Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

I think it worked very well today. In checking out the vendor, mogulus.com, to learn more about it, I discovered that Gannett is the provider of $10 million in support, as of July 2008, to that company.

So they have lots of money for web investment, but what of the newspapers? It’s an unfair question, I know, but I just had to ask it. Investing in the technology the company uses seems like a good thing.

And no, dear Gannett, ads won’t pay for this if the user blocks them. Everyone will have to deal with this question, that is, how to make web investments pay off over the long run, should the ad-based business model deteriorate. As I think it will (and already has).

In Hawaii, the video technology has been pioneered by local gurus Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa. I wrote about their experiments in an article posted last year. They used ustream.tv. I tried it out, from the State Capitol, via my little Tablet PC and a cheap webcam. It worked really well. And if I can do it, anyone can.

But let me repeat that the Advertiser did a great job at the Obama rally. I’d love to see more of that. And I’d love to see more video out of the Legislature, City Council and Neighborhood Boards. Complete coverage, gavel to gavel. Labor rallies. Public events. Meetings. Maybe one day…

Permalink posted by Larry @ 8/08/2008 05:33:00 PM