Daily Digest 12/17/2008

• 5 Ways To Create Custom Multiple Signatures In GMail

  If you are like me, who has multifaceted web avatars and duly has his Gmail configured to handle different accounts, personal and professional, you would love to sign off with custom signatures for each. So this handicap of not having multiple signatures built in seems to have found a universal protesting echo around the web. Faced with the vexing problem, I fired up Google to search for ways to put my stamp within Gmail.

  tags: gmail, getanewbrowser

• Hyperlocal Content Network Outside.In Adds Funding

  Prepping for the long financial winter, hyperlocal content network Outside.In has secured an undisclosed amount of funding. Previous backers Union Square Ventures, the New York City Investment Fund and Betaworks all participated in the new investment, among others. The new money comes just a few months after the Brooklyn, NY-based company picked up $3 million in its third round of funding.

  tags: hyperlocal, getanewbrowser

• 21 Awesome WordPress Plugins That I Selfishly Kept to Myself Until Today

  I’ve not been very forthcoming with the list of WordPress plugins we use on Marketing Pilgrim. By keeping them a big secret, I shamelessly thought I’d keep an advantage over competing blogs.

  tags: wordpress, plugins, getanewbrowser

• Pitch Your Micro-Release in 140 Characters | Microblink

  George’s site, PR140, is a URL-shortener for public relations professionals, focused on the idea that it would only be used for PR pitches and stories, making it easier for journalists to track. As the site catches on, “[j]ournalists and other web watchers following [these tweets] will see the pitch” and recognize it as such by the pr140.com portion of the link address.

  tags: microblink, microrelease, pr140, getanewbrowser, web strategy

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

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Diane Rehm Show - Future of Journalism and Newspaper Industry

In fitting timing for our series on the Future of the Media/Journalism - yesterday Diane Rehm had a panel on her public radio show discussing “The Newspaper Industry and The Future of Journalism“.

This week’s bankruptcy filing by the Tribune Company is the latest sign of trouble for the news business. A panel joins guest host Katty Kay to discuss how the on-going recession is affecting the already struggling industry and what it could mean for how Americans get their news.

Guests include Lauren Rich Fine, Director of Research at ContentNext; Rem Rieder, Editor and Senior Vice President of the American Journalism Review; Jeff Jarvis, associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism; and Bruce Dold, Editorial Page Editor for the Chicago Tribune.

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Jon Stewart on The Newspaper Crisis

Jon Stewart’s take on the newspaper crisis from The Daily Show.

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Bill Densmore on Network Journalism

Bill Densmore is a “career journalist” that is working on many projects while serving as a Reynolds Fellow at University of Missouri. One of these projects is the Information Valet Project, which is:

The Information Valet Project is organizing an information-industry collaborative to build, own and operate a shared-user network layered upon the basic Internet.

In this video Bill discusses Network Journalism, revenue models, and Information Valets…

Here is Bill’s deck describing his ambitious Information Valet Project…

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Michael Libbie on The Future Of Journalism

Thanks Andy, for giving me this opportunity to voice an opinion on “The Future of Journalism” and you’re right. It is a passion of mine.

Much of what is wrong with “Journalism” today is the corporate takeover of the media. No longer are writers, photographers, editors and copy experts dedicated partners in disseminating “the news” they are simply pawns in the hands of corporate accountants. “Sales” runs the operation…not journalism. If you want proof just open any “news media” website. If, indeed, you can download it in decent time you’ll see that it is blazing with more ads than the classifieds. Monetizing news to this extent is simply making it a commodity and the public suffers.

The result of this bunker mentality is falling circulation/viewer-ship yet increased advertising costs to business. It is a recipe designed for failure.

So, what do we do?

• Look to independently owned media that is responsible to their local area. Perfect examples are small town newspapers and radio stations. Here the media professionals are tied to the community and not the corporate culture. They mix with the citizens and are responsible for what they write and read.
• Question existing media. Example: Last night on ABC-5 here in Des Moines they had an entire segment on “fluff news”. Four minutes of mindless drivel that belonged on Entertainment Tonight or C.O.P.S. Sorry but with all the activity in DSM they had to stoop to that junk?
• Push the envelope and get creative on our own. The technology available today allows us to do “Indy” news and get a readership/viewer ratio much larger than existing media. And, that’s not hard. Consider that there are 425,000 households in the DSM DMA. The Des Moines Register daily edition subs are 144,000 and falling. We can do better.
• Finally, do away with the political agenda. I don’t need local writers to “take a stand”. Give the data and the facts unless your agenda is an “agenda”.

Thanks for reading…

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