Random Culture

WSJ: Every Journey Needs A Journal

The Wall Street Journal has launched a new campaign, Every Journey Needs a Journal, to drive subscriptions. The website features the personal "stories", bios and behind-the-scene video of some notable folks who find value in the WSJ, such as Cheryl Crow, Kenneth Cole, Steven Levitt and others. They're also soliciting submissions of consumer's personal "journeys" to be included in the campaign. The site was designed and created by T3.

Link via Adverblog.

NY Times US Open Blog

The New York Times has launched another blog, this one for the 2006 US Open. It's written by Michael Kimmelman and a number of other staff writers. Does anyone else wish this blog had some images on it?

YouTube Article: Dallas Morning News

I was interviewed for an article about YouTube that's out in the Dallas Morning News today. You can find the article online here. It's a small article, and they spelled my name wrong, but I'm a publicity hound, so I'll keep a copy and pencil in the "h" they forgot in my last name, Keehler.

AdAge.com Redesigns

Anyone notice that AdAge.com got a new Web 2.0 look? And it's not just the design, it looks like there have been some other changes...

• For subscribers, full content available online before the print hits
• Expanded video content
• No more registration for daily news (finally)
• Commenting allowed on more content

Nothing really significant, right? But finally I will be able to link to Ad Age stories.

Run Print Ads Using Google

Not so new, but noteworthy if you missed it... Google is running ads similar to those in its search results in The Chicago Sun-Times. They appear in the right-hand column on some pages, and look similar to classified ads. According to an article in Chicago Business, Google is buying what's referred to as "remnant space" in the paper, as a part of a discreet test.

NY Times Relaunching About.com

It's been nine months since the New York Times Company bought About.com, and it looks like they finally may be doing something with it. According to a DMNews article, About.com is "about" to get a relaunch. There appears to be a 5-prong strategy in place:

- Improve content and quality
- Reintroduce the brand to the ad industry
- Redesign site to improve user experience
- More emphasis on partnerships
- Support other NY Times properties

Ok, so it sounds like a good plan, but About.com has a long way to go.

Someone needs to be tough on About.com. The DMNews article clearly isn't being tough at all. About.com still has popup ads people! And DMNews points out that About.com authors are experts in search engine optimization. Does this mean they are sacrificing quality of content to get more search referrals?

I think the NY Times Company bought About.com for the ad revenue. That's what I see About.com as... content created solely to generate revenue, not to help the user. Will the NY Times Company turn it around? I think when the redesign launches, we'll be able to immediately see what their commitment to quality is.

Washington Post & Web 2.0

I have to applaud The Washington Post for embracing Web 2.0 quicker than I thought any newspaper would. They've launched a blog called "Post Remix" that highlights some of the useful things that readers have developed using Washington Post content. Granted, the reader created applications aren't really that impressive right now. But the impressive part is that The Washington Post sees value in opening up their content to users.

You can read a little more on the subject at Influx Insights.

Onion Radio News

The Onion has a new Radio News area.  I love The Onion, but something is definitely lost when read aloud.

NY Times Online: Pay Us

The New York Times announced that it will be moving "premium" online content to a subscription model. The new offering, called "TimesSelect", will cost $49.95 annually. It will also allow access to archives that now date back to the 80s, and will eventually date back even further. People who currently subscribe to the offline edition of the paper will have access as well.

The biggest issue that's been raised with this is that putting content behind this wall will discourage the spread of these articles online... because bloggers and others won't link to content that's not accessible to their users. Jupiter analyst David Card calls this new strategy a "risky - probably even "dumb" - strategy in the face of blog-mania and exploding online advertising growth." I tend to agree. What's more, there are issues outside of the blogosphere, such as availability of this content to search engines.

Related Reading:
Clickz article
NY Times story (requires registration - ha!)

Alexa: NY Times vs. Xanga

Business Blog Consulting has a great post entitled "Blogspot, Xanga Blogs Outrank NYTimes.com in Traffic." The correct title to the post should be something more like: "Xanga and Blogspot more popular than NY Times with Alexa toolbar users."

That's because Alexa gets traffic numbers from its toolbar users. Alexa can be a great resource, but with a HUGE caveat, because "The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical               traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users."

This is not to say that Alexa may not be right. It's possible that Xanga or Blogspot might have higher traffic, but these Alexa numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

MediaBistro Blogs? Sorta...

Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion points to a CBS Market Watch story that MediaBistro has launched 5 new blogs. They are: fishbowlNY,  fishbowlLA,  fishbowlDC,  MBToolbox and UnBeige.

"We were creating content [for the site] on a daily basis," said Elizabeth Spiers, editor in chief at MediaBistro.com, in an interview. "The blog format allows is to do that throughout the day."

Spiers seems to have missed something... People won't be able to find out that they're updating these sites during the day because there appear to be no syndication feeds. That's right, no RSS or Atom feeds.

We expect it from newspapers, but not from everyone else...

First Live Webcast Ad?

The Financial Times will be the first publisher to carry a live webcast advertisement on their site. Today at 4pm and tomorrow at 11am in the technology section, Cisco will have a live webcast in a simple on-page advertisement, and users will be able to interact with the presenter through an instant messenger application built into the ad unit.

Link via Netimperative.

NY Times: 2004 in Pictures

The NY Times has posted their 2004 Year in Pictures... It's quite nice.

30 Million Newspaper Pages Online

The future's finally catching up to our expectations. I just read a great AP story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the 'National Digital Newspaper Program" from the Library of Congress. The plan is to have all the old newspapers in a browsable digital format. The first round will cover newspapers from 1836 to 1922, about 30 million pages, and will be available in 2006.