“Si votre journal disparaissait qu’est ce qui prendrait sa place ?”. Adrian Holovaty a fondé EveryBlock après avoir quitté le Washingtonpost. Il considère les blogs locaux comme une source d’information. Il a crée un service permettant de géolocaliser et de consulter les informations issues des blogs et de sources offcielles proches de vous. Ce type d’initiatives se multiplient. EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger et Patch sont des sites hyperlocaux. Avec la disparition des éditions papier de journaux comme Rocky Mountain News ou The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, la problématique devient cruciale pour les média traditionnels.

Les média locaux sont au milieu du gué, même si des organisations comme la Knight Foundation pensent qu’il est crucial qu’une presse de proximité survive.

Le paradoxe bien sur est qu’en fractionnant le lectorat ces services ont des difficultés à trouver des annonceurs. De l’autre côté les lecteurs sont de plus en plus attirés par ces médias de quartier et désertent les points presse.

Cependant Peter Krasilovsky,  directeur au Kelsey Group, estime que le marché publicitaire local va doubler d’içi 2013.

Everyblock a été crée pour répondre à cette équation. Financé à hauteur de $1.1 million par la Knight Foundation, il est présent sur 11 villes américaine, incluant New York, Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco.

Tout ce qui touche à la vie locale intéresse Everyblock qui se décline en version Iphone ou web, qui pense qu’il se passe tellement de choses dans une ville qu’il y a de la place pour tout le monde, le papier et le web.

Le New York Times ne s’y est pas trompé en nouant un partenariat avec Everyblock pour la région de New York.

Faute de se remettre en question  et d’occuper ce créneau les journaux risquent d’affronter une concurrence de plus en plus rude.

D’après un article du New York Times :  ‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers”

——-

MSNBC.com prend le contrôle d’EveryBlock

Géolocalise-moi! Le medialab de Cécile

Today: Future of Music policy summit live blog day 3 of 3

Apple quits US Chamber of Commerce from Think Progress

Telecom astroturf leader gives self ethics award from DSL Reports

Sen. Franken: Remarks on net neutrality at Future of Music policy summit

Knight Center to fund EveryBlock despite MSNBC buyout

Trust & objectivity: WA Post new social media guidelines

Ad Age on FTC blogger payola regulations

FTC rules: Endorsements & testimonials by bloggers, celebrities

Why did Sen. Schumer attempt to limit the shield law?

912 Tea Baggers: Something New on the Mall from NY Review of Books

Lobbyist Richard Wolffe returns to MSNBC Countdown

Journalists love stories. Give us a good anecdote and we know what our lead is going to be. We’re not as comfortable with data. We know a good story is hiding in there somewhere, but most of us don’t know how to find it. And too many of us — reporters and executives alike — are refusing to learn.

My first exposure to the use of data for journalism was when I was at the Kansas City Star (or possibly the Kansas City Times; I worked for both) nearly 20 years ago. The late Greg Reeves, a kind of geeky reporter I didn’t know very well but came to admire, wrote a terrific story about the driving records of Kansas City police. I don’t recall the details, but I was shocked at how many police had offenses such as reckless driving (I think drunk driving, too, but I can’t vouch for my memory over that many years). What I do recall is that I started to understand the power of data analysis.

In the mid-1990s, I attended two training programs of the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting and learned a great deal from David Milliron, Shawn McIntosh and Jennifer LaFleur. I worked side-by-side on a project at the Omaha World-Herald with a reporter who was a data whiz, Carol Napolitano. I later bugged another World-Herald colleague who learned faster than I did, Paul Goodsell, for some advice as I struggled on data stories of my own.

Data work never came naturally to me (it doesn’t to many journalists), but I learned that the rewards were worth the struggle. I love a good story and using spreadsheets and other data tools helped me deliver some front-page stories that used the records of public agencies to contradict the public statements from leaders of those agencies. Every reporter loves that kind of gotcha story.

I learned that you could find great stories by asking good questions of data, just like you find some great stories by asking good questions of people (except that data didn’t lie as often). I began to argue that every reporter should learn to analyze data. I argued that the term computer-assisted reporting was as ridiculous as notebook-assisted reporting. Computers are a tool every reporter should learn to use and I lamented that our profession was turning it into a specialty reserved for a few geeks.

I saw more possibilities in using data to tell stories the first time I visited chicagocrime.org, a web site developed by Adrian Holovaty, a journalist who developed the site on his own time. He wrote programs to scrape the police reports of the Chicago Police Department every day and store them in his database. He wrote other programs to let visitors ask questions of the data and get helpful answers.

Let’s say you were considering buying a home in Chicago. You could enter an address and Holovaty’s database showed all the recent police reports in that neighborhood. Maybe you were visiting Chicago and wanted to know whether you should walk from your hotel to your business meeting: Enter both addresses and look at the police reports along your route and you can decide whether to take a cab or hoof it. If you’re an advocate for domestic-violence victims, you can search by a particular type of crime.

I began to see the possibilities for building interactive databases that let users look for answers to their own questions.

Not long after my first look at chicagocrime.org, I got a chance to hear Holovaty talk about it at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Seattle in April 2006. He explained the need for journalism to have more people with programming skills to develop similar databases. In my Training Tracks blog for the American Press Institute, I wrote about the parallels Holovaty saw between a reporter pursuing a story and a journalist/programmer developing a database:

Just as a reporter gathers information for a story, Holovaty gathers information for his databases. Like a reporter distills information by deciding what’s worth writing about, Holovaty distills information by deciding which queries to offer users. As a reporter presents information by writing a story, Holovaty presents information by designing the web site.

Holovaty was innovation editor at the Washington Post then, developer of the Post’s excellent Congressional Votes and Faces of the Fallen databases. Any editor at the convention who didn’t see the importance and urgency of developing interactive databases wasn’t paying attention.

The industry has certainly improved and expanded its use of interactive databases since that convention:

• API’s Newspaper Next report later that year called for using databases to help anwer users’ everyday questions.
• That fall, Gannett made data one of the emphases of the “information centers” that replaced Gannett newsrooms.
• This spring, PolitiFact, a fact-checking political database developed by Bill Adair and Matt Waite (one of many journalists who are learning programming skills) of the St. Petersburg Times, won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
• I documented the increasing use of databases, first for the N2 Blog and later in a Newspaper Next report. (I suggested calling them answerbases, because the people who use them are really looking for answers and many of them feel unfamiliar with databases.) 
• A Knight News Challenge grant provides scholarships for programmers to study journalism at the Medill School at Northwestern University.
• Some newspapers have hired programmers for newsroom positions, teaching them journalism skills and principles. I spent a week in 2007 working with and learning from such a programmer/journalist, Aaron Ritchey of thenewstribune.com in Tacoma, Wash. (I wrote about Aaron in my N2 report.) 
• Here at Gazette Communications, Zack Kucharski has developed a strong set of answerbases for the Local Knowledge section of gazetteonline.com.

That’s the glass half-full. But we have been moving too slow to embrace and explore the possibilities of databases. Data too often is an afterthought, still a specialty, handled by those people in the geek ghetto. As an industry, we haven’t really developed the possibilities for using databases as a tool to attract and support new revenue streams (I addressed this in my report for N2).

A couple years ago, Holovaty left the Post when he received a Knight News Challenge grant to develop EveryBlock. This took the chicagocrime concept of microlocal mapped information and expanded it to every type of geocoded data Holovaty’s team could find: liquor licenses, building permits, restaurant inspections, property sales, street closures, photos, news stories and more. And it’s expanded from Chicago to 15 cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Washington.

The Knight grant ended in June and Holovaty released the code to the public. Anyone can use his techniques now to develop that kind of local answerbase. This may be the best resource to provide customized answers at the local level in the history of journalism. EveryBlock would be a tremendous vehicle to tap into what Michael Gluckstadt of Fast Company calls the “$100 billion local-advertising pot of gold.”

The newspaper business watched the potential gold mine develop. And yesterday, the newspaper business watched EveryBlock join forces with MSNBC.

That’s probably a great match. Instead of dealing with the glacial pace of newspaper organizations, Holovaty has hooked up with a national news force that’s focused on the web. Perhaps local newspapers will be able to affiliate with EveryBlock, gathering the local data and selling local ads. Or perhaps local NBC affiliate web sites will play that role, representing another lost opportunity for newspapers.

Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter wrote that MSNBC “scooped” the newspaper industry, asking, “How did newspapers lose EveryBlock?”

We lost EveryBlock because we’ve been slow at understanding the importance of data for years.

This is what I’ll call the EveryBlock edition, given the news yesterday that MSNBC purchased the former Knight Foundation challenge winner. Microlocal data is apparently the new pink, so a few links on what this all is about:

• First, the first sign of the news and what EveryBlock actually can do (from NY Times Bits)
• Next, post to the official EveryBlock blog from its developer, Adrian Holovaty, on the purchase
• Finally, the million dollar question: Why no newspaper company bought Everyblock (from Temple Talk)

Chalk this up this week as more proof of the value of going local, where supply is low but demand is needed for unique, specific information, is how news organizations very well may survive. Kudos to the Peacock for being the ones to take a whirl and saving EveryBlock after its Knight grant ran out at the end of June.

Some updates to recent posts

Digital Britain

Tom Watson MP: Filesharing: Why the government should proceed with caution and what you can do www.tom-watson.co.uk
Example responses to the BIS consultation www.berr.gov.uk on legislation against P2P filesharing: wiki myrandomstuff.wikispaces.com

Hyperlocal
MSNBC.com acquires EveryBlock.com. The start-up was funded by Knight News Challenge until June this year. Everyblock source code is available under GNU license code.google.com Prospects for future development and distribution of code after MSNBC acquisition?

URL shortening
Nambu network product tr.im will transition in to the public domain, becoming community-owned and operated. tr.im blog This could be a good outcome if tr.im is adopted by the community, offering assurance to users that the service will survive and insight into the otherwise closed world of Twitter usage stats.

The news production process has pretty much always been divided into two parts: input (newsgathering) and output (news production). In the debate about the future of news, is this being forgotton?

For example, my blog post Introducing: the Journalist of the Future focussed, unwittingly, entirely on news output – the way the content will be produced. It mentioned nothing of news gathering. It may be that in the future, these two sides of the coin will be completely separated.

And while the editors and managers engage in a bout of synchronized-head-scratching over how to get us to pay for the output side of news, the input side appears to be generating itself a nice bit of revenue potential.

It’s time to give that area some attention.

new media news gathering

These operations could succeed not because they offer the audience a pre-packaged, scripted and editorialised view of the world; quite the opposite. Their value is in allowing the audience easy access to the raw data. The police statistics, the council decisions, the official documents.

Of course, these are (or should be) accessible to the public anyway, but are often too time consuming to get hold of.  Another characteristic of these operations is they often (although not always) involve some form of crowdsourcing for their success

Three (potentially) successful new-media newsgathering operations

01. Everyblock

Everyblock (in the US only) currently covers a dozen or so cities. It works by providing its audience with critical official data by geographical area. When when I say critical official data, some of it is hard to believe. Residents, and even casual visitors, can see how many 911 calls were made for any particular street and what they were about. They can see every restaurant inspection carried out in Boston, and details of every building permit in Seattle.

Sadly the appalling lack of public information available in the UK means this type of site may not make it to the UK.

02. Help Me Investigate

Just launched in the UK in July, Help Me Investigate is effectively crowd-sourced reporting. Members of the public can suggest issues they want investigated, and other members of the public can help uncover the details; each person does their own little bit. It’s already had a couple big hits in the Birmingham local press.

Again, Help Me Investigate isn’t about sexy audio slideshows or a great package, it’s about public access to raw data.

03. Spot.US

Working along the same theme, Spot.US allows the public to get access to the answers they want. Members of the public suggest stories they want covered, and then a fundraising effort gets underway to pay a professional reporter to get to work. I like this idea because it still gives some currency to the trained journalist and their abilities to uncover the truth.

So what makes these sites different?

They’re all about the information, the data, the evidence. It’s not about finding a new way to produce content; no new ways of shooting video, or unique storytelling device.

And while they might not resemble a newspaper or anything like that, they still provide the same vital public service. These news input projects are one of the first tangibly positive things to emerge from this media revolution.

A busca pela reinvenção do modelo de negócios na mídia impressa e digital carece de se apoiar na especulação por novos modelos produtivos.

Um novo olhar precisa ser dado aos bancos de dados e a reutilização da informação, seu tratamento, bem como, o caráter e extensão da informação a ser disponibilizada por meio. E ainda, a novos contextos interativos que envolvam e fidelizem suas audiências.

Arianna Huffington, la madonna del Post

Nesse cenário, destacam-se algumas iniciativas de inovação, que ainda estão sendo colocadas a prova, como Huffingtonpost.com, um projeto concebido exclusivamente para ambiente online. Nascido como blog agregador de todo tipo de informação circulante na rede, evoluiu para um meio que combina informação propriamente dita, conteúdos de terceiros e agrega meios e blogs. Conhecido como agregador dos famosos por seus conteúdos e informação envoltos num glamour emprestado do prestígio de seus proeminentes blogueiros, agora também quer ser local. Na sua evolução, quer concretizar o conceito de ‘rede de redes’, somando o conteúdo de blogs e meios locais numa única plataforma. Seu objetivo é claro: rentabilizar um mercado ao qual pouca ou nenhuma atenção é dada pelos meios tradicionais. Iniciando por New York e depois Chicago pretende, nas palavras da sua madonna, Arianna Huffington, disponibilizar uma “seleção da melhor cobertura informativa local, com a colaboração de blogueiros – alguns conhecidos, outros que teremos o prazer de apresentar – ávidos por compartir suas visões sobre tudo, da política local a moda, gastronomia, imóveis, esportes e negócios”, num pacote de opinião abundante, agregação de conteúdos externos e famosos. Segundo sua editora, Katharine Zaleski, cada site terá sua própria página, onde seus editores associados e diretores determinarão o montante de conteúdo a ser exibido, e tais histórias também contarão com links específicos apontados para elas.

Nate Silver, o golden boy

Destaco também a experiência de Nate Silver com seu FiveThirtyEight.com. Em 2007, sob o pseudônimo “Poblano”, Nate começou a publicar análises e predições relativas às eleições presidenciais americanas de 2008. Após seu primeiro trabalho ser publicado no blog político Daily Kos, estabeleceu seu próprio site em maio de 2008, FiveThirtyEight.com. E a partir daí passou a freqüentar como analista político jornais de prestígio nacional, sites e TVs a cabo. Nate recorreu à matemática e informação para simular 10 mil vezes por dia os resultados eleitorais para dar sentido e clareza às sondagens eleitorais, a matéria prima que lhe serviu para publicar as análises políticas mais precisas do mercado. Para se ter uma idéia, acertou o vencedor em 49 dos 50 estados e foi indicado como uma das 100 pessoas mais influentes pela revista Time. No Brasil, nos anos 80, o jornal Folha de S.Paulo apostou com ênfase no Datafolha, cujas pesquisas se tornaram um dos pilares de credibilidade do jornal, levando ciência onde imperava a especulação. Essas pesquisas serviram tanto ao jornalismo de serviços incentivado pelo jornal, como pesquisas de preços de serviços, de opinião e comportamento, como para o jornalismo político. Basta lembrar da manchete solitária da Folha colocando Lula no 2º turno com Collor, quando todos os outros grandes veículos de comunicação apostavam em Brizola, ou se eximiam duma assertiva. Foi também um grande investimento técnico voltado para o aprimoramento do conteúdo, da qualidade e confiabilidade editorial. E isso nos anos 80. Hoje, com todos os novos recursos de interatividade proporcionados pelo online, de acesso remoto a banco de dados, das oportunidades para se trabalhar a classificação e recuperação de dados com bancos desestruturados e a interação de seus conteúdos, das enormes possibilidades que recursos de web2.0 oferecem para a estruturação criativa de conteúdos e serviços, não vejo resultados inovadores e relevantes e, justiça seja feita, desconheço, no Brasil, outros veículos investindo no desenvolvimento inovador de aplicações para seus conteúdos que ajudem usuários (sejam usuários que participam da produção da informação ou seus consumidores) a selecionar, organizar, incrementar, distribuir, colecionar e, principalmente, interagir com a informação, de forma a gerar valor agregado.

Obama, promessas na mira do Polifact

Impossível falar de inovação, pertinência e relevância em produção de conteúdo sem tomar como referência a iniciativa do jornal St. Petersburg Times, que levou este ano o prêmio Pulitzer pelo Polifact.com, um projeto que parte de um preceito muito simples e arrebatador: repórteres e editores do jornal checam e colocam a público, no site, se as declarações de políticos estão em conformidade com suas plataformas e se suas promessas estão sendo cumpridas. Em particular, no que se refere ao mandatário do seu país, criaram o Obameter, que elenca e acompanha sua fidelidade em relação a mais de 500 promessas de campanha. Um exemplo muito eficaz de como a imprensa pode fazer transparente o necessário compromisso de acompanhamento da notícia, um serviço, acredito, indispensável para o cidadão. E o modelo não se restringe, a meu ver, apenas a promessas políticas, mas ao andamento de obras públicas, da qualidade de serviços e tantos outros assuntos locais e nacionais que podem ser colocados em evidência para o acompanhamento dos interessados. Essa é uma perspectiva de serviço do jornalismo que foge às manchetes passageiras e tem a capacidade de fidelizar o usuário pela relevância do serviço. Aí se percebe o grande potencial de twitters, agredadores de notícias e redes sociais como ferramentas de fidelização do usuário a serem integradas no processo de circulação da notícia sob o incentivo, patrocínio e ao abrigo da marca da empresa geradora da informação e, claro, dos seus anunciantes*.

Holovaty, the mashup man

Outra iniciativa interessante, Everyblock, vem das mãos de Adrien Holovaty, um dos pioneiros da figura jornalista/programador, conhecido pelo site Chicago Crime. Antes, falar um pouco de Chicago Crime: foi a primeira experiência que me impressionou profundamente, ao integrar o banco de dados de ocorrências criminais mantido pela polícia de Chicago a um banco de dados de mapas, no caso iniciou com o Google Maps, permitindo o georeferrenciamento do risco em toda cidade, de forma simples, compreensível e útil a qualquer cidadão. Ambos os bancos de dados eram públicos, e permitiam um mashup, ou seja, criar um website ou uma aplicação web que usa conteúdo de mais de uma fonte para criar um novo serviço completo. O conteúdo usado em mashups é tipicamente código de terceiros através de uma interface pública ou de uma API (Application Programming Interface) que, por sua vez, é um conjunto de rotinas e padrões estabelecidos por um software para a utilização das suas funcionalidades por programas aplicativos – isto é: programas que não querem envolver-se em detalhes da implementação do software, mas apenas usar seus serviços. Bastava acessar o site para saber o tipo e qual a incidência de crimes por região, bairro ou rua da cidade. Permitia olhar para a vizinhança do domicílo desejado, simular trajetos, e avaliar o risco. Daí para perceber sua importância para o mercado imobiliário, foi um pulo. Hoje, trasmutado em Everyblock.com, abarca informações de 15 cidades americanas, é uma plataforma/base de dados de toda informação local. Um agregador de informação de proximidade, tanto quanto de serviços como notícias. Quando se fala em valor agregado da informação, sempre imagino esse serviço acoplado a classificados de imóveis, só para dar um exemplo de como esse conceito pode ser útil às empresas que produzem e divulgam informação.

Enfim, como diz Pablo Mancini, Magister Internacional em Comunicação e Jornalismo no Chile, “sin nuevos modelos productivos para la organización periodística, ni contextos interactivos para las audiências, nada tenemos que hacer los periodistas em la Internet inmediata”.

Não sou jornalista, sou oriundo do marketing, e me alinho com o conceito.



* Para poder tratar desse tópico de forma mais adequada e não fugir ao tema central deste, deixo seu desenvolvimento para um post futuro.

The code for Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock has been released. The open-sourcing of the site’s system were apart of the Knight News Challenge Program. Everyblock is a very impressive site that aggregates and geocodes local data — news, crime, fire, restaraunt inspections and reviews – and then lets users define their interests down to the block-level.

Adrian made the announcement on 6/30. Here’s the list of newly open-sourced, GPL’d goodies found on Everyblock’s new Code page:

The main package (probably the thing you’re looking for) is the publishing system, known as ebpub.
Second, the packages ebdata and ebgeo contain Python modules for processing data and making maps.
Third, the packages ebinternal and everyblock round out the code that powers EveryBlock.com. They’re internal tools and are likely not of general use, but we’re including them to be complete.
Finally, ebblog and ebwiki are our blog and wiki software, respectively. Because, dammit, the world needs another Django-powered blogging tool.

Django fans, Python geohackers and anyone who wants to build a local data aggregator are going to be thrilled.

via Everyblock’s Code is Open-Sourced – O’Reilly Radar.

As journalists we are continually looking for answers.

Saturday’s Chicago Media Future Conference tried to find some answers to some of the most fundamental questions that have been hovering over every journalist’s head as of lately: How do people consume the news and how can we – as journalists – make money selling the news? The two questions were addressed by two separate panels.

The first panel tried to focus on news consumption and innovative models of news distribution, especially on the local (ex. Gapers Block) and hyper-local (Everyblock) levels. Everyone seemed to pretty much agree that one of the reasons the traditional newspaper is in crisis is because it had significantly reduced its coverage of local news.

During the second panel discussion, Patrick Spain, CEO of Newser, said the New York Times would disappear in a year and a half and the Trib and Sun-Times wouldn’t be around anymore next year.

Medill professor Rich Gordon, however, said he didn’t believe newspapers were going to disappear so quickly.

“Print is not going to die until the digital platform substitutes everything the newspaper does today,” he said. We might get there one day, he added, as screen technology evolves.

Does that mean one day we’ll all be walking around with Kindles, Blackberrys or iPhones and getting our news exclusively from there? To me, this scenario appears to still be very distant. For two reasons:

1. Right now that technology comes with a high cost. The devices are getting cheaper every year, as demonstrated by the new iPhone for only $99, but you are then bound to pay relatively high monthly fees to actually use them.

2. A lot more people need to know how to use these wonderful devices. I think some journalists are so hyped up with new technology that they often think everyone else uses the internet just like they do.

Well, that’s not how it works. The reason why newspapers will survive for quite some time (most will change, some will fail, but they’ll still be around) is because they are still today the simplest way to get the news.

News distribution in newspapers is based on the “push” model: The news is packaged and handed to you.

Since most people are not information-junkies, they won’t waste their time on countless news websites that pretty much all offer a “pull” model: You get a homepage with as much information possible, and you’re just one click away from all you need. If you’re a journalist, you probably can look through tons of links and other pages. After all, that’s what we do for a living.

But if you’re just someone trying to get some information on what happened in your town, how are you supposed to know that there are dozens of websites out there that can give you in-depth coverage on almost any topic?

The answer, for now, is you can’t.

In my opinion, news-websites still today are trying to figure out how to create a single, compact and user-friendly “package” that will truly substitute the newspaper. That’s why hyper-local news websites can be successful: They are very specific “packages”.

How to get all these “packages” into one big “container” so that people don’t have to waste their days on their computers, now that’s something we should start talking about.

by Sandy Ikeda

A while ago on another blog I wrote about a website called “Everyblock.com” that reports on everything from neighborhood “restaurant inspections and building violations to missed connections posted on Craigslist and news mentions” in about a dozen major US cities.

FYI, here are two similar and handy sites, which have an emphasis on tracking crime trends block by block:

Crimemapping.com
Crimereports.com

(Thanks to Mario for the WSJ article about these last two.)

Cuando el pasado 16 de marzo salía a la luz la beta de ‘Somos Centro‘, algo cambiaba en el panorama comunicativo de España. El país entero se daba de frente con el fenómeno de lo hiperlocal, la información constante e hiperespecializada en lo que ocurre en tu propio barrio, incluso, en tu propia calle.

A pesar de lo que pueda parecer, la información hiperlocal es una idea que desde los 80 vienen planteando algunos gurús, sociólogos y otros teóricos de la comunicación. De alguna manera, sería la evolución de la famosísima ‘glocalización‘, especialización de las grandes empresas a las condiciones de lo local. La información hiperlocal se traslada de la ciudad al barrio, en ocasiones, a un puñado de calles.

Desde hace unos años, la crisis de los medios y la revolución de las nuevas tecnologías habían empujado a unos pocos emprendedores estadounidenses a ocuparse del nicho que ofrecía lo hiperlocal. Algunos ejemplos de ello son Outside o EveryBlock. El exito fue inminente. Prueba de ello, es la entrada de grandes medios en sus contenidos, la NBC en Outside o el New York Times en el caso de Every Block.

La actualidad de tu barrio

No obstante, España no había tenido la ocasión de disfrutar de las veleidades de lo hiperlocal hasta ahora. ‘Somos Centro‘ ha sido el primero. De  la mano de Diego Casado, su redactor jefe (facebook y twitter), ‘Somos Centro‘ da cuenta de todo lo que acontece en el Barrio Centro de Madrid.  “‘Somos Centro’ está pensado como una traslación de la plaza del barrio a internet” ha comentado Casado  en una entrevista reciente realizada por AgoraNews. Y en la plaza digital hay cabida para todo. Últimas noticias, eventos o recomendaciones pueblan una web que, en su diseño, es muy atractiva, intuitiva y ágil.

Desde el punto de vista comercial, si algo llama la atención de este proyecto, es su atención a la publicidad. ‘Somos Centro‘ ha apostado por la publicidad hiperlocal de la misma forma que escoge la información.  El portal anuncia eventos y recomienda lugares como forma publicitaria pero, a la vez, no olvida las oportunidades que ofrece internet. ‘Somos Centro‘ dedica un espacio a la publicidad de google, AdSense.

¿Estrella o estrellado?

Desde luego, es difícil intuir el futuro a largo plazo de ‘Somos Centro‘. Depende en gran medida de la gestión comercial que haga de la publicidad y de la conexión con los vecinos de la zona. Esa ha sido la gran tara que los medios hiperlocales han tenido hasta ahora. El posicionamiento en medios hiperlocales no atrae a las grandes empresas que, a fin de cuentas, son los máximos participantes de la publicidad en internet, por lo que el proyecto depende de los comerciantes de la zona y del consabido AdSense.

Sin olvidar a los vecinos. Ellos son el motor de noticias y, a la vez, los propios usuarios del medio por lo que conseguir su atención cobra una importancia máxima. En sus manos está que ‘Somos Madrid‘ salga adelante. Por el momento, el éxito cosechado por la página ha servido para que lancen otra cabecera dedicada al barrio de Malasaña, ‘Somos Malasaña’. En proyecto quedan Chueca, Lavapiés y La Latina.

* También publicado en el blog ‘Estrellas y Estrellados’ por el autor.

SNDChicago events made today one of the fullest, most satisfying Saturday. A series of informative, eye-opening lectures, and the pretty city view from the 22nd floor of the Tribune building…I can’t get enough from those.

Summaries and thoughts to share–

Revenue 2.0 and the road ahead (by Matt Mansfield)

“There’s no better time to be a journalist.”–Matt Mansfield

But in order to be a smart, passionate, and successful one, contents matter. How to develop values by differentiate content, in other words, to find a niche market, is crucial in today’s digital world. We ask not only who is the audience, we are trying to figure out not only what we can provide our unique content to the audience, but when, where, how the audience wants it. And further, since the audience’s understanding goes into a new level, experiences count as much as content. How to use design to enhance the experience, and combine with content to generate traffic on your site? Hum…

About 30% (I could be wrong, notes were taken in a hurry, but a great deal) of the traffic was lost at homepages. Save your traffic by looking at some homepage solutions Revenue 2.0 suggest:

-enable impulse buys

-think like a user

-off-line reading: hey, I can read on the airplane!

-Geo-tagging: find places to go, discount wherever I go!

-Archive, export

-customization: this is the one of the most important factors, in my humble opinion, because nowadays, everyone wants their web page to be personal, individualized, and special. Customers want customized homepages more than ever!

I think I’ve written about this in my previous post about Steve Rubel’s lecture, we are all experimenting here about online journalism, online advertising, and one of the experiments Revenue 2.0 try to do is to test eye-line design: pages that don’t scroll, it contained in the limited width/length of the browser window. Will readers like that? Let’s try it.

One interesting thing Matt Mansfield mentioned today is that the seattlepi did not change anything on their website when they dropped off their print edition.  it was a good opportunity to launch something cool, new on their website and it will be interesting to see without the print edition, where the seattlepi can go. Now, it’s like they just dropped the print edition, but didn’t add any new value to their brand.

“Print design is about control, web design is about behavior”  –Matt Mansfield

Look into the skimmer thought, friend! Readers of websites skim, they don’t read (refer to this post).

Chicago Tribune Reinvention (By Jonathon Berlin)

“One publication, two readership” –Jonathon Berlin

I am always interested in the co-existing tabloid and broadsheet sizes Chicago Tribune, and the Tribune design team does them both at one night, and serve different groups of audience. Who are those picking up the tabloid and who are the others who prefer the broadsheet? Hum, I should have asked this question during the presentation, shouldn’t I?

I think subway riders, bus riders may prefer the tabloid version because it’s easy to handle, carry, and read; while those sitting in the offices can open up a broadsheet version and enjoy a cup of coffee/tea.

Social media roundtable

One interesting thought from this panel is actually evoked to me byJason Pelke.

When I twittered that content is the most important factor that drives web traffic #sndchicago, Jason responded, “Maybe it’s the relationship/trust?”

I thought about that, and my follow up answer is that content may be the most important factor that drives web traffic, the relationship/trust may be the most important factor that keeps the traffic.” Social media is about connections, relationships, but content is the base. We now have twitter, facebook, and other social medias to expand our ways of presenting our contents. Soon, there will be new social medias, but the content is always the core, the essence.

Another thing the panel mentioned is that we always like interesting sites, because of their personalities and great designs. While we are all experimenting, why not take some risks and try something cool?

Everyblock.com (by Adrian Holovaty)

Internet is a giant resource center where all pieces of information gather, and good websites find intelligent way to sort these information. There are millions of different ways to do it, and we just need to find the smart, unexpected ones, like what everyblock.com has done.

Embrace hypertext, and roll your own maps.” –Adrian Holovaty

A map with different tags, information on them mean nothing but a map, we need more content on the page by adding hypertext on them, they are reporting, news, information that people can easily search and find. Oh, google “take control of your own map” and the first link will help you figure out how to roll your own maps, tips offered by Adrian.

Coudal Partners by Jim Coudal

Among all the speakers and topics today, Coudal’s appearance and philosophy were the most unexpected, and of course brilliant. It introduces a news way of looking at online advertising. Instead of trying to sell 1 million ads to 1 million people, Coudal’s idea is to sell the right advertising to the right audience through selling one ad on one page in order to maximally satisfy the publisher, the reader and the advertiser.

It’s a really simple idea in the end, but most people just haven’t thought about that.

For example, on a designer’s blog, Coudal sells a Wacom tablet ad because it’s really relevant to the visitors so that they are more likely to click on it. For advertiser, this way of advertising is effective. For readers, the only ad on the page will not disturb the reading experience, and because of it’s relevancy, readers welcome it. Hey, we like ads, but ONLY the relevant ones. For publishers, the ad gets attentions, does not fight with the content, and it generates money. (Oh, money! The word I haven’t used at all in my post, but is actually the basic of all.)

Jim mentioned that Twitterfic has two version of iPhone apps, the free one which comes with the deck ad or the paid one without the ads. Many feedbacks show that audience supports the paid apps but actually want the deck ad. Oh my god, readers want advertising! I believe most companies will totally blow their mind if their audience say “we like your ad,” in fact, as customers, we do like ads, but once again, relevant ones, please.

Conclusion

I know it’s a long post, but I have a long day, and all those are what I’ve learned, reflected from all the speakers and their lectures. Thank you SND Chicago for such a great Saturday, and the view of Chicago from the 22nd floor of the Tribune building will always reminds me the privilege of being a designer.

A quick rundown of what The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and a group of hyperlocal sites are doing to build audiences.

The New York Times takes a look at hyperlocal sites EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch,

Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, offers his philosophy of what reporters need to do to grab eyeballs:

The art of a good blog is figuring out the right mix between the piece that you know is going to get maximum search-engine hits to the piece that really defines what you’re doing that’s uniquely valuable. That second piece might not bring in as much traffic, but it’s the piece that’s gonna keep the traffic once you get it in the door. So all of that, which is part of the job of building a community, building an audience — those are totally new skills.

Meanwhile, The Washington Times is embracing citizen journalism — in print:

The Times’ version ramps up the intensity and the outreach, focusing on six communities within the larger Washington area: academia on Monday, the Maryland and Virginia suburbs on Tuesday, the District on Wednesday, local military bases on Thursday, faith communities on Friday and the charitable and the public service community on Sunday.

The citizen journalists’ work will be showcased in the A-section as an additional page of Metro coverage and will provide a natural complement to the work of the newspaper’s reporters and editors.

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and BRAD STONE@ The New York Times

If your local newspaper shuts down, what will take the place of its coverage? Perhaps a package of information about your neighborhood, or even your block, assembled by a computer. (continues@ The New York Times)

Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone have an article in The New York Times published Sunday about how hyperlocal news media are starting to catch on with the public.

Hyperlocal publishing is an amazing amalgam — sort of a throwback to simpler times but made possible by low-cost and easy-to-use Internet publishing tools. Now your part of town can have its own regularly published online news reports. Pretty cool, huh? In an era when your local newspaper may be shutting down, or at least trimming newsroom staff, it may become the norm.

Miller and Stone’s article mentions a number of different sites, including EveryBlock, Outside.in, Patch and PlaceBlogger, that aggregate stories from blogs and other sources, mixed in with local government information. Some even hire reporters. Each has its own method of operation, and some don’t publish any original content of their own.

I used to be a newspaper reporter in a small city near a much larger city. The newspaper from the bigger city had a small bureau in town, but our staff was geared more specifically for the environment, so we were able to cover local events more thoroughly than the big paper. Our readers found out more about what was going on in town in more detail than they would have reading the larger paper. Of course, we didn’t have nearly the circulation, but there was quite a lot of interest in the local articles we’d publish.

As a result, we got lots of very local advertising, which is something Miller and Stone say hyperlocal Web sites are having trouble with. The neighborhoods served by these sites are so small that they’re having difficulty attracting people to advertise.

While you might think hyperlocal media would fear big publishing, large newspapers such as The Times itself are partnering with these hyperlocal sites for local news. Maybe the two can hang together to weather the tough times and keep telling us what’s going on around us.

Take a look at these articles for some related topics:

How Newspapers Work
How Blogs Work
If I want to create my own Web site, what do I have to do?

Everyblock collects data from government agencies and lets you search down to the street level to see what’s happening around you. Seattle is one of eleven supported cities. Some things I learned:

• Laurelhurst Community Center will host an Egg Hunt this Saturday (April 11) morning at 10:00am for the 12-and-under set. Expect it to be over about 10:03am. Bring your own basket, and email us photos! We’ll publish the best one.
• Sheasox, Inc. applied to have the Sand Point Grill’s liquor license transferred to it from the original license holder (approved on April 3.) Has the Sand Point Grill changed hands?
• Laurelhurst was featured in the Seattle Times as a “good place to move up to” in the Sunday real estate section. Bill Gates, Sr., Joie Gowan, Jeannie Hale, Stan Sorscher, Marlinda Siegfried, and Sequoia Hartman are mentioned. Does anyone claim the chair pictured in the photo?
• Engine 38 was dispatched 4 times yesterday – 3 medic responses and an aid response. A fire alarm at Children’s Hospital the day before.
• Villa Academy passed it’s restaurant inspection with a perfect score. Talaris Conference Center also passed.
• 4747 41st St NE was listed for sale yesterday for $638k.

-Mike Mathieu

In January, I blogged about EveryBlock, which provides users with neighborhood-level news. Now comes an application from the New York Times designed for tracking local politics.

Represent allows citizens to follow their elected representatives:

If New Yorkers enter an address, they can see their political districts (Congressional, Assembly, Senate and City Council) and representatives. Represent will also track what their representatives have been doing through a recent activity feed from NYT articles and congressional votes.

I’ve put up a couple of posts about EveryBlock, here and here. Today, I found David Cohn’s brief interview with EveryBlock creator Adrian Holovaty at the Poynter Institute. Go to Aggregation is Creation at NewsInnovation to watch their talk.

Toward the end of the discussion, Holovaty offers advice for computational journalists, which I think could apply to journalists of all stripes: “Pick something you’re passionate about, and make a website about it.”

Who’s mentioned in your article? What organizations does it talk about? Or what zip codes?

Answering these simple questions—in ways notoriously inflexible computers understand—can be like putting handles on your articles. It means aggregators and filterers like EveryBlock can grab on and give readers one more way to find what you have to say.

That’s what the New York Times is doing—in two stages, it appears. First its librarians encode the elected officials mentioned in its articles; mentioning them in the regular text of the article doesn’t cut it. Then its newly built web service, called Represent, figures out the geographic locations those officials represent. Meanwhile, Represent is also taking a computerized look at Congressional votes. When a politician votes, Represent says something like, “Oh, a person just voted in geographic area Y, and that person’s name is X.”

EveryBlock isn’t built for understanding much about people or names, but it is built for understanding locations and geographic areas. So Represent’s job is to translate from X to Y—from names to places.

Which brings us at long last to the metadata game. The historical problem is the way you have to answer these questions has been interminably dull and technical. So the historical result has been one big shoulder shrug: “Why bother?”

Well, people like Adrian Holovaty are starting to envision on answer “We have a number of ideas for sustaining our project,” he writes, “like building a local advertising engine.” That kind of engine might share ad revenue with the newspapers whose articles it incorporates. In order to claim a share, each newspaper must diligently prepare its articles for EveryBlock: there much be location handles that EveryBlock can grab. It’s highly unclear how much money EveryBlock’s hyperlocal ad targeting could generate, but if it’s enough, it will provide the kind of incentive publishers need to make boring metadata worth their while. EveryBlock might just unlock the ‘R’ in ROI. That could very well be a great reason to bother.

Epilogue    It’s notable that grant monies have helped solve this chicken-and-egg problem. I may have personal issues with the Knight News Challenge—I didn’t win and didn’t receive feedback promised on multiple occasions—but EveryBlock is quite justifiably the darling of the news innovation set.