The Media Oxpecker: Cynical Traffic-Trawling is Bad for the Soul (and other lessons learned while favela paintballing)
january 6, 2012 02:54 pm
Every week we round up media & tech industry news you may have missed while you were spreading the santorum.
- There are a lot of things to love about the latest communique from Gawker chief Nick Denton, starting with the fact that it was sent "on behalf of Nick, who is currently favela paintballing in Brazil." It's also rich with new Denton aphorisms.
On journalistic talent: "Superior writers, videographers and other content makers want to work with their own kind and for their own kind."
On evaluating staff writers: "We looked not just at an individual's audience appeal but at their reputation among colleagues and contribution to the site’s reputation."
On web optimization: "We believe that the best web content optimization strategy is something as old as journalism itself: the shocking truth and the authentic opinion."
And the irresitably retweetable quote: "Relentless and cynical traffic-trawling is bad for the soul. Yes, I just said that."
- Online News Association president Christine Montgomery on why the organization is coming out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA): "Despite the laudable goals, the legislation is seriously flawed.
Says David Carr about the proposed law: The open consumer Web has been a motor of American innovation and the attempt to curtail some of its excesses could throw sand in the works of a big machine on which we have all come to rely … Given both Congress’s and the entertainment industry’s historically wobbly grasp of technology, I don’t think they should be the ones re-engineering the Internet.
- Gannett has bought thousands of iPhones and iPads for its newspaper employees, who will be trained to use the devices over the next several weeks.
- Hearst's U.S. digital media business has turned a profit for the first time.
- Tool of the week for journalists: The Interviewr.
- A report released last month provides data on how small businesses are using group deals and Facebook ads. Among the findings: The number of local merchants using daily deals has grown by 33 percent since June, while the number using Facebook ads has slowed. Cost is the most important factor when selecting a deals provider.
- Forget mobile payments. The future is the mobile wallet.
- Early candidate for the Most Sought-After Demographic Group of 2012: The Drunken Consumer.
- Also coming in 2012: Digital ads that are a lot more personal.
- The Tri-City Voice, an independently-owned semiweekly in the San Francisco Bay area, says that attorneys for the behemoth MediaNews Group are obstructing its effort to be acknowledged as a "Newspaper of General Circulation," which would allow it to carry legal notices. The paper has now turned to a petition effort.
- Google is using adwords data to send "notifications" to big search advertisers:
It appears that Google uses what it knows about a company to promote the product with targeted ads, which is not an unusual practice for any company. It's the first time that marketers have begun to see cross-promotional notifications or ads for other Google tools in the AdWords user interface. Some marketers that are familiar with the text ads seem a bit uneasy about being served the notices because it appears that account information and spend levels trigger the ads.
- Why Twitter's "verified account" failure matters.
- Here are the Top QR Code Fails of 2011 according to Mashable.
- And finally, a dispatch from the favelas of Sweden:
The Church of Kopimism, a religion whose central tenet is the free sharing of information, has been formally recognized by the Swedish government.
Kopimists believe all information sharing is “holy” and that the value of information multiplies when it’s shared. They hold CTRL+C and CTRL+V, keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting, to be sacred symbols of their religion.
