Jeff Roberts at paidContent.org spotted the following ad on WashingtonPost.com earlier today:

I visited WaPo’s site and clicked around for quite a bit trying to find this ad somewhere but it was elusive. I saw a lot of political ads, ads for Internet Explorer, ads for tax refund services, ads for WaPo’s tablet app, but didn’t see the Google ad you see above (I clicked until I ran out of free articles to open). Ironically, I did come across one of Google’s Good to Know ads, which was supposed to be a marketing campaign to explain how Google uses the data culled from users of their services and how to protect yourself from having your personal data looted.

So much for ameliorating people’s fears of privacy violations.

It’s peculiar that Google chose to buy the ads on WashingtonPost.com since it was WaPo who Google named as the instigator for creating the initial “misconceptions” about the new Privacy Policy in the first place. I guess they figure if a news contagion started once with WaPo, maybe it can happen again.

At any rate, the ads are out there and at least in some corners of the Internet and if Google’s initial defense to the privacy frenzy has shown us anything, expect the company to reach into the inventory of tricks to spread the word that they’re not trying to change your privacy controls.

The emails were requested by many journalists during the 2008 Presidential campaign, as Palin was obviously a big player as the Republican VP candidate. The release of the emails has been delayed on multiple occasions, with Alaska officials saying they didn’t have the proper technology to accommodate the requests.

But in January, the Alaska attorney general directed that the emails should be released. And tomorrow, at 9am local time in the capital of Juneau, 24,199 emails will be made public. The emails will cover Palin’s time as Governor, spanning from the beginning of 2007 to September of 2008. Current Alaskan’s Governor Sean Parnell is keeping some 2,000 emails private.

Many of the major news outlets will have people on the ground tomorrow to begin to go through and analyze the emails for possible stories. Two organizations are requesting the help of amateur journalists to comb through the massive cache.

The Washington Post, on its blog The Fix, has a post today entitled “Help analyze the Palin emails.” They are limiting the participants to 100, who will be working in small teams to uncover any important information:

That’s a lot of e-mail for us to review so we’re looking for some help from Fix readers to analyze, contextualize, and research those e-mails right alongside Post reporters over the days following the release.

We are limiting this to just 100 spots for people who will work collaboratively in small teams to surface the most important information from the e-mails. Participants can join from anywhere with a computer and an Internet connection.

Here’s what their request form looks like:

The Washington Post has also set up a Twitter account simply for this purpose. @PalinEmails went live yesterday.

The New York Times is also getting in on the fun, asking readers to help investigate the Palin emails on their politics blog The Caucus.

We’re asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple form to describe the nature of the e-mail, and provide a name and e-mail address so we’ll know who should get the credit. Join us here on Friday afternoon and into the weekend to participate.

If you requested copies of the Palin emails, they will cost you three cents a page. That adds up to $725.97. They will come in five 55 pound boxes.

Palin herself has commented on the email release, saying that everything there is to know is probably already known. She does have some worries, as she told Fox News host Chris Wallace:

“A lot of those e-mails obviously weren’t meant for public consumption,” she said, and people who read them will “never truly know what the context of each one of the e-mails was.”

This story is bound to become pretty political, and fast. Judging by the comments over on Politico, there is plenty of opinions coming in from both sides regarding the release. Some say that this is an example of the liberal media continuing to hound someone they don’t like. Others say that a transparent government is essential to democracy, and if Palin has nothing to hide, she shouldn’t be worried.

Thoughts?

The move comes a day after the Post ended its partnership with the Tribune’s Los Angeles Times.

Marcus Brauchli,
Executive Editor
The Washington Post

The Post and Bloomberg will produce a co-branded online business news page on washingtonpost.com, featuring content from both news outlets.  The Post’s news will also be available on Bloomberg’s professional service, which has more than 300,000 users.

"This is a formidable collaboration," said Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of The Washington Post.

"It brings together The Post’s vast expertise on politics and policy news in Washington with Bloomberg’s highly regarded global financial, economic and political news franchise. It also brings together The Post’s prize-winning feature writers and columnists with Bloomberg’s team of top-notch journalistic talent."

The move by Bloomberg is an attempt to widen its reach beyond its core financial clients. Bloomberg is also a likely candidate to purchase BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill, according to Reuters.

The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News will launch January 1, 2010. It will feature 120 stories daily along with photos, graphics and other story elements.

The topic has come up with both Dow Jones and Gannett to name a couple, just within the past year. The policies come out, and the blogosphere criticizes them. PaidContent has the entire document of the Washington Post’s guidelines. Some highlights include:

- When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment.  We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.

- Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.  Post journalists should not be involved in any social networks related to advocacy or a special interest regarding topics they cover, unless specifically permitted by a supervising editor for reporting and so long as other standards of transparency are maintained while doing any such reporting.

Some in the blogosphere take issue with the fact that journalists working for the Washington Post are not allowed to express themselves as the human beings that they are, even in their own personal social networking, separate from the publication. The Post considers anything its journalists say on social networks the same as if they were including it in their bylines in the publication.

Critics of the policies feel that the Washington Post (and other publications with similar policies) are only stifling their social media efforts by taking away the human element that real people can connect with. The Post appears to feel that opinions run the risk of damaging the publications reputation. Both sides have reasonable points.

What do you think of the Post’s policies on social media? Do you think journalists should be allowed to say whatever they want on personal social network accounts? Share your thoughts.

"Under this latest iteration of advanced search, users will be automatically served the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google’s page," explains Waxman. "The latest algorithms apply ever more sophisticated filtering – based on search words, user choices, purchases, a whole host of cues – to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they’re looking for it."

According to Waxman, Schmidt said the first two news organizations to be featured in this system have been predetermined to be the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Unfortunately, we have to take this whole thing with a grain of salt, and question the legitimacy of the information. VentureBeat says "a source close to Google" is doing so.

"On one hand, we have Waxman, a reputable author and former correspondent for both the Washington Post and the New York Times, saying that Schmidt was concrete in his explanation of the new system, which seems very consistent with expressed goals," says VB’s Camille Ricketts. "…On the other hand, we have Google, a company that is usually tight as a drum when it comes to pre-announcements about products."

Ricketts also points out that Schmidt himself has historically been tight-lipped about forthcoming Google features. Waxman does get pretty specific though, and she has a reputation of credibility, so we certainly don’t want to dismiss her article as false just yet. We’re just going to have to take a wait and see approach.

Currently the site is focused on people involved in the government and politics on a national level but plans are in the works to expand it to include state officials, experts at think tanks and interest groups.

Each profile offers in-depth information on individual’s policy experience, involvement in government decision-making, major policy positions, voting records, political affiliations, campaign and personal finance information and related news articles from around the Web.

The Post says the goal is to provide policy biographies of all major government decision makers across the Executive and Legislative branches and independent agencies. Each profile highlights an individual’s main policy concerns.

"This is the first phase of a new venture to create a uniquely collaborative and rich information resource that demystifies the individuals behind Washington’s policy-making process," said Rachel Van Dongen, Editor of WhoRunsGov.com.

"The site gives political, business and opinion leaders, as well as students, educators and engaged citizens, a destination for crucial, real-time information on Washington’s key players. And it will be a free resource for all."

The initial beta version of the site will allow users to discuss officials’ policy profiles. More social features will be added later this year when the site expands to become a moderated wiki.

Users will be able to add their own content to profiles after they are reviewed by an editorial team. Politicians profiled on the site will also be able to provide biographical details and share stories in their own words.
 

On its website, Predictify allows users to make predictions about the outcomes of current events. At issue right now, for example, is whether Brooke Hogan will pose for Playboy, which spot "The Dark Knight" takes among IMDB’s best all-time movies list (15th seems to be winning), and who Barack Obama and John McCain will pick as running mates.

If you’re really good at predicting, you could make some money. Predictify offers Premium Questions, posed by sponsors, and the especially prescient can earn a little of the pot just by being right all the time.

At issue on the Washington Post, predictably, are various questions related to the Presidential candidates—not just VP choice, but also timing of the announcement.

Jim Brady, Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com, says the site’s new Prediction Center provides Post readers "with a dynamic forum to interact with news."

In rocky times for the newspaper industry, major news sources are turning more and more to developing their online presences to attract readers and offset losses in their print divisions. Though late to the game, national papers especially have widely adopted blogs as part of their formats. Increased interactivity appears to be a new part of the overall strategy. 
 

According to a New York Times report, some retailers and publishers were especially not too enthusiastic about this feature because of the growing concern, that Google’s SERP (Search engine result page) display PPC (pay-per click) advertisements from rival companies. Insinuating, that while it might be beneficial for a person using Google for a comprehensive search, the host site would be losing traffic due to the additional search box embedded in the Google search page.

For example: While searching for employment opportunities in Washington Post, the search results yield additional PPC links from Monster.com and CareerBuilders.com. Both these sites are in direct competition with the Washington Post’s employment site. This creates contradictory and a hostile environment for the host site.

However, at present these paid advertisements or the PPC links aren’t showing on these sites. One reason can be that, Google could have pulled out these particular advertisements on the grievances put forward by the website owners. Or the other reason being, that the website owners have themselves taken a stand and opted out of the ‘Search-within-Search’ maze like feature.

For those users who applied the Apple Software’s auto-updater and were forced to install the Safari browser, this post could be an eyeopener. Proving the fact, that, if users are not vigilant enough while working online, they might end up installing softwares which they do not need, or which could seriously compromise their computers’ safety and security.

Just a word of caution. “Be careful, what you wish for’.

Comments

Old Media, Time To Find The Missing Link

But maybe in the New Media, we’re talking of a different animal. The New Media is more about conversation and cooperation than it is about competition.

Maybe. You still want to be the number-one go-to resource in whatever niche you’re in. But it seems unrealistic (or perhaps overly-optimistic) to think that media hasn’t already fragmented into a million pieces.

News Flash: Readers now how have unlimited sources, and yours is just one of them.

Writing for CenterNetworks, Allen Stern criticizes WashingtonPost.com for publishing an article on the 20 best travel websites but not linking to a single one of them.

"The newspaper sites still don’t get how to join the conversation," he writes. "It starts with something as simple as a link to the sites and blogs who provided the content. In this case, the links should be provided to the travel sites that are mentioned."

In fairness, though, WaPo has been pretty aggressive about incorporating blogs into its everyday content, and linking out is standard practice among them. The same goes for the New York Times. However, in their main "newsy" articles, they’re both stingy with the link love, usually opting to link within their own sites rather than out to somewhere else.

That, and you have to tell them your life story via registration to view that content, another cardinal Web sin. Other sources often let their content expire, which is a prime cause of "link rot." Click on a link from an older story to find that newspaper site’s content is no longer available.

And this is really too bad, mainly because it is really an old-fashioned, Old Media approach to the New Media.

Note also how WaPo and the NYT are still attached to their serif fonts, as though reading from a screen and reading from paper are the same. I’m with them on that; I dig the little tails – they look nicer to me. But sans-serif makes for speedier reading online.

This isn’t so much an essay on where the major newspaper sites have fallen short during their online migration as it is a treatise on usability. I’ve written before about how the editorial process is changing because of the Internet.

News Flash #2: The end user doesn’t want to hunt and gather more than he has to. Information overload is no joke, and the easier you make the discovery process, the more likely the user is to return to you.

That means not delaying discovery with registration pages, making it easier and speedier to read, linking out to related sources, and keeping your content alive forever so the reference doesn’t die. 

So, I disagree (a bit) with Stern’s assertion that the major newspaper sites don’t get how to join the conversation; I think they do (finally) get it and are trying. Where they’re failing, though, is tailoring their design and content with the end-user in mind. It’s a new end-user they’re not used to dealing with, one that reads from a screen and not from paper. 

The "FactChecker" will offer readers a chance to verify facts behind the candidate’s positions and statements. Once a week, the "FactChecker" will post an item and readers will be able to add commentary on an issue and make topic suggestions as well as bring to light false claims by candidates, interest groups, and the media.

"We see fact checking as a collaborative effort and encourage readers to become part of the discourse," said Liz Spayd, Editor, washingtonpost.com.

"We believe the ‘FactChecker’ will provide an important resource for accurate, bi-partisan information on the issues most important to voters following the campaign trail."

Washington Post writer Michael Dobbs will be the author of the "FactChecker." After "FactChecker" presents an issue of national interest and receives reader’s comments, as well as responses from presidential candidates, Dobbs will offer comprehensive analysis on the issue.