Category Archives: Online

Malcolm Coles: The injunction DID protect the footballer Google search volumes show

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"Until the last few days, there were many more people searching for injunction than there were for his name. Each spike in searches for injunction sees a rise in searches for his name. But it’s only on this Saturday (the final day in the graph) that search volumes for the name really outstrip the word injunction. Hardly anyone has been searching for his name plus the word affair until this weekend."

Point to Point: Dear Journalists, This is The Title Search Engines Care About

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"For many journalists, SEO = headline + keyword stuffing. It’s all they know. However, if journalists really want to know and understand how SEO can help them and their publications they should worry a lot less about the importance of headlines and focus on their company’s sitemaps, site architecture, endless duplicate content, internal linking and the like. But they won’t. Many journalists opine about headlines and keyword stuffing because that’s all the information their SEO team is giving them. And it’s all most care to know."

The Atlantic: ‘Google Doesn’t Laugh’: Saving Witty Headlines in the Age of SEO

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"If all online searches are literal, what happens to the headlines that involve a play on words? Are those headlines relegated to the print edition, where headline writers have a captive audience? Indeed, as newspapers embrace search engine optimization, and as young journalists are taught to value Google visibility above all else, many copy editors fear that funny headlines are quickly going the way of the classified ad."

O’Reilly Radar: BrightScope liberates financial advisor data

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Useful advice for data journalism projects, as well: "[The] government data that BrightScope has gathered on financial advisors will go further than a given profile page. Over time, as search engines like Google and Bing index the information, the data will be searchable where consumers are actually looking for it. That's aligned with one of the laws for open data that Tim O'Reilly has been sharing for years: Don't make people find data. Make data find the people."

Kent Online: Council webcasts aren’t a ratings winner

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"Audience figures for live webcasts of meetings at County Hall show many are being watched by fewer than 100 people. ... An analysis of data released to the KM Group under the Freedom of Information Act shows 5,766 people watched committee broadcasts as they happened between April 2010 to March this year. ... KCC spends about £20,000 a year streaming live meetings and making them available on its website to view later."

Monday Note: Read, Share and Destroy

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Frédéric Filloux: "In recent months, we’ve seen a flurry of innovative tools for reading and sharing contents. Or, even better, for basing one’s readings on other people’s shared contents. In Web 2.5 parlance, this is called Social Reading. ... All of theses apps start with the same raw material. They collect and rearrange RSS feeds, they crawl Twitter or Facebook streams. Unfortunately, from a news publisher vantage point, all these aggregating apps kill value by removing ads from the articles they assemble for our reading pleasure."

Monday Note: Flipboard: Threat and Opportunity

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Frédéric Filloux: "Every media company should be afraid of Flipboard. The Palo Alto startup epitomizes the best and the worst of the internet. The best is for the user. The worst is for the content providers that feed its stunning expansion without getting a dime in return. ... For the reader, Flipboard provides the ultimate comfort: no ads. ... No media outlet should be allowed to complain about Flipboard. First, there is a now well-established pattern in the increasing fight between old-fashioned publishers and 'inexperienced' Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs. The latter always invent things that the former should have been first to come up with."

The Cutline: Jim Romenesko gets back to reporting

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"After aggregating for a dozen years, I decided to shift gears a bit and do some reporting too. It's a good change of pace," Romenesko [said]. "Also ... when I started aggregating for Poynter in 1999, there were only a few journalism 'town criers' on the Internet; now with Facebook, Twitter, etc., there are millions. I just felt I needed to adjust to the world of social media."

Online Journalism Blog: Is community moderation etc. journalism? Another ice cream question

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"The point of community management/SEO/social media optimisation etc. from a journalist’s point of view is that it should seek to involve readers as early as possible, and so improve the editorial product while it is produced. Not only that but also so that, once published, any errors/additions etc. are likely to be added by users. It’s the difference between seeing users as passive audiences, or as active collaborators."

Canadian Press: Libyan journalist killed in assault on rebel capital; Al-Jazeera crew arrested in west Libya

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"A Libyan journalist who ran a webcast program showing the aftermath of government attacks and commentary on the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi was killed in Saturday's government assault on the rebel capital in the country's east. ... Also Saturday, Al-Jazeera TV said Libyan authorities detained a team of its journalists in western Libya."

Nieman Journalism Lab: The Newsonomics of The New York Times’ pay fence

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Ken Doctor: "Though the FT and the Wall Street Journal have long operated successful pay models, the Times’ leap is a big one: The Times isn’t mainly a business newspaper. If it can succeed charging readers for “general news,” that’s a milestone for newspapers around the world. ...We know that the vast majority of visitors won’t reach the 20-article-view level and won’t bump into the fence. They are fodder for advertising, and a slim few will become more regular users over time. Then, there’s that small percentage — one to three percent — who do pay for digital-only subscriptions, in addition, of course to the print subscribers who will now get 'all-access' ... How open the Times will be to social traffic is a big consideration, as social traffic is the fastest growing source of all traffic, and represents a more engaged audience than search-driven visitors."