Recently by Sarah Schewe

Jack Schofield, of the Guardian, questions Google's choice to ignore its predecessors when creating Knol.

"While Knol is based on the same idea," writes Schofield, "inviting users to create pages on topics they know about - HubPages looks better, reads better, and is better organized."

While Knol debuted just this December, HubPages has already passed its second anniversary and Squidoo is even older.

The major difference between Knol and Wikipedia, the site it is so oft compared to, is that Knol encourages competition, not collaboration. Knol, which identifies authors, who take full responsibility for their pages, also offers these authors the chance to make money. "A thousand people can all create pages about the same topic and hope the best one wins," says Schofield.

Schofield's major complaints:

-Knol is painfully academic and "dull;" HubPages invites users to "Publish your passion"

-Hubs are easier to browse than Knols and separate pages with tags like Love, Finance, Business and Health. You can also search by author, vote for hubs you like, comment, become a fan of authors, and request hubs you can't find.

The question remains with HubPages fate, since, as Schofield points out, "it also makes more than 90% of its revenue from Google Adsense advertising, and Google features HubPages as a case study. For a small start-up, this is success. Can that success continue now that Google has invaded its turf?"

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Clark Fredricksen of Crosscut writes, "Today, a newspaper without a posse of blogs is so passé."

Sprouting up across the US Pacific Northwest, bloggers -- often reincarnates of the newspaper political reporters of old -- are leading today's political discussion.

Chris Mulick's Olympia Dispatch, "might be the best Washington political blog you've never heard of," writes Fredricksen, of the blogger who delivers "legislative scoops"  with plenty of humor.

Mapes on Politics, authored by blogger Jeff Mapes, has got Oregon's Legislature pegged. According to Seattle Times chief political reporter David Postman, Mapes has "deeper and better understanding of Oregon politics than almost anyone."

"What Mapes is to The Oregonian," writes Fredricksen, "David Postman is to The Seattle Times -- and more." Postman on Politics has the advantage focusing solely on blogging.

"I realize I'm lucky in having the blog as my primary job, while others still have to write for the paper as well," Postman said. "I have the luxury of being able to cover issues and people statewide, and don't have to worry about writing for the paper."

Source: Crosscut

NWN Media, which owns the Wrexham-based daily the Evening Leader as well as weekly titles in Shropshire, North and Mid Wales and Cheshire, and Glyndwr University have established a Certificate of Higher Education in Print Journalism. The Certificate will allow students to gain weekly newsroom experience to supplement their classroom studies.

The certificate, which will start next month, is a one-year program.

"The time at Glyndwr University will cover lectures and practical workshops," explained Janet Jones, journalism lecturer at Glyndwr University. "But in addition... students have the opportunity to put all this into practice in structured work placements at one of the NWN Media titles for two days each week."

Source: Holdthefrontpage.uk

Poland's Metro, a free daily paper, has launched a new design to increase credibility and look more like a quality paper.  

"The masthead shrunk to the size of the title, while every front page now opens with two 'horizontal' stories: one with a 'story-telling' picture," reports the Newspaper Innovation blog.

The paper is also rolling out a major advertising campaign to benefit from the buzz about the redesign.

Source: Newspaper Innovation

Tom Cheredar, of newassignment.net, argues that it's time to open up weekly editorial meetings. In most newsrooms, the once a week meeting where stories are pitched and assigned, is a crucial time to get everyone up to speed, and provides an opportunity for everyone to provide feedback.

Chererdar, acknowledging there may be some need to guard sensitive stories and feature pieces, wrote, "Everything else should be wide open to others in the community. I'm talking about literally taking a web cam and broadcasting weekly editorial meetings in real time streaming video."

One way to do this is a free service offered by Ustream.tv.

Below, an edited version of the how-to Cheredar provides. Read his full recommendations here.

How to do it

Create a budget that does not include exclusive feature stories or other sensitive piece, then split those budgets into categories: education, Crime, City governement, etc. Each of those sections can be turned into individual channels on Ustream thus allowing a somewhat manageable group of outsiders to participate through the live chat that is up during the meeting.

Why It Should Be Done

"Scooping" is a thing of the past, as most readers don't care where they get their news from... Soon the only thing that will matter is a dedicated community. Ustreaming makes the community a part of the newsroom. Don't look at it as a peeping tom looking over your shoulder... think of it as multiplying your newsroom by 10 in every department.

Live, Streaming Accountability

Opening up the staff meetings to members in the community will improve journalism by adding a much needed dose of accountability into the mix.

"There is much more value," says Cheredar, "in acknowledging your community than there is with keeping it exclusive for the sake of tradition."

This sort of "transperent newsroom" has been higly successful at The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash. The Spokesman-Review hosts a blog on the inner workings of the paper, including editorial decisions and meetings, an opportunity for visitors to the website to comment and ask questions and editors explanations of news gathering methods and more.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

David Stout, of The New York Times, is currently answering questions in the paper's regular Talk to the Newsroom feature. Stout, a domestic correspondent for the Continuous News Desk explains some of the challenges facing the desk in the 24 hour news cycle - "We are constantly trying to balance speed and accuracy" - and what the Continuous News Desk, one found in just a handful of newsrooms across the country, actually does.

"Part of my job is to synthesize the reporting of my colleagues. In return for their help, I try to repay them by keeping them apprised of news developments (I keep a constant eye on wire service reports) and, occasionally, going to news conferences," explains Stout.

He adds, "My job, generally, is to write a quicker, and therefore less detailed, version of an article about a court decision than will appear in the following day's newspaper. I think there is a need for both kinds of articles in this day of 24-hour news.|

In early 2007, the Editors Weblog interviewed Neil Chase, then editor of the Continuous News Desk.

Source: The New York Times

Mark Potts, of the Recovering Journalist blog, has recently tried to put a total on the severity of recent cut backs in the newspaper industry. "Over the past few days, I've built a database of the cuts over the past year at the nation's 100 largest newspapers."

Some key findings:

-Some 6,300 employees at the 100 largest newspapers have lost jobs in the last year (and more than half of these cut backs have come since the beginning of June)

-Nearly two-thirds of the top 100 papers have cut staff in the last year, including all but four of the top 34.

-28 of the top 100 have cut more than 100 jobs, 7 have cut more than 200 (in the past year)

-Virtually all cuts have been to the print side of papers. Few, if any, have cut online staffers

Potts collected his (admittedly, unscientific) data through Romenesko posts. If you want to "see the gory details" - as he calls them - a PDF of the data is downloadable from Recovering Journalist.

Source: Recovering Journalist

After The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland announced a "partnership" with the Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC), where AAMC paid the paper to provide all the content for the newspaper's health page once a month, two major journalism groups have responded, issuing a joint warning to news outlets on the ethical complications of creating to cozy of a relationship with hospitals, according to Editor & Publisher.

In March, on the Capital's website, the paper explained, "... Partnering with the hospital on the Health page seemed to make sense. We don't have a health reporter to write about medical issues and often use stories from syndicated services that quote doctors from other cities.... Instead of generic stories originating from another city, the reader will have local news featuring people they recognize (and) doctors they use."

In their release today, the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists state they "are concerned about news media that publish or broadcast stories, reports, news releases and interviews prepared or paid for by hospitals."

"The ethics codes of the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists call for fair and accurate reporting and editorial independence. But editorial cutbacks, along with pressure on hospitals to market profitable services, may be eroding these standards."

Despite these challenges, the groups asserted, "our journalistic mission requires us to hold doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies accountable to the public. In doing so, we commit to fair and transparent reporting of medical issues.

The statement also included these guidelines of media outlets to abide by:

• News organizations should fully disclose the source of any editorial information not independently gathered, whether video, audio, photograph or print material.

• News organizations should not run prepackaged stories produced by hospitals unless they are clearly and continuously labeled as advertisements.

• News organizations should not favor advertisers or sponsors over competing health-care providers when choosing sources or story topics and should strive to employ a wide variety of sources.

• News organizations should develop guidelines for the public disclosure of sponsors and advertisers.

• These guidelines should prohibit news personnel from appearing in or participating in sponsored programming or advertisements.

Source: Editor & Publisher

This Sunday, the New York Times magazine ran their first "cover wrap" advertisement, for U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, which overlays one-third of the front cover and nearly one-half of the back.

"This ad buy illustrates how we continue to work closely with our clients to create unique executions and customized opportunities to meet their business objectives," Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer at the New York Times, said in a statement.

The Times has introduced many new ad formats over the last 18 months including section front ads, spadias, and single-sponsored magazines.

If there was ever a time for innovation in newspaper advertising, it's now. Advertising revenue was down 11.8% for NYT in the second quarter of 2008.

Source: Editor & Publisher

In the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Stephen Franklin writes about his experience coaching bloggers and journalists in Cairo. Although Franklin acknowledges that most journalism coming out of Egypt is currently written with a conservative Islamic bent, often on the defensive, he writes "I hope the tug of competition will gradually convince them that good journalism--not journalism in service of a cause--is their best bet, both commercially and in terms of helping their society."

There's reason to think "good journalism" will win out. Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger interviewed by Franklin, leaned close to tell the Chicago Tribune staffer, "I want to learn how to be credible. I want people to believe me. I want to know how you journalists work. I want to report news. Facts. No ideology."

Abbas' sentiments echo the findings of a study published this May by Lawrence Pintak, of the American University in Cairo, who found that Arab journalists see themselves as "agents of political and social change."

Franklin's report, and Wael Abbas' thoughts, are particularly poignant, given the recent four-year prison term sentenced to a 22-year-old former law student, who criticized President Hosni Mubarak on his blog.

Source: Columbia Journalism Review

The Nielsen Company has launched a new blog, NielsenWire, which will cull essential information from its many publications and research units.

Recent posts range from the latest prime time broadcast ratings to a new "premium" line of M&Ms.

Particularly timely, the blog offers a special Olympic Games section, which will examine everything "from historical ratings data on the most-watched opening ceremonies of all time to a feature on Chinese Olympians becoming product endorsers."

Source: Editor & Publisher

According to the The Daily Telegraph's outgoing political columnist, Jonathon Isaby, the "ultra-pressured environment" where journalists are expected to be all things to all people, writers, photographers, and multi-media gurus, always on top of their RSS feeds, means too many stories are falling by the way side.

The multi-media madness means that a journalist would never spend an afternoon digging through parliamentary records.

"People don't have the time to look through Hansard [the official parliamentary record] and look at parliamentary questions and answers which so often are the source of so many stories.

Even as Isaby critiques the new newsroom, in a case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," is leaving the Telegraph to be co-editor of news blog ConservativeHome.

"I've seen the blogosphere taking shape and becoming more influential and powerful. I suppose, in a sense, it's a natural development for me to go and do this."

Source: Press Gazette

Jody Rosen's recently Slate piece, Dude, You Stole My Article, has sparked renewed the debate in the blogosphere about plagiarism, fair use and the link economy.

Rosen recently chronicled the discovery that one of her articles had been plagiarized (four paragraphs nearly verbatim) in a small alt-weekly, The Bulletin, published outside of Houston, Texas. It turns out Rosen's Jimmy Buffet article was just the beginning - as Rosen dug through the Bulletin's archives, she quickly realized most, if not all of the articles, were mosaics of stolen prose, lifted from Slate, USA Today, The Dallas Observer, Rolling Stone, the Boston Globe, and more.  

Although the Bulletin seems a clear cut case - "the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism" writes Rosen - more often, bloggers and journalists are at odds when "Fair Use" borders on abuse.

Tammi Marcoullier of Publishing 2.0, recently wrote about having quotes lifted from her article without attribution, during her tenure as a Washington Post blogger. Nick Carr has been widely criticized for not including links in a recent Atlantic article, by critics who argue that mentioning an author or source (without a URL) isn't sufficient when a hyperlink is so easy. And it seems the AP controversy over Fair Use, which had the self-righteous of the blogosphere so enraged, has only just subsided.

So how can journalists and bloggers play "fair"?

ePluribus Media recommends the following:

-Summarize the article and attribute it to its original source, including title, date, publication, author and URL

-If you need to quote from an article and you're unsure if your use constitutes as Fair Use, contact the copyright owner and simply ask permission. For example, for the AP:

    E-mail: apdigital@ap.org
    Fax: +1-212-621-5488.

-If you are unable to find contact information for the copywright holder, post a disclaimer, citing "fair use" under Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 with your contact information

-Last, if a copyright holder asks you to remove material, do so in a considerate and timely manner. If you don't? The copyright holder may contact the ISP the offending material is hosted by and the entire site can be disabled.

Sources: Publishing 2.0, Slate, ePluribus Media

Newspapers are losing ground in the online local market. According to Borrell statistics cited in a recent Wall Street Journal story, newspapers' share of the local online ad market fell from 35.9 percent to 27.4 percent in the last two years. Which means newspapers are missing out - not just on what they have lost in the last two years, but actually on a larger advertising market than the one they had, because local online advertising is growing rapidly, at a rate of 57 percent annually.

Mark Potts, of the Recovering Journalist blog, argues that news sites are missing out on the "Smaller advertisers - the pizza parlors, nail salons, mom-and-pop stores... there are lots of them, and other media are moving in - community papers, local Web sites and blogs, even Google, Yahoo and specialty sites like Yelp."

So how can news sites take the local advertising base back? Potts offers these suggestions (below follows an edited version of Potts' post. Get the full list here):

- Build a strong local product to attract local advertisers, for example the leading local entertainment guide

- Cut costs of ad sales as low as possible, and get rid of the high-commission sales rep. What about commission-only telemarketing reps smiling and dialing to blanket small local businesses.

- Make it as easy as possible for advertisers to come online, create, place and pay for an ad. That drives the cost of sales way down.

- Seminars for local businesses on online advertising. It's a medium that's new to many small business owners - educate them on the value of online advertising and how to take advantage of it.

- Banners and tiles aren't the only way to advertise online. Experiment. Use video. Real estate walkthroughs, chefs describing their restaurants-these videos seem obvious, but they're still few and far between on newspaper sites.

Source: Recovering Journalist

The Guardian has recently spent millions to relaunch their website, guardian.co.uk, however, some features didn't cost a pound.

On Guardian blogs Lost in Showbiz, PDA, and Deadline USA, you'll now find an "Our Faves" feature, which displays items from a Guardian account on the social bookmarking service Delicious. The Showbiz blog can even be personalized by a readers who are also Delicioius users, with a "Your Faves" tab, where relevant web pages tagged by the user with "Showbizspotted" will display on the Guardian blog, as well.

Also on the Lost in Showbiz blog, you'll see another box, "Latest Fashion and Showbiz blog posts," which aggregates headlines from five non-Guardian blogs, generated by Yahoo Pipes and delivered to the Guardian via a Google Gadget.

As Poynter points out, "Culturally, this is a hard thing for many news organizations."

None of these services - Delicious, Google Gadgets, nor Yahoo Pipes - are owned by The Guardian. It's an issue which leaves many news sites fearing a lack of control.

"Increasingly, though, they're learning that integrating other online services into their site tends to work better than unwieldy custom software," continues the Poynter column. "It's not just cheaper -- it's also much, much quicker."

Source: Poynter