Microsoft launching news operation « General Microsoft Corp is launching its own news operation as part of its new-look MSN website when Windows 8 launches later this month. The world’s largest software company is making a “big, multi-million dollar investment” to create a “decent-sized media operation,” said Bob Visse, general manager, MSN Product Management Group. Microsoft sold its 50 percent stake in news website MSNBC.com in July to longtime partner NBCUniversal, now majority-owned by Comcast Corp. MSNBC’s newsroom at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington is being wound down, while MSN builds up a news team at its nearby Bellevue offices.
Long-term calendar for TARGET closing days Today the Governing Council of the European Central Bank has decided that, from 2002 until further notice, the Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross settlement Express Transfer (TARGET) system will be closed, in addition to Saturdays and Sundays, on the following days: On these closing days, TARGET as a whole, including all the national real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems will be closed. The establishment of a common long-term calendar is deemed necessary because the frequent calendar changes and the existence of annual calendars, which were seen for the three years 1999, 2000 and 2001, introduce uncertainties for financial markets. Furthermore, to avoid problems arising from different national TARGET operating days, the closure of TARGET as a whole is deemed desirable, as indicated by the banking sector. In order to implement a common TARGET calendar, some operational and legal adaptation may be necessary in certain Member States.
Collaborative mapping of fires in Brazilian favelas showcases possibilities for crowdsourcing the news Brazilian reporter Patrícia Cornils got a surprising response after sharing on Facebook a Google Docs worksheet listing fires in the favelas of São Paulo. Several people joined the collaborative reporting project that became Fogo no Barraco (Fire in the Shanty), an interactive map that cross references data on fires with real estate appreciation near the affected areas. The map demonstrates the journalistic possibilities of online collaboration and crowdsourcing information. According to Cornils, the spreadsheet took off when she decided to open the process and ask for help online. "I didn't have any expectations but to start collecting basic information about the fires because I was worried about what I was seeing--am seeing--happening.
'The role of the journalist in SEO is changing' “The role of the journalist in SEO is changing,” said Eric Olander, former Digital Editor-in-Chief for France 24, an international news network based in Paris. Today’s digital newsrooms are acutely aware that search engine optimisation (SEO), a term that encompasses a range of tactics for getting web content noticed and listed high up in search results by Google and its competitors, is not a magical gloss that in-house tech experts can merely apply to news articles after they have been written. Rather, it is a skill set that all journalists whose work appears online need to possess, and use to their advantage, in order to remain competitive in the digital age. “Optimisation should be baked in as you’re creating the story,” said Olander; “it has to be done on the content creation level because if you do it on a secondary level you’re changing the editorial structure of the story.”
Carla Buzasi interview: Huffington Post's woman in a hurry Carla Buzasi moves fast. Eighteen months ago, the editor responsible for AOL's disparate collection of web brands in the UK received a round-robin email from the company's chief executive, Tim Armstrong, on the way into work. "I was standing on the platform of Barnes Bridge station, and it was notifying me that AOL had just agreed to purchase the Huffington Post for $315m. I decided to track down Arianna Huffington – it wasn't too difficult to find her – and I emailed her somewhere between Barnes Bridge and Waterloo." It was a job application ("this was an amazing opportunity potentially at the right place at the right time, and I wasn't going to let it pass"), and a month later, Buzasi met Huffington in the Charlotte Street hotel.
Digg sold for just $500,000 Digg, the "social news" site which was once the poster child for Web 2.0 and valued at up to $175m, has been sold to New York technology development company Betaworks for just $500,000 (£324,000) in cash plus equity. The sale of the seven-year-old site, founded a few months after Facebook, marks a colossal loss for its former venture capital backers, who put in a total of $45m during its life as an independent. Digg reportedly still gets more than 16 million monthly unique visitors – but it has lost its ability to drive the direction of the net's interest as it once did. Having once looked as though it could be the biggest driver of such social news, the site stumbled multiple times in trying to remake the way that users could vote stories up or down its front page – and lost its advantage over rivals sites such as Slashdot and Reddit.
Google's Gingras: Media Orgs Need to 'Rethink Everything' Richard Gingras, Google’s head of news and social products, talks with Knight Fellows about journalism and web ads. Credit: David Sarno The digital earthquake that’s knocking the traditional news industry off its foundations is not over, said Richard Gingras, Google’s head of news and social products. And it probably never will be. Murdoch considers splitting up News Corporation News Corporation is considering dividing itself into two, splitting off its publishing arm from its much larger entertainment division, according to a report in the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal (WSJ). If Rupert Murdoch brings off the move, it would mean the creation of a publishing business that would comprise News International's papers - The Times, Sunday Times and The Sun - with the WSJ, the New York Post and the book publisher, HarperCollins. The entertainment entity would include the Fox movie studio and television networks that now represent News Corp's strongest and most profitable parts.
Why traditional media should be afraid of Twitter As we’ve mentioned a number of times, Twitter has been gradually tip-toeing further and further into the media business for some time now. It has already become a real-time newswire for many, a source of breaking news and commentary on live events, and now — with the launch of curated “hashtag pages” like the one it launched late last week for a NASCAR event — it is showing signs of becoming a full-fledged editorial operation. It may not be hiring investigative reporters, but the areas of overlap between what it does and what media companies do is growing, and so is its attractiveness to the advertisers that media entities desperately need to hang onto. The NASCAR page may not seem like anything to be concerned about, since it appears to be just a typical grouping of tweets collected by hashtag.
Tribune seen nearing bankruptcy conclusion By Tom Hals WILMINGTON, Del., June 7 Fri Jun 8, 2012 3:14am IST WILMINGTON, Del., June 7 (Reuters) - Tribune Co's long bankruptcy entered what is expected to be the final stage on Thursday, although the media company still faces months of regulatory clearances to transfer broadcast licenses to new owners. The owner of 23 television stations and publisher of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times asked a Delaware bankruptcy court to approve a reorganization plan to pay off creditors. The company failed a year ago in an attempt to end its Chapter 11 case because of creditor disputes, but this time success appears much more likely.
Forbes’ AdVoice Platform - A couple years ago, Forbes broke ground on what it calls its “most significant re-architecture” in its 90-plus years of existence. The goal, according to chief product officer Lewis D’Vorkin, was to “increase the interaction between content creators, audiences and marketers.” In effect, it’s been a process of putting the content creator “at the center of experience,” says Mark Howard, Forbes Media’s senior vice president of digital advertising strategy. Since then, Forbes has grown its contributor base to more than 1,000 academics, journalists and experts from a variety of fields who pass through what Howard calls a “firm vetting process” and bring to Forbes their own audiences, networks and followings.
#GEN2012: Inside an analytics-driven French newsroom The online editor-in-chief of French financial daily Les Echos has described how a steady stream of analytics data is helping journalists do their job – and even having an impact on what appears in the print edition. LesEchos.fr editor-in-chief François Bourboulon said the site had taken analytics seriously in the past three years. Before this time: There was little data given to the news staff about the most read stories on the website. We have tried to change that.We have introduced analytics and data almost everywhere and at every moment of the day. The FT's Digital Subscriptions Could Outnumber Print By the end of the year, the Financial Times could have more digital subscribers than it sells print copies, FT.com‘s managing director Rob Grimshaw predicted this week during an on-stage interview with NewsCred‘s CEO Shafqat Islam as part of the Internet Week New York. According to Grimshaw, who has been heading the newspaper’s digital operations for the last four years, the FT currently has a whopping 270,000 online subscribers – almost as high as its 310,000 print copy circulation, which it may soon exceed. Update: Grimshaw’s numbers were slightly outdated, as the FT now has 285,000 digital subscribers. As we previously reported, the FT’s subscription revenue is also on course to overtake its ad income in 2012.