The Medium Run

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The logical conclusion of Newspaper Next

The surprising implication of the very persuasive Newspaper Next presentation I sat through today: Screw newspapers. If newspapers don't need us, we don't need them.

Need I add that I'm not talking about the short run here?

No jump on this one. More about this in a later post, maybe.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Next gen of online comments: in-line comments

I'm late to this party, but if you haven't seen the comment system on Jack Slocum's blog, you gotta. I'm not sure it lends itself to news, since it requires that click to view, but this is still explosive stuff.

The post-intrepreneurship Medium Run

Mike rediscovers the first law of blogging: never promise anything. If you say you've got three posts in the works, you won't write a thing for months. If you say you're going to type up your final thoughts on a seminar you went to, the file will sit permanently unfinished on your laptop's desktop. And if you say you're going to post something tomorrow, you'll have an existential crisis, quit your job and go to work as a direct-to-print reporter for a paper that doesn't even post its content until noon.

It wasn't actually much of a crisis, but a couple weeks ago I did leave the Daily News of Longview for the Columbian of Vancouver, a family-owned paper down the road that does some things online very well and others pretty clumsily. But it won't be my job to worry about that.

I don't expect to stop thinking or writing about the Web, but I'm abandoning the pretense of regular updates here.

Leaving the front lines always comes with a sense of loss and guilt, I guess. My previously mentioned friend David linked to a Guy Kawaski post that hit home:

From the outside looking in, entrepreneurs think intrapreneurs have it made: ample capital, infrastructure (desks, chairs, Internet access, secretaries, lines of credit, etc), salespeople, support people, and an umbrella brand.

Guess again. Intrapreneurs don’t have it better—at best, they simply have it different.

I can do without the chair, but I'll miss the capital. Increasingly, though, my hopes for the future of online news lie away from capital. In the meantime, I just want to learn how to write.

See you around.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Let readers see (and edit) their own data

Work's been heavy lately. Tomorrow, a post on triaging limited programming resources. (As if there's some other kind...) Today, a quick suggestion for winning trust: let readers access their own usage data.

Job one, of course, is to start collecting readers' usage data. Seriously. Let readers know about it, tell them how they'll benefit, let them opt in or out, but start it right away and do it any way you can.

Job two is inspired by this Fredshouse brainstorm (courtesy Lifehacker): Google should create a digital privacy tool for all its users that would let them view, delete and set expiration dates for all data that's collected about them.

We should do that, too.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Not the feed you were looking for?

Move along; move along.

If your feed's been acting up in the last week, it's not your fault or imagination -- I've been upgrading to the new Blogger Beta in order to add features like topic tags (below every post), improved archives (at right) and peekaboo summaries (rather than always sending you to a separate page to read the full post). Thanks for your patience.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Newspapers should be classifieds clearinghouses

Everybody and his brother's startup has a free classified service these days. Even if you're ignoring all but the bigger players -- Craigslist, Base, Edgeio, eBay -- who can keep track?

Hint: they're black and white and read in large but ever-decreasing quantities.

For the moment, newspapers in the smallest markets should probably still be trying to minimize the content that leaks onto competitors' sites. But in mid-size markets (and, before long, in the smaller ones) papers can keep offering value to classified advertisers by offering a service the big boys don't: syndication of your ad throughout the Internet. Anybody who pays for a classified should get it listed on all the free sites in addition to the print edition and the newspaper's Web site.

Three startups called Mpire, vFlyer and Postlets are trying to make this service into an entire business, the
New York Times reports today. (While they're at it, they check your spelling and suggest an effective layout.)

It's not clear whether these guys are going to make money for such a relatively simple service. But if newspapers can seed their ads into both the Web-savvy and Web-illiterate markets, they'll be saving their clients a lot of time.

No time for the staff to do all these postings, you say? Well, I happen to know of three fledgling Web sites who might make great partners for your classified department...

Friday, September 29, 2006

Closing the software gap

Can newspapers maintain competitive software on a smaller, less Soviet scale than Tom Mohr would have us believe? Here are two signs that a few folks still think it's worth a try.

1) Reviewing the API's Newspaper Next study, Susan Mernit name-checks the two bits of software small newspapers probably need most:

- a self-serve ad platform
- a simple local listings service

And she wants it done in open source, so we can all share & improve. Right on, sister. (Tx Will Sullivan.)

2) The Des Moines Register is searching for a local search editor. Bully. A dozen such "editors" won't do squat until the software is in place, but once it is, no set of editorial duties need more attention at mid-size metros, I think. (And nobody is better poised to see the benefits of that software than Gannett. Let's cross our fingers, k?)