Tag: online media

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New York Times Co. Leads Funding for New Online J Site ‘Daylife’

daylifeA formal announcement is forthcoming from Daylife — the news site that has popped up in conversation over the past year because of Craig Newmark, Jeff Jarvis and others’ involvement in the project.

The New York Times Company appears to be one of the top investors, which could foreshadow a bold move into user-generated news and reader-customizable content.

Staci Kramer at Paid Content writes:

The mission is to gather and organize news in ways that are most relevant to the user. That could be by event, topic, author, geography or other factors. Source pages that show what a journalist writes about or who is quoted are part of the mix. RSS plays an important role. In an interview, [Upendra] Shardanand [founder of Firefly] said the distributed platform—designed for use across multiple sites—will be open “to a degree” with options for revenue sharing and licensing for those doing a heavy volume. “Anyone can take what we’re building and add it to their own site … Obviously, we have to make some revenue.”

Nice to see the Times making a proactive move long after their relatively idiotic acquisition of About.com. Interested to see how — if at all — Jay Rosen‘s NewAssignment.Net is involved.

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Online News Readership Up Big in U.S., UK

Start spreadin’ it: Online newspaper Web sites are averaging 55.5 million unique visits per month according to a new study released by The Newspaper Association of America. That’s one-third higher than last year’s average over the same period. (Click here to download the complete Fall 2006 Newspaper Audience Database [PDF]).

Across the pond, new Nielsen/Net Ratings research shows that 40% of all Britons with online access use newsfeeds. But, as BBC News — which has consistently been ahead of the curve as far as online news sites — stresses, more than two-thirds of all respondents did not know that the official term for newsfeeds is RSS or Really Simple Syndication. The RSS (or whatever ya wanna call it) revolution is alive! Click here for a PDF of this report. (Thanks Niall Kennedy for blogging this to my attention and also for grabbing the image below):

Also fresh out — The RTNDA’s The Future of News ten-part report, summed up in a great Poynter article / Q&A as “Viewers to TV Execs: We’re Smarter Than You Think.” (Duh!)

Finally, I’ve just gotta post this — YNET printed a translation of a Q&A exchange on The Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini’s Web site which included such issues as masturbating on Ramadan. Read all about it here.

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Webzines: The Birth of e-Cit. Journalism

Thumbing through Chicago Magazine, of all things, I found an excellent article (written by David Bernstein) profiling Jamie Kalven, son of a prominent First Amendment scholar who found himself fighting his own press-rights battle this summer as the first Chicago-area journalist to be served a subpoena by the City of Chicago in recent history.

Since 2001, Kalven has published the Webzine “View From the Ground,” a fine collection of journalism that should have been — but never was — published in the mainstream media.

Kalven has been documenting his observations and those of the residents of Stateway Gardens, arguably the most decrepit of South Side projects and at this point almost completely torn down. He has not been shy about openly criticizing gang or police conduct, most notably the conduct of a group of plainclothes officers known as the Skullcaps.

Now that a case charging members of the Skullcaps has gone to court, city attorneys subpoenaed Kalven for his notes, which he is protesting on First Amendment grounds. In July, a judge denied the motion for Kalven to submit his papers.

Coincidentally (or, perhaps not) as many as 8 elite Special Operations officers stripped of their powers this week, reportedly for involvement in various thefts in and around Stateway Gardens.

An investigation into a corrupt police force in Chicago? Who woulda thunk?
This is a great story, the only must-read I’ve ever seen in Chicago Mag to be honest — also highly recommended is Kalven’s “Webzine,” View From the Ground.

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U.S. Radio Goes Global With Yahoo! Widgets

Surprised to find a Radio SAWA widget today, while scrolling through the latest additions to the Yahoo! Widget Engine Gallery (download the Engine / View the Gallery).

Simply load into your widget engine and it will begin streaming… great way to touch up on your Arabic. (Sawa’s Web site: Arabic | English)

Bengali speaker? Try the Bangla Live New Radio widget, which offers BBC Bangla, Voice of America Bangla, Radio Japan Bangla and BBC Asian Network.

Take it even further East with Radio Tuner Singapore and tune into 23 Singapore-based radio stations streaming in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.

Plenty more radio ’round-the-world in desktop widget format here.