Over the years, many authors have tried versions of the online donation model, with mixed results. But one specific genre of writers, speculative fiction, seems to be experiencing a moderate level of success.

Back in 2000, Stephen King became one of the first major authors to offer a book online using an "honor system" to solicit donations. The book was called "The Plant," and was based on a series of chapbooks King had sent around to his friends in the '80s. He placed the first chapter in various downloadable formats on his website, and downloaders were expected to donate $1 by mail or credit card. King said that as long as 75 percent of readers donated, he would continue to post new chapters.

According to news reports, the first few chapters either reached or nearly reached that 75 percent threshold, though the second chapter fell as low as 70 percent. Eventually, King raised the price to $2 per chapter. To compensate for this increase, he published more pages at a time. I was among the King fans who dutifully mailed in money each time I downloaded a new chapter.

But King's system was flawed in several ways. First, 75 percent is a fairly high threshold to meet. Plus, he counted every single download, so if someone downloaded the PDF but then had to switch to the plain text version, King counted these as two separate downloads. He wanted his $2 (or $4 for later chapters.)

Eventually, the donation rate fell below 50 percent and King abandoned the project, promising to return to it at a later date. He hasn't. Compared to the sales of most mid-list authors, the experiment was a huge success -- at one point King wrote on his site that it had generated several hundred thousand dollars -- but a piece in the New York Times inferred that it was a failure. Still, it garnered huge press attention because of its novelty. The question remains: could this be a viable business model for future works?

Success With Speculative Fiction

In early 1999, author John Scalzi (of the popular Whatever blog) released his book, "Agent to the Stars," as a "shareware novel."

"People could read it, and if they liked it, they could send me a dollar, or whatever sum they liked (even if that sum was zero)," Scalzi wrote of the experiment. "If they didn't like it, well, clearly, they wouldn't have to send me anything. It was a no-risk proposition for the reader. I didn't expect to see a dime from it, but as it turns out, over five years I made about $4,000."

Author Tim Pratt recently turned to the donation model after unsuccessfully shopping around a novella to small press publishers. The large publisher Bantam Spectra publishes his Marla Mason series, and Pratt developed an idea for a smaller work set within that same universe. The work wasn't a full novel, yet it was also too long for short fiction magazines. After the small presses passed, Pratt put off the project -- until his wife was laid off from her job.

"When I saw that [author Catherynne Valente] was trying [the donation model], I thought that I would, and the obvious thing was to write this thing that I already had," he said. "If I knew what the story was going to be, I knew functionally it was just a piping exercise really."

Pratt began publishing the chapters on his blog without any preconditions as to how much money had to be donated before subsequent chapters would be released.

"I would say that most the people reading it are fans of my series," he explained. "But, certainly, some of the donors in the first couple of weeks were people who just felt for my situation, people who saw an opportunity to help us out. It's sort of a good excuse to let people give you charity."

Pratt didn't provide exact figures for how many people have donated, but said he's made more than he would have if one of the small publishers had picked it up. Some of the people gave one large donation, while others donated in small bits as new chapters were released. For the first few weeks, he had four or five new donors a day. Now, several chapters into it, he gets perhaps four or five new donors a week. I asked him if he viewed this as a sustainable business model for established authors who have built-in fan bases.

"It's hard for me to say because I don't know how much of the response to this has been based solely on its novelty," Pratt replied. "It's usually not that common of a thing, especially with books in existing universes that have come out from other publishers...I think going directly to your fans is something that writers should be open to -- an increasing number of musicians are doing it -- but with this particular project, I don't know if it's something I'd necessarily repeat."

'I Can't Do Without My Chapter'

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller went a slightly different -- and perhaps more business savvy -- route when they began releasing one of their works in late 2006. The writing team has been collaborating on projects for years, and in December of that year they began having difficulties with one of their publishers.

"We announced ... that we were going to write this side book, and put it out on the Internet," said Lee. "And the rules were that the first chapter went up for free, anyone could read it. The second chapter would depend on it earning $300, and people could donate as much or as little as they wanted. They could donate 50 cents, or the sky is the limit. And when it got to $300, we'd turn it out into the wild and anyone could read it again. By the time we started releasing the book on the Internet, it was January 2007 and we had five chapters already written. The book was well paid for before we were halfway through [publishing] the book."

Donors who gave a minimum of $25 were guaranteed a free print edition of the book, if one was ever released. They said approximately 1,066 donors reached this threshold.

"About the fifth week, we had an occasion to be a little late [in releasing a chapter], and people began to worry that we weren't going to post," said Miller. "And pretty soon people were setting their clocks in Australia at the right time to get it when the chapter was supposed to come out, and we were getting notes from people saying 'I can't do without my chapter this week.' "

As former newspaper reporters, the duo said that this is the kind of project for someone who is adept at writing on deadlines; otherwise, the author risks falling behind or becoming disheartened by a lack of results. Though Lee felt this could be a good business model for authors with established fan bases, she said it probably wouldn't be viable for amateur authors trying to build a following.

Cory Doctorow's Experiment

Though many writers are just starting to experiment with this new format, there's at least one notable author who's ready to compare its effectiveness to traditional publishing. Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and co-editor of the popular Boing Boing blog, has released several books under Creative Commons licenses. He believed that the free publicity resulting from this strategy would lead to higher print sales. Recently, he announced plans to bypass traditional publishing completely, and then publish his results for all to see.

"Here's the pitch: the book is called 'With a Little Help,'" he wrote in Publisher's Weekly. "It's a short story collection, and like my last two collections, it's a book of reprints from various magazines and other places (with one exception, more about which later). Like my other collections, it will be available for free on the day it is released. And like my last collection, 'Overclocked,' it won't have a traditional publisher."

The book will be put out through a variety of self-published formats -- ranging from e-book, to audiobook, to print -- and Doctorow will record all the income that it generates, whether it's from donations, speaking gigs, or even the money paid for his Publisher's Weekly column on the experiment.

"There's plenty more details, of course -- how I'm going to use Twitter, what I'm going to do to get this into bookstores, the marketing and publicity plan," Doctorow wrote. "But I'm out of space for this month -- and many of those details will fill a column on their own. One thing I need to mention, though: I'm seriously considering writing a book about the experiment, no matter how it turns out, selling it to a traditional publisher and adding the advance to the balance sheet."

Simon Owens is a social media consultant and associate editor for MediaShift. For more about him read his blog or contact him at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com

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It's been over a year now since the arrest of Hossein Derakhshan, popularly known as Hoder. Ever since he wrote the first Persian-language blogging guide in November 2001, he has helped pioneer the Iranian blogging community while living in his adopted home of Toronto. (Derakhshan is a dual citizen of Iran and Canada.)

However, beginning in 2006, Derakhshan's views started changing. He called for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and engaged in personal attacks against people that he disagreed with politically. He was even sued for libel by another Iranian in September 2007.

A year later, he returned to his homeland for the second time in nearly ten years. While there, he continued to espouse very nationalistic views. His family had advised against his return, but Derakhshan went anyway, and was arrested on November 1, 2008.

This is the story of how he got to this point, and an examination of the lack of information his family has received from Iranian and Canadian authorities up until this point.

This original audio report for MediaShift is based on interviews with people who knew Derakhshan in Iran, and archival tape of interviews conducted with Derakhshan:

You can read Derakhshan's blog, which is now offline, via the Internet Archive.

Addendum

Earlier this week, MetaFilter, users discovered that Hoder.com was set to expire at the end of this month. They wanted to make sure it stayed in Derakhshan's name. Some users suggested that the registrar wouldn't allow the domain to be renewed unless Derakhshan did it himself, which was of course impossible. However, later in the day, the domain's whois records showed that it had been renewed it for a year, though it was unclear how or why it had happened. It ends up that GoDaddy stepped in to renew the domain for him. Read my report on what happened.

Cyrus Farivar is an Iranian-American freelance technology journalist, a freelance radio reporter/producer, and is a wanderlust geek who lives in the city of Oakland, California. He regularly reports for National Public Radio, The World (WGBH/PRI/BBC), and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He also freelances for The Economist, Foreign Policy, Slate, The New York Times, Popular Mechanics, and Wired. He is currently working on a book, "The Internet of Elsewhere," about the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world, including Senegal, Iran, Estonia and South Korea. It is due out from Rutgers University Press in 2010.

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What determines a successful community? The number of unique visitors or page views? The number of comments?

Those metrics can be important, but there are also qualitative aspects to consider. Are the discussions on your site respectful and insightful? Are members deriving value from the community? Or are you hosting flame wars that lack intelligence and decorum?

In order to create a community of quality, perhaps it makes sense to cut down on quantity, and create an exclusive members-only structure. Few media companies have done a better job of building this kind of exclusive community than the Financial Times. Its Long Room was created as part of the paper's FT Alphaville blog. The Long Room is an "exclusive comment and analysis arena, where finance professionals are invited to share their research and offer thoughts on the work of others."

In order to learn more about how the Long Room has created an exclusive community of value, I spoke with New York-based Alphaville editor Paul Murphy.

Some Background and Context

It's important to first understand that Alphaville and the Financial Times are unique properties. The newspaper's website, FT.com, has a frequency-based pay wall. This means you can read a set number of articles for free, but have to subscribe if you exceed that number.

However, Alphaville is a free daily news and commentary service. Its mission is to give "financial market professionals the information they need, when they need it." On a typical day, the blog gets between 40,000 and 50,000 unique visitors. It generates roughly 500,000 uniques per month.

Alphaville was launched roughly three years ago. Murphy said the goal is to serve a community of "deep specialists in their respective areas. They know more than we journalists know."

In addition to the blog, Alphaville offers email newsletters, news alerts, and Markets Live, a kind of chat session where two journalists instant message each other about the financial markets. (The community can also add comments in real time.) Alphaville also regularly links to news and reporting generated by other media outlets.

"We are a blog and we acknowledge that people are promiscuous," Murphy said. "So we tell them what to read elsewhere if they have half an hour of spare time, and we tell them what they should read in the FT. Being financial professionals, it's a navigational service. We allow them to sample."

The Long Room

The Long Room exists as an extension of Alphaville. It is "an exclusive comment and analysis arena, where finance professionals are invited to share their research and offer thoughts on the work of others." It is free to join, if you can get through the vetting process to be accepted.

The Long Room was inspired by a famous restaurant in the City of London that was a favorite haunt of financial pundits and market movers during the 1980s. The online version of the Long Room aims to be as exclusive as the real-world place. The site says it clearly: "The Long Room is reserved for financial professionals and for people with a clear understanding of how financial markets and products work. Our members-only policy and application vetting process allow us to ensure that these criteria are met."

Indeed, when a colleague of mine applied for membership, he received a call from London informing him that he had been accepted. But they also told him that he could not report the discussions taking place in the Long Room. "What happens in the Long Room stays in the Long Room," he was told.

Murphy confirms the application process is taken seriously. In fact, he handles many applications personally. He said the Long Room's exclusivity and careful vetting process have helped it reach the target group of financial experts and decision-makers: "I'm really impressed by the seniority of the people applying for the Long Room," he said.

Listening to the Community

The Long Room is an example of how intimate knowledge of a community can lead to a compelling service. The Alphaville team discovered that there was a willingness among financial specialists to share ideas and research, and so they created a safe place that encouraged them to do so.

"We simulated the way groups of financial professionals operate in the real world: in small email communities of 20 to 30 people," Murphy said. "They are trading research and commentary, and we wanted this functionality [as part of the Long Room]."

Murphy said the sharing of research and insight had to be done "in a walled garden in order to give them a certain comfort level."

The discussions inside the Long Room are organized using topic-specific "tables," such as those dedicated to market strategy or finance 2.0. Members can apply to host a table. So far, Murphy said, everyone is getting along well. (He mentioned one case when a person was kicked out because they engaged in constant self-promotion.)

Why it Works

Alphaville has been profitable since its earliest days. "It's a very light structure, especially compared to a newspaper, which typically requires a massive industrial process," Murphy said. The Long Room also enables the Financial Times to gather important insight about its readers. This information helps the paper sell itself -- and its special community -- to advertisers.

Alphaville also helps the Financial Times enhance its position as a hub for the financial community in London and beyond. This unique focus is a big factor in the structure and success of the Long Room. Financial professionals need timely and correct information, and so they can't ignore the Financial Times (or the Wall Street Journal).

But the question remains whether or not this kind of exclusive community could work at other newspapers and news organizations.

For his part, Murphy has no doubt.

"The model is applicable elsewhere, whether we talk about cycling or tennis communities," he said.

*****

What's your take on this "exclusive" strategy? Do you think it's elitist, or that it introduces an element of civility in online interactions? Could this strategy be used by other media organizations? Finally, a last question for the MediaShift community: could this approach help media to survive financially?

Roland Legrand is in charge of Internet and new media at Mediafin, the publisher of leading Belgian business newspapers De Tijd and L'Echo. He studied applied economics and philosophy. After a brief teaching experience, he became a financial journalist working for the Belgian wire service Belga and subsequently for Mediafin. He works in Brussels, and lives in Antwerp with his wife Liesbeth.

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For anyone who has suffered through reading the entire AP Stylebook for a journalism class, there's a cathartic release when reading the dry wit of the @FakeAPStylebook feed on Twitter. It combines parody of the journalism usage bible with funny repartee and the absurd. That mix has brought amazing success to the people behind the feed: more than 40,000 followers in 15 days, plus they've scored a literary agent for a book deal.

Here are some of my favorite recent tweets from @FakeAPStylebook:

> STAR WARS Episodes IV-VI are to be referred to as "The Original Trilogy." Episodes I-III are not to be referred to at all.

> When there's no more room in Hell, omit the final paragraphs to save space.

> When composing a story about strange murders, always refuse to believe the kids until it's too late.

> It is poor newsroom etiquette to throw yourself out of the window to prove that your co-worker is Superman.

While Callie Kimball was touting her sleuthing prowess in uncovering the identities of the folks behind the feed for Wired Epicenter, I simply emailed them and asked them to tell me their story. The two main guys behind @FakeAPStylebook are Ken Lowery, a copy editor at United Methodist Reporter in Dallas, and Mark Hale, an unemployed friend of Lowery's in Louisville, Ky. They work with a motley crew of contributors online called "The Bureau Chiefs." Here's a rundown of who they are:

David Campbell, 40, Seattle, Wash. -- copywriter, ArenaNet
Andrew Otis Weiss, 37, Woburn, Mass. -- communications specialist

David Lartigue, 41, Springfield, Mass. -- database whatzit (not technically a DBA)

Kevin Church, 35, Somerville, Mass. -- online marketing specialist

Dorian Wright, 34, Santa Barbara, Calif. -- currently unemployed

Mike Sterling, 40, Oxnard, Calif. -- manager, Ralph's Comic Corner

Chris Sims, 27, Columbia, S.C. -- freelance writer

Benjamin Birdie, 33, Astoria, NY -- graphic designer

Josh Krach, 35, Las Vegas, Nev. -- freelance designer

John DiBello, New York City -- national Internet account manager, W.W. Norton

Dr. Andrew Kunka, 39, Florence, S.C. -- associate professor of English, USC-Sumter

R.J. White, 34, Philadelphia -- manager of media relations

Matt Wilson, 26, Chattanooga, Tenn. -- reporter

Anna Neatrour, 34, Salt Lake City -- librarian

Eugene Ahn, Washington DC, 29 -- attorney

Shane Michael Bailey, 32, Jacksonville, Fla. -- web designer/developer

Here's an edited transcript of my phone conference call with Lowery and Hale. We spoke about how the feed became an overnight sensation, what a potential book will be like, and their fears of legal trouble with the Associated Press.

How did the idea come about for @FakeAPStylebook?

Ken Lowery: I just became aware of the real @APStylebook Twitter feed, and sent the link to Mark because he was a journalism student at one time, and I thought it might interest him. He had said, "I don't know if I'm sad or relieved that this is not a fake account" because there are so many joke accounts for celebrities. That's when the inspiration struck. We passed back and forth a few jokes, and put them on out Twitter feeds and asked our own followers if they thought it was a good idea. We got a "yes" so we went ahead with it.

Tell me more about the group working on the Twitter joke feeds?

Mark Hale: A lot of us have joke Twitter feeds: Ken has two or three, one of our other contributors has at least three, and I had one I abandoned a couple months ago because I couldn't sustain it. This was in that same vein, but it hit a nerve with more people than anything we had done.

Ken Lowery: I've done some before... with some success. @Zombiehorde has about 600 followers, and is the articulate thoughts of a bunch of zombies. Then there is @ThisReallyHurts, which has 200 followers and is just a guy describing extreme pain, which is a dumb gag but it seems to work for some people. The same group latching onto this new joke [of @FakeAPStylebook] really took off.

How do you guys operate as a group? Do you use instant messaging?

Hale: It's basically an email list through Google Groups. It's funny to me how popular email lists have become again. They were pretty popular in the mid-'90s and tapered off, but they serve us quite well. We always have our instant messaging windows open, so people are always saying, 'how about this?' or 'how about that?'

Lowery: We have the Google Group going and we have a few threads established. [There's] one for the open submissions thread, one for open questions when people ask the Fake AP questions. We link to the question and all throw out answers, and we're able to suggest responses, tweak them, and fine-tune them. Mark and I are basically the editors but as far as the actual creative part goes, it's a roundtable.

What happened after you launched the feed, and how fast did you get a big following?

Lowery: The first day we got upwards of 1,000 followers, which was explosive and way more than we expected. Then, Wednesday morning, the next day, Newsweek's Twitter feed mentioned it, and it just boomed completely out of control after that. A few blogs like the Chicago Tribune's [Eric Zorn] have basically been quoting stuff because it makes them laugh. That's how it's gone since then. By Saturday, four days in, we had about 9,000 followers.

Hale: By that Sunday, after being live for about a week, we passed the real @APStylebook feed. We don't want to be egomaniacal, but...

Lowery: We were just looking for a metric at that point because it seemed so crazy and out of control. 'How do we measure our success here?' And that was it. Late last week, we hit a terminal velocity and it slowed down a little bit. But got a fresh round of [sign-ups] after the Wired article and a couple other articles. It's begun anew.

Hale: We've officially passed the population of my small hometown, New Albany, Ind., according to the 2000 census figures. It's across the river from Louisville.

When did you first hear from literary agents?

Lowery: I think it was day two. It was Thursday, which is when we heard from the first one, who we eventually went with. Then we heard from another on Friday, and since then, we've heard from five or six more. Kate McKean at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency was the one we chose.

Hear them talk about their excitement when they heard that comedian Michael McKean liked their feed:

Why do you think out of all the things you've done that this one has resonated with so many people

Lowery: Initially, the first popularity came from journalists who said, "I needed this" or "this made my week" or "this is very cathartic." My own highfalutin theory is that journalists have taken a pretty bad beating the past few years in public perception and job security, and this is a way to goof off without being mean or cynical. It's been journalists, salespeople, marketing people, English teachers, students, and fans of word humor [following us].

Did all the contributors meet online?

Hale: I think some of us know each other in real life. I've never met any of them in person.

Lowery: Same here. We're pretty well scattered all over the country. We initially hooked up because we're all big nerds. At one point we all ran comic book blogs just goofing on comic books. We did all our own blogs, but commented on each other's blogs over the years. Through that we developed a friendship, a writer's workshop, whatever you want to call it.

How will the book be formatted? Will it contain tweets and some original material as well? Will it look like the actual AP Stylebook?

Hale: It won't look so much like the official book. It will take a subject, say entertainment, and then it will tell you how to cover obituaries of celebrities, how to approach closeted gay celebrities, how to review a fine art piece, and a glossary, which will be more like the actual guide.

Lowery: The way we have it mapped out now is there will be a sections like sports, entertainment, medicine, etc., with tips on writing up front, and then a glossary of terms that looks more like the Stylebook and the Twitter feed. The stuff we've put together so far for the entertainment chapter is about 75 percent or 85 percent original material that hasn't gone live.

Hear Lowery talk about the tone of the @FakeAPStylebook feed as a faceless voice of authority:

Have you heard from people at the AP about what you're doing, and do you have a fear that they might come after you?

Lowery: We have fans who are AP reporters. We were approached early on by an AP reporter to do a story about us, but nothing came of it. We are talking about changing the name if and when the book becomes a reality. Part of the bind is that this is how people know us now. If we change it too much, then we could potentially lose everyone... We're already thinking about it and tossing around ideas, but some of this might be up to the agent or publisher.

*****

What do you think about @FakeAPStylebook? What are your favorite tweets from them? Share your thoughts and favorites in the comments below.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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With the 2010 U.S. elections coming into view, many people are looking for more information about the people running for office -- and the individuals and organizations funding these candidates.

Fortunately, there are dozens of initiatives that mine and share the data that influence policy and policy-makers. Many are funded by The Sunlight Foundation, which aims to use "the revolutionary power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the federal government more meaningfully accessible to citizens."

Below are 10 innovative government transparency projects that employ powerful online databases to make political data accessible (and, in many cases, fun as well). They serve as examples of Public Media 2.0 by providing much-needed intelligence about the relationships between officials, corporations, and policy-makers.

10 Watchdog Projects to Watch

1. Watchdog
Billed as "The Good Government Site with Teeth," Watchdog is a non-profit, foundation-funded project that uses open source software to aggregate government data -- including census information, campaign disclosures, and voting records -- in a single location. In addition to allowing users to search for data by location or officials' names, Watchdog also encourages people to take direct action by contacting their government representatives, and signing and creating online petitions.

2. SourceWatch
A project from the Center for Media and Democracy, SourceWatch is a wiki-style "directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda," including public relations firms, think tanks, activist groups, industry-backed "experts," and government agencies. According to the website, "the goal of SourceWatch is to create the largest and most up-to-date guide in history, both in terms of breadth and depth." As of October 24, the site had 47,321 articles. Interestingly, SourceWatch does not adhere to a "neutral point of view" policy (like Wikipedia), although it does provide guidelines for contributors, and a paid staff of editors oversees the content.



3. Follow the Money

Follow the Money, an initiative from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, is an excellent resource for political funding information at the state level. The site includes comprehensive data, maps, charts, and graphs about lobbyists and government spending. Some of their creative tools include data visualizations such as Pulse, which demonstrates the "correlative relationship between money, incumbency, and winning"; c50, which compares the competitiveness of elections in all 50 states; and Contributions Timeline, which explores campaign contributions over specific periods of time. The site includes plenty of other innovative tools, as well as APIs and widgets.

4. Little Sis
Public Accountability Initiative's Little Sis is the antidote to Big Brother. It's an "involuntary Facebook" for government officials. This user-edited, social networking database profiles close to 30,000 current and former government officials, lobbyists and major corporate executives. It also includes close to 12,000 organizations, including lobbying firms and Fortune 1000 companies. The site provides data about these individuals and organizations, but its primary focus is on exposing the relationships between them (13,8871 relationships are currently highlighted). Little Sis has developed some interesting data visualizations, including this one (see a portion of that above). They are currently working on APIs and becoming an open-source project.



5. OpenCongress

An initiative from the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation, OpenCongress uses open source tools to track bills, representatives, funding, and votes. There are plenty of interactive and social networking features on the site. Users are encouraged to discuss, evaluate and vote on bills, as well as provide approval ratings for members of Congress. Registered users can create their own "My OpenCongress" customized portal to track their personal Congressional interests. OpenCongress also features a host of innovative tools, including state and district portals, a head-to-head voting comparison tool, various widgets, and Battle Royale, an aggregated list of the most popular happenings in My OpenCongress.



6. OpenSecrets

OpenSecrets is a large-scale database project from the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that has analyzed money in American politics for over 25 years. The site includes national, state and local political funding information, and provides news and analysis in the form of reports and blogs. The My OpenSecrets tool allows regular users to keep track of their watchdogging. OpenSecrets also offers resources for developers, and widgets that track campaign spending and industry contributions.

7. GovTrack.us
GovTrack.us is an open source database tool created by Civic Impulse, LLC. It tracks members of Congress, bills, voting records and Congressional committees. Users can employ "trackers" -- such as bill trackers, people trackers, subject trackers, and committee trackers -- to follow specific happenings, as well as create personalized "tracked events" pages. It offers widgets and APIs. GovTrack.us was launched in 2004, two years before the Sunlight Foundation formed. It was a source of inspiration for the current government transparency database movement.

8. MAPLight
MAPLight is a database project that "illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways." Users can search for legislators, interest groups, and bills across the United States. (Comprehensive state and local information is available for California and Los Angeles.) Money-related widgets are available, as is a Bill Positions API, which relies on combined data from OpenSecrets, Follow the Money, GovTrack.us and OpenCongress.

9. GovernmentDocs.org
GovernmentDocs.org is a collaborative project from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen, the Sunlight Foundation, American Rights at Work and the ALCU. The site is a vast database of government documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. Registered users are invited to review and comment on the documents. GovernmentDocs.org is information-heavy (some of the government files are hundreds of pages long) and its multimedia elements are weak (the blog on the site hasn't been updated in a very long time). But it offers an invaluable resource by publishing, indexing, and offering public review of formerly secret government data.

10. The Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker
Moving beyond the United States, the Foreign Lobbyist Influence Tracker from ProPublica and the Sunlight Foundation monitors foreign interests seeking to influence U.S. government policies. Using information from the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the project has digitized and organized foreign lobbyist information by legislator, country, lobbying firm, client and issue. The site is mostly data at this point in that it lacks some of the more fun and engaging user features that many other government transparency projects employ. But it is full of valuable information that's impossible to find anywhere else.

The above list is by no means exhaustive. For example, Project Vote Smart, is a comprehensive resource that deserves an entire post of its own. The open government movement is growing stronger with each passing election, and that means more of these valuable watchdog initiatives are being launched all the time.

Katie Donnelly is a research fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University where she blogs about the future of public media. With a background in media literacy education, Katie previously worked as a Research Associate at Temple University's Media Education Lab in Philadelphia. When she's not researching media, Katie spends her time working in the environmental field and blogging about food.

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Many news websites are working to refocus on local news, and often this means turning to automated aggregation. One hyper-local startup in Charleston, S.C., is blending links, community and visuals to try and redefine aggregation by giving it a human context.

TheDigitel.com was launched by Ken Hawkins in June 2008, and recently received its first round of venture capital funding from Palmetto Investments & Exchange Group.

Hawkins and his team are now deciding where to expand next. In keeping with its community philosophy, TheDigitel has even asked readers to vote for its next destination.

Hawkins spoke about the concept of "context aggregation," using wikis to engage readers, and other topics shortly after the funding was announced in October 2009. Here's an edited version of my interview with him.

Can you say how much funding you received?

Hawkins: It's not huge, but it does give us the momentum to 'break out' of the test market in Charleston and start expanding.

Talk about the process of finding your investors. How much control will they have?

Hawkins: The investors were pointed our way through a mutual contact at another
local company, BeliefNetworks. I still retain more than a 'super majority' of [TheDigitel]. However the investors bring not only cash but more of a business background, something journalists are often lacking.

Are you hoping to generate revenue from normal online ads or contextual ads? Can you or will you take donations?

Hawkins: Well, the business model at its heart is very familiar: display ads. Obviously that's a tough market, and we do want to pursue sponsors. It allows us to have a real relationship with the area's best businesses. Done well, it could help the businesses, the readers, and us. Done poorly, and it would just be bad.

Ultimately I really want this to be a non-profit. We're not in this to get rich. We want folks to find the best in coverage, be it a local photographer or the local media giant.

Are you an aggregator, or are you a news organization?

Hawkins: All media outlets are aggregators either in whole or in part, depending on how broadly you define aggregation.

Our site engages in a mix of primary reporting about simpler things -- 'Band X is playing at Venue Y' or breaking crime and traffic news -- and a blend of aggregation that I'll call 'context aggregation.' That means we both go digging for media sources used by other media and wire services, and [we are] offering a sort of 'reporter's notebook' about who's talking about what, and what this means in the broader scheme of things. Those are things our younger audience often doesn't yet know.

One of the things folks seem to appreciate is that we don't assume that you've read the prior story, so we stitch in relevant back links. In essence, we report on the multitude of reporting. At first, this would seem to add to information overload, but it actually helps by giving the reader more perspective.

So our aim is to connect, and not to re-report the news. Sometimes, this context aggregation is simple, and sometimes it's much more involved. For example, we just recently did a complicated election roundup with lots of links.

What kind of traffic do you generate?

Hawkins: This month, we served up 57,242 page views, which is about on par with our usual 60,000 a month, and 21,351 visits. Only 11 percent of the traffic comes from Google. Forty percent is direct traffic, 9 percent comes from Twitter, 8 percent from Facebook, and so on.

We've developed a highly local market that comes to us directly instead of a Google in-and-out market. Seventy-two percent of visitors are in South Carolina and 53 percent are in the metro area.

You have no Google ads. How do you manage that?

Hawkins: One thing that separates us from most new media ventures is actually being in the community. This not only helps us with community coverage, but also gives life to more standard advertising opportunities and frees us from the low CPM rates of Google.
Ultimately, we also want to develop local ad networks that allow good local bloggers to make some real cash off page views. We have the ad tools.

When did you initially launch, and how long did it take you to prepare?

Hawkins: We spent months planning the launch on paper (I'll say four months of casual conversation, and two of real planning). And then we spent about two months to build the Drupal-based site, which has been an ever-evolving design.

How large is your staff, and how many community contributors do you have?

Hawkins: We're a group of three staffers writing, with about 20 occasional community contributors.

Tell us a little bit about your staffers. Does anyone ever take a vacation?

Hawkins: I'll focus on the two that are in it for the long haul. Amanda Click was a marketing intern who stayed with us. We aim her mainly towards the soft news that is often so important to communities. She's been with us nearly a year, and carries the food, entertainment and features beats. She's 22.

I have more of the traditional news background, having been in papers for eight years, most recently at The Post and Courier in Charleston. I came from an infographics background and consider myself an information designer. It's something that drove me to create the site. I'm 29.

No vacations yet. But we hope someday.

Talk about your strategy of asking Twitter users and online readers to vote on your next city. What kind of response have you had? Which cities are you considering?

Hawkins: We had about 100 responses through just two plugs on our Twitter account. We're hoping that this will be somewhat viral, with passionate [people in different] cities getting behind the idea. We'll eventually plug the campaign from our site and talk directly to other bloggers, but it will be a process. Right now, Charlotte has taken a dominating lead of nearly 5-to-1.

Do you have any plans to increase capacity for traditional journalism, with deeper stories and paid reporters and editors?

Hawkins: To do more 'traditional local journalism' is not our end goal. It's our belief that there's plenty of it out there, from traditional and non-traditional sources, but that folks have a hard time finding and understanding it. That said, if a reporting doomsday does come, we're laying the foundation to be able to do traditional reporting tasks.

Your photo credits link to sources on Flickr. How much time does photo-mining take? Do you consult with Flickr users first? What kind of responses have you had from the photographers?

Hawkins: We feel it best to link to Flickr photo pages to get the photographer more exposure. We also feel this is most fair to the reader, who would probably want to see more photos.

It's a fairly non-painful process to mine, taking about five minutes on average. We normally don't pre-consult. But thus far we've received nothing but thanks for our usage of photos, particularly in the local circle.

Your open community feature allows almost a wiki-like interface. Can all your content be edited by anyone who signs up? Has that ever created problems?

Hawkins: It basically is a wiki with a gatekeeper. An editor reviews changes before they go live, and it's only been a good thing. We get all types of contributors, from typo fixers to writers of full stories.

A big inspiration for the workflow and cost-saving necessity of this was a piece by Information Architects.

What kind of challenges have you faced?

Hawkins: Our most interesting challenge has been demonstrating how we are not a pure aggregator. For so long, the online field has been [filled with] just three types of players: blogs, traditional media, and aggregators. So it seems the natural assumption is for folks to think: 'Which of the three are they?' As I said, we're a blend, which gives context. In six months to a year, I think it will be all the rage.

Andria Krewson is a freelance journalist and consultant from Charlotte, N.C. She has worked at newspapers for 27 years, focusing on design and editing of community niche publications. She blogs for her neighborhood at Under Oak, writes occasionally as a Tar Heel mom at The Daily Tar Heel and covers changing culture at Crossroads Charlotte. Twitter: underoak.

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Politicians are figuring out what social media technologies like blogs, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have to offer: direct access to voters. More than ever before, they can bypass the professional press and deliver an uncensored, unfiltered -- and unchecked -- message.

"[Social media] allows me to gives my thoughts on the events of the day and the complete text of my comments from speeches and stuff that I give that the mainstream media might not normally cover," said Francis Slay, the mayor of St. Louis, in a phone interview.

Slay, who was recently elected to his third term, has been blogging and using social media such as Twitter for years. Tony Messenger, Missouri state Capital political reporter and columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote in a recent email that Slay is a "consistent user, he gets his message out, and he also has fun with it. He doesn't just regurgitate talking points or news releases. Mostly, he uses the social media how it was intended, as interaction."

Slay says new media technologies made it possible to publish his policy positions and get his message out. "It does help me communicate better...it really engages my constituents and people that have a stake in the city," Slay said.

The Internet has leveled the playing field for political communication. Now, thanks in large part to social media, a growing number of people are going directly to the political source to get the latest information.

Mainstream Media's Value?

Alexandra Samuel, an Internet researcher and CEO of social media consulting company Social Signal, says there are lots of examples of important investigative reporting. But during a recent phone interview Samuel said it's only a small fraction of what's produced by the mainstream media.

"Mostly what you read in newspapers feels like press releases," Samuel said. "So can that be replaced? Yeah, that can totally be replaced. Why should I as a politician or political organization rely on some respectable news organization to essentially rewrite my press release and print it in their newspaper when I can send that same information directly to my constituents? There is not really much value added."

Jake Wagman, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who covers St. Louis City Hall, said in a phone interview it's helpful that Mayor Slay uses his blog to get his message out or send out tweets. He says as a journalist he can see what the mayor is up to whether it is big or small.

Perhaps more important, new media technologies leave an online record that is searchable by interested citizens and by journalists. However, Wagman said that you can't interview a blog post.

"During an interview the mayor will say things more off the cuff which is usually what's most revealing," Wagman said. "Using social media he doesn't have to endure the give and take and can stay on message."

Objectivity and Watchdog Role Important

Despite the exponential growth of social media technologies, and the declining profit margins for some mainstream media, a large majority of people in the United States still prefer to get their political news from television.

Jeremy Hanson, communications director for Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, said in a phone interview that there is still a need for objective news media.

"It's very handy for candidates and elected officials to be able to communicate directly to voters or their constituents ... (but) people shouldn't be forced to rely solely on information they get directly from politicians," Hanson said.

It's important in a healthy political environment for journalism to maintain its core functions to inform the public and keep a critical eye on government. But with the direct access politicians now have, is the mainstream media becoming irrelevant?

Columnist Tony Messenger wrote in an email that social media sometimes does scoop the mainstream media but Twitter and Facebook have actually increased the opportunities for reporters and politicians to interact.

"That can be a good thing for both of us," Messenger said. "Using direct messages, with (Mayor) Slay and others, I've gained a better understanding of stories and instant access when it otherwise might not have been granted."

It has become much easier for politicians to build a website with social media tools and other interactive capabilities. Most websites for politicians will feature a news section which looks and reads like content you might find in the local paper. There is just one important caveat: The sites are generally paid for by political campaigns and are likely to ensure the politicians remain in a positive light. Despite being free services, the same could be said about updates on Facebook or tweets sent out by politicians.

Reporter Jake Wagman calls Mayor Slay's website a "24/7 campaign site."

"I would hope people recognize it as a campaign-funded website," Wagman said. "I don't know if the causal reader recognizes that, but I think news consumers are pretty savvy."

Wagman suggested that with as many information sources now available online people will go to multiple places to find out what's happening in their city. But, Wagman said "it is incumbent upon traditional news media sources to provide information that readers want to see so they will still want to come to us."

Steven Davy is a freelance journalist, and freelance radio reporter/producer. He regularly covers the defense industry and security related issues for UPI. Additionally he hosts a current affairs news magazine radio show called the Nonchalant Café Hour which broadcasts live in Kalamazoo, Mich. Steven is a second year graduate student at Michigan State University in the School of Journalism. His research has covered news media bias and framing issues, censorship during war, urban revitalization, renewable energy and climate change.

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Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at Twitter Lists and how they allow people to group the people they follow on Twitter. Some say they might replace RSS feed readers. Robert Scoble answers Just One Question about how Twitter Lists have changed his life. Plus, magazines are hurting once again, with Time Inc. planning big layoffs and $100 million in cost-cutting, while Newsweek saw ad sales drop 48% in the quarter.

Check it out:

4mrbareaudio103009.mp3

Background music is "What the World Needs" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.

Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:

The Twittering Masses Get Lists at WSJ Digits

Hands-On with Twitter Lists at News.com

Twitter Lists Goes Live at Search Engine Land

Why I Don't Use Google Reader Anymore at Scobleizer

World Series Game 2 - Follow Live On Twitter Lists at Huffington Post

Listorious

Time Inc. Is Expected to Eliminate More Jobs at NY Times

Bad News From the Washington Post - Ad Sales Slide Again at Media Memo

Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged - Newsweek Revels In Condé Losses at Mediaite

Added Bonus: Here's the entire interview with Robert Scoble:

robertscoble.mp3

Here's a graphical view of last week's MediaShift survey results. The question was: "What do you think about the real-time web?"

Also, be sure to vote in our poll about the future of newsweekly magazines.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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When Sen. Charles Schumer amended the Senate's bill to exclude unpaid reporters, bloggers, and citizen journalists from a proposed federal shield law, many in the Internet and journalism community were outraged. In the wake of the change, MediaShift published an article that argued Why Bloggers and Citizen Journalists Deserve a Shield Law. [Ed. note: please see update at the bottom of this post.]

It is yet to be determined whether the final version of the shield law will reject Sen. Schumer's amendment and protect citizen journalists alongside their paycheck-depositing brethren. Nonetheless, Congress and the rest of us should be crystal clear on one point: if citizen journalists are not covered by a federal shield law when it is first enacted, they will never be protected by such a law. It is an all-or-nothing game, and right now citizen journalists are losing.

There are, of course, already distinctions between traditional media outlets and citizen journalists. The traditional media have better access to newsmakers and potential sources. The traditional media have more time and money to spend on producing stories. All of these factors distinguish the Chicago Tribune from, say, my blog. However, if the Senate's version of the federal shield law is enacted, it will create a legal distinction between traditional reporters and citizen journalists. It is this legal distinction between members of the press that makes Sen. Schumer's amendment so worrisome.

Lobbying Effort Driven By Large Outlets

The current lobbying effort in support of the shield law has come from advocacy organizations such as The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), along with media outlets themselves. While the RCFP may have spent uncountable hours lobbying, media companies are the real engines behind the push for a federal shield law. Media companies donate to advocacy organizations, and have the name recognition needed to convince Congress of the shield law's merits.

Before Sen. Schumer's amendment, citizen journalists had been piggybacking off of the current lobbying effort. While newspaper editors were busy throwing their weight around the halls of Congress, Joe the Blogger watched from his sofa. When Lucy Dalglish, executive director of RCFP, spent her weekends convincing Congress of the shield law's benefits, many were filled with hope. But what happens if media outlets are forced to jettison citizen journalists in order to obtain their holy grail, a federal shield law? Will media companies scrap the whole effort to protect free-riders? I think not.

There is the argument that if unpaid reporters are not protected under this version of the federal shield law, Congress could enact a subsequent law that would extend the privilege. Such an argument is wishful thinking, to say the least.

Once traditional media outlets obtain a federal shield law, something they have been screaming for since the 1970s, the lobbying money will dry up. The heavy-hitters, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC etc., will direct their attention, one imagines, back to producing quality journalism. Without the backing of these media Goliaths, citizen journalists do not stand a chance of convincing a hostile Congress and a reserved President that they deserve the law's protection as well.

Moreover, it is against the traditional media's corporate interest to lobby on behalf of unpaid journalists. Reporters have long claimed that a federal shield law is necessary in order to produce proper journalism. They state that in order to report on issues of public concern, journalists need the ability to keep confidential sources.

By this logic, a shield law that only protects traditional journalists means that professionals alone will be able to coax confidential sources into disclosing information. Traditional journalists, then, will be able to publish hard-hitting stories that drive sales and traffic through the roof, while unprotected citizen journalists are left to pick up the rest.

Bright Spot?

As not to be totally doom-and-gloom, there could be a bright spot developing. The avalanche of opposition to Sen. Schumer's amendment raises the possibility that if the shield law turns a cold shoulder to citizen journalists, someone could harness that discontent and turn it into a lobbying campaign.

However, two problems still persist. First, despite the tireless efforts of the RCFP and the like, no such harness has been fashioned. Second, I am afraid to say that we have seen the high-water mark for the general public's interest in the federal shield law.

I am not proposing that the federal shield law should be scuttled unless citizen journalists are protected. All I want is for members of Congress and President Obama to understand that if citizen journalists are not protected by a shield law when it is enacted, then they will have foreclosed the protection for this vital portion of the fourth estate for the foreseeable future.

UPDATE November 2, 2009: Since this article was first published, the Senate, White House, and media company representatives reached a tentative deal that would include unpaid journalists under the shield law's protections. While the compromise is certainly a positive development, we're not out of the woods yet. Even if the Senate Committee on the Judiciary accepts the compromise, the bill must still get through the full Senate. Throughout this process, lawmakers should keep in mind the consequences that would result from leaving unpaid, citizen journalists out in the cold.

Rob Arcamona is a second-year law student at The George Washington University Law School. Prior to attending law school, Rob worked at the Student Press Law Center and also helped establish ComRadio, the Pennsylvania State University's student-run Internet-based radio station. He writes the Protecting the Source blog.

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This is one in an occasional series on MediaShift where I discuss issues in-depth with thought leaders in online media. If you have suggestions for future Q&As, or want to participate yourself, drop me a line via the Feedback Form.

Profile

Harold Evans

Age: 81

Hometown and Current Location: Manchester, England; New York

Online Persona: Facebook fan page; website; Hachette page for his memoir; his favorite books of all time.

What Makes Him a Thought Leader: Evans worked his way up to be editor of the London Times from 1967 to 1981, and later became founding editor of Conde Nast Traveler, editorial director of U.S. News & World Report, and president and publisher of Random House. His campaigns helped overturn the death penalty in England, and brought attention to children impacted by thalidomide.

What He's Doing Now: Evans is the editor-at-large for The Week magazine. He has written numerous books, but his most recent is called My Paper Chase, a fascinating memoir covering his early years as a cub reporter, copy editor and eventually editor and publisher over decades of distinguished work. He connects what happened in those early years to the changes wrought by technology and the Internet, and what he sees as he watches his wife, Tina Brown, co-found and manage the Daily Beast.

Q&A

Early in the book, you talk about your experience going to a family and telling them that their son had died in combat. You said that reporters weren't regarded as intruders, but as "friends of the family." Do you think newspapers have lost that?

Evans: I think a lot of newspapers have lost touch with that sense of community, which so impressed me as a teenager when I had to knock on people's doors. I was embarrassed, I was ashamed. When I went to get a photo of someone whose son had been killed, I walked up and down the street and thought about lying to the newspaper that I couldn't find them, or that they turned me away. Anything but knocking on that wretched door. Finally I psyched myself up to knock on it. And they said, 'Oh come in lad for a cup of tea. Do you want a photograph of our boy? Here you are.'

I had been at the newspaper for a few months. It wasn't regarded as the paper, it was their paper. There was a sense of community because they reported, we reported, I reported the little things, the whist drives, the weddings, the funerals, the little speeches. In one sense it was the most boring copy in the world to anyone picking it up, but, on the other hand, it was crucial to the people who lived in those communities. But then came the invasion of privacy. There have been many instances where these guys have disguised themselves as doctors to try to get in and photograph a wounded sports star. It's happened in the United States and in the United Kingdom. That kind of thing turns the newspaper from a friendly organ -- not necessarily appeasing everybody -- into the enemy. It's one reason why newspapers have suffered circulation falls.

There's a push online to do hyper-local editions to get into those nitty-gritty details in a community. Do you think that's an opportunity to reignite the community aspect of newspapers?

Evans: I do, actually. I've been to a few local sites, one or two started by friends of mine, and they are slow to ignite, as far as I can see. The one in San Diego has taken off. But when there's a lacuna in print, whether it's daily or weekly newspapers or magazines, then there's a real opportunity. Provided it's a serious effort. I don't mean dull, but that it's a sincere effort. My wife [Tina Brown] co-founded the Daily Beast, so I have no hostility to the web or Internet. A number of print friends of mine regard it as the worst thing that's ever happened, but I don't.

Hear Evans talk about opinion journalism and the importance of reporting and basing opinions on facts:

You mention in your book that when you were working at the Manchester Evening News, it was like "a souped-up Internet service" and you helped produce eight editions in six hours without what you considered to be the crutch of a computer. Do you still believe that was more demanding than even Internet news sites?

Evans: I think it was much more demanding. Internet news cycles are by the minute, and any fool can take a headline from the Associated Press and send it out as news. If someone's done the original reporting, that's crucial. So when is original reporting made available? Usually through print, not so often through TV, and not so often through the Internet, though there are some good examples of that. What we were doing was something more complicated. Here we have the essence of journalism to me. In a sense it wasn't original reporting from me because the copy was coming in from the Press Association [the British version of the AP].

First a paragraph garbled came in [about a train crash]. Then another paragraph came in saying three trains had crashed. Then a minute later, something coming in with a correction. And so on for a whole day. It was my real baptism of fire. So how do you relate these contradictory facts and give them coherence? We had eight editions in a day, which sounds like a lot, but it was an incredibly fast operation. Every piece of copy [was] arriving on the agency wire, and they were coming like a snow blizzard by the end. Hundreds of pieces of paper had to be reconciled with what you've put out in the newspaper before.

I often see cases of Internet news where there's no reconciliation for what's gone before and what's newly arrived. That training for me -- which was absolutely brutal and I was terrified -- was so important, especially later in life when one was faced with conflicting stories and conflicting evidence.

The Huffington Post did some excellent coverage after the Iranian election and the protest by running commentary by Nico Pitney of all the things that had happened that day, coming in from so many sources, and trying to update and correct things. It seems a bit similar to what you describe, though it wasn't their own original reporting.

Evans: The same thing happened in Bosnia, I wrote about it at the time. Somebody looked out their window and saw gangsters coming down the street and doing ethnic cleansing. I said that was the thing that would happen in the future, someone phoning in what they were seeing on the scene. Whether it's the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Drudge Report or the BBC, all those reports, you have to assume there's a real person [who] has credibility.

One of the problems I still have with that kind of reporting -- it's marvelous -- but does it have a weakness that a reporter on the spot with a notebook doesn't have? Does it lend itself to a government arm flooding a website with reports saying, 'On the contrary, I saw the police treating people with great courtesy today.' Just because it's come from Tehran doesn't mean it's true. The credibility of a newspaper or news magazine is essential so you can check it for accuracy. I'm not saying it's not valuable. One can make a case for just running everything. Just run it! That's one of the advantages of the web, you can run everything -- but you don't help the reader find out what's important.

Also -- this impressed me when I was the editor of the Sunday Times [of London] -- we had the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed civilians by British paratroopers. We interviewed 500 people for our report, and not one of them could give us a total picture of what was happening. It was like the Rashomon effect multiplied a million times. For a website or even a newspaper to be a collector of information flow is not the highest form of journalism. It has its value, but the highest form of journalism to me is what the people on the team did for me to assess what the 500 people had said, and check it against the photographic record from disparate sources, and then check it against the official line from the government and check forensic evidence and bullet wounds, etc. That remains the best kind of journalism, and I remain fantastically proud of what my team did with the "Bloody Sunday" reports.

If that same thing happened today, with those 500 people you talked to, if they could post their pictures, write their blog posts, you still would be sorting through perhaps even more information, but you wouldn't know if they were trustworthy.

Evans: You as an experienced journalist know, it goes back to my time when I was studying at Chicago and at Stanford University, where many many cases of two people observing the same event have a different take on what happened. There was a staged case at Columbia where a white guy pulled a gun and started harassing people, and the cops came. And among the 30 or 40 people who were interviewed, they said it was the black guy who had a gun. There was just one black guy on the platform and he wasn't carrying the gun. The point I'm trying to make is that, as the cops know well, it's extremely important and not always very easy to get it right as to what people saw and whether it's credible.

Journalism is not easy. It's the first rough draft. I don't think you need to wait around until you have the definitive thing. You record what's there; don't delude yourself that this is the ultimate historical view.

Hear Evans talk about how the Internet makes editorial research much easier than in early times:

With the democratization of media, everyone can write their own blog, create their own video or podcast. What are the benefits of that and perhaps the downsides?

Evans: I think there's a lot of benefit in letting people vent. When I was on the Manchester Evening News, we got 500 letters a day, and part of my job as editor was to edit them. And I thought that was one of the best things in the newspaper, and it was instituted by an editor known as Big Tom, who said 'this is the voice of the people.' And he was quite right. I think there's enormous value in all that, but with one qualification. The democratization of news is fine and splendid, but it's not reporting. It's based on a fragment of information picked up from television or the web, and people are sounding off about something that's not necessarily true.

...When [Dan Rather] was sacked by CBS -- I'm really interested in typography -- the amount of stuff that was opinion around things that were fact about the way a Microsoft document would look was total rubbish. The opinions were based on erroneous facts. What I'm driving at is let's not lose sight in our excitement of the democratization of the media that some things are bad, false and ugly -- and no amount of electronic gloss will make them true, beautiful and accurate.

So you think there's a place for professional journalists to check and filter these kinds of reports?

Evans: I don't want to overdo it. The 'gatekeepers' became a term of revile. But when you think about the flow of information, I personally value immensely the calibration a news organ, whether it's on the web or in print, brings to the floodwaters of information. I haven't the time to read all the dispatches of the Associated Press, for example. It's fantastic what they put out, it's extremely good, from all over the world. I like when someone acts as a filter. If I want to spend the rest of my life reading one day's output of information, which is about what it would take, OK fine. But I personally prefer calibration from an aggregator or newspaper, where the No. 1 story is one they consider important, [and] they're usually right.

Television and radio are what I call sequential media; they're not simultaneous media. With simultaneous media, you can scan your eye down an electronic or print page and pick among six or seven stories you might like and want to read. With television and radio, you have to wait until the guy's finished talking about the balloon boy, which I don't have the slightest interest in, to find out that all hell's broken loose in Baghdad. Because they've chosen that day to start with the balloon boy. If they want to start with that, it's fine. But it delays the really important story. In a newspaper, you'd have 50 people blown up in Baghdad in the lead position, and the balloon boy would be put somewhere where it's relevance is appropriately signaled, which is minimal.

With print media, there's been so much talk around Rupert Murdoch saying he wants to charge for everything online. What do you think about putting up pay walls or charging micropayments for content?

Evans: If Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for content online, he will succeed in so far, but no further than what he provides that is unique and can't be found anywhere. Just to give an absurd example, if he wants to start charging for stock market indices, no one's going to pay for that-- it's on a number of websites. If he's providing investigative journalism or arresting commentary or original stories or interpretations that the reader perceives has value, then if he wants to charge, that's fine. People will decide whether they want to pay. It doesn't seem to me that if he wants to charge it will be a blow to universal freedom and liberty of mankind.

The bigger question is whether charging will help newspapers survive or whether it will hurt them.

Evans: I think it will help them survive. When I was in London, the editor of the Guardian told me that the revenues from their website were $30 million, but unfortunately their costs are $70 million to generate news for the paper. But $30 million is almost half the costs, so just imagine if that develops -- and it's a free site and a very good site. The Wall Street Journal gets significant revenues from charging, so if that helps to sustain a newspaper as important as the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, so be it. If, on the other hand, they charge for something that's not valuable, it's not going to pay. It's an incentive, if they have any sense, to make sure the content does have that unique appeal.

Hear Evans talk about how he'd pay for expert analysis of English soccer games:

It's a fascinating time, I think. I do believe that with all the qualifications I've said -- [such as] the uncertain accuracy of the web -- nonetheless the access to speeches, documents is unparalleled with the ease of gathering information. If I had had that access when I was an editor or coming up, it would have made my life so much easier. As it was, everything took so much longer.

[The web] is going to end up being a tremendous advantage, providing we can work out the financial structure. I think we'll see newspapers survive, being printed at home on a machine that I've seen in operation, which is a Hewlett-Packard machine that costs $2,900. Not everyone can afford that, but you can print out a beautiful digital paper on that, transmit it online. That capital cost will surely come down. Or you'll have a local print shop, so that rather than waiting for the newspapers to arrive by truck, which is 30 percent at least of a newspaper's cost, you'll go in and push a button, and it will take your dollar bills without anyone having to be there. And it will print the newspaper for you while you wait. It will take seven minutes. There's a terrific future for print in my view and it gives me great heart.

We always talk about how everyone is unifocal. You can't possibly be interested in jazz and Beethoven. Of course you can. You can't both be reading a newspaper and be online. Of course you can. We shouldn't be obsessed with a gun to your head, 'You either read a newspaper or die!'

Hear Evans talk about how 'meatheads' took over newspapers and cut too much editorial:

*****

What do you think about Harold Evans' views on newspapers? Do you think print has a bright future? How can we learn from the past to inform our future? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo of Dan Rather by Michael Foley via Flickr.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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Late last week, the Federal Communications Commission announced it was seeking public input on draft rules that would codify and supplement existing Internet openness principles. This was another chapter in the ongoing "Net neutrality" debate.

On one hand, the White House was calling for a "free and open Internet" and endorsed a bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. Yet, at the same time, the European Union adopted a telecommunications policy that rejects these principles. Have European democracies given up on Net neutrality?

Many countries already openly violate the principle of Internet neutrality by blocking access to online publications that displease them. For example, the commander of the Iranian "special forces for moral security" said on Feb. 8, 2009 that "identifying banned websites and arresting Internet users that go on them is one of [its] responsibilities." It was the first time the country's police had spoken publicly about Internet censorship. The thought that European countries could enact their own forms of Internet censorship is highly troubling.

Net Neutrality in the U.S.

Net neutrality means equal access to the same Internet for all, and the right, once access has been obtained, to access whatever content is available without restrictions. No Internet company, be they an access provider or search engine, should be able to discriminate, prioritize or filter website content or information transmission. (For more on Net neutrality issues in the U.S., see this MediaShift guide.)

Net neutrality also means banning regulations that impose discretionary or arbitrary controls on bandwidth use, except when the security of the Internet or its users is threatened, or to deal with temporary technical problems. The Internet should transmit information without reference to its origin or destination. Users should be free to decide which content they want to access.

By calling for public input on draft rules to guarantee Net neutrality, the FCC is contributing to the re-establishment of civil liberties that our organization, Reporters Without Borders, is witnessing under the Obama administration. Our most recent World Press Freedom Index for 2009, which was published on Oct. 20, made note of the progress the United States had made in the last year. The country jumped 16 places thanks to the decisions made by the administration to facilitate access to information for American citizens, and in part due to the president expressing his views on the role reporters play in society.

However, when it comes to Net neutrality, mobile phone companies and Internet service providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are blocking access to peer-to-peer networks, Skype and even some newsgroups. These Internet services threaten the short-term profitability for mobile phone service operators. AT&T recently decided to allow Internet telephony applications like Skype, but only on its 3G mobile phone network.

Europe Takes a Step Backward

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the consequences of the European Union's adoption of its so-called Telecoms Package. In a press released published on Oct. 21, we noted that "the European Council is allowing Internet operators to haphazardly determine the use of bandwidth as they see fit." By rejecting Net neutrality, the European Union is challenging the principle of equality.

Watch an interview with Squaring the Net, an organization dedicating to preserving Net neutrality

Non-discrimination is enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. It derives from the principle of free expression: that everyone has the equal right to express their views. Net neutrality will help secure this principle on the Internet. By moving away from Net neutrality, the EU is allowing Internet service providers and other companies to violate the principle of free expression.

(Read more about how Vodafone's porn filter blocked innocent Czech tech blogs on its mobile web service.)

The new Telecoms Package means companies will be allowed to steer users toward content and services that have paid a premium for the privilege. It is likely that small online publications, particularly blogs, will be relegated to a second class Internet. This means that websites without financial means could disappear from the radar of many users, much to the benefit of large content providers.

The future of free speech is inextricably tied to the ways in which individuals are permitted to use the Internet. For this reason, it's paramount that people work to advocate for Net neutrality in the United States and other countries around the world.

Clothilde Le Coz has been working for Reporters Without Borders in Paris since 2007. She is now the Washington director for this organization, helping to promote press freedom and free speech around the world. In Paris, she was in charge of the Internet Freedom desk and worked especially on China, Iran, Egypt and Thailand. During the time she spent in Paris, she was also updating the "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents," published in 2005. Her role is now to get the message out for readers and politicians to be aware of the constant threat journalists are submitted to in many countries.

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The murder happened in the kitchen with a laptop.

That possible explanation for the death of Gourmet magazine sounds like a solution from the game Clue. The 68-year-old food magazine met its end this month when publisher Condé Nast cut it and two other magazines. Some blamed Gourmet's demise on the Internet and its theft of the print audience. It's easy to see why.

For foodies, the attraction of thousands of food websites is powerful. Many home cooks now carefully position a laptop in the kitchen, keeping it safe from crumbs and splashes, instead of a magazine recipe. The loss of Gourmet, which was seen as a prestigious title, means that other food magazines may now feel a greater sense of insecurity.

But the threat to food titles goes beyond the mere existence of the web; it also comes from magazines' challenges in the changing game of branding.

Getting to Know You

It might be tempting for some to blame the thousands of food bloggers for distracting audiences from print media.

There's a food blogger for every ethnic specialty, dietary concern or locality. Bloggers offer personal connections, unique voices, and a passion for their subject that print magazines may not provide. Narrow expectations from readers and advertisers can limit print magazine content, while bloggers are more free to explore topics in frequent posts.

"I actually started going to food forums and sites because I got sick of seeing the same places and same eats in the same magazines," said Titus Ruscitti, whose blog, Smokin' Chokin' and Chowing with the King, focuses on barbecue. "If a magazine like Gourmet or Bon Appétit or a show on Food Network is doing a special on Chicago, it's always the same food, same places. The same goes for the recipes. I felt like they were all the same."

Gourmet's food coverage was also aspirational in nature, making it somewhat inaccessible for many people. In fact, it may have been too disconnected from readers' changing tastes in the current economic situation. For most people, it's easier to identify with a food blogger who lives a more ordinary life.

"I think food blogging has become so popular because the face behind the blog is a real person," says Kath Younger of the blog Kath Eats Real Food. "Recipes are cooked in a real kitchen. Photos are taken as [the recipes] are consumed. I think readers enjoy reading the story behind the food as much as they enjoy the recipes."

Beyond a Magazine Brand

To contend with these digital competitors, magazine publishers are extending their traditional print brands into digital media.

Jim Sexton, senior vice president and editorial director for Time Inc. Lifestyle Digital, oversees a number of the company's websites that are linked to print magazines, including those for Real Simple, Southern Living, Cooking Light, Sunset and Coastal Living. Today, he says, those names need to evoke not just print magazines, but an array of media options.

"We're making it so the brands are thought of as brands, as opposed to magazine brands," he says. "The difference is thinking of Cooking Light as a magazine, a website, books, a brand that shows up on Twitter and Facebook, and in mobile. It's a brand that the audience can connect to wherever they are."

Magazine websites also are incorporating interactive features already found on blogs and in other social media. Cooking Light developed a video series, a blog and message boards, as well as integrating social media like Twitter and Facebook. Overall, though, the magazine and site emphasize expert-produced content, such as blogs written by a registered dietitian and by the test-kitchen cooks.

Experts and Users Online

However, Cooking Light and other food media with "expert" content have competitors that use low-cost content: recipe sites with user-generated content, like Allrecipes.com.

Allrecipes is part of the food and entertaining division of Reader's Digest, along with the magazines Taste of Home, Simple and Delicious, Healthy Cooking and Every Day with Rachael Ray. It's currently the top food website, drawing 10 million to 15 million visitors per month.

Though it sometimes features recipes from its affiliated magazines, Allrecipes primarily relies on its audience for content.

"All our recipes are created by home cooks, and we have partnerships with various advertisers who integrate recipes into the site," says Judith Dern, public relations manager for Allrecipes.

Allrecipes' content is also participatory. Users suggest modifications and substitutions that make the recipes more useful and dynamic.

Gourmet's website, on the other hand, contained some links to social media, but few chances to engage actively with the magazine's content. Although the "Gourmet Community" box on the site suggests becoming a Gourmet fan on Facebook, visiting their YouTube channel, downloading their iTunes podcasts and following staffers on Twitter, these are primarily passive activities that don't build a community on the site itself. (Epicurious.com, which hosts recipes from Gourmet and other Condé Nast magazines, does have social features, but it's barely mentioned on the current Gourmet website.)

Magazines Meet SEO

The competition between established, "expert" food media, like Cooking Light or Gourmet, and user-focused, interactive blogs and communities demonstrates the print magazine's dilemma in going digital. Why spend money to produce high-end content when an individual cook's blog or Allrecipes contribution can draw your audience just as easily?

To draw users to premium content, magazine websites are using search-engine optimization (SEO) techniques to elevate their site in search results. Editors now pore over every piece of content looking for opportunities to push their brand to the top of Google's results.

Sexton's concern is that when people type "chicken noodle soup recipe" into Google, they don't necessarily care whose website they end up at. They just click on the top search results.

"More and more, people don't care about brands," Sexton says. "It's an interesting challenge for companies based on brands. Do they resonate as well online when people have a thousand different choices for where to get a recipe? Even a venerable brand like Gourmet, unless they play the SEO game really well, the big name won't matter to the audience."

To hear that the "big name" doesn't matter may come as a shock to magazines rooted in a print mentality. Maintaining an eye-catching, consistent cover aesthetic and perfecting the art of writing cover lines helped print magazines attract the attention of readers in the past. With just a glance at the newsstand, people could made a connection with a brand and a magazine's content.

In the digital realm, however, instead of seeing a familiar face in a crowd and striking up a conversation, now the reader decides if an existing conversation is of interest before reaching out to a new friend. It's up to magazines to make sure that the content attracts readers and draws them into a relationship with the brand -- whether online or off.

Image of laptop by Eirik Newth via Flickr. Magazine stack by thebittenword.com via Flickr

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

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Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the deals Microsoft made recently with Twitter and Facebook to incorporate tweets and status updates into its Bing search engine. Google quickly announced a deal with Twitter too, but why should we care? Also, Bloomberg bought out BusinessWeek magazine, but the jewel might well be BusinessWeek.com. And I ask Just One Question to Chris O'Brien of the San Jose Mercury News to get his take on the Twitter deals with Microsoft and Google.

Check it out:

bareaudio102309.mp3

Background music is "What the World Needs" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.

Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:

Twitter-Microsoft Bing Deal Confirmed, but so Is Facebook-Bing at AllThingsD

With Bing, That Sound You Hear Is Facebook & Twitter Saying, Ka-Ching! at MediaPost

RT @google - Tweets and updates and search, oh my! at Google Blog

Google and Microsoft Crank Up Rivalry at the Wall Street Journal

Google Follows Microsoft With Twitter Search Deal Of Its Own at PaidContent

Bloomberg's Pearlstine - Buying BusinessWeek Matches Need - And Desire at PaidContent

Bloomberg LP Puts Another Tool in the Belt. Now Gunning for WSJ? at NYT Media Decoder

Bloomberg Got a Bargain at The Big Money

Bloomberg to Buy BusinessWeek After McGraw-Hill Tires of Losses at the Wall Street Journal

Added Bonus: Here's the entire interview with Chris O'Brien:

Here's a graphical view of last week's MediaShift survey results. The question was: "What do you think about the FTC's rules for blogger disclosure?"

Also, be sure to vote in our poll about what you think about real-time search.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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Swimming in the roiling sea of online journalism, increasing numbers of newsrooms have decided to take up the challenge of articulating editorial policies for social media.

Over the past year, news organizations from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times to the BBC have issued protocols for staff on Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs and websites.

Recently, the Washington Post came under fire for formulating "restrictive" guidelines, after managing editor Raju Narisetti expressed on his Twitter page strong views about war spending and term limits for politicians.

Reading the guidelines and the opinions of their critics is instructive. It shows how to construct a social media ethics for mainstream journalism. Here are some lessons I've learned.

Guidelines Have a Place in Journalism

The first step is to understand the place of guideline writing in journalism ethics.

The guidelines should be applications of general ethical principles. The issue is not only about giving individual journalists the freedom to participate in new media. It is not about how, since everyone is on Twitter, we have to let journalists tweet away, unrestrained.

It's about something bigger.

It's about how social media should be used to contribute to responsible, democratic journalism. Guidelines should not be ad hoc "fixes" to a particular problem. We need sober, nuanced, ethical thinking that takes the long view, not emotional arguments from social media enthusiasts.

The task is to articulate rules with two features:

(a) Flexible rules that encourage new media -- In this developing area of ethics, guideline writing should be experimental in spirit, viewed as a work in progress. Avoid a hectoring or absolute tone.

(b) Rules that are consistent with a plurality of ethical principles -- Guidelines should be evaluated according to how well they honor or violate the principles of journalism as a whole. A common mistake is to argue from only one principle. For example, critics who reject the very idea of social media guidelines often invoke free speech rights. They don't mention that journalism ethics also recognizes the principle of journalistic independence, which insists on the avoidance of conflicts of interests and perceived conflicts.

Guideline writing, like journalism ethics as a whole, must weigh the conflicting principles of freedom, independence, minimizing harm, and being accountable.

Taking the Right Approach

The policy of the New York Times contains guidelines that follow this approach.

The policy stresses the "remarkably useful reporting tools" of social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Then the Times policy warns:

1. People will use what journalists write, and the online groups they join, to undermine their credibility. Journalists should, for example, leave blank the Facebook section that asks for the user's political views.

2. Be careful not to write on a blog or a personal Web page what "you could not write in The Times - don't editorialize, for instance, if you work for the News Department."

3. Be careful about your Facebook "friends." Journalist could show impartiality in the areas that they report on. For example, a political reporter could have "friends" in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Times' approach is open to social media, yet suggests reasonable restraints consistent with journalistic principles. It warns about pitfalls. This is the right strategy.

The wrong approach

Do I have an example of the incorrect approach? I do. Consider the rigid guidelines on social media established in May by the Wall Street Journal. One rule stated: "Let our coverage speak for itself, and don't detail how an article was reported, written or edited." Another guideline was: "Don't discuss articles that haven't been published, meeting you've attended or plan to attend with staff or sources, or interviews that you've conducted."


This guideline writing ignores both (a) and (b) above. The idea that journalists not comment in any manner on stories or their news organization is too sweeping. It runs against the grain of social media and its love of collaboration and transparency. However, since all organizations need to keep some information confidential, what is needed is a more specific set of protocols that lists the situations that demand confidentiality, such as the protection of sources.

The BBC's approach to blogs and confidentiality is better that that of the Journal's.

The BBC acknowledges that reporters use blogging to discuss their BBC work in ways that benefit the BBC and add to the "industry conversation."

Its editorial policies are "not intended to restrict this, as long as confidential information is not revealed. Blogs or websites which do not identify the blogger as a BBC employee, do not discuss the BBC and are purely about personal matters would normally fall outside this guidance."

If a blog makes it clear that the author works for the BBC, it should include a simple and visible disclaimer such as, "these are my personal views and not those of the BBC."

The Times, the BBC and other newsrooms are pioneering social media ethics for mainstream media. Their efforts, while not perfect, show that it is possible to develop norms for responsible online journalism.

The development of reasonable guidelines should be sustained against the libertarians on the Internet who reject any rules and hidebound conservatives who accept only traditional norms.

Journalists who take on the often thankless task of developing guidelines should ignore the skeptics and push on with this remarkable reinvention of journalism ethics.

The future of responsible journalism depends on it.

Stephen J. A. Ward is the James E. Burgess professor of journalism ethics in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is director of the school's Center for Journalism Ethics. Ward is the author of The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond, and is associate editor of the Journal of Mass Media Ethics. He also writes Ward's Words, a bi-weekly column on ethics for www.j-source.ca, Canada's main portal for the discussion of journalism issues.

This article was originally published on J-Source. J-Source and MediaShift have a content-sharing arrangement to broaden the audience of both sites.

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On a recent trip to Washington, D.C. for "Public Media Camp," it happened again. I was tempted by print.

Starting in May, I gave up my print newspaper subscription, and then compared how the iPhone beat the Kindle when it comes to reading periodical publications on electronic devices.

My fingers have remained relatively ink-free each day because I get my news fix electronically. But what about when I get out of my hermetically sealed home office chamber and head out into the wild? I sat down innocently at the airport gate for my hour of repose, and next to my chair was an abandoned San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.

Before I knew it, the newspaper was in my hands and I was leafing through the pages. I noticed that the actual size of the newspaper had shrunk since I last read it in print, and I saw that many articles in the print paper are not included in my Kindle edition (not to mention box scores, listings and many graphics). While I've sworn off getting a print subscription to the newspaper, that doesn't mean I can't read it out around town or while traveling, right?

On this trip, I fond myself reading print newspapers and a print book much more than my Kindle 2 or iPhone, even though these electronic devices were loaded up with books, newspapers, my email and Twitter feed. How do I explain the allure, the pleasures of print? Here are a few things that come to mind.

One Man's Trash...

Perhaps one of the strongest reasons that print newspapers could survive the twin holocausts of the Internet and economic meltdown is that people still like holding them during mass transit commutes, on airplanes ("turn off your electronic devices"), and on the toilet. When newspaper boosters talk about the "pass-around" rate for newspaper readers, they mean that one print edition easily makes the rounds from person to person to person.

And that includes strangers. I remember being in London a couple years ago and seeing Metro newspapers sitting everywhere inside the subway cars. When you got on the train, you reached for a paper, read it, and put it back when you were done. These free commuter papers are so convenient, so easy to find, so trashable, that you don't even mind the holy waste you are likely creating on the back end. Just grab and go.

On my recent trip to D.C., I found the Chronicle and the front section of the New York Times to read on my flight over, and then USA Today appeared under the door of my hotel room, free of charge. One morning I took the paper to breakfast; the next day, I stuck to my home routine of reading the New York Times on my iPhone. I would never have gone out to buy these papers, but their ability to appear magically at the right place and right time made them hard to ignore.

Scannability

So how did my reading experience differ with print newspapers compared to reading on the iPhone or Kindle? The first thing I noticed was that I could read a lot more in print than I would on those devices. With the print newspaper, I could quickly determine which stories were interesting by their headlines, images and placement. On a Kindle, it's more limited to one story at a time, or a partial list of headlines and cutlines. On the iPhone, most apps only load about 5 to 10 headlines and cutlines at a time.

For instance, I read all the front page stories from the New York Times front section, as well as many other articles the paper. On the iPhone, I usually read about five or six stories in the "Latest" section, and rarely go beyond that. Part of the reason for that could be that I have less time to read on the iPhone than I do while sitting on a five-hour flight. But the other reason is that it's quicker and easier for me to jump around to different stories and flip through pages with a print paper.

On an electronic device, there is the stutter-step effect. Click and wait. Scroll down. Page up and page down. A small window on the content. On a computer screen, scannability comes a little closer to the print newspaper. A home page of a news website is bathed in headlines, photos, cutlines, and even video. But, still, the print paper remains the king when it comes to scanning through a lot of content in a short period of time.

I remember when I first got my Kindle 2 and happily read through nearly every story in the Sunday New York Times. But perhaps that was a function of the newness, the excitement of seeing all that content and not having to carry around a huge print publication. Over time, the Kindle 2's magic has worn off. The more I read on my iPhone, the less I want to read on the Kindle.

The Beauty of Print

Finally, the eye-catching color images in a newspaper rarely transfer well to electronic devices. The Chronicle, in particular, uses almost gaudy amounts of color in its page designs. I quickly picked up that abandoned paper in a "monkey see, monkey read" moment. USA Today obviously operates with a similar modus operandi. The riot of color -- and even color-coded sections -- make it perfect for travel-weary souls who are more ready to be entertained and dazzled than put to sleep with monotones.

That goes for the ads as well. I haven't noticed the ads on my iPhone, and the Kindle is still ad-free. The ads in print newspapers are massive and difficult to avoid. Oh yeah, that's why they still charge an arm and a leg for them. Yes, the colored ink does stain, but the marketing message burns a hole in the retina, too.

Conclusion

As much as I'd like to kick ink completely, I have to face the fact that print still has its charms. I realize the clear-cut forests, the big carbon footprint, the sheer energy used in making print publications is not good for the environment. And I don't want to pay ungodly sums to get them delivered to my doorstep. But, occasionally, when something colorful and flashy is sitting forlorn and unused, I might just have to dig in.

Image of chicken on USA Today box by ira via Flickr.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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