:Journalistopia

Just announced: 2008’s Webby Award winners! The Webby Awards picks through the best of the Web and grants awards in more categories than you can shake a stick at.

I’ve pored through the list and extracted the winners from news-related categories, as well as news organizations that won in other categories, such as science or best practices. Here’s the Journalistopia-edited list. Apologies in advance if I missed anyone:

Best Copy/Writing
Wired.com
http://www.wired.com
(Also nominated: HowStuffWorks, Design Observer, NYTimes.com and Slate)

Best Use of Photography
Your Shot - National Geographic Magazine
http://ngm.com/yourshot

Blog - Business
FT.com Alphaville
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/

Blog - Political
The Huffington Post
http://huffingtonpost.com

Broadband
ABC.com Full Episode Player
http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streami…

Magazine
National Geographic Magazine Online
http://ngm.com
(Also nominated: Dwell.com, Makezine, NYMag, Yoga Journal Yoga Journal)

Music
BBC Radio 1 Meet the DJs
http://agencyrepublic.net/awards/…

News
NYTimes.com
http://nytimes.com/
(Also nominated: BBC News, Wired, CNN and Discovery News)

Newspaper
NYTimes.com
http://nytimes.com/
(Also nominated: The Guardian, the Independent, the Wall Street Journal and Variety)

Radio
BBC World Service channel site
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/

Science
nature.com
http://www.nature.com

Sports
Yahoo! Sports
http://sports.yahoo.com/
(Also nominated: ESPN.com, Nike Skateboarding, Spyker F1 Magazine, Sweet Spots)

Television
HBO Voyeur
http://www.hbovoyeur.com

VIDEO CATEGORIES

Best Use of Animation/Motion Graphics
The New York Times/T: The New York TImes Style Magazine “Circle Squared”
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/20…

Best Writing
Onion News Network
http://tv.theonion.com

Documentary: Individual Episode
Coney Island: An Uncertain Future
Getty Images
http://www.rickgershon.com/gettyi…

News and Politics: Individual Episode
Finding the Way Home
MediaStorm
http://mediastorm.org/0017.htm

Travel (video)
Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip - NYTimes.com/Video
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_s…

MOBILE

Entertainment (mobile)
Cosmo Mobile: 100 Hot Cities, Fake Calls, Dude Decoder & Cocktails!
http://m.cosmopolitan.com

Listing and Updates (mobile)
The New York Times Mobile Real Estate Listings
http://m.nytimes.com/re

News (mobile)
Mobile NYTimes
http://mobile.nytimes.com

Sports (mobile)
ESPN.com (Wireless)
http://mobileapp.espn.go.com/wire…

ALSO: Shoutouts to NYTimes.com for their best practices and best visual design/function nominations, Mama Trib’s Swamp blog for best political blog nomination, National Geographic for their best home page People’s Voice award, Consumer Reports for their Guides/Ratings/Review People’s Voice award, the Guardian and Onion for their podcasts nominations, NPR for their politics nomination, NPR and the BBC for their religion and spirituality nominations, Frontline World for their Documentary: Series and Documentray: Individual nominations, U.S. News and World Report for their Best Writing (video) nomination, the New Yorker’s animated cartoons for their animation nomination, CBS for their sports (video) nomination and many more.

Yep, no news site nominees in the navigation and structure categories. We’ll have to work on that…

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Amy Webb over at MyDigiMedia cuts through the media circus around newspaper acquisitions and has a moment of clarity when she surveys the bigger picture and looks at “who owns what.”

Amy has drawn up a handy chart showing the acquisitions made by IAC, Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and, yes, News Corp. Us newsie types like to think newspapers are the center of the universe, but there’s a much larger landscape to be surveyed.

She writes:

“The future of media isn’t only about content, it’s about delivery. While journos are busy bickering about whether or not to allow visitor comments on their websites, other companies are moving full-speed ahead with radically different business models. They’re thinking broadly: aggregator + search + content + mobile + gaming = sustainability.”

In other words: If you’re worried primarily about what to call the lifestyle section on your news site and not about, say, delivering content to mobile devices, then it’s time to take your head outta your arse.

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American Journalism Review takes a hard look in its June/July issue at whether hyperlocal journalism is a financially sustainable practice. Paul Farhi writes:

Is there a real business in this kind of business? So far–and admittedly it’s still very early –the answer is no. A few of the estimated 500 or so “local-local” news sites claim to show a profit, but the overwhelming majority lose money, according to the first comprehensive survey of the field. The survey, conducted by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism (affiliated with the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, as is AJR), documents a journalism movement that is simultaneously thriving and highly tenuous.

While national sites will have a difficult time pursuing a Backfence-style model, I still believe newspapers should be aggressively catering their content to smaller geographic niches. By categorizing your content into narrowly tailored categories, you’re going to be better serving a greater number of people by making your site’s content more relevant to them. Whether this will translate into big ad dollars is anybody’s guess. But can you afford to ignore catering to your local audience, where many of your advertisers reside?

[Via Romenesko]

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This is just classic.

[Photo by jkenning]

Here’s a link for those of you non-geeks wondering just what the heck is so funny. Back story is here.

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The McClatchy newspaper group is backing out of an online ad partnership with Tribune and Gannett to join a rival group of companies partnering with Yahoo, The Wall Street Journal reports.

According to the WSJ:

“McClatchy’s decision means Tribune and Gannett could be isolated from what appears to be a growing industry coalition aimed at creating an online national ad platform with Yahoo. Led by Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group Inc., the rival group already includes 12 publishers that represent more than 250 newspapers across the country.”

An official announcement could come as early as Monday, according to an LA Times report.

[Via PaidContent]

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Big, big kudos to the Allentown Morning Call for their Breeders and Kennels search widget. While there’s nothing especially extraordinary about setting up a searchable database, the Morning Call took it a step further and made their search widget embeddable by way of copy/pasting iframe code.

I could be wrong, but I can’t recall seeing a newspaper site ever do this with a search widget.

One consumer rights group has already embedded the database on their page and called it “groundbreaking.”

Newspapers should start considering this as standard operating procedure immediately. Can you imagine the traffic you’d receive for your local voter guides from bloggers during election season? What about dining databases? Chances are, there is plenty of content already on your site that can be turned into a search widget. And, the advertising of your site in a positive light? The possibilities are ripe.

Thanks to Amy Gahran for spotting this.

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As if the Roanoke Times doesn’t already produce so many great multimedia news projects, now they go and produce one hell of a want ad — in this case for the top editorial job at the paper.

This is one of the best examples of “show, don’t tell” I’ve ever seen. Go look.

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Do I hear $10 for “Saddam Hussein hanging?” $15?

PaidContent highlights a Wall Street Journal report on the growing trend in the U.K. toward newspapers bidding on sponsored links on Google for news events. Some American newspapers have gotten in on the act too, including the New York Times, Washington Post and USAToday, according to the article.

I have no qualms about training journalists to write search-engine friendly headlines. Those headlines tend to work better on the Web anyway, and Google is the biggest driver of traffic just about anywhere.

Nevertheless, the question is: If this trend explodes here in the United States, will even mid-size and small news sites have any other choice but to join the auction?

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The New York Times reports on Forbes.com’s troubles with determining how many users visit the site and who they are, a trend I predict is likely to increase in coming days with other media outlets.

All evidence suggests that advertisers are becoming increasingly concerned with the accuracy of measuring users’ activities. The Audit Bureau of Circulation is pushing a web data initiative, as is the traditionally broadcast-only Nielsen ratings.

Editors and managers should be taking a hard, honest look at where their traffic comes from and whether it will be able to stand up naked in its full glory to advertisers. Fortunately, many newspapers seem committed to building local traffic, not just focusing on raw page views.

On Forbes, the NYTimes reports:

“A closer look at the numbers raises questions about Forbes.com’s industry-leading success. For its claim of a worldwide audience of nearly 15.3 million, it has been citing February data from comScore Media Metrix, one of the two leading providers of third-party Web traffic data.

There are several problems with that statistic, though, and comScore has since revised the figure downward to less than 13.2 million as part of a broader revamping of its worldwide data for many sites. Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore Media Metrix, said the new figures were released “a couple of months ago” after it changed its methods for estimating global audiences.

There is also the question, given Forbes.com’s user figures, of where those visitors were going. According to comScore, 45 percent of its February traffic went to ForbesAutos.com, a companion Web site heavy on car reviews and photos. About three-quarters of the ForbesAutos.com traffic came from outside the United States.”

[Via MediaBistro]

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The New York Times reports on how Google is now allowing businesses to upload coupons for free onto its Google Maps service. The acrimonious lede, which I confess I enjoyed, goes:

“Google is expanding its local directory business using the same sort of disruptive tactics it has used in other areas: giving away something for which others charge.”

Newspapers may again be left with the same dust in their faces that Craigslist kicked up. For newspapers to survive, the best and brightest need to redouble efforts to figure out what local news operations can offer that Google can’t.

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Never to leave a segment of newspapers’ profits untouched, Google has plans to launch interactive local ads in its new version of Google Earth, according to Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard (registration required). Google has apparently been scraping real estate data that would allow Google Earth users to see any home’s purchase price, property taxes and more.

Google is also planning on selling Google Earth ads that will provide a sharp, emphasized image of the building along with a link to the store’s Web site. Hopefully, no one will be dumping the trash in the back when the satellite snaps the pic. I’d love to see a three-dimensional view of the Dumpster with the leftover fried rice inside.

Still, this all beggars the question: What services to real esate advertisers will local news sites be willing and able to offer that Google can’t? Will a text listing on a newspaper site be competitive against a beautiful three-dimensional image and an interactive map of the area?

What happens when Google perhaps starts integrating local crime statistics and school information into their map databases to give buyers a better sense of the area in which they are considering purchasing a home?

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