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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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The bad economy seems to be speeding up the downward slide of advertising dollars spent on newspapers. As a result, the discussion about the future of news and who is going to pay for it is reaching a new level of intensity. Just today, when I took my daily look at Jim Romenesko’s blog about the industry, I found most entries were about this very dilemma.I was an early convert to the power of the Internet to convey news, but I nevertheless am sympathetic to those experts and journalists who rail against the possible demise of the printed newspaper. For me, it is not because I need to have my news delivered on something concrete like paper. I honestly get just about all my news online. I worry about the future of newspapers because I value their newsrooms filled with reporters and editors. I think it’s important that young reporters get a chance to develop professionally — learning the ropes on general assignment, adding depth to their skills on a beat so that they can tackle a national or foreign post with sufficient experience. Editors, too, are needed to shape coverage, and to make sure all the right angles are being covered, and to be there when questions about ethics arise. In my many years in newsrooms, I always learned from my colleagues.While I understand that the old models are fast becoming obsolete, I worry that this very important support structure that is built into newspaper newsrooms would be lost in new models that are all about being lean.  Here is an interesting discussion on NPR’s On The Media program that is worth listening to. interesting discussion on this subject.

An interesting posting by the Poynter Institute’s Ellyn Agnoletti gives us a peak into the future. Agnoletti attended the recent Online News Association conference and came back with a list of emerging technologies that could have an impact on how the news is delivered.

Take a look here and let me know if you find anything of interest. 

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.

As I trolled through various Web pages looking for an item for this blog, I clicked into “iReport,” off of CNN’s main home page on the Web. The headline was too tempting to resist, “YOU take control of the news.”

I went to the site where I was as greeted with more strong words, “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.”

After a bit of Internet research, I found that iReport is a special Web site being developed by CNN to promote citizen journalism – that meaning reporting done by non-professional journalists.

 A recent article on Information Week’s Web site gives a good summary of what  CNN is looking to develop. According to the article, anybody who registers can upload video, photos and stories to iReport where it is posted “unfiltered.” Then the best reports are linked to CNN’s Web site.

 When I checked, the iReport site had video and many good photos up from the Olympic torch protest in Paris.

 Not a bad way to encourage the public’s involvement in the newsgathering process, but still keep some editorial control over what appears on a news organization’s Web site.

I wanted to note in a quick post just how powerful the Web can be when someone powerful uses it. Oprah Winfrey, who already has conquered television and publishing, is launching a new online endeavor - a free, 10-weekly Web seminar with herself and self-help author Eckhart Tolle. His book “A New Earth” is Oprah’s pick for her influential book club.

She says 700,000 people have signed up for the weekly Web seminar. Anyone would agree those are pretty impressive numbers. According to Oprah.com, participants will watch live classroom Web casts and have the opportunity to ask questions and connect with other like-thinking people around the world.

It’s always good to keep track of new Web sites that are coming out of the news industry. The newest that I’ve found is miami.com, a companion site to miamiherald.com.

A big banner ad across the top of the Herald site promotes Miami.com, which bills itself as THE place to go for information about going out and other leisure activities in southern Florida.

The new venture is rather breathlessly introduced in a video hosted by J.R. Biersmith and Toni Gonzalez, who apparently run the site and who try to convey that the site is cool and in-the-know.

The site has compiled searchable databases of restaurants , clubs and events and has any number of guides, such as one compiled from Miami Herald reports about beaches in South Florida. Stories, reviews and video tours round out the content on the site.

The site also heavily promotes user involvement, soliciting reviews, comments and photos from the general public.

I find it interesting that newspapers are spinning off sites like this. In the Herald’s case, a local entertainment site such as miami.com would likely generate more local advertising. For other examples, check out metromix.com, which was a creation of the old Tribune Co. (before being sold to Sam Zell) of a network of local entertainment sites in markets where the company had newspaper outlets. The idea of metromix was to generate interest among national advertisers who might want to place ads over several markets.

 

A lot of news is happening in the city today. People are voting in the presidential primary, helping the Giants celebrate their Super Bowl victory at a ticker tape parade downtown and maybe even taking in a show at Fashion Week at the tents in Bryant Park.

In this day and age, there is no reason for anyone to be just a consumer of news. News Web sites in the area are providing plenty of opportunities for readers to be part of these stories.

The Daily News has a cool feature in its fashion coverage called “Hot or Not.” Readers click to a page with photos from the catwalks and they are able to vote on which outfits they like and which outfits they don’t.

For Super Tuesday, The New York Times rolled out its ongoing “Polling Place Photo Project,” with a link off the homepage. Readers are asked to upload photos of their polling places and provide a little bit of information such as how crowded a polling place was at the time of the photo. These photos are hardly scintillating, but people seem to be getting into the project

A little more raucous were the videos of Super Bowl celebrations posted by readers on NJ.com. The site, which gets its news from a group of New Jersey newspapers including The Star Ledger in Newark and The Times of Trenton, had a pretty good selection of reader-posted videos. The site was soliciting photos and video from today’s parade so it may be worth a look this evening when people have had a chance to get home and upload their coverage.

 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.

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.