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I keep saying that the web is a completely different medium and we should not be regurgitating print copy onto it, but rather creating new content specifically for it.

Example: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20070803_BRIDGE_GRAPHIC.html

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So back in 1990-something there was a big brouhaha caused by including the reporter’s email addressed in the “tail” of the story:

Buffy Writesalot can be reached at buffyw@thelocaltrusteddaily.com

This was the beginning of the End of Times apparently (well, in a way…). Recently several papers I work for are moving that info up to the byline. They call this progress. I suppose the lack of outcry is progress.

But it’s lame.

What I want to see is a link to a reporter’s “profile” page, in very much the same vein as Facebook profile. Except, unlike Facebook, this profile would be public — the fact that you’re a newspaper reporter makes the whole world your “friend”. Call this “transparency”.

Let the reporters customize these profile pages if they wish — just like Facebook — adding blog postings or photos or video… or whatever. It would be the reporter’s “face” at the paper.

The only things I think I’d require on said page would be a self written “about me” blurb (hello, you are a writer aren’t you?!?) and the inclusion of a “last X stories” widget and a “last X user comments on my stories” widget.

I’m starting to think that what’s needed at newspapers, excuse me, news organizations, is more people. People that you can trust as opposed to a big corporate entity you probably don’t. Staff profile pages with a collection of the reporter’s work and samples of their interactions with people seem to me to be a good way to create this relationship and build that trust.

Really, I’m not opposed to internet video, YouTube and all that, but I think this comment to a Slashdot (yes… journo-geek) article on Boeing’s really flexible 787 wings sums what makes a “good” internet video:

“This would make one heck of a good video for Youtube if it’s done right. I would be very interested to watch the test accompanied by the 1812 overture with the wings snapping in a spectacular fashion just as the drums hit! Oh, and add two squirrels and a cat fighting to the video. And while you’re at it add lightsabers and two chicks kissing. Now that would make a good video!”

Instead, the high and mighty among us give us… ketchup.

Stupid Review-Journal, thanks for hiding your obits so well. I finally guessed.

It’s almost like I work at a newspaper.

Gil Martin

So industry pundits have told me to Facebook. Ok, now I have and as others have said before, social sites are really desolate landscapes unless you have friends.

Howard Weaver says he’ll be my friend and that’s nice and all, but where are my real friends? Understand that most of my friends are involved in technology in some way (hey, it says “geek” up there) and yet very few — no wait, none — of my real life, non-work related friends have even heard of Facebook, or Twitter or del.icio.us or any of these other supposedly newspaper killing social/sharing sites let alone use them.

In fact most of my own coworkers haven’t either (that may be indicative of a whole different issue, I’m not sure).

Yes, I can literally say: I virtually have no friends.

So?

So where are these “disruptive” hoards? On Facebook I looked through a list of potential friends linked to me by our common employer, and considering you’re talking about a pool of over 20,000 people, Facebook showed me 34.

34.

I can’t help to think that, while I personally think they’re as cool as the pundits tell me they are, social web sites are just the windmills that newspapers are tilting at.

To be sure, of the 34 faces that peered at me from the Facebook pages, very few looked to be over 30. The time will come, when they’re gray haired and using the special door for the Corp. VPs, when our world will be different.

But not today.

I hate LinkedIn.

I hate the slimy businessy feel of the place, “…a tool for recruiters, job seekers, sales execs and other corporate drones”. I hate the fact that for the short time that I was a member I found that very few of the 300-odd contacts I developed in my “network” had titles that didn’t come out of a management handbook.

My real issue with LinkedIn however, was that aside from notching your virtual bedpost, you don’t actually do anything there. You exist for the solitary purpose of linking to someone else. That’s it, its just a big Outlook addressbook.

Now lets compare this to Facebook. I’m not a facebook user (well, ok, I just signed up — grudgingly — to see what all the fuss is about) but from the site tour it’s pretty clear I can actually do stuff. I can share photos (as I can and do within Flickr) and I can post messages and set my status (sorta like Twitter) and I can keep lists of friends (like LinkedIn) and groups (not so much like LinkedIn).

Most of all, it calls your friends “friends” and not “contacts”.

Google Mapplets

Ok, work with me here: you go to Google Maps and you see “FooNews.com” listed. *click* and you add the last 7 days of stories and photos.

And garage sale ads… ooh ooh and classified ads… no wait! Upsold ads!

Now THAT would just so rock!

I was thinking that you’d have to give writers and photogs GPS units, but no, Google can do geocoding. All I’d need are addresses. You get addresses with your stories, right?!?

I’m gonna float this to the various online folken I work with and see how far it goes.

Here it is again: 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head

Is anyone listening?

Amen, brother!

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12617

If I was pointing fingers — and I am — I’d point at the high level editors who seem to be afraid to really let the journo-geeks in the door.

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So your newspaper’s IT department has finally heard the whole “print is dead” bit and wants to get in on the web act. Great! Good for them! Yeah, they’re late to the party, but we’ll just say they’re fashionably late and let it slide. Here are some thoughts I have for a IT department that is looking to go web:

There’s a lot of web out there on the web

Figure out exactly what you want to do on teh intarweb. In most companies there are two sides to the web: internal (sites, pages and info for employee consumption) and external (sites, pages and info for public consumption).

So? So very often these areas require different skills. Where I work internally we’re Windows/IIS/MSSQL/.NET based while externally we’re Linux/Apache/MySQL/Perl based. Good luck bridging THAT gap. You have to decide which areas you’re gonna play in because “all of em” oftentimes just isn’t feasible.

On the external side newspapers often get blessed with the additional facets of editorial vs. advertising, which may very well dictate where you apply your resources. It’s hard to quantify the ROI on a nifty Google map of stolen cars.

Don’t fight the last war

Time was when you got a new system in the IT response was simple. You selected some staff to get all trained up and then turned ‘em loose. If everything went well, you were good. If something didn’t go well, you called the vendor.

Um, you can’t call the web.

This sounds dorky, but the web is a culture. Ask yourself how many of your IT folks maintain personal web sites or blogs. How many use web-based services like flickr or del.icio.us? How many follow tech blogs like Ars Technica or Slashdot? If you’re counting on one hand, you have a problem.

While you can’t call the web, you can post questions to online communities. But how can you do that if don’t belong to any?

You wouldn’t hire a reporter who kant spel, wood yoo?

Look, newspapers that have functional IT departments are not small. Odds are the folks in the newsroom are skilled, experienced journalists, many on their second or third paper. Why wouldn’t the same be true in IT?

You won’t hear in the newsroom, “Hey, Jennie in Accounting can write, have her do the story,” so don’t try the same thing in IT.

Most newspapers got onto the web in the late 1990’s. That means there’s a fair number of people out there with 5-10 years of newspaper/web experience. These are the people you need to be looking at. It’s not that Dave, the guy in IT who’s doing the same job today he did when you first got your Vax, wouldn’t make a good “web guy” — he might but, frankly, you don’t have the time.

Remember, you came in late.