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Posterous, a new blogging platform powered by email, could allow newspapers to attract more users to their blogging communities.

According to Poynter's Paul Bradshaw, Posterous is "fantastically intuitive, quick, and easy".

Bradshaw gives several examples to demonstrate Posterous' user-friendly platform: create a Posterous blog by sending an email to post@posterous.com; email photos, video, or audio to Posterous and the files will be uploaded in a posting; check blog comments through automatic email notifications.

"It's a very new service, but I think Posterous could become a hugely popular blogging tool, as well as a great tool for blogging on the move," he writes.

Source: Poynter Online

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published a guide for journalists on covering the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The guide emphasizes the need for journalists to protect their Chinese sources.

"You will leave, but they will stay," said Minky Worden, director of media at HRW.

The guide addresses the Chinese government's regulations imposed on foreign journalists, and offers tips to elude government censorship. It also teaches journalists to identify different levels of security forces by uniform.

The guide will be available in French, English, Spanish, and German.

Source: Agence France Presse

English regional newspaper publisher, Newsquest, is rolling out a revamped website.

The Lancashire Telegraph, Telegraph & Argus and The Press have all had the makeover treatment. Further Newsquest sites are expected to launch the new look in the weeks ahead.

The new-look websites have a navigation website that tretches across the top of the screen, bigger banner adverts, live traffic updates, weather reports, and a  'What's On' information on every page. Birthday, marriages and deaths are now altogether in one section titled 'Announcements' and blogs and comments are also paired together.

lancashiretelegraph.co.uk guides readers through some of the major changes.

Source: Holdthefrontpage.co.uk through IFRA Executive News Service

A second daily freesheet will launch in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires: La Mañana will be released August 1 with an initial circulation of 250,000.

Its publisher, Sergio Szpolski, is the owner of several other Spanish-language publications, including the Spanish version of Newsweek and Buenos Aires Economico. La Razon, published by the Clarin group, is the only other freesheet currently available in Buenos Aires.

La Mañana is the latest freesheet to debut in South America. The Brazilian freesheet Destak Rio was recently launched in Rio de Janeiro.

Source: NewspaperInnovation.net through IFRA Executive News Services

Newspapers are making several preparations in anticipation of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, trimming staff and putting increased focus on their online operations.

The Associated Press will provide newspapers with a service called Summer Games Plus, made possible by a deal with NBC that allows the AP to publish NBC-produced context.

According to New York Times Sports Editor Tom Jolly, the Times will utilize the AP's service "because we wanted the ability to fully cover things like lead-up events, lesser events we might not staff, and mostly agate events."
 
The Tribune Company's papers, which include the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun, will share reporters to provide the widest range of coverage.

The Boston Globe is among the papers sharpening its web coverage. According to sports editor Joe Sullivan, the paper is bringing "a full-time multimedia person...in charge solely of producing products for the Web."

The Globe will also bring a Chinese reporter "to help with the language and cultural stuff."

Check out some past coverage of the Beijing Olympics:

Human Rights Watch Guide for Reporting
BBC Coverage
Journalists Manage Expectations

Source: Editor and  Publisher

Dave Stancliffe, a columnist at The Eureka Reporter in the USA, has published a unilateral condemnation of outsourcing. He asks: where do we draw the line with outsourcing?

Outsourcing may begin with ad production and layout, but where will the financiers look to next in their drive for efficiency? Is this the beginning of a wholesale move in search of cheaper labour, or is it a one-off reaction to a competitive market?

"I dread to see what will be outsourced next. Newspaper editors perhaps? Somewhere along the line we're losing more than just jobs," writes Stancliffe, citing issues of diminishing public trust if their local papers are edited overseas.

This is a serious question, especially for local newspapers. Pulitzer Prize-winning local newspaper, The Orange County Register, outsourced its copy editing and page design function to India after struggling with falling ad revenues. As Stancliffe writes, "The writing was on the wall in 2006 when they started offering a voluntary severance program."

If a paper is being copy-edited in another country, can it really still be called a "local newspaper"?

However, the wholesale relocation of newspapers to India or any other country is still unlikely. Most newspaper owners are well aware that to provide news to their communities they have to be a part of those communities. Running a newspaper is difficult enough without having to consider time-zone differences when chasing a story.

Early reports on outsourcing indicate that it is not always plane sailing. However, we will have to wait and see how these newspapers fare in their efficiency drive. Maybe this innovation will prove successful.

Source: The Eureka Reporter

As Google gets better at providing more personalized results, the importance of Search Engine Optimization seems to decline, according to new media guru Jeff Jarvis.

SEO and Googlejuice (how far a website ranks in the search) might have been as important as a company's EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) in the past, but that may not be the case today.  

"What does that mean to brands? The world gets confusing once more. But I think it means that true relevance becomes more important than SEO tricks," said Jarvis.

The relationships between brands and people may become more important than spending resources on optimizing the rankings of news stories.

"It also means that the more relationships you have with people -- the more they talk about you and link to you and click on you -- the better off you will be," Jarvis said.

Source: BuzzMachine

See Also:
How to maximize your site's visibility in Google's search rankings
Google News "Only so far you can go with algorithm"

Ashley-Paul Robinson, a Crystal Palace football player, announced on his Facebook profile that he might be transferring to Fulham, a rival football club. The football player's public announcement may put into question the type of information that can be announced on social networks.

The news that he was trying out for Fulham was not only viewed by his nearly two hundred Facebook friends, but also to the 2.7 million members signed up to the London section.

The 18-year-old has been with the club for around four years. Now, however, Palace asked him to look "elsewhere to further his career".    

"It's pretty embarrassing for the club that this guy is telling the world he's looking to leave the club," said a source from Palace. "Perhaps someone should tell him to be a bit more private about what he's putting on the Internet."

Source: The Guardian

IHT.com has announced a new iPhone-optimized web site. The entire site is based on AJAX, allowing for quick downloads.

IHT blogger Michael Cosentino acknowledged there are still bugs in the system, notably compatibility issues with some Safari features. "The iPhone site is still very much a work in progress. We wanted to get the core functionality in place first," wrote Cosentino.

The IHT plans to continue developing the site from its current barebones frame, including plans to soon add an "E-mail Article" option.

It's expected other papers will soon follow suit, the New York Times has already announced plans for an iPhone application, which will be released later this month.

Source: IHT Developer Blog through Journalism.co.uk

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, says his document-leaking site is helping journalists change the world.

"Imagine a world where companies and government must keep the public, or their employees, or both, happy with their plans, and behavior," Assange says. "That is the world we are striving to create."

Wikileaks has been responsible for the leaking of several major news stories: the U.S. military's operating manuals for its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; lists of U.S. munitions in Iraq; reports of the looting of Kenya by former president Daniel Arap Moi.

For investigative journalists, this powerful new resource has the potential to provide an endless stream of stories. Assange is beginning to tweak Wikileaks to better accommodate journalists, pre-releasing selected documents to reporters. He is also considering making Wikileaks a subscription service for journalists.

Though Steven Aftergood, head of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy Project, is critical of Wikileaks' indiscriminate release policy, he admits Wikileaks could be a powerful tool for journalists.

"Working reporters can use all the help and sources they can get, and Wikileaks does have a track record of getting their hands on documents that other people haven't," Aftergood says. "It also has the potential to introduce another layer of editorial judgment and I believe in editorial judgment on matters of confidentiality."

Source: Wired