When last we talked about comments (February 2008) we had abut 1,000 posts on our new system (hosted by Disqus.com) and we were trying to figure out how to best balance identity, anonymity, moderation and free speech.

We eneded up with a hybrid system. if your email address is unverified, your comments go into a queue for moderation. If you are verified, you can post directly and immediately.

Now - six months later, we have about 25,000 comments, a ton of registered, verified users and what looks like a pretty healthy community growing strong.

 

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I can only fault that they do not let you share and embed from the video player: Two of a kind Audio and Video brought to you by boston.com

The 'rewrite man', of course, joins the 'outside man' the 'linotype operator' and the 'women's department girl' as integral parts of any respectable daily newspaper.

 Found this on Journalism That Matters

 

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I am working on a presentation for a college class - talking about the transition from print to digital newsgathering and figure it is about time that a Powerpoint (or Keynote actually) about multimedia actually use some multimedia to make the point.

 

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An interesting story in the Globe today about an offbeat Website taking an anthropological approach to that species of Americans known as 'white people.'

Stuff White People Like draws fans, criticism - and 16 million hits - The Boston Globe

 

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Increasingly, Longworth told me, decision-makers get their news from elite sources and too many voters don't get any news at all.

Chicago Reader | Hot Type | The Rust Belt Reader: Could a regional newspaper improve the midwest's prospects?

I really want to agree with the thesis here - that newspapers are obliged to give people all the news they need, not just want, because that information is important to a functioning democracy. Specifically - global news is important to local and regional papers because of the global economy.

 

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You can almost hear the business models crumbling every time Google comes out with a new product/API.

The latest I have been looking at (not sure how recent it is?): Google Visualization API Gadget Gallery - Google Visualization API - Google Code

Along with a sort of similar product from MIT: Simile Project

These are the kinds of tools that used to require a designer and/or flash developer along with several days worth of effort to produce. And now basically anyone with an XML or JSON feed and some basic knowledge can get it done. Amazing. Now we just have to figure out how to use them somewhere on the site!

Tags: Google, API, Data

A week after a round of layoffs - the Portland Press Herald announced today that they are up for sale. Portland is a great city to live in and the PPH has always been well designed and a good read - so aside from the general economic downturn in the industry - this probably has as much to do with the Blethen family's ownership of the Seattle Times as it does with the Portland/Maine market. The paper has been going through the usual online growing pains - with control over online 'news' recently switching from the MaineToday.com portal site back to the individual newsrooms at the PPH, the KJ and the Morning Sentinel. This has got to be disruptive in the newsrooms - though the owners indicate they would like to sell it to 'community investors' which could be good for the papers if it happened. The fact that the price will probably be in the $100 million range - not the $200 million Blethen paid in 1998 could also help. That newspaper group covers about half the population in the state so this sale is of no little importance to residents.

Tags: Portland, newspapers, sale

So, in an effort to update the blogs more often, I am testing out the Flock browser. Pretty happy so far - it allows an easy XMLRPC connection to multiple blogs, as well as instant access to other social web services such as Del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and others. I am probably the last to this party - but looking forward to testing it out

Tags: Flock, blogs, twitter, social

It has been far too long since I updated this blog - in some part due to a very busy Spring conference schedule. 

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ChannelOne (a news station for high school students) and NBC news broadcast a nice segment on the Telegraph-Nashua High partnership to cover the presidential interviews. Video after the jump... 

 

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Some good news on the awards front today - the Telegraph has been announced as a finalist in two categories for the Newspaper Association of America's Digital Edge Awards. 

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One thing we (at the Telegraph) will not be thankful for this Thanksgiving is the fact that one of our photojournalists, Stanton Paddock, let us know today that he is moving on to other opportunities.

We wish him the best - but as a result, we have an opening on the Telegraph photo staff - see the job posting below:

 

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Matthew Ingram posts a comment from an AP staffer regarding the AP/Google partnership:

 

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UPDATE: A follow-up to this post is here

It is strictly 'inside baseball' stuff but in their blogs Jeff Jarvis and Matthew Ingram picked up on our recent experiences with the Google News / AP partnership.

 

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