“Is it Ginger or MaryAnn?” Arianna Huffington rhetorically asks the audience at the 2007 American Society of Newspaper Editors [ASNE] Convention during a panel entitled “Lessons from the Digital Revolution.” The panel was filled with top execs and writers from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post - and the conversation turned to Arianna’s theory of web publishing promiscuity.

“I say, let’s have a three way!” she flamboyantly declares.

Visuals aside, Huffington is addressing one of the major issues in digital publishing: whether to restrict all of one’s content to an individual website - or whether to permit cross-publishing or cross-posting.

Cross-publishing is the practice of allowing other websites to re-print the full text of your content (text, images, etc.) with full attribution to the original author/publication and a link to the original source.

Advocates believe that publishing their content on other websites exposes their work to wider audiences, and drives traffic back to their site when interested readers click to read more.

Detractors prefer to publish all of their content solely on their own site, both to build up their paper’s site as a destination, and in order to sell ads around that content.

HuffingtonPost.com co-founder Kenneth Lere echoed Huffington’s proclamation by stating that “Ubitioquity is the new exclusivity” and that is “the way we manage our business” at the HuffPo.

Perhaps predictably, Donald Graham, CEO/chairman of the Washington Post Co., is not an advocate of web publishing promiscuity, stating: “No newspaper or one site will do everything in this time, but what the Post can do that is special is to produce something that people want to come back to.”

Read Editor & Publisher’s coverage of the same session

What does this mean for alts?

The cross-publishing debate is a massive one - especially for alt-papers. On the one hand, there is the opportunity to gain new audiences through links. On the other hand, there is the potential loss of traffic-based ad revenue and loss of branding identity.

Here in the AAN offices, I had a healthy debate with a staffer about the promiscuity theory. What’s your take?

DO YOUR E-HOMEWORK

Prof. Sree Sreenivasan of Columbia Journalism School shares his reading list for his students - a shortcut of need-to-know concepts, people, daily must-reads and more: The Changing Media Landscape

MUSIC COPYRIGHT FEES TO GO UP, UP, UP?

Via Freepress.net: “All ‘webcasters,’ nonprofit and for-profit, small and large, face a massive hike in the royalties they pay every time they play a song.”

Yikes - this could impact alts’ ability to offer music on their sites. If you’re interested, FreePress.net has a petition to sign to stop the rate hikes.

GET A FREE BOOK, MAYBE LEARN SOMETHING

“News, Improved: How America’s Newsrooms are Learning to Change” is the title of a new book by Michele McLellan and Tim Porter. A free copy is available to folks who take a survey at NewsU.org, Poynter’s interactive learning portal.

OREGONIAN POSTS THEIR PICTURES TO FLICKR

As reported by JoeThinks.com, Oregon’s daily is posting their staff images to their Flickr account - along with a link to the story in question. It’s a novel idea to drive traffic from the active Flickr community.
Steal this idea, but do it better…

• Be an active part of the Flickr community. Create contacts for your paper’s account - most of the time, those folks will add you as a contact too.
• Share your images with multiple groups on Flickr - people browsing group content will see your pictures, increasing the click-thru opportunities to your site.

[via Journerdism.com]

Stumbled on a great link others should know about?

Email it to laurafries [at] aan [dot] org.

“User-generated content” - it’s an ugly way of describing the great materials that communities contribute to the websites of their newspapers - whether comments, images, or entire stories.

Jonathan Dube, the editorial director of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation website at CBC.ca, founder and publisher of cyberjournalist.net, and incoming president of Online News Association [ONA], outlined three useful ways for categorizing User Generated Content at a panel session today at the American Society of Newspaper Editors [ASNE]’s 2007 Convention in Washington, DC.

Supplementary

• Content that is independent from news coverage, often not edited, and often low in news value
• Examples: Reader-uploaded images at the Tampa Tribune Snap.TBO.com, video-uploads at Boston.com

Integrated

• Content enhances journalism, is integrated into journalist coverage, and is often high on news value, such as eyewitness accounts
• Examples: The BBC received many images during the London Bombings from citizens, and the Fort-Myers News Press
  “crowd-sources” articles by eliciting reader reports [example].

Stand Alone

• New journalism products created with user content, that are standalone and distinct from legacy products.
• Examples: YourHub.com, My.Tennessean.com, IndyMoms.com, Vita.mn

Many alts are already incorporating supplementary user-generated content by adding comments, and soliciting reader photos via their Flickr accounts. What ideas do you have for integrating user content on alt sites? And could stand alone user generated sites have any place in the alt universe?

… What does that mean for alts?

The American Journalism Review [AJR.org] recently posted an intriguing article about the dilemmas that many young journalists face in deciding upon a career in the “dying” medium of newspapers.

Among the main reasons for young journos’ woes?

Trautwein, like other young journalists I interviewed, find themselves torn by competing emotions. They love their jobs but fear [daily] newspapers are dinosaurs. They value what papers do but find them often dull, out of touch and sluggish. They respect older colleagues but are bewildered at things they don’t know. They have lots of ideas but limited power. And they have passion for their craft but are positioning themselves for a future that may leave newspapers behind.

- Caught in the Contradictions, by Carl Sessions Stepp

Stepp focuses his article on the under-30 staffers at the Charlotte Observer, the metro daily in North Carolina. But there’s some food for thought for alt staffers as well.

Some of the frustration felt by the under-30 crowd could be traced to the paper’s web presence:

“Managing Editor Cheryl Carpenter, 49, knows her young staff members would like to see even more energy flowing into the Web. But she is quick to show me a chart showing where the paper’s advertising revenue comes from — far more from print than online.”

So, how do alt-weeklies fare when it comes to creating long-term workplaces for young journalists? And what role does the Internet play in helping to sustain a young pool of talent?

Background via HuffingtonPost.com.

UPDATE, March 28, 2007
The Onion has released three videos to date.

In The Know: Our Troops In Iraq

Immigration: The Human Cost

Condoleezza Rice To Voyage East

You may have heard the buzz around it, but been confused: What exactly is Twitter? Why is it useful, and why should I pay attention? And how can I use it to connect audiences at events - or to drive traffic to my site?

What’s Twitter?

Twitter is a deceptively simple technology. Sign up for an account. Invite your friends to do the same. Then, you can send each other short little messages - like the ones below - using your phone or the web. Your messages go out to everyone in your network.

You can receive your Twitter messages however you like - via IM, web, or SMS (text message). It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Twitter-ing microblogging.

Flickr’d by rorris | Flickr’d by cackhanded | Flickr’d by Patrick Haney

Why is Twitter useful?

Twitter works really well in two ways:
1. Connecting wired friends in a compact urban environment. At South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2007, networks of people used Twitter to find out about great conferences and parties, and to meetup with each other.

2. Connecting like-minded friends over topical interests. Now that SXSWi is over, my network sends out links to things I’m interested in, like new web developments.

Sounds cool. How can alts use Twitter?

Use Twitter at sponsored events to help people interact A screen displaying the latest “twits” from attendees is a huge crowd pleaser.

Use Twitter to drive traffic to your site FoxNews has taken the lead here, using their Twitter account to send out the latest news to their “friends.”

NERD NOTE: Fox News uses TinyUrl.com, a program that shortens lengthy URLs, in order to stay within the 140 word character Twitter maximum.

So what do you think?

Is Twitter overrated? Do you see other ways alts could use this technology to connect with our audiences?

MySpace is the behemoth that fragments the attention spans of 18-35 year olds, says conventional wisdom.

But does the megasite really deliver that much value to advertisers?

‘Online community developer’ Communispace’s latest study suggests that smaller, fully transparent, and branded communities attract more engaged users who create content instead of ‘lurking’:

The more intimate the community, the more people participate. […] 86% of the people who log on to private, facilitated communities with 300 to 500 members made contributions: they posted comments, initiated dialogues, participated in chats, brainstormed ideas, shared photos, and more. Only 14% merely logged in to observe, or “lurk.” […]

In a typical online forum, for example, just 1% of site visitors contribute, and the other 99% lurk.

- via MediaPost

So what does this mean for alts? By creating small, vibrant local communities of discussion online, alts can attract engaged audiences that marketers are seeking. MySpace hasn’t won.

How do you use the engaged, attentive audiences on existing social networks such as YouTube in order to drive traffic to your own content?

Lonelygirl15, a YouTube user, gave us a case study of how to do it. The actress for an alternate reality game garnered a wide following on YouTube by following these simple steps:

1. lonelygirl15 began began ‘friending’ other youtube users (creating “her” own social network.)

2. lonelygirl15 next began to seek out popular videos and began commenting on them with regularity (creating name-recognition among an even broader audience of those who are viewing these popular videos.

3. lonelygirl15 began posting her own videos and her friends began posting responses and the masses who view popular videos linked through to her after reading her previous comments…the rest is history….huge traffic and a loyal fan-base.

- Marc Levin, Senior Marketing Manager, Yahoo! Publisher Network Group, reporting on SXSWi session LonelyGirl15 on his blog dogballs

So how can alt papers put LonelyGirl15 strategies to work for them?

1. Create online presences with authentic voices.

2. Use your online presences (MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr) to interact regularly and meaningfully with real people. Post comments on their pages and content.

3. Link to your content contextually on other people’s sites. Posted a comment about politics? Send them a targeted link to a recent story.

[More about the LonelyGirl15 phenomenon.]

How does your paper drive traffic using social networks?

What are your readers actually seeing when they visit your website? Eyetrack studies may help you make some educated guesses.

Eyetrack studies started back in 1990. Today, odd gadgets on people’s heads track exactly what users are looking at when they visit sample websites. The studies have progressed over the years, becoming more sophisticated.

More about Eyetrack Studies

• History of Eyetrack Studies
• Eyetrack Accuracy
• Poynter’s Overview of the first Eyetrack study

The most recent batch of Eyetrack data was taken in late 2005. The full results will be debut March 28 at the 2007 ASNE conference in Washington, DC, but the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review [ojr.org] has published a highlights article this week.

Among the findings?

Write - or reformat - for the web

• Readers get through material faster, remember it better, and have better reading experiences.

Use precise titles and simple navigational structure

• Use scannable text and eliminate useless graphics

Use only relevant images

• No stock photography.

If you’re not familiar with the Eyetrack studies, it’s worth taking the time to read through the complete Eyetrack III report from 2004. It will change the way you think about your paper online.

The full results from the 2007 study will be published at Eyetrack.poynter.org.

There’s a Junior Boys concert on my website. It’s full length with awesome video quality, and it’s free. And it could be on your website, courtesty of Dutch website FabChannel.com.

Unlike music footage on YouTube - currently under attack by Viacom for copyright infringement - these concerts are cleared to use legally on your site.

CEO Justin Kniest said via email:

“We have cleared the rights of all our concerts with the labels and artists so you can post them on the sites of your papers. In fact the artists would love that because these days they can use all the publicity they can get.”

Neat, huh? Get to copying and pasting!

NERD TIP: For technical advice on embedding FabChannel content in Wordpress and MySpace, read this FAQ.