Here’s what she had to say in a blog post this morning:

This is the first time we’ll have two HuffPost editions in the same country. But it won’t be a sibling rivalry; it will be a powerful collaboration, a reflection of our commitment to being a hub of reporting, comprehensive curation, group blogging and engagement across all of Canada. And since it’s part of HuffPost’s DNA to foster community — and also because it just makes a lot of sense — Le Huffington Post Québec’s editors will work closely with Le Huffington Post France to bring Quebecers the most relevant news and opinion from France, and vice versa.

Le Huffington Post France launched late last month, as Huffington said that she wanted to launch it at a “crucial time in France’s and Europe’s history.” Le Huffington Post France’s editorial director is Anne Sinclair, who is married to former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Le Huffington Post Québec’s managing editor is Patrick White, a Québec native with 20+ years of experience in the business. Radio-Canada’s Jean-Phillipe Cipriani is joining as the news editor. The blog editor is Tamy Emma Pepin, formerly part of Le Journal de Montreal, Québec’s biggest tabloid.

Huffington is emphasizing that Le Huffington Post Québec will really be all about Québec, and everyone associated has deep ties to the community. “We’ll cover everything that makes Québec unique, from its French-speaking heritage and stunning architecture to its politics and vibrant entertainment scene,” she says.

According to previous reports, Huffington Post is also set to launch the Huffington Post Streaming Network this summer. It will structure itself in a way similar to cable news networks and provide real-time news, commentary, and discussion.

Here’s the rundown: Readers are allowed up to 20 articles per month free of charge. Upon clicking that 21st article, readers will be prompted to purchase a subscription. According to the Times, that limit is designed to “draw in subscription revenue from the most loyal readers while not driving away the casual visitors who make up the vast majority of the site’s traffic.”

There will be three subscription options from which readers can choose, each being paid monthly. The cheapest is a $15 package that includes unlimited web and mobile app access. Next up is the $20 package which includes unlimited web and iPad app access. The all inclusive plan is $35. Of course, if you have an actual paper subscription, everything digital will be free. The plans do not cover subscriptions through e-readers.

The Times’ plan will not discourage those who come upon articles via social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as the 20-article rule does not apply in those cases. The Times only plans to put a 5 article a day limit on those who access the site through Google.

The times announced over a year ago their intentions of moving to a paid online subscription system. Throughout this time, they remained the most popular newspaper site in the country. News Corp’s paid iPad app The Daily has been met with mixed reviews since it’s release in early February, but most seem to be knocking its content and presentation rather than the idea of paid digital news. The Daily, although associated with the well known News Corp., was a brand new online news source. The New York Times has millions of loyal readers already, and they seem to have faith that loyalty equates to revenue.

Fact: The Internet is appealing because of all the FREE information available. Do people recognize the Times and others like it as authority sources that are worth the extra few bucks a month? The Times is betting that they do. Arthur Sulzberger, Chairman, is quoted in today’s Times as saying,

“This move is an investment in our future,” he said. “It will allow us to develop new sources of revenue to support the continuation of our journalistic mission and digital innovation, while maintaining our large and growing audience to support our robust advertising business. And this system is our latest, and best, demonstration of where we believe the future of valued content – be it news, music, games or more – is going.”

Rosenberg says, "Links have become an essential part of how I write, and also part of how I read. Given a choice between reading something on paper and reading it online, I much prefer reading online: I can follow up on an article’s links to explore source material, gain a deeper understanding of a complex point, or just look up some term of art with which I’m unfamiliar."

With print, you can’t do these things. You can take the exact same article in a print publication and its online counterpart, add some links to the online version, and automatically increase the value of the piece exponentially (from the reader’s perspective). Believe it or not, readers like content that is useful to them.

Now, that’s not to say that automatically adding any links increases the value. They have to be useful links that do the things Rosenberg described. Linking to past happenings related to a story, giving background, increases value. Some will argue that the links are a distraction (this is more the point of Rosenberg’s article – he argues for links as opposed to no links in web content), just ask yourself how many times you’ve clicked on links within a web article to get more information.

The links provide a means for increasing the reader’s knowledge, and doing so in a way that doesn’t force the reader to read about a bunch of stuff they already know, if they’re familiar with the background of a story. Links save time in an era where time has never been more valuable.

Links are also one reason why app-based publications could replace print publications in many readers’ hands. While I still feel like the paywalls associated with such publications are a larger obstacle (considering so much free content is available just a click/tap away), the apps do have the capability of adding the interactive element for readers, which can make the reading experience more appealing, and the articles themselves more valuable.

I don’t think print will completely die, because there will always be people that simply like to "have" the publication physically. They want to hold a newspaper over breakfast or collect back issues of a magazine that they hold dear. Some like having their own personal libraries.

However, people like convenience and valuable content, and print just can’t deliver either in the way online content can, whether it be in app form or simply from the web.

Thoughts?

Interestingly, while Google has been the apparent focal point of Murdoch’s woes, News Corp. has blocked other news aggregators in the past, but not Google. 

This week, News Corp.’s New York Post got a story wrong and pulled it down, but it’s still available in Google’s cache. It sounds like he’s pretty angry about the whole fiasco, and one can only imagine that Google still providing access to the story (with people able to link to it) probably doesn’t sit too well with him.

Foster Kamer at the Village Voice reports on the "hot water" the Post’s newsroom found itself in:

We received a tip earlier this afternoon: "heads might roll" by the end of the day at the New York Post’s Metro desk, as they’re in crisis mode after a humiliating correction was published this morning in the paper. Even more, that The Rage of (Post-owner) Rupert Murdoch is fueling it. What’s going on over there?

On Monday, the New York Post published a story about "Bronx wife-killer" Johnny Concepcion, who reportedly confessed to the crime of killing his wife via text message, and then took rat poison in an attempted suicide. The crux of the Post’s story was that Concepcion was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital and given a liver transplant. The story has since been scrubbed from the Post’s site, though it’s still available to read thanks to Google Cache.

According to Politico, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has jacked up the rate it will charge the White House’s news clipping service by $600,000. The publication quotes an unnamed administration official as saying they might have to drop the Journal.

The White House called the posting of such documents "irresponsible", but New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Dean Baquet is quoted as saying, "I think it was clear to them, in our conversations, that we were handling it with care."  The New York Times has expressed that its own staff conducted the research necessary to form its story, as WikiLeaks simply provided the documents.

The Atlantic has an interesting piece about how "WikiLeaks May Have Just Changed the Media," calling the event "a milestone in the new news ecosystem." Alexis Madrigal, senior editor for TheAtlantic.com writes:

Traditional media organizations are increasingly reaching out to different kinds of smaller outfits for help compiling data and conducting investigations. NPR is partnering with several journalism startups to deliver their information out to a larger audience. The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University broke a large story on renewable energy in association with ABC’s World News Tonight. ProPublica’s 32 full-time investigative reporters offer their stories exclusively to a traditional media player.

New conduits have opened into the most highly regarded newsrooms in the country; while that’s probably a good thing, it adds a layer of complexity to a story like this. While ProPublica and others are certainly journalism outfits, WikiLeaks is neither here nor there. The video that caused their last news splash — "Collateral Murder" — seemed like an attempt at an editorial. The group was harshly criticized in many quarters.

"Internet advocates love to say that information likes to be free," wrote Mashable’s Samuel Axon recently when he compiled a list of innovative sites that could reshape the news. "There are few greater examples of this than WikiLeaks, which has played an important role in several political scandals and controversies."

Wikipedia points to other notable leaks that have been published at WikiLeaks in the past. These include an apparent Somali assassination order, Guantánamo Bay procedures, Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account contents, Internet censorship lists, 9/11 pager messages, and other U.S. intelligence reports.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is quoted as telling the Guardian, "This situation is different in that it’s not just more material and being pushed to a bigger audience and much sooner … but rather that people can give back. So people around the world who are reading this are able to comment on it and put it in context and understand the full situation. That is not something that has previously occurred. And that is something that can only be brought about as a result of the Internet."

There’s no question that point has been made loud and clear this time.

The New York Times ran a piece about the aggregator TechMeme this week, putting such sites in the spotlight. Another such site, Spotery (formerly Ispotastory), launched today as well. Spotery CEO Limor Elkayam shared some insight into the significance of human-edited news aggregation and content curation with WebProNews.

"’Information Overload’ is a common problem, and finding great pieces of content within the constant flow of status updates is getting harder and harder," says Elkayam. "Some sites use algorithms, but they can easily be gamed, and people love to try and game them; some recent examples include Google’s and Twitter’s trending topics."

"Algorithms are great for finding information, but nothing can replace a person reading something, figuring out if its written well or is funny, or gage whatever sentiment is meant and deciding if they should recommend to others or not," she continues. "It’s why the Facebook Like button is so popular, or Twitter’s Retweet function is so heavily used."

"For the relaunch of Spotery, we took that recommendation aspect on an unbiased level," says Elkayam. "A lot of times, friends like and share similar content within the social Web, and we wanted to give people the day’s top stories without focusing on one or two topics. At a glance, a Spotery user can quickly and easily take a look at any category page and get updated with the day’s top news."

"We realize the importance of every person submitting content to the site, which is why we have a livestream and the ability for people to follow each other and share stories, but our editors filter through the stories that are submitted so that no one can game our system," she says.

"We also recognize that the future of news on the Web will continue to overload consumers with information," she adds. "We want to help people filter through the status updates and find what is valuable and interesting to them by providing an editorially-enhanced platform to find and share the day’s top news."

While not all of the news industry happy with the direction things have been going in, there is no doubt that there is a demand for the kinds of services sites like Spotery, TechMeme and a slew of others provide. Frankly it’s probably in the news consumers’ best interests that there are a lot of such sites, because when human-editing comes into play, there is still trust to be established – with the curation of content, as well as the content itself. As long as there is a human involved, there is room for bias, and more choice means more room to use your own judgment as a reader.

Original Article: Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a pep talk to the news industry Sunday Night in Washington, addressing the American Society of News Editors. Schmidt’s talk comes after Rupert Murdoch recently re-ignited the "we’re going to block Google" flame.

Is the web good for the news industry? Tell us what you think.

"The web can ultimately be very good for news," Schmidt is quoted as saying. "Think about it: You have more readers than ever, you have more sources than ever, for sure you have more ways to report and new forms of money. New forms of making money will develop."

According to Politico, Schmidt talked about "wanting to be challenged through technology that directs readers to a story with an opposing view." News aggregators do this (assuming that they’re aggregating a rounded pool of sources. Google News does this. Go to a story page in Google News, and you’ll be met with articles (sometimes hundreds or thousands) from varying sources, many of which have varying views.

That can be valuable to a reader, and can paint a more rounded picture of the story. Perhaps Google will deliver something (technology-wise) through Google News that puts greater emphasis on the opposition of views from the sources it draws from. Could this really be done algorithmically? What if Google News had a credibility rating system like Allvoices?

Google is "working on new ways to tailor advertisements and content for consumers, based on what stories they read," according to Politico’s account of the speech.

Either way Schmidt reportedly says that new forms of making money will develop and that Google is working on them, without giving any more detail than that. He did however advise news publications to place greater emphasis on news personalization and mobile, and maintained that there’s a bright future for both display ads and subscription models.

What approach would you like to see Google take for delivering news content? Ads? Share your thoughts here.

How it Works

When you hear that Allvoices uses an algorithm, thoughts of Demand Media may dance in your head, but where Demand Media CEO says flat out that it is not journalism, Allvoices is all about journalism.

Comparison between the two entities is not really fair anyway, because they are simply different animals. Whereas Demand’s algorithms help it determine the topics that it needs articles on, the Allvoices algorithm is more about piecing stories together, regardless of where they come from. Allvoices isn’t necessarily telling you what to write about. You’re reporting to Allvoices the news you have. If someone else contributes a different perspective on that news, the two (or however many exist) will be brought together to the same destination. That’s how it works in a nutshell. It’s actually more complex than that.

While Demand and Allvoices may be different animals, that’s not to say that there aren’t some similarities. For example, both have great potential for search. You can read about Demand’s process here. When a single report is pushed out under Allvoices’ model, five additional pages are created – for related news stories, images, blog posts, videos, and comments. It’s not about creating content based on what people are searching for, like Demand’s model, but there are multiple ways that readers may experience the content by way of search.

The Allvoices system takes citizen reports and news feeds from mainstream outlets, instantly determines when they come in, where they come from in the world, down to the city level, and categorizes them dynamically, whether that be politics, sports, entertainment, etc. If a city page doesn’t exist in the system, one will automatically be created. Hashmi says the system dynamically determines the validity of a news source as well.

That’s where the reputation system comes in. It looks at local sources that are coming from a country, Twitter feeds coming from that location, citizen reporters from that location, etc. The way the community interacts determines the credibility and level of trustworthiness of a story/reporter. Each citizen report has a rating that lets readers check the credibility level. There are basically three levels of contributors. Everybody starts out at the "stringer" level. Once they’ve met the criteria of credibility, they can become a "reporter." This means they have greater clout, and can eventually achieve "anchor" status, which will give them more influence on the community and a higher degree of trust. Things that are looked at to determine one’s status include number of articles per month, checking for copyright violation, reputation, level of activity, engagement factor, level of promotion (Allvoices provides tools to share content), popularity, etc.

Contributors can make money at any of the three levels, should they elect to join the incentive program. At the lowest level, they can get $2 per thousand views, and at the highest level, $4 per thousand views.

As far as spam checking goes, Hashmi says the algorithm looks for profanity and performs contextual analysis. There is a plenty of the human element invovled as well. Community managers will police content on top of the algorithm, and there is further checking at the top level. Users can also flag stories and comment on them.

The New Global News Desk

Now Allvoices has released a Global News Desk, or an assignment desk if you will, which gives citizens and reporters opportunities to work together. For example, a citizen could feed a journalist information for a particular story, and the journalists could take it from there and turn it into a full-fledged story. This News desk has launched in 30 cities around the world, and they expect to have that number of to 60 within the next month to month and a half. The idea, is that more parts of the world can be covered extensively than what is currently being covered by mainstream media outlets. "We see signals from the audience," says Hashmi. "They’re looking for alternative news sources and different perspectives – news they’re not typically seeing." Currently, cities that have appointed Global Desk citizen and professional journalists include:
 
- Baghdad, Iraq
- Beijing, China
- Beirut, Lebanon
- Cairo, Egypt
- Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Doha, Qatar
- Dubai, UAE
- Islamabad, Pakistan
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Kolkata, India
- London, UK
- Manila, Philippines
- Nairobi, Kenya
- Shanghai, China
- Yerevan, Armenia

As well as cities in:
 
- Canada
- Iran
- Israel
- Nigeria
- Palestinian Territories
- Turk and Caicos Island
- USA

"What’s interesting about us is unlike traditional media sites, we don’t promote reporters," says Hashmi. While traditional media will promote their reporters and the actual coverage, Allvoices places greater emphasis on the stories themselves, bringing in multiple perspectives to a single destination. Assuming it works like it’s supposed to (frankly I don’t have enough experience with Allvoices to give it an evaluation in that regard), it’s a pretty novel idea for helping readers wade through bias and get a more well-rounded picture of any particular topic.

While Allvoices considers itself a destination site for news, Hashmi tells me mainstream media outlets often find content through the site and request to syndicate it themselves.

The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition is available to consumers for $49 per month. Current WSJ.com subscribers can access the offering for a discounted rate. In October 2009, Dow Jones launched the professional edition, aimed at offering businesses more in-depth information while boosting its revenue via its subscription service.

Features of The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition include allowing users to personalize the service to match their needs. Wall Street Journal editors will monitor and select top news and trends across key industries including pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, media & marketing, finance and technology. Users can customize news alerts and company profiles for industries and topics that are most relevant to them.

The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition offers access to news from Dow Jones’ 2,000 journalists, as well as the ability to search more than 17,000 global business news sources, some of which are not available free online.

"The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition leverages two of our leading products to create an innovative tool to serve professionals across multiple industries – a service Dow Jones is uniquely positioned to provide," said Todd Larsen, president, Dow Jones & Company. 

"The competitive advantage offered by being able to quickly and thoroughly access and analyze information from literally thousands of resources is an exciting prospect for our business and for our users."

The department said the registry is not likely to reduce competition among news content owners and could offer procompetitive benefits to both participating content owners and content users.

The registry would consist of a centralized database containing news content from multiple content owners. It would allow content owners to register and list individual items of news content, specify the uses others may make of that content, and detail the terms on which such content may be licensed.

"The AP’s registry may provide a new, efficient way for news content users to identify applicable terms of use and purchase licenses for Internet news content," said Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney.  

"The registry may benefit both news originators and content users by reducing the transaction costs associated with securing licenses for Internet use." 

The registry would be a non-exclusive method of accessing, licensing and using content on the Internet. It would be open, on nondiscriminatory terms, to all owners and users of Internet news content. Content owners would be free to select which, if any, content to include in the registry. They would be allowed to offer registered news content outside of the registry. They would also be free to join other competing Internet registry services.