Journalists listed as ideal targets by Oslo gunman

By KJ Mullins (Guest Contributor/Digital Journalist)

Journalists were one of the targets detailed in the manifesto by Anders Behring Breivik, Norway’s alleged gunman of the Friday murders in Oslo and Utoya Island.

Just hours before the worst mass murder in Norway’s history, Anders Behring Breivik released a video on YouTube entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” Breivik credited the name Andrew Berwick in the release.

In his manifesto under “Category A, B and C traitors,” Breivik stated that annual gatherings of journalists in Norway were the most attractive targets for large-scale attacks.

A conference held by Stiftelsen for en Kritisk og Undersøkende Presse (SKUP) that promotes investigative journalism was identified as a perfect target.According to the manifesto, journalists are to be viewed as “multiculturalist political warriors and overwhelmingly left wing political activists.”

It now appears that Norway’s Prime Minister’s offices were not the prime target in the Oslo bombing Friday. In fact, the building that was hit houses the largest newspaper of Norway, VG.

SKUP published a portion of the manifesto on its website that detailed the way to attack a group of journalists using a primary and then secondary attack. The first attack would use one to three detonations followed by an assault using flame thrower, assault rifles or grenades to execute any survivors.

“This just emphasizes the madness of the tragedy that took place on Saturday,” said SKUP chairman Heidi Molstad Andresen. “Pointing out a political organization or a journalist conference as targets, is a direct attack in the core of democracy and freedom of expression. SKUPs thoughts goes to all the victims of the terrorist bomb in Oslo and the massacre at Utøya and their relatives.”

This article was originally published on Digital Journal [Link]

News outlets, Facebook in talks about exclusive content

by Stephanie Medeiros (Guest Contributor/Digital Journalist)

Several news sources are in talks with the social network giant to provide exclusive news and content through Facebook.

Major news sources such as The Washington Post, CNN and The Daily are currently negotiating a deal with Facebook that would give the behemoth social network the ability to offer “exclusive” content and contend with similar services of competitors.

Facebook would provide the platform for the content and the news outlets will give Facebook access to content made available only through the social network, similar to a Web app.

All Facebook reports that Forbes Mixed Media analyst Jeff Bercovici said that this service could be provided as early as September. He also added that Facebook will more than likely be receiving compensation through ad-revenue from sales as well as a percentage of sales from subscriptions.

Facebook currently has several partnerships with major movie and television studios, which offer specialized offers through the social network. Bercovici pointed out that users have the ability to rent episodes of Doctor Who from BBC through Facebook.

Facebook’s aim is mostly on Google, who also have a similar partnership in the works with news outlets in offering exclusive content, Bercovici says. Also, Facebook must now compete with Google’s own fledgling social network, Google+, which already have several news networks such as ABC, Al Jazeera English and MSNBC using the service and a rapidly growing membership base.Other tech giants have already created similar content services, like Yahoo Pulse and LinkedIn Today.

However, with roughly over 700 million people using Facebook, the social network might prove to be the leader among the pack soon enough.

This article was originally published on Digital Journal [Link]

Google News introduces badges

By Chris Hogg

I typically associate badges with anything that is gamified, Foursquare being the best and most famous example of using badges to reward someone unlocks an achievement.

But as of yesterday in the U.S., Google has added badges to its Google News service. The badges are designed to help you keep track of what type of content you engage with most, and what you most often click-through to read.

Take politics for example: If you continue to visit Google News and consume politics content, you’ll earn a badge related to that. The more content you read related to that topic, the higher level badge you’ll receive. Badges start at a bronze level and then move up to silver, gold, platinum and ultimate. Google says it has more than 500 badges available for almost any interest. Here is a sample:

As you earn more badges, they begin to show up on your Google News page and you can then use those badges to create sections related to specific content.

Badges are private by default, but you can share them with friends and use the +1 features. To get started with badges, Google says you need to visit Google News from a signed-in account with web history enabled and then visit this page on the Help Center for instructions. Google says this is just the first step of what is possible with badges.

I applaud the effort to be different, and think it could definitely help people create sections that curate content based on their interest. Readers may unconsciously know they have an addiction to Harry Potter stories, but once the badge pops up it may be a more direct confirmation. The ability to create sections on the fly based on interest, is also great.

That said, I don’t think this is a huge step forward, either. People will always drill-down into a site to find content they want or they will use a search function to get it. While the badges are good reminders and direct links to find content we want and like, I don’t think they’re much different than simply bookmarking a section you’re interested in.

Also, in its current form I’m not sure badges are the most appropriate tool to promote this activity; badges typically are rewarded to people for reaching achievements, and I don’t see this as achieving anything. It may promote increased activity among some users, but for those who truly compete to earn badges, I think this initiative fails to address the real reason people compete to unlock badges. I will be watching closely to see how this changes over time. It’s a good start, for sure.

What do you think about the new Google News badges?

CTV News Quebec City Bureau Chief quits job in 3,000-word essay

By Andrew Moran (Guest Contributor/Digital Journalist)

CTV News Quebec City Bureau Chief and former CBC News reporter, Kai Nagata, quit his job in a 3,000-word essay where he explains that he was “disillusioned” and cited a “loss of faith” in television news.

There is a lot of pressure on the average journalist to bring both interest and viewership to a news story, but the report may not bring satisfaction to the reporter. Sometimes a reporter can feel that “junk news” has become the primary goal for news outlets and real shoe leather journalism has been blown in the wind.

That one journalist is Kai Nagata.

A 24-year-old CTV News reporter, also a former correspondent for CBC News, has quit his job as a Quebec City Bureau Chief in a 3,000-word farewell letter. In the essay, Nagata cites several reasons for his abrupt resignation, including an industry that “casually sexualizes its workforce” and television news not being the “best use of my short life.”

To put to rest any claims, Nagata explained that he didn’t quit over a “falling out” with CTV management, he didn’t quit “because it was too hard” and he didn’t quit his job because his career was peaking.

Nagata does believe CTV puts together a high standard of fact checking and its editorial managers are “critical thinkers.” “But there is an underlying tension between ‘what the people want to see’ and ‘the important stories we should be bringing to people.’”He quit for several reasons.

Journalistic Priorities

“The Kate and Will Show,” which Nagata referred to as his network featured extensive coverage of the royals visiting parts of Canada for their Royal Tour.

“On a weekend where there was real news happening in Bangkok, Misrata, Athens, Washington, and around the world, what we saw instead was a breathless gaggle of normally credible journalists gushing in live hit after live hit about how the prince is young and his wife is pretty.”

Hiring Practices

Nagata believes the media/journalism industry “casually sexualizes its workforce” instead of hiring “confident, intelligent journalists.” They hire attractive talents, which seems to make up for their paucity of other qualifications.

“The idea has taken root that if the people reporting the news look like your family and neighbours, instead of Barbie and Ken, the station will lose viewers.”

Politics

Everything that Nagata wanted say to his colleagues, industry professionals and casual conversations with public officials and even his tweets “were carefully strained out.” But now since he has quit his job, he is “coming out of the closet” to say that he has problems with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

Specifically, Nagata has “serious problems” with the Canadian policy on fiscal issues, social issues, climate change, “the war against science” and its foreign policy.

“The people who are supposed to be holding decision makers to account are instead broadcasting useless tripe, or worse, stories that actively distract from the massive projects we need to be tackling instead of watching TV.

”The letter has caught the attention of several publications, including famous Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, who tweeted the letter on his Twitter account. The farewell address was republished in the Huffington Post, Rabble and J-Source.

This post was originally published on Digital Journal [link].

The Rise of In-Content Advertising

by Oliver Roup (Guest Contributor)

Today, there isn’t a strong need for consumers’ schedules to revolve around their favorite TV shows, thanks in large part to the Digital Video Recorder (DVR).  They allow viewers to record their favorite shows and play them back when it is convenient for them.  As a result, the quantity of viewers watching commercials has dropped so they just aren’t as effective as they used to be. So advertisers have stopped relying exclusively on commercials to get their message out and are increasingly turning to advertising that delivers their message directly within a program’s content (commonly referred to as product placement).  Integrating advertising into program content makes sense since program content is what viewers are truly interested in, where their attention is the most focused, and where an advertising message has the highest chance of being understood and acted upon.

The Evolution of Online Advertising
Today, we are seeing a similar transformation occur online.  Originally, banner ads were the predominant form of online advertising, as commercials were on TV.  But just as TV  commercials lost their effectiveness as consumers changed the way they watched television, banner (and even text) ads are losing their effectiveness as online readers have grown accustomed to the spaces in web pages dedicated to advertising and have started to simply ignore these areas.

To illustrate this point, let’s consider the web’s first banner ads which went live on HotWired on October 27, 1994.  The click-through rates (CTR) on some banner ads were as high as 78%.  Today however, according to Google, the average CTR of a banner ad is closer to just a fraction of one percent (0.10%).   What brought the figure down so significantly?  Consumers realized that banner ads typically didn’t contain the information they visited the web site for and they started to ignore them.

A term called banner blindness was coined to describe this phenomenon, and numerous studies (complete with eyetracking heatmaps) have confirmed its existence.  The following image demonstrates where readers’ eyes spend time on a particular web page.  It’s clear that the banner and text ads delivered above and around web content are largely ignored.

An additional challenge banner ads face is that they aren’t delivered at a time when the reader is compelled to take action.  So, even a well-designed and well-targeted banner ad may attract eyeballs but that ad won’t necessarily “convert” into an action because the reader isn’t looking for product information at that point in time.

These two limitations can be summarized as follows:

1. Banner ads are largely ignored by most website visitors.
2. Banner ads that are viewed don’t convert at a high rate because they aren’t delivered at a relevant time.

The solution to these limitations is to reach website visitors where their attention is, when they are ready to take action.  A form of advertising called in-content advertising allows advertisers to do just this.

In-Content Advertising Overview
In-content advertising is similar to the product placement advertising options businesses turned to when television commercials began to lose their effectiveness.  The category of “in-content” advertising can mean anything from tightly integrated, contextually relevant in-content links to text or banner ads placed between pieces of content.  The discussion here will focus on the former due to its stronger performance and consumer experience.

Tightly integrated in-content advertising works for the very reason that banner advertising doesn’t:

1. Website visitors see and interact with these ads. The content portion of the site is where readers spend their time and where their attention is focused.
2. Website visitors experience these ads when they are actively seeking information. Web visitors are exposed to in-content advertising when they are reading about a product, service, or company that they are interested in, or when they are seeking advice on a product purchase.

Options
There are a variety of delivery options available for this type of advertising, most of which fall into one of two general categories: link affiliation or link insertion.

Link Affiliation
Link affiliation ensures that links inserted by visitors in a social media environment, or links inserted by an author within an article or blog post, are associated with online merchants and advertisers.  Advertisers that participate in these programs pay publishers on a per-click basis (when traffic is sent via a link to their site) or on a per-sale basis (when traffic results in a purchase).

Some companies offer an automated link affiliation service that manages and optimizes link affiliation for site owners.  Alternatively, site owners can sign up directly with advertisers and advertiser networks and manage the link affiliation process on their own.

As an example of link affiliation, let’s consider a site owner who posts a movie review on his or her site and opts to link the DVD’s title to a page on eBay where visitors may purchase the movie.  eBay (the advertiser) gives incentives to publishers to send traffic to them.  If the site owner is using an automated link affiliation service or has opted to manually affiliate the link with eBay they will receive a monthly commission payment reflecting the clicks or sales the link generated.

Link Insertion
Link insertion applies algorithms to a web page to infer its content and adds links to the page that is relevant to the page content.  These links take the reader to a page on an appropriate merchant’s web site.  Vibrant Media and Kontera are the best known link insertion providers, although their solutions tend to focus more on inserting ad units (think a link with a pop-up ad).  Other services, including VigLink’s link insertion tool (Disclosure: I am the CEO of VigLink), insert product links.

Let’s revisit the example of the movie reviewer above to illustrate how link insertion services work.   Here, the movie review that is published doesn’t include a link to the DVD’s title so a reader can easily find the DVD.  Link insertion services recognize the title of the DVD and add a link to an online merchant’s site where a reader can purchase the DVD.  The publisher receives payment when their visitors click on the link or purchase the DVD and the advertiser receives additional relevant traffic and sales.

The In-Content Advertising Advantage
In-content advertising offers advantages for the publisher, the advertiser and even the consumer viewing the ad.

Because these types of ads reach consumers at a point when they are more engaged and more likely to take action, publishers are typically able to deliver high CTRs and more conversions from these types of ads.  In-content ads also introduce a new revenue stream for publishers that doesn’t require additional ad space because the ads are delivered within the content itself and don’t access the space around the content where banners are already placed.

Similarly, advertisers generally enjoy a strong ROI on these types of ads.  Ads delivered within site content reach consumers exactly when they are seeking information about a product and can be very influential in purchasing decisions.

Finally, consumers benefit from access to product information at a time when they want to be connected with a particular product, company, or service (and of course if they wish not to be, they are still welcome to ignore these recommendations).  Thus, these ads are more likely to be considered useful information as opposed to marketing “noise.”

Concluding Thoughts
The way advertisers elect to communicate with consumers is evolving as the way that consumers seek and digest information changes.  Delivering advertising between slices of television programs during commercial breaks used to be effective, but this is no longer the case and advertisers have evolved to deliver advertising within the program itself.

The way consumers are locating information online is also changing drastically.  Consumers tend to ignore banner ads, preferring social media sites, online forums and blog content to help them make purchasing decisions.  In-content advertising leverages this monumental change in a way that benefits advertisers, publishers and consumers alike.  It is an advertising form that has all the makings to be the web’s next big advertising frontier.

Oliver Roup is the founder and CEO of VigLink, a service that allows online publishers to earn money from the content on their site.  Previously, he was a Director at Microsoft in charge of product for various media properties including XBOX Live Video Marketplace, Zune Marketplace and MSN Entertainment. Oliver was also an early employee at Internet Radio pioneer Echo Networks and has worked for Paul Allen at Vulcan, for iPlayer at the BBC and for the Founders Fund. Oliver has issued and pending patents covering micro-transactions, media and metadata. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from MIT and his MBA from the Harvard Business School.