Findory’s Blogory and a Topix.net clarification: Via comments on a previous post regarding news aggregators offering alternatives to Google News, Italian blogger Luca asks, “What about Findory.com? I found your post by Blogory.com.”
Sure enough, I clicked over to Blogory.com and found a Google News-influenced interface featuring posts from the blogosphere. (I also discovered I had registered on the site sometime in the past, so obviously this is not new news.) Very cool.
Also, Chris Tolles of Topix.net let me know that they do, indeed, have e-mail alerts which my earlier post implied they did not. I was referring to the “when-published” alerts. Upon thinking about it, however, I don’t know why I would set up an e-mail alert on Topix as they are far-ahead the field in RSS feed options which I much prefer over e-mail anyway. Thanks for the clarification anyway.
Do the “Big 5″ control what we think? Slate’s Jack Shafer makes the case they (TW, Viacom, News Corp, Disney, Bertlesmann) don’t.
Quote:
For all the Big Five’s alleged powers of mind control, consider the list of influential news organizations besides the Big Four Newspapers they don’t control. The top newspaper chains: Gannett, Knight Ridder, Cox, Scripps, McClatchy, Landmark, Copley, Newhouse, Freedom, Hearst, MediaNews, and Tribune. The Boston Globe. Newsweek. The various flavors of NBC News. The New Yorker and Conde Nast’s other titles. PBS. NPR. Reuters. AFP. AP. Bloomberg. U.S. News & World Report. Pearson. Hachette Filipacchi. The Atlantic. The Economist. And scores of local TV stations.
In the U.S., the “Five” own no major newspapers save News Corp’s NY Post…and, well, we all know:
If anybody decides what most citizens learn, it’s the agenda-setting editors at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. The TV news would go dark if it couldn’t crib from the Big Four Newspapers. NPR’s Morning Edition would fall mute. The newsweeklies would have to run more cover stories on ice cream, dreams, and guides to colleges.
America’s most literate cities: Determined by analysing U.S. Census data regarding newspaper and magazine circulation rates, educational attainment levels, library resources and booksellers, comes this ranking from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (I assume the school was not named for the Clinton scandal). #1 goes to Minneapolis. However, I must question the methodology of any ranking that concludes (and I love this town, don’t get me wrong) Montgomery, Ala., is more literate that New York City.
(via ResourceShelf)
Magazine website gimmicks: Reuters profiles some “newfangled tools that popular U.S. magazines offer on their Web sites these days in a bid to court readers and advertisers with features that can’t be replicated in print.”
Quote:
Glamour.com features a virtual changing room that lets a woman see how different styles of jeans or bathing suits would look on someone with a body similar to hers. From the online ovulation calculator at Parents.com aimed at helping prospective mothers gauge when they are most fertile to the mixed-drinks database at Esquire.com, big U.S. magazines are packing their Web sites with more original articles, contests and research tools than ever. It’s a big change for many sites from just a few years ago, when they were mostly repositories of previously published material from the print editions.
Start spreading the word: The NY Post (second item - however, read the first as it’s about a vaporzine) reports that the New Yorker has passed the one-million mark in its circulation for the first time in its 79-year history. (Considerably slower than the other Conde Nast magazine that announced the same milestone on Monday.) Major props to magazine friend David Carey.
Contract of a Life: Last week, I sent a shout-out to my Quad friends for picking up the contract to print half of the 12 million-run of the new Friday-newspaper-delivered Life. Today’s shout-out goes to the rexblog friends from RR Donnelley who will be printing the other half.
How magazines get started (continued): Last week, I broke down the formula for how a local newspaper profiles the launch of a new magazine in its area. Today, the Arizona Republic includes the formula-profile of the magazine Personal Real Estate Investor.
