This is a really neat way to display video. Instead editing all three camera angles into one video, they just let them play side-by-side-by-side. I can’t think of a lot of places where it would make sense to display online video this way. But a live performance is definitely [...]
Dave Butler is right, of course. It’s time to focus on the future - not the past - at the Mercury News. In a memo to staffers yesterday, the executive editor noted a recent photo essay by designer Martin Gee that documents the empty desks and offices left behind [...]
Executive Editor Dave Butler sent the following email to the Mercury News newsroom. There’s a part of me that wants to deconstruct it line-by-line. But I think I’ll just let the words speak for themselves.
Colleagues:
Where are we headed? What’s my vision for The Mercury News? I’ve been asked those [...]
I received an email from VideoEgg today telling me that they were closing my publisher account. Their FAQ says why:
As you know, resources at technology startups are limited and it is in our best interest to focus on the core of our business at this time….Once [your] video [...]
I can’t say I’m a big fan of Sarah Lacy. She seems just a tad too enamored with and starry-eyed over the Web 2.0 crowd she covers as a journalist. But now that the (almost) full video of her SXSW interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is out, it’s [...]
It’s sort of beside the point - kind of like asking how you’d rather be executed - but someone raised the issue again of how the Mercury News laid off employees today. In the last round of layoffs, and again today, management ordered everyone to stay home between 8 [...]
At the risk of offending my friends and former colleagues still at the San Jose Mercury News, I’m writing its obituary today. There will be more buyouts and layoffs this week, the fourth round of en-masse departures in the last few years. Sadly, I fear the paper will not recover. [...]
I tried to leave a comment on a Fortune blog last week (owned by CNN). I say tried because a) the comment still isn’t posted, and b) I’m left with the impression that it may never be. Why? Here’s the confirmation message I got after I hit the publish button [...]
When I moved over from reporter to online editor at the Merc, one of the first things I wanted to do was build a site focused on the local music scene. Alas, because of the many distractions at the Merc, lack of resources, competing demands, etc., it didn’t get [...]
April 27, 2006: Ridder: Singleton will be a very good steward of the Merc
“While McClatchy may be buying Knight Ridder, we’re getting the flagship and the crown jewel of Knight Ridder,'’ Dean Singleton told the San Jose Mercury News staff Wednesday. He appeared with KR CEO Tony Ridder, [...]
There may yet be a smart business strategy behind Yahoo’s rumored purchase of web video company Maven Networks. I’m finding it hard to understand much of anything Yahoo is doing these days, even as I try to root for them. But the Maven deal depresses me a bit. [...]
I second what Ryan says about the new Las Vegas Sun site. Looks nice, easy on the eye. Some smart touches here and there. Nice big art. Interesting that they’re linking out to other news sites off the home page (l’horreur!). But I’m beginning to wonder how many [...]
I’ve long thought that one of the biggest problems with newspaper companies is their inability to see - and grok, as John Battelle would say - the changing the media landscape. To watch McClatchy and Media News spend billions of dollars in the past year gobbling up newspapers instead of [...]
You can put all the video and bells and whistles and social networking tools that you want on your media web site, but at the end of the day what still matters is good original journalism that stands out amid the white noise. Which is a long-winded way of saying [...]
Reuters reporter Julie Steenhuysen gets the quote of the year out of Peter Martin of the University of Utah’s Traffic Lab. He’s talking about the slowing effect that cell phone users have on the flow of traffic.
“It’s a bit like breaking wind in the elevator. Everyone suffers,” Peter Martin of [...]
Richard Koci Hernandez is one of the most talented photojournalists I know. And now he’s a multimedia whiz, too. He’s got a new book out that is aimed at photojournalists who are navigating this new multimedia landscape. If you walk away with even a sliver of Richard’s smarts, [...]
Photographer John Moore of the New York Times was a witness to history Thursday. He was there for Benazir Bhutto’s final rally and her subsequent violent and public assassination. There’s been a headlong rush by newspapers into video, and audio slideshows that mesh ambient sound with pictures. [...]
Ev Williams (of Blogger/Twitter) felt the need to clarify some points about the new Economist story about him. As a longtime journalist, I cringe whenever I see a blog post like this because I believe it erodes the credibility of the profession. In this instance, the Economist paraphrased Williams [...]
Every once in a while (see here and here), someone will comment on how the Mercury News let its most popular blog, SiliconBeat, slip away. SiliconBeat was a popular and well-respected technology and venture capital blog that colleague Matt Marshall and I founded in 2004. We published [...]
Minneapolis School Board adopts wide-ranging strategic plan recommendations
Can we just stop writing headlines like this, please?
[...]Local public radio talk show host Michaek Krasny came to the law school last week for a media training for faculty. Krasny was funny and smart. And at one point, he asked the audience to pitch him story ideas for his morning show. One of the professors hit home for [...]
So I’m standing in the Emeryville Apple store today trying to troubleshoot a problem with a sales rep when a young woman bolts up to us saying she wants an iPhone. Like, now. After some back-and-forthing about the particulars, she says she’s a Google employee and she was going to [...]
We’ve been using Brightcove a lot more to publish video (1, 2) at the Merc, and there is so much to like about it. But fer cryin’ out loud, can we please do something about these annoying Flash behaviors. Brightcove’s editing control panel is written entirely in [...]
Google has egg on its face today after an employee for the company’s health advertising team ripped Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko'’ on a corporate blog — and then had to apologize. “Moore’s film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare’s interest [...]
Lots of people are doing lots of different things with video these days at the Merc, but one that I’m especially excited about is a new show we launched this week. It’s called Inside Silicon Valley, and it’s a weekly video podcast that will feature interviews with the people [...]
There’s been a lot of chit-chat lately about the best camera to foist on reporters in this age of reporter video. Many newsrooms seem to like the Casio Exilim. I’ll throw in my vote for the Canon Powershot A570 IS. The “IS'’ stands for image stabilization, which should [...]
Anyone have a Joost invite they can toss my way? If so, send it to mabzeley@gmail.com, and you’ll have my undying gratitude. Merci.
UPDATE: Got the Joost access. Now all I need, it turns out, is an Intel Mac to run it on. Grumble, grumble.
UPDATE2: I don’t have Joost invites to [...]
Not that we really needed another video codec or anything, but Microsoft made news at the NAB conference this week by talking up its new web video player and video platform, now dubbed Silverlight. Flash, of course, has become the standard web video distribution platform (sorry Quicktime fans). Can [...]
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ideal length of Internet video. At the Gear Media Tech seminar last week in San Francisco, host Alex Lindsay said that he and his Pixelcorps team are aiming to produce shows in the three- to eight-minute range. Conventional wisdom holds [...]
The news release below is the sound of the other shoe dropping for TV networks, affiliates and advertisers. If Google can have one-tenth the effect on TV advertising that it did on online advertising, the change will be huge.
Some Google employees want nervous media execs to believe that the company’s [...]
Video auto reviews are certainly nothing new. Other newspapers, as well as Edmunds and other auotmotive sites, have been doing them for some time. Nonetheless, I like what we’ve started with our autos editor Matt Nauman. We grab Matt and his vehicle du jour, zip down to the local empty [...]
The Chronicle’s David Lazarus is a fine columnist and a great consumer advocate. But I can hardly agree with anything he says about the newspaper industry in his latest piece.
Lazarus uses Viacom’s lawsuit Tuesday against GooTube as a hook to talk about what ails newspapers, and suggests that [...]
UPDATED: New craigslist link and full text of job listing.
We have a fun job opening at the Mercury News. We’re looking for an online graphic designer who will play a key role in shaping our online visual presence. We’re actually asking for the person to be unusually versatile, in that [...]
Yes, Omniture, Hitbox, Urchin and all the other web analytics tools do a fine job. But tapefailure looks like it could add another valuable and fascinating layer of user data.
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