Martin Hofmann

a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me

Articles of Note

Articles of Note – February 19, 2013

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1. The New York Times: Logging Off to Trace a Web Photo to Its Source

If journalists take their eyes off the screen, leave their cubicle and actually go out and talk with people, they might discover something that is interesting as heck.

David Carr in The New York Times, February 17, 2013

2. TheMediaBriefing: Raju Narisetti on the intersection between tech and content

Most big news rooms have focused on creating great content, and thinking the audience will come and hopefully they’ll pay. But having great content is no longer enough – everybody gets the same news. The experience the audience are getting from the content is what will differentiate us from competition and all experience only come at intersection of content and tech.

Raju Narisetti, head of Wall Street Journal Digital Network, at Digital Media Strategies conference, February 19, 2013

3. The Guardian: How we made Les Misérables

Lyrics and journalism are a good match: both are about manipulating language under constraint. Bars of music can’t be negotiated.

Lyricist Herbert Kretzmer in The Guardian, February 19, 2013

Articles of Note – February 12, 2013

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TheMediaBriefing: It’s tough below the line: the paradox of reader comments

For too many media organisations, for too long, community “strategy” has simply consisted of opening up comment forms underneath as much content as possible, and hoping for the best. It is no surprise that it doesn’t work.

I agree with a lot of the perspectives in this article. For many newspapers, allowing reader comments helps drive traffic but in many cases it doesn’t enhance a discussion when people in comments just yell at each other instead of listening to each other and building on each other’s comments. That would only work with more active community management which would likely become an expensive proposition for newsrooms and at the same time drive many of the readers away who come for a shouting match, not for a discussion.

Articles of Note – March 10

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  • In the age of big data, data journalism has profound importance for society
    ‘We’re living in a data-driven culture,” said DeBarros. “A data-savvy journalist can use the Twitter API or a spreadsheet to find news as readily as he or she can use the telephone to call a source. Not only that, we serve many readers who are accustomed to dealing with data every day — accountants, educators, researchers, marketers. If we’re going to capture their attention, we need to speak the language of data with authority. And they are smart enough to know whether we’ve done our research correctly or not. As for news apps, they’re important because — when done right — they can make large amounts of data easily understood and relevant to each person using them.’

  • Why Don’t We Read About Architecture?
    ‘Architecture, writes Lange, “is the art you cannot avoid” and it carries a burden that the other arts don’t — it must reconcile aesthetics and ideas with user functionality. A painting or a novel need only please or provoke its audience; it doesn’t then also require setbacks, parking minimums and LEED certification. Fewer of us are affected — or even in regular contact with the other arts — while all of us are inextricably connected to the built environment.’
  • How to create and edit articles for Wikipedia
    ‘Ironically for a user-generated content site, Wikipedia looks down on user-generated content. Blogs can be a reliable source if the blogger is notable for something other than blogging.’

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The ROI of putting your pants on

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“The notion of saying, ‘What’s the ROI of social media?’ is, at its broadest sense the right notion. But it’s the wrong question. You may as well ask what the ROI of putting your pants on every day is. You know there’s a value to it, but it’s hard to measure. It’s about what specific objectives we’re setting out, how we measure against those objectives, and how those all lead to a better reputation for the company, increasing market share, increasing excitement about the brand.”

Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford, in an interview with Marketing Magnified eJournal, August 2010