Food for thought: Latin Americans online

From CyberJournalist.net
QuePasa.com Spearheads Citizen Journalism for Latinos
"QuePasa.com introduces QuePasa News Network, the first online Latino Citizen Journalism News Channel"

I believe that Latin American publications in the U.S. have dismissed online development for a long time. Yeah, there are websites, but they do not develop online content as far English American websites do.

While working in South Florida, I was told that the audience online just wasn't there for Latino media. Latinos don't go online, so why should we develop.

You should develop, because Latin Americans are not going to go through the same process of adoption of technology as English Americans. Latin Americans will make incredible leaps in a shorter periods of time.

For a long time, English American media has been going, "Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap!... What are we going to do? How do we manage this beast?" English American media has taken a reactive approach, instead of a proactive approach.

QuePasa.com is a major development in Latin American media. This marks the transition from proactive to reactive. Over the next couple of months and years, there will be a string of developments with Latin American media.

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Case study: The Czechs and technology adoption

My mother, a Czech, had no cable television, no television, no call waiting and used dial up for a long time. She only used the internet to check her email. (She had no understanding of the work that I do.)

After visiting the Czech Republic in January, I discovered that her sisters, who are not of a high wealth status and live in a rural area, not only had high speed internet, but they regularly used Skype and played RPGs that also them to interact with Germans, Italians and Slovaks.

I returned to the U.S. and shared this information with my mother. Over the summer, she called me to tell me she upgraded to high speed. I will never forget what she told me...

Mom: "Joo vill nehverrr giss vat I 'ave!" (You will never guess what I have)
Me: "What's that?"
Mom: "I git fast interrrnet! Aund... I can talk un de phun aund be un de internet et de same time. Can joo beeleaf dis?" (I get fast internet! And.... I can talk on the phone and be on the internet at the same time. Can you believe this?)
 
She saw my work for the first time.

Her decision to adopt came as a reaction from technological advancements in her own country. After talking to her, she explained to me that it was more influential to her, because she felt that as a Czech-American, she is suppose to be more advanced than a Czech in the Czech Republic.

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We need to look at how Latin media outside of the U.S. is developing and how it is being used to know where to develop Latin media in the U.S..

Also, we need to take into consideration, the age of my mother (sorry mom) and the age of most Latin Americans in the U.S.. My mother does not have the exposure to technology in her age, but most Latin Americans in the U.S. are younger than her. They are working adults with families. They have children, who are attending school. Think about how much technology has penetrated out schools.

QuePasa.com is a natural fit. Family and friends are important to Latin Americans, and it gives them a means to reinforce those connections.

We need to stop being passive about this and starting active, because it too late to be proactive. That time is over. It is reactive from here on out.

Web link

The Web is your Web site; search is your navigation
"... A journalism organization’s value will be measured by, for example, “content views” or “time spent on content” instead of page views or time spent on page..."

Nature of the beast

This week's shift left little time to breath. Besides what reporters handed me, I did not  time for extra extras, but I did have time to learn the nature of the beast.
In general, TV stations are behind print media in web development. The major factor lies in deadline structures.
Print newsroom often work for days and for larger stories, weeks, in advance. This gives time for the writer to communicate with interactive department on the development of content.
Broadcast newsrooms work day to day, sometimes even often hour to hour. This gives little room for an interactive department to develop in-depth content for the web.
TV news has special super powers, something that print will never have. TV viewers are more likely to multi-task while consuming media. According to eMarketer, in 2006, 102.6 million adult internet users also watched tv while going online.
WHOA! WHOA! HO! HO! Stop the presses! 102.6 million! What are we doing here people? Why are we not paying more attention to not only 102.6 million, but a 102.6 million which is a captive audience?
Imagine this. Scenario 1: John reads an article in the newspaper, sees a tease for a web extra in print, tears it out and shoves it in his pocket to view later. Scenario 2: Jane is watching TV and she see a plug for more content on the web. In a heighten emotional state of fear, she thinks, "If I don't visit now, then this opportunity will be lost forever." Jane then visits the site. As for John, he never made it to the site, because next time he sees the web tease he tore out, it is shriveled up and dried out, because it just came out of the drier.

Media companies need to turn away from the convenience of creating web content for their print outlets and start pushing resources towards their TV stations. On the station level, web departments need to start developing applications that process content can be packaged under tight deadlines, because that is the nature of the beast.

Image sources:
"Internet's impact chart" was taken from Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists published by the Pew Research Center.
"US Adult Internet Users Who Use Other Media While Going Online, 2006 (millions)" was taken from Two-Thirds of Internet Users Watch TV While Surfing the Net published by eMarketer.

Technies ousted by social networking?

The cat is out of the bag. The techies lost control. Digg is looking into Social Networking to recognize articles.
Digg Goes Deeper with Social Networking

Crazy ideas

Imagine using this (still buggy) tool to deliver news. The whole world could change.
Zap Reader

Free news at midnight tonight

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York ...
I knew it wasn't going to last. It goes against everything the internet stands for.

Buzz Machine's take on the matter: Mo who?

News aggregation for Dummies

Once when walking through a book store with a friend, out path was blocked by a large table of banana yellow books all the same size and shape, all with the word DUMMIES. My friend picked up the first book she saw and turned to me and said, "Just what we need, more dummies getting pregnant." I think we spent a hour next to that table, just trying to find the most ridiculous way to complete the sentence, "Just what we need, more dummies XXXXXX." Living Longer for Dummies, Doing Business in China for Dummies, Sucess for Dummies, Consulting for Dummies, The Complete MBA for Dummies.... the list goes on pretty far. It is like that series of books became a disease of topics over night.

I think the same the has happened with news aggregators. I can't find it, but I know the book must exist, Creating Your Own News Aggregator for Dummies. Now it seems like everyone and their brother has one. I just stumbled across Myspace's news aggregator.
Myspace News
New Media - MySpace News

Yes, they are mixing the idea of news aggregation and Digg, which is different from prior ideas. Personally, I just don't think that Myspace is going to make as a "reliable" source of news. Myspace rough around the edges. I get a certain tabloid-like vibe from them. I have been turned off by the site, because every time, I log in I end up with a bunch of spam messages.

People on the web are comparing them to Digg. It's like apples and oranges. Digg fans are going to go to Digg for the Easter Eggs that are posted. They can get aggregated news from anywhere.

My conclusion... if you want aggregated news, you are going to go to Google. If you want voted news, you are going to go to Digg. So, where does Myspace fit in?

More links about Myspace's News Beta
MySpace News: The Digg Killer 03/08/07
Exclusive: MySpace News Pics 03/13/07
Do you think myspace's just released news aggregator can compete with Digg? Is it a "Digg Killer"? (Online Poll) 04/19/07

Googlinians and Yahooites

My fiance, Josh, and I are sort of an odd couple. We met back in my undergraduate days while I was working nights at the Columbia Daily Tribune. He was and is a pressman, and  I worked in post press operations and went to school during the day for photojournalism. He proposed to me, then I became an interneti.

When I went webbie, we joked about the irony of our career paths. Then one day recently I suggested taking my idea for my master's project to Google or Yahoo. This is how our conversation went.
.......
Josh - "What? What am I going to do?"

Me - "Baby, they have to have some sort of printed publication near by that you can work for."

Josh - "No they won't! You don't understand what those places are like. There will be no place for me. They have their own cities with names like Google Town and Yahoo City. Do you think that they have printed publications in place like that. I'll bet you they don't. I'll bet you they don't even have recycling pick up for paper, because they just don't have any."

Me - "Baby, if I am going develop this series of mapping idea for news organizations, I think Yahoo or Google would be the best places. I don't want to waste my time developing a concept, when it could already be in the works."

Josh - "What happens if everything turns out? What happens if you stay? How will you hide me? You are going to have to tell your co-workers one day what I do for a living?"

Me - "Baby, you are being silly."

Josh - "All those Googlinians and Yahooites are going to mock me*. They won't even let me on the compound. I can't even work the elliptical machine at the gym, let alone a computer. They will know I am a fake.... After you finish your project, you will exit the techno, Mormon-like cult compound to tell me that you are going to leave me for some Drew Carey look-alike**. I'll bet you those places are full of them."

Me - "Baby stop, you are being ridiculous."

Josh - "Next thing you know, you will take my Histoogle idea, sell it too Google and leave me."

Me - (Me LOL.) "How am I suppose to take you seriously? I'm done with conversation. I'm going to back to work."

Josh - "Are you mocking my Histoogle idea?"

(Me exits stage left.)
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*This sentence has been edited for professional purposes. Josh agreed to this edit. The original content contained a few curse words and sexual references.
**Please refer to the YouTube video of Ben Clemens, Director, Yahoo Design Innovations, in my last posting. A friend asked me, aren't you afraid to post a comment like that, especially since you are planning on pitching your project to Yahoo and Google. I told her that the best places I have worked at were so because I got along with my co-workers so well, no matter how much money I did or didn't make. I would like to think that a co-worker or supervisor would be flattered by such a comment. Then I continued to explain, that it was my fiance, not I who said it, and that I have nothing for or against Drew Carey look-alikes.

Search bursts and news websites

Yahoo is studying patterns of search bursts. Search bursts are clusters of searches that originate from one geographical area. At Wired's Next Fest, Ben Clemens, Director, Yahoo Design Innovations, and Online Journalism Review's Noah Barron discuss how this could be used news websites.



Ben Clemens, Director, Yahoo Design Innovations at Next Fest
YouTube - Ben Clemens at Next Fest

The original ORJ article: Not all that Wired about it: Communication technology gets the short end at NextFest

Thinking hacks

A breath of fresh air...

scottberkun.com » #56 - Creative thinking hacks

"...Here’s a test: quickly pick two things in front of you, say this web browser and your annoying, smelly friend Rupert. Now close your eyes and imagine different ways to combine them.

If you’re stuck, here are three:

1. Rupert with a minimize button
2. An annoying, smelly web browser
3. Web browsing on, or with, Rupert’s face..."

User comments, a broken system

Google added the option to comment on news stories, but only by those mentioned in the story. Read more: Google News Adds Barely 100 Comments in 30 days

Good? Bad? I can see where they are going with it. After monitoring boards during some of my internships, they can get out of control in numbers and in content. On the linked blog above, there were a couple comments made that suggest everyone should be able to comment and those mentioned in the article should be noted so.

I was always an advocate for a user ranking system, sort of like Yahoo Answers or system similar to that which the Naples Daily News uses. In both situations users are able to vote comments up or down. If a comment receives so many negative votes, it is blocked out, but not deleted. A user has to consciously click "view" to view the comment. I am not sure why more media outlets do not use such a system. While it is not full proof, it does assist with a great deal of the monitoring, well, at least more than an automated system that tries to deny in appropriate language.

Google's system does add to a story. It takes what is a journalist "conversation" potentially into a debate, but as one person mentioned in a comment on the blog, the comments become less genuine and can come of PR-ish.

Shall it be spelled GoogleAP or Googleap?

Welcome to a new world of Googleap.
Google will now host AP news, instead of linking off to other websites. This will translate as a revenue loss. See > Time to rethink the AP model? - Lost Remote TV Blog
So maybe this is not Googlezon, but for news media it is still kind of scary. Maybe we slow down with pulling stuff of the wires for the website as a result? Wasn't the notion always to have something, so if we don't have something, let's hope the wires do?

Bio writing 101

Bios are awkward. It’s like going on a first day. How far do you go before you gone too far? How personal should you get? How much professionally related content do you include? How long do you make? It’s an odd thing to write about yourself. Do you use the first person? Do you use the third person?

It the end, they all say the same thing. They identify education, major experience and sometimes family or they are only two sentences long. I usually never get passed the first two sentences.

During the redesign of my website, I thought about what do with my bio. Your biography is important, because it is that extra spot on your website to say something that you couldn’t fit anywhere else. It is the chance roll in Yatzee.

My bio will be built from quotes that came out of my mouth over the next month. This way, people can learn not only something about me, but about the real me. After I collect all my quotes, I will reassess the situation to make sure I am not hanging myself.

This is what I have collected so far…

“My inspiration as a journalist came at a very young age. My parents couldn’t afford diapers, so they wrapped me up in newspapers. I have the scars to prove it.”

“During middle school, my first exposure to interactivity came when I made a folded paper fortune-tell (a.k.a. Cootie Cather, a.k.a. Gadalotschka, a.k.a. Heaven and Hell, a.k.a. Nebo Peklo, a.k.a. Spå or Spålapp) out of newspaper. Today, might ask a question like, ‘Who will be the next member of President Bush’s staff to resign?’”

Wired.com pre-time stamping stories?

Okay, I just discovered an article on Wired.com's website, that is time stamped for 2 a.m. tomorrow morning. I found the pre-time stamped article at about 11:10 p.m. today.

Link to the article.
Here is a screenshot...


Is this something that is happening at other places? Hit me up, if you know of any other occasions that this has happened.
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This part was added at 11:41 p.m.....

I went back to Wired.com and found out that it is a Wired.com practice. It has been done on more than one article. I wonder if this is a general practice for Conde Nast Publishing or if this is just a Wired.com practice.

Another photo of pre-time stamping proof: