journalism

Wall Street Journal a haven for hard-core gamers. Who knew?

Yesterday I opened my Wall Street Journal and was struck by the advertisement staring back at me from the front page. Roughly two years ago the Journal started inserting one ad per day on its front page, talking it up as a prime advertising vehicle:

"The Wall Street Journal will provide the most valuable opportunity anywhere in any medium for advertisers who want to reach a large, affluent and influential audience," [said] L. Gordon Crovitz, the publisher of The Journal and executive vice president of Dow Jones & Company.

So who is this "large, affluent, and influential audience"? Gamers, as the inclusion of the $75,000 to $100,000+ advertisement suggests:… Read more

CNN's citizen journalism site iReport goes live

As we wrote on Monday, CNN's citizen journalism pet project iReport was due to get a site of its own. Today the service finally went live as iReport.com, and is already filling up with user content both old and new.

iReport's site has a lot in common with YouTube, showing off a grouping editor-selected videos (and photos) on the top of the page alongside a queue of the latest news content that's been uploaded by users. Each iReport user gets their own page with a listing of their uploaded photos and videos. Similar to Current, content is marked to show if it's been featured on CNN's televised or Web news reporting. adding incentive for others to click on it.

In addition to hosting any news story videos uploaded by users, iReport dishes out assignments to fledgling videographers and photo journalists. On top of the list is the 2008 Presidential elections, alongside weather reports, the ever popular "offbeat images", as well as "stories from Second Life," Linden Lab's MMORPG. Users can upload up to 10 videos and videos at a time, with each one taking up to 100MB in size.

Interestingly enough, the videos on iReport.com cannot be embedded on third party sites, although there are links to share it on five major social bookmarking and news services. Users also have the option of making the file downloadable, letting others grab it to play on their PCs or portable media devices. Syndication (albeit direct) is the name of the game.

In the future the service plans to increase the ties between stories, as well as where users are reporting from by integrating world maps. Already there is a "more on this story" feature that groups together content by assignment. The service also employs tags and a "newsiest" feature which "combines freshness, popularity, activity, and ratings" in an algorithm not unlike the ones found on social news sites like Digg and Reddit.

More screenshots after the break. … Read more

National Press Club targets citizen journalists

The National Press Club, a 100-year-old professional club for journalists, aims to recruit new online-media members through a partnership with Helium.com, a hub for citizen journalists. The deal is expected to be announced on Tuesday.

In terms of new media, the partnership is a first for the NPC and part of an overall strategy to update its image, including new renovations to its Web site. Several years ago, the NPC recognized the blogosphere by changing its constitution so that online writers could more easily apply for membership. With its Helium partnership, NPC is trying to extend its reach to … Read more

Report: CNN citizen journalism site close to launch

CNN is close to expanding its "iReport" user-generated reporting initiative into a separate Web site, MediaWeek wrote Monday.

The new site, to be hosted at iReport.com, will be a repository for user-submitted news content--video, audio, and photos. Visitors can navigate through categories of news (like sports, weather, and politics), rate content, and embed it elsewhere on the Web. Contributors will be able to create profiles, and regulars can build up individual followings. As for filtering, the new site will be moderated once content has already been posted to the site; this is a change from CNN's … Read more

Loomia launches 'SeenThis' social app with NBC, WSJ, CNET

Social-news company Loomia announced Wednesday that it has launched a new application called SeenThis, which connects news sites with social-networking sites so users can learn what their people on their friends' lists have been reading. Loomia's inaugural partners in SeenThis are The Wall Street Journal, NBC Universal, and CNET Networks, parent company of CNET News.com.

Like many other "recommendation engines," Loomia's technology can suggest content items to a reader based on what he or she has already viewed. SeenThis goes a step further by using social-networking sites' APIs--the one that the current content partners are … Read more

Microsoft to serve up ads to Wall Street Journal online

Microsoft landed another ad-serving deal on Tuesday, announcing it will be the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search ads for the Wall Street Journal online and several other Dow Jones-owned sites.

The move is the latest in a string of deals, following Microsoft's expanded ad-serving deal with Facebook in October. In December, Microsoft announced a deal with Viacom that it valued at $500 million, though it didn't provide specific details on how it came to that figure. Last month, Microsoft signed a deal with another financial information company, Edgar Online.

In addition to WSJ.com, the … Read more

Who's surprised that China Mobile knows where you are?

It's hardly surprising that China Mobile can figure out about where its subscribers are when the phone is on (or when the battery's in). This sort of technology is standard in developed mobile networks, and it's fueling a wave of business innovation and "locative technology."

So why was it so shocking to an AFP reporter when China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou told an audience at the World Economic Forum that "we know who you are, but also where you are"? Will at Imagethief has already made the alarmist journalism argument, so I'll … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 646: Twitter Novel

EPISODE 646

Cranky Geeks on tech journalism

I ended my recent posting on Ethernet connections in a hotel room not being secure with "You don't read PC magazine for mutual fund advice, and you shouldn't read the Wall Street Journal for computer advice." The Cranky Geeks did a show earlier this month about technology journalism that made some interesting points along the same line.

The show is hosted by John C. Dvorak, the guests were John Markoff, Gregg Zachary and Sebastian Rupley. The show ran 30 minutes, I found the first half more interesting than the second, your mileage may vary.

Some tidbits … Read more