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.

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...

Short review on the latest german website relaunches

Maybe you remember the large blogosphere among media blogs about the latest website relaunches, such as Holtzbrincks' youngster news site Zoomer.de, News-TV N24.de or the yellow press website Bild.de.

Despite we note that there is much difference between these sites, one attribute is common: the shift to a visual presentation of news.

N24 focuses on video which seems very logic for a news tv channel (but which has been a novum anyway). Bild and Zoomer use appealing flash effects to present their slide shows and video news, or newsmaps to enhance the selection of regional news.

But both Bild and Zoomer not only use visual features. They establish also a 'visual layout': The top news section on the first screen is dominated by large photos, teaser texts are skipped. Scrolling down, we find a more conventional design, nevertheless focused on big images and photo slide shows.

Compared to this visual oriented website design, relauches such as netzeitung or FAZ.net seem rather conventional. We are looking forward to further relaunch projects to find out if there is a news site design concept which is different from the spiegel-sueddeutsche-focus-faz-netzeitung-scheme.

Map it! Geocoding opens new visual access to information

Google's Marissa Mayer this week at the DLD conference in Munich announced new features to come for Google maps and Google earth. The triumph march of Google's geo concept all over the web is incredible.

Many people in the traditional media, especially from the Offline Taliban faction (still convinced that the internet nightmare could be over one day), still renounce the relevance of map like mash ups as some sort of unserious triviality. Even web experts like Mattias Kretschmer express their scepticism.

I'm pretty sure that displaying information in a geo context will become indispensable. The geographical context uncovers hidden dimensions of facts and data.

One of the most impressive examples is the Local Explorer of the Washington Post . The team of Rob Curely developed a mash up concept which combines data for crime, home sales, schools and places to a unique tool of local orientation.

Last week EveryBlock was launched by Adrian Holovaty, a pioneer in geo mapping for information scenarios. It provides relevant local data and information for San Francisco, New York and Chicago. It's promise: "The easiest way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city."

In Germany various community sites and point of interest portals have started to use Google maps as an additional layer for providing context and orientation. In 2007 the first newspaper applications went online like Saarbrücker Zeitung or Der Westen/ Westdeutsche Allgemeine , the largest regional paper in Germany. The basic intention is to display local news from the editors in a geographical context. People can easily check what is going on in their local neighbourhood by access the news via maps as the quickest and most logical of all entries. With maps as a visual access they no longer need to waste their time by browsing through long lists of text stories.

The next step will be that private users and citizen journalists can upload their content including the geo reference. Publishers plan to add local classified ads or sponsored information by local shop owners, public services or cinemas, clubs, bars and restaurants. I guess it is one of the most convincing approaches to revitalise the real strength of regional newspapers - their local competence and credibility.

At dpa-infocom we just launched a gecoded version of our regional multimedia wire services (dpa-RegioLine). Bild.de has based the beta version of it's Berlin navigator on this feed. So far we add an official geo co ordinate for towns and cities. In the cases of Berlin and Hamburg, the largest German cities we provide the data for the city districts. Gerd Kamp, head of our application development and Mr. Geonews, gives some technical background.

In late spring we plan to attach the complete address to the regional dpa news wherever useful. Besides we intend to geocode our main world newswire dpa-InfoLine. Users should be allowed to follow news via news maps from the local to the world level - simply by zooming in and out.

By defining standards and workflows we hope to motivate more and more publishers and editors to go for the geo option and add geographic metadata to their content. Map it! Another task visual journalists and story tellers will have to embrace.