Random Unorganized Thoughts
Primary Media/Journalism Paradigms
Everyone approaches the media, and journalism in general, with a pre-conception of what it is and what it should do.
Pre-History
Journalism is often noted as, "The first draft of history". Chronicling the events as they happen, and providing the context for a society to remember itself through.
Fourth Estate
Eugene Meyer described a newspaper as a public trust, intended to serve the public in a democracy.
Web/Print buy
In a perfect world, a newspaper website would have a page within the physical paper daily (and vise versa).
Ad Weight
Ads need to be assigned a "weight" based on the amount of interactivity, file size, and height/width.
Classifieds - Textual Advertising
The trend in ads is moving both bigger and smaller. By simply using Google's AdWords services, newpapers are missing out on a big upsell opportunity.
The Cost of Advertising to the Consumer
One of the problems with online advertising is that you're making the reader pay every time you put an ad on their screen.
Classifieds Monitoring With RSS
RSS has emerged as the defacto method to passively monitor content online, it makes sense to offer this functionality within the classifieds sections.
Pay-per-click Cross Promotion
Encouraging readers to leave your site for another site doesn't necessarily make economic sense. What if payment and reciprical links were offered as an incentive?
Building the Memex
How can readers form trails through a media website for others to follow?
Engaging vs. Entertaining
Entertainment is a tool, not a goal of journalism.
9am Crossword Challenge
Crosswords are a personal challenge, but it is also often an inter-personal challenge.
Drawing The Line
Most hot button topics are far from black and white (abortion, death penalty, war, etc), this "game" would encourage readers to draw their own line in the sand.
Community Maps
I like the idea of a community map based on themes.
Community Conversation
Communities exist through the communication ties between individuals.
Weblogs and "Media Reality"
Weblogs offer individuals the quickest method of becoming part of media's reality.
Interactive Indexes
Newspapers should consider allowing users to build weblogs surrounding popular topics.
On-Page Chat
Online chatting should be treated similarly to offline chats, spontaneous and omnipresent.
Semantic Conversion of Print Stories
The conversion of a printed story to be used online, needs to be thought of in a semantic context, not just a presentational context.
Reponse to "Amazoning the News"
Hypergene's article "Amazoning the News" presents an interesting way to present the news. However, the recommendation algorithm would need to be figured out first.
When I Am Not Me
Implicit personalization is a powerful tool, unfortunately, it rarely understands when I'm not acting like myself.
Opinion Leaders
Everyone has something to say, however media sites should use karma-based methods to bring out the best their citizen writers.
Timeliness and the Out of Market Reader
Out of market audiences have different expectations then local audiences, deliver them the local "big picture" and leave out the national news.
Writing in Real Time
Journalism schools would be wise to teach students the structures of writing in a real-time medium.
"We React too Much..."
"We react too much and we anticipate too little. We struggle to be the first with the obvious."
Personalities of Emerging Technologies
New technologies gather their "personalities" through the interaction of three primary forces: the technology itself, the policy, and the use.
Constructing a Better Chat Metaphor
The established metaphor for chat applications is a conversation, which is completely blown apart when entering any chat room.
Full-text Footnotes
It is becoming increasingly important for media sites to bring together information that is associated, but not necessarily a part of the original story.
Liability within message boards
The best offline metaphor for message boards would be graffiti and graffiti walls.
Locating "Connectors" Through Subscription Surveys
"Connectors" should be actively sought by advertisers and to a news site's promotional department. Finding them online, should be a priority.
Storytelling and chatbots
Chatbots are an interesting type of communication.
Dead Link Porn
There's a business opportunity for a group to help keep dead newspaper links clean.
Site Redesigns
I hate full website redesigns. Was the previous design so egregious that a slow evolution couldn't fix it?
Push Tools: News Aggregators vs. Email Newsletters
The knock-down drag out fight between the current heavy-weight champion email, and the scrappy contender RSS.
Information Cascade
The difference between data, content, news, and journalism.
Strengths of the Internet
Each new medium has its own strengths and weaknesses (sometimes one and the same thing)
Speculative vs. Concrete Value
Media websites would be wise to strike a balance between the concrete and speculative value of their advertising inventory.
Partnering with Ebay
By using a newspaper's strength in the local market, and ebay's national reach, a partnership between the two could provide a great value to sellers.
Shared Connections
A newspaper makes regularly makes connections between different articles, it is time to allow readers the same functionality.
Links Do Not Convey Enough Information
The problem with hyperlinks is that it doesn't give you enough information to make the decision of "where to go from here".
Shackling Readers Inside Frames
Yet another rant against the use of frames, especially when used to link to outside sites.
Reciprocity vs. Reach
As communications technologies and techniques grow, they have a balance they strike between reach and reciprocity.
College Newspaper Sites
Ideas and suggestions for building a successful/sustainable college website.
Casual vs. Protected Personal Data
By seperating the casual and protected data into two different systems, the ease of use can remain high, without an increased risk of identity theft.
The Transition Between Orality and Text-based Traditions
Are we in a transition between a text-based communication tradition, into a model that more closely resembles a oral tradition?
The Information Hourglass
The traditional information hourglass is getting a wider neck through the increase in sources of information online.
User-Created Content Fragments
Full stories and write-ups often pose too high of a barrier to entry. News websites should also facilitate user contributed content fragments that add to the whole.
Advanced Site Searching With Semantic Standards
The promise of the semantic web is still in its infancy, however that shouldn't limit a site from building it within their own structure.
Skills Needed for Online Media Librarians
Newspaper archivists and librarians are best positioned to bring about the next stage in news site publishing, however several skills are more important than others.
Trust Levels in a Participatory System
In any participatory system, where users are expected to come back over time, there needs to be a slope of trust.
Backing Into the Semantic Web
We've been working our way back into the semantic web. From a presentational, to the logical, and then into the semantic layer.
Bottom-up Intelligence Online
A bottom-up strategy often leads down a trail of broken eggs that lead to the golden goose.
Swarm Ad Serving
By monitoring the results of each delivery and recording the local variables for each click-thru, an ad system could be taught to optimize itself automatically.
The Celebrity Factor
Right now there are leaders and celebrities being established online on the national, regional, local, and topic levels. News sites would be wise to establish their own personalities in this space.
Attracting Topic-Based Elite
Each media site, needs to not only attact the best writers and reporters for employers, but as readers and contributors.
Aqua Navigation and Digital Photojournalism
With digital photography, it shouldn't be a big deal to put all images taken during an event online.
The DeCoupling of Journalism
There is something terrifying but natural about the roles of a traditional journalist being seperated.
Nesting links to create a story package
Teasing a story package from the front page of a site using traditional html links is the equivalent of rubber-banding together a stack of pages. A better solution is needed to display their relationship.
Find your own doorways to content
You should place links to your newest and best content in the places a user is most likely to look in their daily workflow.
Linking Within a Story
Every link is an editorial decision.
Bruce Almighty as Personalization Parable
People rarely ask for, wish for, pray for what they really want or really need. Don't make miracles, be the miracle.