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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.

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I feel a bit paralyzed when faced with the prospect of writing about the Sarah Palin story. It seems to me a classic case of a story mushrooming out of control. I visualize a balloon losing its air, spinning around and around, until it is empty and falls to the ground. Where this story will end, we will have to watch as the campaign unfolds.

This weekend, the story just took off. It started with general shock over John McCain’s VP choice and then soon degenerated into rumors as bloggers, including a post on the liberal Daily Kos blog, raised questions over whether Palin delivered baby Trig, born in April, or whether her 17-year-old daughter Bristol was the actual mother.  These stories were soon dashed by the shock announcement by Palin that Bristol was currently pregnant and planned to keep the baby and marry the father.

This strand — pregnant, unwed teen daughter — is just one story line of many swirling around the Alaska governor. There’s also her “trooper-gate,” questions about her support of the “bridge to nowhere,” reports she was a member of an Alaskan secessionist party … and the list goes on.

Questions also are raised over how closely McCain’s campaign vetted Palin, a darling of the evangelical wing of the Republican Party. One thing is for sure, McCain and his people understimated their ability to “manage” Palin’s story. In this day and age, when information is bantered about with abandon on the Web — and everyone seems to be blogging — there is no stopping a story that appears to be more than meets the eye.

One interesting interview to watch is linked here. CNN’s Campbell Brown grills McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds:
[googlevideo]

New Orleans Times-Picayne, whose staff heroically covered Hurricane Katrina three years ago, was back at it yesterday as Gustav swept onto the Louisiana coast.   The newspaper’s Web site presented a textbook example of how to cover a big event happening under its nose. A red banner across the top, alerted readers of the main links of the coverage — news and hurricane tracker, a resident survival guide with nitty, gritty details about developments community by community and a place for readers to post their photos, videos and comments.  Photos were updated regularly and the site carried information that people affected by the storm could use.

One area of coverage that was slow to develop was user generated content. Usually in weather stories, photos and video uploaded by the reading public are plentiful. Around 7:30 p.m. yesterday, hours after the storm came ashore, very little of this content was available on line. Obviously, this was because most people had evacuated the area so very few people were on hand to witness the event. More of this type of material was available by Tuesday morning. Check out this interactive map on CNN’s iReport.

For more on how the news media tried to harness social media for reporting on Gustav read a column posted today by Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute. He interviewed NPR’s Andy Carvin about the “Voices of Gustav” Web site he helped create.  These efforts to build community around a news event represent the new ways news outlets are approaching a story.

The convention season now upon us will not just result in the official naming of the presidential candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties. If you read all the hype in the media, the conventions also will mark a milestone for political bloggers — legitimatizing them beyond any lingering doubts.

The articles stating this apparent truth are countless. Just today, readers on nytimes.com can read, “The Year of the Political Blogger Has Arrived.” Look back a few days and find this column on The Times of London’s Web site that states the Democratic National Convention (starting tomorrow in Denver) has been hit with “Obamedia frenzy.” The column by Richard Siklos contends that blogs such as Politico and The Huffington Post are as hot a commodity as the candidate himself.

In fact, bloggers are taking center stage at the DNC gathering — even warranting the construction of a two-story tent (sponsored by Google among others; see photo from Flickr) where credentialed bloggers will have free WiFi and other amenities. For a list of the accredited bloggers, see this page on the DNC Web site. It will be a good place to start if you want to sample some of the blogging that’s coming off of the convention floor.

If you’re wondering where the political heavyweights go for their political news, check out this link: www.google.com/powerreaders. Here, Google says it has collected the sites read by the two candidates, John McCain and Obama, as well as the sites followed by political journalists.

Save the date. On Oct. 28, the Baruch College Journalism Department will sponsor a panel discussion on the impact political blogging has had on this presidential election. More details to come.

I’ve finally done it — just now — exactly 30 minutes ago — I signed up for Twitter, the social networking phenom that everyone seems to be using. Fortune magazine senior writer Adam Lashinky described it in a recent article like this:

“Twitter, in case you’re over 25 and don’t live in a trendy coastal metropolis, is a ‘micro-blogging’ site. It’s a free service that lets you send the briefest of messages to everyone in your network. It marries the mass appeal of blogging with the rat-a-tat-tat of text messaging. “

 Like a lot of people, I was hesitant to add another mode of communication to the roster. Communication overload is the norm these days, what with cell phones, multiple e-mail accounts, instant messaging and social network pages to keep updated. What use is a service that allows you to send and receive micro-messages of  140 characters or less?

Despite what may seem like an obvious answer to this question (Don’t need it!), Twitter’s appeal is snowballing. It is an application that can’t be ignored by anyone who seeks to keep up with technology.

Its uses by the news world are numerous. For example, Slate is twittering from the Olympics, offering sometimes biting commentary in very small bites. The service is used to alert readers to new postings as a way to build Web traffic. Here’s the Twitter page for The New York Times’ City Room blog. Journalists also have used Twitter to finesse story ideas, seek out sources and get information out fast on breaking news stories. Poynter.com recently posted a story about how newsrooms are using Twitter.

I am a little intimidated by the prospect of finding my place in this online community. I feel it’s important to bring something to the table — and to be clear about what I want to get from this service. Is it updates on news … or the latest thoughts on new technology and the media … or a mine for story ideas? I’ll keep you a-twittered. 

A New York Times article today describes an interesting battle brewing between the sports world and the news world. Developments in the way sports stories are reported is causing tension between the teams and the news organizations covering them.

According to the article, with bloggers detailing every word and news Web sites posting slideshows and videos, sports executives are looking to limit this ever-growing coverage - and drive fans to their team Web sites.

So the Times asks, “Who owns sports coverage?” Some sources in the stories suggest that these disputes may end up in court.

That the younger generation seeks out its news from different sources is hardly new, but The New York Times today takes it a step further. An article states that young consumers are spreaders of news, especially in the realm of politics. Here’s an excerpt:

“According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well - sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter - reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com - with a social one.”

The article underscores the fact that the ease with which the Internet allows the transfer of information is leading people to get to their news in non-traditional ways.

Blogs are good for many things, among them giving journalists a forum to focus on a particular subject. This blog is an example. It gives me the opportunity to write about changes in the news business.

Blogs also allow journalists to tell the story behind the story, to go into detail or to shoot off on a tangent in ways traditional news stories wouldn’t allow. The Iraq story has spawned many a journalist blog – most of them offering up painful stories of life behind the headlines. The New York Times is the latest to launch such a blog, Baghdad Bureau. The item I read, about a platoon of U.S. soldiers about to go home, provided vivid reporting with photos and audio clips from individual soldiers.

In another such blog, Baghdad Observer, McClatchy Newspapers Baghdad bureau chief Leila Fadel recently posted a poignant item about the isolation felt by the 13-year-old son of an Iraqi  colleague. The NBC News bureau also blogs at Blogging Baghdad.

The war also has inspired non-journalists to write. Take a look here at a directory of blogs and diaries from Iraq compiled by Yahoo.

What is sometimes lost in discussions about the current state of the news industry is how the shift to the Web has created opportunities for powerful storytelling. The ability to report using words, images, video and audio means news organizations can draw people into a story like never before.

To find compelling coverage on the Web, take the story in Kenya. For many people in the United States, a news story from Africa may seem remote and, perhaps, not of the highest interest. But spend time on the YouTube channel created by NTVKenya, a television news station, and the importance of the story will be driven home. There are heartbreaking reports such as this one about children being separated from their families because of the violence.

Other interesting Web coverage is being done by a young photographer/blogger, Lameck Nyagudi, whose photos are featured on the BBC’s Web site.  Nyagudi also has a blog and supplies photos to africanews.com.

 When I used to work night rewrite at the New York bureau of The Associated Press, I remember having to write running leads on developing stories such as political debates and award ceremonies.The idea was to watch, take notes and then write a lead while the event was still going on so that newspapers would get an early version of the story before their deadlines. It was a nerve-wracking and tricky task.

So it is with sympathy that I read the efforts of live bloggers, who now write blow-by-blow accounts of political, entertainment and sporting events. Obviously, the style of writing is different from what I used to do. Bloggers can be more casual and opinionated. The reasons for writing in real time have changed, too.

From what I can gather, live blogs allow Web sites to stay on top of the news as it happens and they act as a platform to engage users in real-time discussions. These are valid reasons to run live blogs, but I’m struck by how fleeting the posts are. Barely is the debate or game over and the entries seem obsolete.

This doesn’t seem to discourage news organizations from pursuing the practice. With public interest running high in the current presidential race, it seems like everyone is live blogging the debates. Take a look here at recent posts by usatoday.com and nytimes.com.

The live blogs are intense work. The “On Politics” blog on usatoday.com covered the 90-minute Republican debate in Florida with posts at 9:15 p.m., 9:25 p.m., 9:40 p.m., 9:58 p.m., 10:02 p.m., 10:17 p.m., 10: 30 p.m. and 10:47 p.m. I’m sure it wasn’t too much past 10:47 p.m. that the blog was replaced as the main link about the debate.

Politics is not the only area where live blogging occurs. Hollywood award ceremonies are another inspiration for live blogging. The recent SAG awards had any number of bloggers giving running accounts of who looked fabulous and who didn’t.  I’m also sure we can expect some sports writers to be opining and observing during this weekend’s Super Bowl.

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.  

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