Archives: news web sites

Put your news on the pod

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

Podcasting is one of the new terms in online journalism. It simply means putting news and information into an audio MP3 format and making it available to folks who own MP3 players – millions of them.

Permanence of the web, part 2

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

A few weeks ago, we posted a short piece on the permanence of the web, commenting that this is one of the great strengths of the web. Information does not deteriorate. If we lose information (and we’ve certainly lost a lot), it’s deliberate or through operator error. News web sites need to do a better job of keeping up with their information, and one of the great debates in online journalism now is how (or if) the files of a news web site should be open free of charge to the public.

Permanence and the web

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

Permanence is one of the five most important characteristics of the web (the other four being capacity, immediacy, flexibility, and interactivity), as explained in chapter 1 of Web Journalism. Until now. it has not been the subject of much discussion. But a high-level conference on blogging and journalism at Harvard University last week has spurred thinking about one part of the idea of permanence – archiving.

Digital divide continues

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

Going rural more than likely means going dial-up. That’s what Steven Levy, technology columnist for Newsweek magazine, found this summer when he took some time off in the Berkshires. (I found the same thing when I retreated to the farm in East Tennessee.) High speed Internet access was not available, and that’s a problem — not just for us geeks.

The New York Times charges for the wrong thing

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

Many of us would gladly pay for the New York Times. Now, with the installation of Times Select, we’re getting that chance. The Times is charging for access to its columnists, and with the subscription comes open access to its archives (a good deal). But the Times leaves its most valuable product open and free to anyone who wants to register.

De-exiling the website

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

We may be getting past the days when the newspaper’s web site was a small group of techies exiled to a different floor — or even a different building — of the news organization. USA Today announced today that it is bringing its web site staff in from the cold and will be intergrating it with the paper’s newsroom. T

Web polls

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

A web poll can be a quick and handy way of getting readers more involved with your web site. The polls are certainly popular given the number of people who respond to them. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much time or money to generate such a web poll if you use one of the free services that is available. In this short article, we describe one of those services and how to integrate it into your web site.

Launching Politico

May 20, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

The coming launch of the political news web site Politico has drawn much attention from those who wonder about its longevity (see the latest New York Times article about it; and an earlier one). I have no idea about how long it will last — though, being a political news junkie, I hope it will be for a long time — but I am fascinated by the ideas that its founders have about how it should be structured and how it should operate.

New York Times redesigns its site (2006)

May 14, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

The New York Times debuted its new design for its web site today (2006), and it will be interesting to see what kinds of comments it provokes. Undoubtedly, there will be strong opinions because of the Times’ position as a leader in journalism and because of the overall excellence of its site.

Intercollegiate Online News Network conference set for January

October 15, 2010 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites.

The Intercollegiate Online News Network (ICONN) will hold its third annual conference on Jan. 13-14, 2011, in Athens, Ga. Mark Johnson, journalism professor at the University of Georgia and faculty adviser to the GradyJournal, is the conference chair. ICONN is an association of campus news websites that was formed at the University of Tennessee in • Read More »

A superior user experience

February 22, 2009 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, news web sites, newspapers.

Those of us who struggle every day trying to figure out this new media thing and worrying about economic models for journalism get distracted by many ideas and lamentations. Thanks, then, to Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president for product management at Google, for this long, thought-provoking, and perceptive piece that helps to refocus on what • Read More »

The demise of newspapers means better journalism

February 8, 2009 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, news web sites, newspapers, reporters, reporting, web journalism.

We who contemplate the importance of journalism look at the future with trepidation. What happens to journalism, we ask, when newspapers continue on their inevitable decline? The question assumes that journalism itself will be diminished.I am coming to a different conclusion: Journalism will improve once newspapers die or decline to a minor medium. Note that • Read More »

Qualities of the digital journalist

February 7, 2009 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: news web sites, newspapers, web journalism.

Steve Outing, a well-known thinker and writer about online journalism, has envisioned the not-so-distant future digital newsroom in his January 28 column for Editor and Publisher. (The All-Digital Newsroom of the Not-So-Distant Future) The whole thing is well worth reading and, journalism profs, recommending to your students. Of particular interest is what Outing says will • Read More »