lectroid.net

On Feb 20th an IM conversation I was having with a friend contained this lovely:

“I was thinking the other day that it’d be interesting if newpapers pushed photos to Flickr or something and, as part of captioning, link to the article.”

And that was how it started. Nope, not my idea… but I love it just the same. And then the Portland Oregonian goes and does it. (Actually, it seems they uploaded their first photo on the 18th. They — in fact — win)

But there’s room to do it better.

First of all, it doesn’t appear that the Oregonian is uploading all their photos only a subset, and not on a daily basis either. I’d like to see all the photos that ran in that day’s paper automagically uploaded, with links to the stories of course.

I’d also like to see all the EXIF data pulled as well. I think it would be neat to see camera types and exposure and even geocode (mapping) data if it’s there. The Oregonian seems to strip all that.

Of course I’d use Flickr’s sets for various categories: the generic news, sports and features come to mind, but I’m sure more could be thought of. I’d use tags in the same way too, plus a few for other metadata like the photographer’s name (the Oregonian does this).

I’d also automatically put photos into various groups.

The automatic aspect is really a necessity. Even I recognize that Flickr would not be a huge traffic draw, and it would be tough to justify a staffer massaging daily photos into various groups and sets and whatnot everyday. Therefore to make it work, it would have to be an automatic process.

And really, why stop at Flickr? Why not video to YouTube? Why not headlines (or perhaps just breaking news) to Twitter? Just like newspapers are realizing it’s not just about paper, it’s not just about a single outlet on the web either.

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