Q&A with SeattlePI.com's Michelle Nicolosi a must-read

Michelle Nicolosi, executive producer of the new SeattlePI, offers some great insight into the direction of the former Post-Intelligencer’s new online endeavor.

Nicolosi talks with Content Bridges about news sites that she goes to for inspiration (The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald),  partner content for PI, it’s impressive resource of Reader Blogs, and much more. Here’s Nicolosi on:

Aggregation, fair use and the newspaper blues

Today, a fellow journalist e-mailed me this link to a New York Times article on the fair use of online content. He’s of the opinion that sites that aggregate and excerpt material are essentially stealing. Well …

While the Times article doesn’t break any new ground on this topic — at least not for those who’ve been following it on a regular basis — it does provide a decent general overview for newcomers.

However, one of its assertions doesn’t quite tell the whole story:

Social media, online news hubs and Nielsen ratings

As news sites turn to more localized coverage, will readers choose to get their news from general news sources such as the New York Times, or will they turn to specialty websites? That’s just one of the issues raised in Joshua Benton’s video interview with author James Hamilton today at Nieman Journalism Lab.

Hamilton, who wrote All the News That’s Fit to Sell, also discusses how TV news stations use Nielsen ratings data to influence the stories it covers, and how social media informs the types of issues journalists write about.

New York Times' article skimmer

In terms of its look, The New York Times’ new “article skimmer” is very close to what I had in mind in my previous post about innovative news content delivery.

The design isn’t fancy, but it is effective, allowing readers to easily scan a grid of headlines and article summaries according to the news section.

Check out the screen capture of the NYT article skimmer after the jump:

Better than micropayments: packaging the news

The more the debate about paying for online news content rages on, the more I’m inclined to agree with some of the sharp commentary on Mathew Ingram’s recent look at the micropayment issue, comments that have served to focus my ideas about what news sites can and cannot charge for.

What they can charge largely depends on what consumers need. On that issue, Terry Steichen believes they require context:

ESPNChicago.com to launch in April

Chicago Tribune.com reports on ESPN’s plan to launch ESPNChicago.com, which could be the first of many city-specific sports sites with 24/7 coverage:

Like the cable channel, ESPN Chicago will feature its own “SportsCenter”-style newscast with a three- to five-minute highlight reel of the day’s top stories. It will have original content and include breaking news.

If the venture is successful, can Tampa Bay, with the Bucs, Rays, Lightning and Bulls, be far behind?

Key to better TV websites: change the station's culture

Rick Garner’s top 10 list of tips for making TV websites relevant offers some excellent advice for news sites of all stripes to consider, not the least of which is his overall point that in order to effect the changes he recommends, TV stations must change their culture:

Most TV stations spend more time and resources on their onair product and save the scraps for online. This isn’t surprising since onair revenue is still king and what keeps the books in black. This has allowed local TV sales staffs to remain very green at selling their online inventory and being able to convince advertisers to buy their goods.

Why is this? Because the root of the problem hasn’t changed. Like a cancer, every TV station has a core that’s keeping them from success: the culture. Change a station’s culture and you can do wonders. Change a culture and a website can become relevant to the station personnel and their customers. Change a culture and a people can enjoy coming to work and making a difference.

#9 on Garner’s list follows a basic tenet of Web design and usability:

Newspapers have ways of making you pay, aggregators

Enjoy the hard work of professional journalists while you can, online aggregators. Take one last bath in the million of dollars you’ve reaped from advertisements around content you didn’t create. Because if the folks behind Newspaper Project have their way, it’s likely your free ride will be over.

Publisher Randy Siegel talks to Columbia Journalism Review about the recently launched Newspaper Project, a coalition of newspaper executives endeavoring to share ideas about their industry vital.

Siegel, described by interviewer Megan Barber as the leader of the project, talks about the purpose of the organization, touts the value of professional journalism, and then throws down the gauntlet before the “information wants to be free” champions: