor for traditional media.

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Leonard Witt has published an academic paper on citizen media called “Constructing a Framework to Enable an Open Source Reinvention of Journalism “

It’s an interesting approach, drawing comparisons to the open software movement and open source journalism. However, if a publisher is looking for an actionable road map, this paper isn’t it. It’s more theoretical than operational. That may be understandable since of all the citizen media experiments being conducted by mainstream newspapers, none yet can be clearly defined as success, so we don’t necessarily know yet what success looks like, or how to get there.

Witt provides some bits of good advice, though, such as:

Just as with the Los Angeles Times’s Wikitorial failure, the Bayosphere’s poor showing could have been predicted by a close reading of open source software and commons-based peer production literature. Beneath what might look like an open environment there usually is structure and someone with a vision actively providing guidance.

There’s also this important bit:

An enduring criticism is that reporters and editors write for other reporters and editors and not for the audience — or the users. An open source content model should consider serving both users and possible content producers with the aim of producing a more robust product.

And I think that’s where a good citizen media effort should lead. It’s the whole “journalism as a conversation” model.

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John Battelle has been experimenting with Google AdWords (as a buyer, not a publisher), and was confused to find many of his keyword bids inactive. More puzzling was that on many of his bids, he was the only apparent bidder.

Somebody at Google was kind enough to point him to a post on another blog (apparently, an official AdWords blog) that explains how Google AdWords “work.” Basically, if you don’t write a quality ad, you must bid more to get your ad to appear.

It’s policies like this that make me think Google AdWords will never appeal to local, mom/pop shops. Your average small business owner is too busy to optimize ads, check bid rankings regularly, try to figure out the magic formula for the best ROI. They just want their advertising to work. No fuss. And they don’t want to think Google is just jacking them around to make more money (which is certainly a reasonable suspicion). Keep it simple. This could be a key competitive advantage for local news sites.

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Here’s something else interesting via CyberJournalist: Alexaholic. Site managers should use this tool to track their traffic against local competitors. Here’s a link comparing traffic for various San Diego media sites. Alexa is far from the final word in competitive traffic analysis, but in the absence of a better tool, it’s helpful.

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Here’s an obvious path to personalization for newspaper sites: Use RSS.

The first I’ve heard doing this — not just using a branded RSS reader, but actually trying to get into personalization, is Austin.

So far, pretty basic, but it’s a step in the right direction. (Via CyberJournalist).

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One of the first rules of Web usability is, “keep it simple.”

If you make users puzzle over how to find the information they want, you are more likely to frustrate them than impress them with your creative talent. Link labels should be simple and declarative. Don’t hide vital information behind obscure references or metaphors. First and foremost, allow your users to get quickly the information they want.

And for gosh sake — if you want to sell somebody something, don’t make them guess.

With that in mind, check out the online media kit for Boston.com.

Sure, it’s snazzy. I love good Flash as much as the next Web geek. But if all I’m after is banner rates, do I really want to sit through this? Once it downloads, it takes a second or two to figure out that you can’t just click anywhere to go some place (the obvious answer … like, “just take me to the next page where there is real information, please,”) you have to mouse over specific, subtly highlighted areas of the picture. At least, they labeled the boxes, but what’s the metaphor here? Why is a certain box in one spot of the picture and not another? How can I quickly recognize I want this box for rates and another for ad specs (not that those common advertiser questions are easy to get to)? And if I’m a neophyte advertiser, and many are, I’m not going to know what “behavioral” means, so why should I click on that box? OK, now I’m frustrated (I’m pretending to be an advertiser here). I just want to contact somebody to ask my questions. Cool, here’s a link to “e-mail.” I can e-mail somebody. Click. Oh, no. This isn’t an e-mail link. It’s some more Flash telling me about Sandy and how she likes to shop for clothes. Drat. Maybe I’ll go to Google AdWords after all …

How is any of this helping advertisers quickly get the information they need so they can make buying decisions? The tag line of Boston.com advertising is “Find Your Focus.” Ironic, isn’t it?

Lesson: Don’t let your Flash guru build your media kit.

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