Steve Outings Kolumne: War: A Defining Moment for Net News

( ....) Last Wednesday night found me sitting in front of the TV along with a laptop computer, simultaneously watching and listening to CNN and ABC broadcast reporting, and clicking around the world's top news Web sites. I found the Web component of my war-news consumption to be more satisfying, even on that first night. While TV anchors started repeating themselves and filling air time with their own theories when there was a temporarily lull of new information, the Web with its hundreds of available news channels offered a respite when TV news started to flounder.

Indeed, I found myself annoyed with the seemingly singular perspective of the major U.S. television network newscasts. I hungered for some alternative perspectives that TV failed to provide. If I was forced to choose between my TV or my PC for the duration of this war, I'd keep the computer. There's enough breaking-news video on the Web -- albeit not of broadcast quality -- that I wouldn't miss much, if anything.

This is not something I would have said until just recently. (...)

Vollständig nachzulesen bei Editor & Publisher.

Sehr interessante Artikel bei Poynter:

One of the great journalism ethics debates -- how much information is too much -- has spawned some new considerations in the Internet age. With so much questionable material just a link away -- video of captured U.S. soldiers, photos of dead and wounded troops and civilians, rumors swirling on weblogs -- online newsrooms must make weighty decisions under constant deadline pressure.

Poynter Online offers some helpful guidelines that can be applied to the Net: Consider the tone of the coverage and the graphic nature of any images, measure the potential propaganda factor, and weigh the positive and negative impact that aiding the dissemination will have on both your viewers and the worldwide Internet audience.

Poynter's Bob Steele reminds journalists of their underlying ethics principles, and the Institute's senior scholar Roy Peter Clark praises the power of understatement when dealing with the already graphic subject of war.

Poynter Online: Deciding What to Show and When
Bob Steele: Guiding Principles for the Journalist
Roy Peter Clark: Focusing on the Power of Understatement.

Verlinkereien und Konsequenzen

Klägerin ist eine große Würzburger Zeitungsverlagsgruppe, der zu einem bedeutenden Stuttgarter Verlagskonzern gehört. Beklagter ist der Betreiber der Suchmaschine NewsClub.

Im Zentrum des Rechtsstreits steht die Frage, ob es erlaubt ist, mittels herkömmlicher Internet-Links auf Zeitungsartikel zu verweisen, die zur öffentlichen Nutzung im Internet bereit stehen.

Der Betreiber des NewsClub, Christian Kohlschütter, verstoße durch das Verlinken von Nachrichten-Seiten gegen §87b UrhG. Durch die Verlinkung sei ein urheberrechtlich verbotener Eingriff in die Datenbank der Klägerin erfolgt.

Kohlschütter wurde von dem Verlagshaus zuerst am Landgericht Berlin verklagt. In dem Prozess gewann Kohlschütter. Das Urteil des LG Berlin vom 30.1.2001 ist rechtskräftig.

Die Klagepartei gab keine Ruhe. Sie zog vor das Landgericht München. Hier gewann die Klägerin. Kohlschütter ging in die Berufung.
...

http://www.newsclub.de/ und
http://www.newsclub.de/prozess/

DIMMER GEHTS NIMMER .... *kopfschüttel*

Although RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds bring readers to Web sites, it may not be as good at getting people to register or to subscribe to newsletters, says mbites. Net users who subscribe to RSS feeds may click on a link leading them to an article within a Web site, read the article, and click away without checking out anything else from that particular Web site, mbites writes. According to this theory, RSS feeds bring visitors to a Web site, but they do not guarantee an audience. In other words, they promote the content, rather than the site. "The simplicity of RSS, in theory, eats into a publisher's ability to define its audience through registration, and lessens the incentive to hand over crucial audience data like an email address," mbites writes. Page impressions may go up thanks to RSS, but RSS feeds could also bring down site registrations and e-mail subscribers.

full story

...ist bei Editorandpublisher erschienen.

While that describes some elements of the vaunted "media convergence" we've been talking about for many years, perhaps this industry-leader group exercise indicates that the industry will actually accomplish some of these things in the next few years -- and not just talk about them even longer. Let's hope so.
Und weiter:
One of the things that struck me about this report is that these online-news leaders are saying some of the same things that they (as well as pundits like me) have been saying for years -- but these are things that the industry as a whole has yet to effectively implement. For example, in the area of content, the group felt strongly that there is a need for news sites to create more unique content and use less content repurposed from other media platforms within a company. Current online-news content, according to the group: is too general and aimed at a mass audience; lacks entertainment value; is too often redundant to what's published in print or broadcast; and lacks quality and credibility.

That's an old complaint that dates back to the mid-1990s, but online-news publishers for the most part still haven't addressed it.
Hier die ganze Kolumne zum Nachlesen. Sehr interessant!
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