The visual history of Vegas - Rob Curley did it again

Whenever people ask me how the digital future of local journalism and regional newspapers might look like I refer to Rob Curley. It is really impressive what Rob and his team have achieved on their way to prove the enormous potential of local story telling on the web.

Rob started his career at the Lawrence Journal in Kansas, where he managed to create new forms of cross media community services around local sports teams. He then moved to the Washington post, where he launched the Local Explorer, a unique map mashup displaying local crime news, real estate offers, and school and Point of interest information. He caused national debates among media experts when he started Loudonextra.com, a sublocal website for a Washington suburb.

Now Rob and his creative pack have moved to the Las Vegas Sun. And this time, I have to confess, Rob and his folks have topped themselves. The way they compiled the history of sin city is a milestone in local journalism and envisioning local story telling. Why so euphoric?

The Flash designed combination of historic pictures, videos, timeline, geocontext and personalisation is extremely cool and represents the best of newspaper core values. Check the section Construction deaths a complete multimedia monument for the forgotten victims of the Vegas construction boom. I guess there is no place on the web where you could learn more about the Vegas fascination. Could a regional newspaper achieve more?

What is missing? I'm still waiting for the integration of user content (amateur pictures and video) and the voices of authentic witnesses. It must be exciting to listen to the old croupier talking about the black jack nights with the rat pack.

Local history is a perfect web proposition for local newspapers since they have always been a crucial and reliable part of it. They can leverage their archive content, they can team up with users and local experts and they can perfectly play local history stories over all their crossmedia channels - from print to web, from radio to mobile. The Stuttgarter Zeitung recently launched "Von Zeit zu Zeit" (From time to time). It is not as visual and spectacular as the Vegas Sun but already adresses the full potential of local history.

If you want to keep track with Rob Curley and his experiences as a
self proclaimed internet punk in the local newspaper scene (including tops and flops) follow his blog.

A EURO '08 video magazine without video

With the football EURO 2008 entering it‘s final stage I’d like to share some experiences on a quite thrilling visual multimedia service we did for MSN in Germany. For the first time our Flash animation team used Microsoft Silverlight for an interactive infographic application.

The daily EURO video magazine combines 3-D-animations of all goals with picture slideshows, a full audio moderation and infographics envisioning match data and statistics. Besides the video magazine our Silverlight player allows MSN users to select the different content formats directly (e.g. only the goal animations or only the slideshow). The format illustrates the potential of innovative visual concepts on the web. The magazine is fascinating web video without any tv camera image involved.

The daily production is a real challenge. The partners involved are opta/Unlimited in Berlin (3 D goal animations), dpa-infocom (player, infographics, picture slideshow) and dpa audio&video services in Berlin (audio moderation and final video production). After the final whistle – in case of a penalty shootout close to midnight – the team starts to produce.

At 08.00 a.m. when MSN earlybird users start their office PCs the fresh magazine is already online. The audio anchorman and the unlimited folks had to accept three weeks of permanent night shifts. But the service and the overwhelming feedback made the lack of sleep worth it. We are really proud of the result and we have already started to discuss the next ideas for video without video.

Rising cost for energy and food - is media paying the bill?

Exciting discussion at the future congress “forward2business“ in the East German city of Halle. Stefan Liebing, coordinator for government relations at Shell oil company gave a forecast for the worlds energy consumption in the next ten years. According to Liebing a huge challenge.

The auditorium agreed on the fact that the gigantic demand for energy from emerging economies like China and India will force average western households to invest a bigger share of their budget for daily basics. Prices for energy and food – quite stable for decades – will keep rising and will remain on high levels. But who is paying the bill? I guess that not only leisure and travel expenses but also the media and entertainment budgets will suffer significantly. Another blow for newspaper subscriptions and Pay-TV?

For Germany „forward2business“ is quite an unsual event – may be thanks to its East German roots. 200 innovators and change managers from all industries share their ideas for the future trends in management and society, technology and science. I like the atmosphere, sitting in the garden of the medieval castle „Burg Giebichenstein“, enjoying the sun and the unconventional ideas of people who share their passion for the new. A touch of californian web camp feeling in the middle of Germany. We need more of that...

"Bild" is trailing "Spiegel" on the web thanks to visual content

Strong pleas for visual story telling at the second Hamburg media dialogue ("Internationaler Mediendialog Hamburg):

Kai Diekmann, chief editor of Europe's largest tabloid "Bild" made clear that commercially successful content on the web will be visual content. "Bild" is investing heavily in video and offers mobile download options for the pictures of it's pinup girls. Moreover they established a service enabling readers to act as reporters and provide Bild with images and information. According to Diekmann "Bild" is flooded with picture content from it's amateur paparazzi.

Especially via video and mobile "Bild" is closing the gap to "Spiegel online", Germany's leading news portal run by Spiegel magazine. Chief Editor Matthias Müller von Blumencron told the audience: "Video is a question of survival."

But how to get video monetised? Howard Geisler, Senior VP of Digitas Global, and Patrick Walker, Director of Video Partnerships for Google/Youtube in Europe, surprised the crowd with their favourite vision: Integrate the advertisor and his story into the video clip. Howard explained how Digitas is developing editorial video story boards with brands in order to compete with media clips or user content on YouTube. No option for "Spiegel". But Blumencron admitted, that it's getting harder and harder to get the PR spin doctors and the advertisers out of editorial web content.

A closer look at Spiegel Online's time machine

Some time ago, Spiegel Online, Germany's leading news website, launched its ambitious portal on contemporary history, einestages.de. The idea was welcomed everywhere, although the navigation was considered to be too complicated. The masses of photos are difficult to access (why isn't there a real slide show functionality?), and beside (sometimes too) sophisticated texts, I miss some short catchy statements.

The latest innovation on einestages.de is the „einestage.de-Zeitmaschine“. This time machine application shows how historic content can be accessed visually: Imagine you rush in a space shuttle through the universe: the years fly by, and masses of photos that stand for contemporary events pass your way. Technically, the flash solutions works quite well – in case you have a fast computer and the latest flash version. Of course you can set your starting time – either you start the flight nowadays or 100 years ago. The speed can be controlled by the track wheel.

So far so good. This time machine seems to be a smart idea to arrange historic content via expressive photos, giving inspiration to events you haven't known so far, satisfying a certain play instinct.

It really sounds perfect at first thought, but obviously it is not so easy to handle. To be improved: the link between the photos flying by and the real content: If you find a photo of interest, you can only click on it. A new site opens that shows the photo and provides some basic information such as location, date and relevant tags. But: neither title nor explanation what it's about. To access a short description, you have to click once more. But by getting into details, e.g. clicking through the slide show or reading the related article on einestages.de you leave the time machine. So if you want to continue your flight, you have to restart the application. You can't go on the point where you had left the time machine.

In brief: the time machine is a fascinating idea which picks up a human dream. The application is visually attractive, playful and full of inspiring content. But: Once more we get aware of a central challenge of visual journalism: to provide a close link from the attention-catching photo and the real content. One photo may not always suffice to immerse users into meaningful contemporary events.

For me, however, flying through the times with the einestages.de time machine would be even greater if some brief content snippets would be provided just one click away. Of course, everyone wants to maximize page impressions. But in this case, I fear the einestages.de time machine would be reduced to a playful gimmick and not to an inspiring way to discover contemporary history.

Volkswagen has two unpleasant messages for publishers

The second day of the FIPP/VDZ publisher conference in Berlin started with a shock. Ralf Maltzen, director of internet marketing at Volkswagen, had two unpleasant messages for his media partners:

1. Volkswagen will start to shift ad budgets at least on the web more and more to performance based models. Only if portals contribute to a sufficient number of measured test drive requirements or direct consumer feedbacks they get fully paid.

2. Volkswagen will increase direct publishing activities on the web."On the digital kiosk our volkswagen portal is just one click away from the auto magazines." Maltzen showed his highly praised and much awarded Schlemmer blog campaign with German comedia Hape Kerkeling (now offline unfortunately). He made clear, that Volkswagen might no longer be dependent on the media to tell it's stories on the web.

I tried to imagine what Maltzen would argue if the publishers would counter his shift to performance based ad deals by emphasizing the impact of editorial coverage to automobil sales. Who brought the pictures of yesterday's VW Scirocco debut at the Geneva auto fair to the world public? Who is providing test drive reports to advise consumers in order to enable purchasing decisions. And Volkswagen get's it all for free. What about making the editorial contribution part of the overall discussion about performances and fair ad deals?

The „v-word“ – German broadcasters and publishers in heated dispute

Whenever German media managers meet these days the „v-word“ is one of the hottest topics. The two day magazine publisher congress „Powering digital success“ that started today in Berlin is no exception.

Since Video has started to become a standard on average news sites the publishers of newspapers, print magazines and the tv broadcasters realise that the web is becoming the central battlefield for media competition in the coming years. Let’s assume that in five years from now young users browsing the web won’t be able to distinguish information portals operated by print brands, broadcasters or web only providers. They will basically all provide news in text, pictures and video. And I’m sure that the visual formats, mainly video, will be crucial for success in the mass market and for attracting ad revenues.

The consequences are quite irritating. Suddenly for instance German public tv, financed by monthly fees of German taxpayers, and the regional newspapers find themselves competing for the same audience on the same platform. Conflicts are inevitable.

The publishers accuse the broadcasters to pump up their portals with tons of premium content produced with public money. They fear that users won't click on privately financed news sites any more if they can find it all at the broadcasters' portals (and completely free of annoying ads).

The broadcasters and the regional broadcasting licensing authorities meanwhile try to prevent newspapers from publishing online video. The tv channels are afraid that every click on a web video clip will contribute to a decline of tv usage. Thus they argue, that every video clip on a newspaper site is a tiny piece of tv coverage and requires a broadcasting licence.

In the latest move public TV now offered the publishers to team up and use their branded news video. While German publisher legend Hubert Burda rejected the offer as some sort of poison pill, the WAZ newspaper group announced to co-operate with WDR television, the largest regional member of the public ARD group.

Be sure there is more news to come...