The Internet is now the mainstream medium

The Media Trainers:   The Internet Is Now The Mainstream Medium. Even more evidence that this is where much of your attention (and investment) needs to be.

Ad spending on the Web will reach $16 billion this year, a mind-boggling 25 percent increase over last year, predicts Steve King, CEO of media-buying company ZenithOptimedia.

Associated Press: Americans' Media Use Rising, Internet Passes Newspapers.

Americans spend more time watching TV, listening to the radio, surfing the Internet and reading newspapers than anything else except breathing, says a new U.S. Census Bureau report. This year, use of the Internet passed reading newspapers. Also: "People want information 24 hours a day."

Top mistakes made by new online publishers

Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review: Top mistakes made by new online publishers. Commentary: Don't fall into the traps that have left too many other journalists muttering that 'no one can make money online.'

2 more veteran journalists join new venture

NY Times: Journalists from Time and Bloomberg Join Political News Venture.

Mike Allen, a reporter who covers the White House for Time magazine, and Roger Simon, the chief political correspondent for Bloomberg News, are joining the new multimedia political news venture being overseen by two former Washington Post journalists.

That new enterprise now has a name — The Politico, which is its newspaper, and thepolitico.com, its Web site. The name supplants The Capitol Leader, which had been its working title until it broadened in scope.

Both the newspaper and Web site are to begin publication on Jan. 23, the date of the president’s State of the Union address ...

I hope thepolitico succeeds, but I don't see a large appetite for traditional media-style "objective" reporting in the blogosphere.

NY Times to add news-sharing tool

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: The New York Times is unveiling a new service that allows readers to quickly post stories that they find on the newspaper's Web site to Digg, Facebook and Newsvine. The Times will embed links to all three news-sharing Web sites to most of their online stories.

That's incredibly forward-looking. Congrats, NY Times.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

News in the Internet age

For years, mostly in talks at conferences, I've been suggesting that when news organizations cover breaking news stories, reporters and editors post updates with
categories such as "what we know" and "what we don't know at this time." Dan Gillmor expressed support for such a new media convention when we chatted about breaking news a couple of months ago.

So here's an interesting letter in the Sunday New York Times:

News in the Internet Age

“Breaking News: Can Times Quality Be Preserved Online?” (Nov. 19) appears to be a lot of hand-wringing over an easily solved problem.

Why doesn’t The Times set up a special section online, perhaps called “New York Times Online Raw” to present breaking news that has not yet been formalized for the print edition? Provide a link to these stories on the Times home page, with a disclaimer at the top of the “Raw” page explaining that the stories are breaking news and have not yet been thoroughly fact-checked and edited.

The stories themselves in this separate section would be written in a different manner from those meant for the print edition. There could be a subsection titled “What is Known,” which would include everything that has been verified. A second subsection, entitled “What Is Surmised,” would contain the information that The Times doesn’t want to get scooped on but at the same time has not been able to verify.

This approach could also serve as a model for other news organizations that are ever more blurring the distinction between fact and less-than-fact (to be generous) in their reporting.

John Mocenigo
Califon, N.J.

Wounded soldiers get hundreds of laptops

At PBS's MediaShift, Mark Glaser takes a look at Valour-IT, an ad hoc charity organization that has given out hundreds of laptops with voice-recognition software to injured soldiers.

TechCrunch blog ruffling feathers

Dan Fost at SFGate: Michael Arrington, Silicon Valley's 'Mr. Web 2.0,' seeks next big thing. TechCrunch blog ruffles feathers on the Internet beat. (Chronicle photo)

Journalists with 'distinctive signatures'

Jay Rosen at PressThink: 'A Collection of Journalists Who Have Distinctive Signatures'

"The people having the most satisfying careers, it seems to me, are those who create a distinct signature for their work, who add value to the public conversation through their individual talents," says John Harris. He and Jim VandeHei will soon open their new franchise in political news.

What would techies do with a newspaper?

USA Today: What Would Techies Do with a Newspaper? Internet entrepreneurs are asked: If you owned a newspaper, what would you do with it?

Other than getting out of paper, the techies almost universally came up with two main suggestions: turn newspapers into models of Web 2.0-style open media, and go super local, essentially becoming the town Yahoo.

Pulitzer Prizes to embrace more online elements

Journalism.co.uk: Pulitzer Prize to embrace Web 2.0 elements.