Busy, busy international web

Tim Johnson, Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy, talks about how Chinese website design is vastly busier than U.S. website design. He describes the "hot and noisy" design with a Chinese word, renao.
Interesting comparison, but I think he hasn't been watching what's been happening to mainstream media sites in the United States. We're all getting hot and noisy. Here's hoping we preserve (improve? create?) usability and findability, as local aggregator outside.in has. Some are saying it's the new Facebook.

Why we should post to YouTube

This video posted Monday by The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun of a student getting Tasered by police during an appearance by John Kerry made it into YouTube’s "most viewed" list by Tuesday.

The video, shot by a freelancer, was also used by several national news shows on television. Since the paper posted the video to its site, it has attracted more than 20,000 hits, compared with the average 1,000 hits per video (about 3,500 on football game days). But the real coup came from YouTube, where the video drew more than 840,000 hits.

"One of our managers sent it to YouTube," Executive Editor Jim Osteen said. "The thought there is — if it is on YouTube, it brings traffic to your site because it says it is from The Gainesville Sun. There is a certain strategy there."

The video shows how newspapers can use new media and the YouTube buzz. Through these channels, the name and story of the newspaper was reproduced nationwide within hours.

h/t: E&P and Editors Weblog

Adgets (C'mon, you knew they were coming...)

The trend du jour: Interactive -- read: user-generated -- ads, or (I kid you not) Adgets.

From Business 2.0:

A Canadian firm NewspaperDirect is offering the Adget, a new kind of ad that allows online readers to interact with a business - make an appointment, book a restaurant table, even order a product - without ever leaving the newspaper site. Want to arrange a test-drive at a local dealership while browsing the sports section? The Adget can do it.

Uncluttered sustainability

(That's not what the picture shows).

Tech President gets the big prize of $10,000 from the 2007 Knight-Batten Awards. Bluffton Today, former employer of Jim McBee, gets a notable mention.
You can gain hope and learn lots from looking around at the other winners and notable entries.

And you can learn lots by looking at previous sites noted for their innovation, like Baristanet. That "community journalism" site has joined the ranks of online sites assaulting readers, like The Washington Post and the Gaston Gazette, which both took money from Ford Motor Company for a drop-down ad with video this morning. The ad hindered usability by covering up search boxes. (Please, Ford web crawlers: come to this blog and get a clue).

Look around at the sad evidence of a failed effort at BackFence, or what passes for news at YourHub. Keep your fingers crossed that places like Loudon Extra will make money and encourage local reporting.

Seek hope in Dan Gillmor's ideas for sustainability.

Grants can buy some time, but that time needs to be spent pounding on sustainability. It goes beyond newspapers and community blogs to public TV stations as well.

Take a moment to toast and visit sites like Davidsonnet, Under the Water Tower and the fledgling Ballantyne Daily.

Then keep thinking about the uncluttered sustainability of real, complicated, expensive story-telling, like The Morning Call's multimedia narrative about one homeless man named Earl.

Mr. Feeny, where are you?

There are reasons some Gen Y people love the '90s TV show, "Boy Meets World," beyond nostalgia. Give this clip one minute and 21 seconds of your time, and you'll see why.

African-American citizen journalists: "We are taking this into our own hands"

I'd love to hear what Mel Watt thinks about these guys, or what these guys think about Mel Watt. I can't wait to find out who gets the "Lawn Jockey awards."

Found this through a Youtube "citizen journalist" A.Man.I, who was linked in JOMC 713 class at UNC, props to student Amanda Carol Toler.
A.Man.I's website is called My Urban Report and has links to sites like Acting White and Afro-Netizen.

The bottom line: Can a citizen be a journalist? I wouldn't bet against this guy, and it's great that this kind of work can happen when the "name" journalism schools and student papers have inadequate minority numbers among students.



This guy certainly has more street cred than the following Fox TV station. While I applaud the efforts to reach out to the community, I can't help but think that the audience will feel that corporate media just wants content for free. We can steal the technique, but make sure it's mission-driven with the idea that we need help to cover all communities well.

If your mother says she loves you....

...check it out. If your correspondent speaks with a French accent and says he graduated from the Sorbonne, check it out.

Will Bunch connects the dots about Alexis Debat, who apparently has conducted "fake interviews" with folks like Nancy Pelosi, Alan Greenspan, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and Kofi Annan.