Archives have great potential for traffic, debate, manipulation

A news story from the 2005 archives in which a psychology professor called homosexuality a disease recently rocketed to the top of the most-read list of El Pais, one of Spain's leading newspapers.

The strange incident demonstrated several things: what you produce on the Internet never goes away; in social networks the readers, not the editors, choose what's interesting; ruthless political operatives can manipulate these popularity measures for their own use; and newspapers themselves should more actively control and promote archived stories.

Reloading an old business model for new media

Veteran journalist Tom Stites writes on the Nieman Blog that new digital media might be overlooking a venerable method of sustaining themselves -- the cooperative.

The cooperative is defined as a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit. Today we might call it crowd-funding.

When the market fails

Stites says that people form cooperatives when the normal for-profit market forces fail to supply a service or product that their community needs.

There are many examples of user-owned news cooperatives in other countries but none in the U.S.
Stites is trying to launch one here.

Stites reviews recent studies of attempts to establish sustainable business models and concludes that many of the media currently held up as models depend too much on foundation support, which rarely is maintained over the long haul. In addition many of these operations depend on volunteer work, and volunteers burn out. There is thus an urgency to find a new model.

A hybrid model for local news

What is appealing about the cooperative model is that there are many news organizations already functioning. They can be replicated. They mix characteristics of for-profit and non-profit businesses and they can be tailored to the needs of the local community.

More than any other type of news, local community coverage has suffered in the recent downturn of the news industry. The co-op might help give it life again.


Related:
Robert Niles: How to Make Money Publishing Community News Online
How much to charge advertisers? As much as possible
More paywalls won't save journalists' jobs
Google takes magic out of advertising sales process
How I ran my newspaper monopoly
Language barrier helps publisher paywalls
How to tailor news for 4 different platforms? 'Responsive design' 

In hyper-connected world, you have to be everywhere

Versión en español aquí.

At 3:34 a.m. on Feb. 27, something shook Leo Prieto awake. His apartment in Santiago, Chile, was in total darkness. 

Nothing worked except for his cellphone. He sent out a message on Twitter: "What the heck was that?" In no time at all, Twitter crackled with messages from all over Chile with stories of serious injuries and collapsed buildings.

Evidently there had been a massive earthquake, and Prieto began to share messages with other Twitter users via his cellphone. In less than half an hour, CNN in Atlanta recognized Prieto as an unofficial hub of information and sent him a tweet asking for his cellphone number.

Never sleep: best social network strategy

Versión en español aquí.

Not long ago the Wall Street Journal, which thrives inside its paywall fortress, recognized the importance of opening the gates a crack with its new Facebook application, WSJ Social.  

“You can’t rely on users coming to you anymore,” said Maya Baratz, head of new products for the Journal, in an interview with Nieman Lab. This change in attitude shows the increasing role of the audience in distributing and curating content for publishers. 

What makes a professional journalist? Ethics

With all types of people publishing news and information on the web, how do you distinguish who is a professional journalist?

After all, bloggers have broken some big stories before mainstream news organizations, for example. Many of them bring value to their work. In other words, how do journalists justify calling themselves professionals, and how do they differentiate themselves from amateurs and drivelers?

One important way is by their adherence to ethical standards of the profession. Another is by knowledge of how to investigate and verify information. Professionals with the highest standards should be dedicated to more than being first and generating page views.

How to sell advertising without selling your soul

(Versión en español aquí.)

Fayerwayer is one of the most popular blogs in the Spanish speaking world because of its frank and conversational commentaries about the latest gadgets and software. 

Its founder, Leo Prieto, of Santiago, Chile, tells an instructive story about how the blog's first advertiser created controversy among his collaborators and the blog's loyal followers. (photo from www.endeavor.cl)

Prieto started Fayerwayer (a phonetic spelling of "firewire" in Spanish) in 2005 because he was dissatisfied with what he saw as a lazy, mindless rehash of press releases in most technology blogs and print publications. 

He decided he would actually try out the products and services and see if they were as described by the public relations and marketing specialists. 

For non-technical journalists, a free platform

Recently I met the people of Sourcefabric, who produce two free publishing platforms for print and radio organizations that want to have a web presence.


This non-profit group, based in Prague, has been helping independent media outlets extend their reach on the Web for more than a decade. (Disclosure, I was a guest speaker at their recent conference in Prague.)


Their web platform for print media (known as a content management system or CMS) is called Newscoop; their system for radio is called Airtime.