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  OnlineNewsWatch is a blog that follows developments in the ever-changing landscape of online journalism. It is edited by Vera Haller, an assistant professor of journalism at Baruch College.

• This weblog was developed and is supported by the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute, Baruch College, CUNY

  

  
  
  

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Here is a column worth reading. It’s by Steve Klein  in the Poynter Institute’s E-Media Tidbits blog. He makes a very good case for journalism schools to stop referring to journalism on the Web as “new media.” Here’s the link. You have to scroll down to the entry, “Revenge of the ‘Web people.’”

 Thewashingtonpost.com today launched new Web site, TheRoot.com, which its editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., said would “explore the richness of the black experience.” This is not the first time the newspaper has entered into the area of niche Web sites.Just last July, the Post launched loudonextra.com, an experiment in hyper-local journalism. When I say hyper-local, I mean the content would only interest residents of Loudon County in suburban D.C. You’ll find stories about high school sports teams, local government and lifestyle unique to the area.  With TheRoot.com, I assume the Post is expanding this experiment by seeking to establish a niche audience along demographic lines, rather than geographic lines.  I think the editors realize that they have to create unique online experiences in order to hold on to readers — and perhaps more importantly — create more places to sell advertising.

The economic turmoil of late created an opportunity to see how some business news sites handled the onslaught of developments. A brief survey found they were all agressively updating, even outlets such as Forbes and BusinessWeek that used to enjoy the luxury of weekly deadlines. No more.

Both sites offered a mix of breaking news stories and analysis for investors. BusinessWeek today posted an interesting story about what financial blogs are reporting while Forbes offered an expert’s view on why a stock market crash may be necessary. Clearly, the editors were seeking to put information out there — and quickly — that would set their sites apart from the competitors.

One observation: Business news sites are relying heavily on video reports — perhaps even more heavily than general news sites. Take for instance Forbes.com which has its own video network with market updates and business stories. The video viewer launches automatically when a reader goes to the homepage.

Thestreet.com has a video network that produces numerous clips every day, and CNBC and Fox Business also have video links directly off their home pages. While the videos may not be all that visually interesting, they must be garnering clicks because they are prevelant on all the business news Web sites.

Certain annual events lend themselves to extensive coverage on the Web. Take, for instance, movie award ceremonies (in years when labor disputes don’t curb the festivities, of course). These glitzy, Hollywood events inspire Web editors to beef up their celebrity photo coverage, and in turn their Web traffic. Who can resist slide shows of red carpet fashions, especially if they’ve been organized by best and worst dressed? 

But Hollywood doesn’t have a lock on irresistible slide shows. Detroit, yes Detroit, has a stake in this market. Every January, the North American International Auto Show in Motor City (this year it is being held Jan. 19-27) inspires an even larger outpouring of multimedia coverage. To get an idea of what I am talking about take a look at the whole Web site created by MSN. The Detroit News also has extensive coverage. Here is one of the many video reports already up on the site: 

  

Another Detroit News video is about the proliferation of bloggers, such as writers for autoblog.com, who are also covering the show. Now there’s an example of where the industry is going: a newspaper doing a video report on bloggers!

The Detroit News site also has any number of slide shows – from concept cars to new production models. And the list goes on. All this coverage is sure to result in a big spike in its Web traffic numbers.  

When the E.W. Scripps Co. launched www.kypost.com after closing its newspapers in Cincinnati and Kentucky at the start of 2008, executives said the Web site would build on the 126 years of journalistic traditions of the defunct papers.

The plan, according to a Scripps news release, was to focus on northern Kentucky and provide local news, high school sports, traffic, weather, etc. Content would be supplemented by The Associated Press and other Scripps-owned news outlets, including WCPO-TV in Cincinnati and its Web site, which are hosting kypost.com. The company also talked about creating online communities among users.

 This all sounded very ambitious and forward thinking to me until reading an AP story that describes who will be keeping kypost.com up to date – one managing editor, one reporter, freelancers and community journalists. Knowing the demands of running a news Web site, I wonder whether the staffing is adequate. While I wish the new Web site only success, I also wish the owners had thrown more resources at the endeavor. 

Network news shows seem well positioned for the future of online journalism, if only for their output of high-quality video. In an effort to play off this strength, NBC’s Brian Williams launched a new homepage for his “Nightly News” show on Jan. 9. 

The whole top of the page is now devoted exclusively to video clips. An embedded video player sits to the right and a selection of videos to choose from runs down a column to the left. The video is not just repurposed clips from the traditional broadcast.  On the first day of the redesign, the clips included a longer version of Williams’ interview with Barak Obama than appeared on television and some original “video blogs” done by the anchor.

One such blog had Williams doing a report from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on the unveiling of a 150-inch plasma TV screen.  I thought he did a good job of setting a more informal tone on the video blog than he would during a regular newscast.  Check out what his competitors, ABC and CBS, are doing.

The importance of the video clip in delivering the news was never so apparent as when Hillary Clinton got “emotional” on the day of the New Hampshire primary. Written descriptions of how she teared up while telling a group of women about the difficulties of campaigning hit the Web almost immediately and the all-important video clip soon followed.Just about every major news outlet had its own clip up that afternoon. On YouTube, more than a dozen clips were posted by the next day, including this one from abcnews.com:

Who can say whether the widespread dissemination of that show of emotion helped Clinton beat Barak Obama and the other Democratic candidates that night? It certainly got good play. 

The image of an actual web – interlocked and connected — came to mind when I read on Jan. 7 that CNBC and The New York Times had entered into a content-sharing agreement. Times stories would be posted on CNBC’s Web site and CNBC videos would appear on nytimes.com. This was the latest online connection to form among news giants. Some analysts speculated that CNBC and The Times were marshalling their forces in the face of Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp.’s growing business news empire that includes The Wall Street Journal and Fox’s newly-launched business news television network.

As online news outlets compete for Web traffic, they are forced to form alliances with other news organizations. The Times’ business editor, Larry Ingrassia, summed it up well in an interview with Reuters: “If we don’t point people to what’s good out there, people are going to find it elsewhere.” 

The role of political blogs in the presidential campaign crystallized for me while watching television coverage of Iowa caucus results on Jan. 3.  Flipping through the channels, I paused at an MSNBC interview with Ed Rollins, GOP candidate Mike Huckabee’s national campaign chairman. Rollins was being questioned about an item on the conservative political blog, townhall.com, describing what its writer, Amanda Carpenter, “overheard” of his conversation at lunch earlier in the day.

For the purpose of this blog entry, what Rollins supposedly said (and ate) isn’t what interests me. What I found striking was that a major news outlet was basing an interview question on something that had been overheard and reported by a blogger. Obviously, the competition in the political blogosphere will be intense during the campaign. Bloggers will be aggressive in their posts in an effort to stay ahead of  the competition. Once an item is “out there,” it will be fair game to be raised by all other media.    

On the day Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, I followed the developments on nytimes.com. This was  big news story and, being hooked on the news, I was interested in keeping up with all the details. As the day went along, I also started tracking the multimedia features being posted along with the story.

 The package was impressive – a gallery of photos and video from the scene, an audio background piece by correspondent John F. Burns, an interactive feature about Bhutto’s career and a message board for readers to post their reactions to her death. These were just the highlights.

The breadth of the package raised the question for me: Just how much multimedia is too much?  I looked at the photos, but passed on the interactive feature because it took too long to load on my computer. I wondered how much time most readers spend going through multimedia features on a big story like this. I spent a fair amount of time on the features, picking a few items that added depth and drama to the coverage.

The best piece that I found was an audio-slideshow with photographer John Moore, who was at the scene of the assassination for Getty Images. An audio interview done by a Times producer was paired with the photos he took. The final product was powerful and well worth the time it took to find and watch. It brought me closer to the scene than a piece of writing alone.  

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