Posts Tagged ‘Huffington Post’
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
 Looking back to the 1950s, the way Americans got their news was pretty simple – it was either their local newspaper or one of the three nightly newscasts.
Today, there are a myriad of ways to get news – online news sites, on one’s phone, cable television, blogs, and, still local newspapers and nightly newscasts. But with all these different choices, do people trust that each will get them the news fairly and accurately? Overall, the answer is yes. And online news sources are as trusted as local papers, which are the most trusted sources.
When we look at trust in general, majorities of Americans (between 60% and 73%) say they trust seven different media outlets to get them news fairly and accurately.
But the difference is in how much trust they have; while three-quarters of U.S. adults (73%) trust their local TV news, less than one-quarter (22%) have a lot of trust in it and half (51%) have some trust. Seven in ten Americans (69%) trust their local newspapers, but only 18% have a lot of trust.
These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,016 adults surveyed online between January 16 and 23, 2012 by Harris Interactive.
Looking at some other media seven in ten Americans trust radio and Internet news and information sites (69% each) to get them news fairly and accurately, but for both, only 14% have a lot of trust while over half (55%) have some trust.
Just over three in five trust cable TV news (64%) and network TV news (61%) but, for both, only 15% say they have a lot of trust in them and three in five (60%) trust national newspapers, with 16% having a lot of trust.
Fair and unbiased news
While the different types of media are all looked at in a mostly positive light, there are some mixed results when we look at specific media outlets. Three in ten Americans say that ABC (63%), NBC (63%), CNN (61%), the Associated Press (59%), and PBS (59%) all give news that is fair and unbiased all the time or occasionally.
But, like with the media in general, the public leans towards occasionally, rather than all the time as three in five (28%) say PBS is fair and unbiased all the time, while just one in five says the same for the other four media outlets.
Over half of U.S. adults say FOX News, (54%), Yahoo News (53%), MSNBC (52%) and CNBC (52%) provide fair and unbiased news all the time or occasionally, and half say the same about The Wall Street Journal (50%) and Time (50%).
Just under half say The New York Times (48%) and Reuters (48%) provide news that is fair and unbiased; about two in five say the same about The Washington Post (42%), NPR (41%), Newsweek/The Daily Beast (39%) and one-third about the Huffington Post (33%).
But, it’s not that these on the lower end of the list are not trusted, it is, rather, that they are not as well known so many more Americans do not have an opinion of them one way or another.
Fox, Huff Post, MSNBC seen as less fair & unbiased
If we look at those who are seen as rarely or never giving news that is fair and unbiased, over one-third (36%) say that applies to FOX News, while three in ten say MSNBC (31%), Huffington Post (31%), CNBC (29%), The New York Times (29%), The Washington Post (29%), and Newsweek/The Daily Beast (29%).
In this election year, Americans will be getting their campaign information from these various media outlets. In that vein, it is interesting to note that out of the 17 different media outlets, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to think that 15 news providers are giving them news that is fair and unbiased. Republicans are only more likely than Democrats to think that about two news providers – FOX News (75% vs. 39%) and The Wall Street Journal (51% vs. 50%).
So What?
Like everything else, the media is a business that needs to make money and show investors profits. And, as the number of news outlets continues to grow, providers of information are increasingly out to one-up each other as the first with that information. The large number of news providers also means that the providers have to find new, and sometimes sensational, ways to get eyes and ears to their outlet.
| TABLE 1TRUST IN TYPES OF MEDIA
“How much trust do you have that each of the following will get you the news fairly and accurately?” |
| Base: All adults |
| |
TRUST
(NET) |
A lot of
trust |
Some
trust |
DO NOT
TRUST (NET) |
Not very
much trust |
No trust
at all |
Not
sure |
| % |
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
| Local TV News |
73 |
22 |
51 |
23 |
17 |
6 |
4 |
| Radio |
69 |
14 |
55 |
25 |
19 |
7 |
6 |
| Internet News and information sites |
69 |
14 |
55 |
26 |
19 |
7 |
5 |
| Local Newspapers |
69 |
18 |
51 |
27 |
19 |
8 |
4 |
| Cable TV News |
64 |
15 |
49 |
30 |
21 |
9 |
6 |
| Network TV News |
61 |
15 |
46 |
35 |
20 |
15 |
4 |
| National Newspapers |
60 |
16 |
45 |
34 |
22 |
12 |
6 |
| Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding; |
| TABLE 2TRUST IN TYPES OF MEDIA – BY PARTY AND GENERATION
“How much trust do you have that each of the following will get you the news fairly and accurately?”
Percent saying “A lot of trust/Some trust” |
| Base: All adults |
| |
TRUST
(NET) |
Generation |
Political Party |
Echo
Boomers
(18-35) |
Gen X
(36-47) |
Baby
Boomers
(48-66) |
Matures
(67+) |
Rep. |
Dem. |
Ind. |
| % |
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
| Local TV News |
73 |
68 |
77 |
77 |
72 |
70 |
83 |
72 |
| Radio |
69 |
65 |
71 |
73 |
67 |
72 |
74 |
66 |
| Internet News and information sites |
69 |
66 |
68 |
73 |
66 |
66 |
78 |
6 |
| Local Newspapers |
69 |
67 |
70 |
72 |
63 |
62 |
82 |
67 |
| Cable TV News |
64 |
56 |
68 |
67 |
71 |
64 |
72 |
62 |
| Network TV News |
61 |
62 |
57 |
63 |
59 |
47 |
79 |
61 |
| National Newspapers |
60 |
64 |
58 |
61 |
52 |
46 |
77 |
60 |
| Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding; |
Tags: blogs, cable news, Daily Beast, Fox, Harris Poll, Huffington Post, local papers, MSNBC, Newsweek, NPR, NYTimes, Reuters, trust in news sources
Posted in Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports, Tech Culture, TechLife | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
 Michael Arrington UPDATED – The first time we saw Tech Crunch leak a memo from inside AOL and discuss it as frankly as it would any other business story, we figured it would only be a matter of time before AOL and Tech Crunch disrupted each other’s day.
Now, Fortune is reporting that AOL fired Arrington, leading to speculation that TechCrunch could lose other contributors and its position as a leading tech blog. Personally, it seems less nuanced and more colorless already.
AOL bought Tech Crunch about a year ago for $25 million and promised the snarky site founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington editorial independence. Last week Arianna Huffington fired Arrington from his own site when he formed an investment fund (the Crunch Fund) with AOL. That led to Arrington issuing an ultimatum to AOL. Now we’re not entirely sure if Huffington was trying to maintain TechCrunch’s editorial independence or if Arrington is.
Large corporations such as AOL and the executives who run them do not always realize that legitimate news operations treat their own corporate masters the same way they do any other corporate masters unless someone brings a hammer down.
Now don’t get us wrong, journalists are not free of influence, no matter how hard they try to be, and lots of folks beside AOL take issue with the way Tech Crunch covers (or doesn’t cover) some stories. We recently saw an entire stream of complaints about it in threads on Google+. But TechCrunch, up to now, maintained an independent voice – whether we like it or not.
As a journalist with 35 years of professional experience spanning daily newspapers, major magazines, books, and thousands of news and feature articles for online news outlets, I’ve seen this news vs. corporate values battle play out many times. One of the primary difficulties is that the players really do often have vastly different value systems. Executives of public companies are charged with creating shareholder value and producing profits, not with guarding the independence of a news organization.
Editorial Independence
Traditional journalists have a completely different value system based on creating and retaining the trust of their readers, which requires that much discussed “editorial independence.” Admittedly, in today’s world, advocacy journalism, particularly on TV and the web, have become increasingly dominant. And, certainly, many people a journalist covers would prefer that only one voice be heard.
A source for a Tech Journal story about municipal cable systems we did once, asked us, “Does this have to be another ‘he said, they said,’ story?” Well, yes.
Any way, last week, AOL brought that proverbial hammer down on TechCrunch, although it’s hard to tell which side is really fighting for editorial independence.
In a memo about the site’s editorial independence, Arrington wrote:
“As of late last week TechCrunch no longer has editorial independence. Some argue that the circumstances demanded it. I disagree. Editorial independence was never supposed to be an easy thing for Aol to give us. But it was never meaningful if it shatters the first time it is put to the test.”
He proposed two options to AOL: reaffirm the site’s editorial independence and autonomy from the other top AOL editorial property, the Huffington Post, or sell TechCrunch back to its original shareholders.
The real question, despite the objections of the TechCrunch staff, may be whether or not the site can deliver real objectivity, with or without Arrington, and others are whether the investment fund deal with AOL (or his other investments) comprises his independence on TechCrunch. What do you think? –Allan Maurer
The Tech Crunch post on the Arrington/AOL affair:
Is this the end of Tech Crunch (as you know it?)
The LA Times tells the story this way:
Tech Crunch Founder Michael Arrington Issues Ulitmatum to AOL
Arrington’s proposal (ultimatum?) to AOL
Michael Arrington trying to buy back TechCrunch
Tags: Allan Maurer, AOL, Arriana Huffington, Arrington AOL, Crunchfund, editorial independence, Huffington Post, Michael Arrington, what's up with Tech Crunch and AOL?
Posted in Internet/New Media, People | Comments Off
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
 Simon Heseltine By Allan Maurer
WASHINGTON, DC – AOL has an enormous amount of content posting daily, including the Huffington Post, and it wants as many hits on each story as possible. The man in charge of AOL’s search engine optimization efforts, Simon Heseltine, says one key is adaptability. “Working in SEO is a constant education,” he says.
“You have to keep your finger on everything all the time. Google changes its (SEO) algorithm daily. Some changes are minor, some very noticeable. But change is inevitable and it can change very quickly.”
People figure out how the algorithm is ranking stories and take advantage of it, resulting in once but no longer successful tactics such as keyword stuffing. Google not only changes the algorithm daily, tweaking it, the company also runs Panda from time to time. The initial run knocked out a lot of content farms relying on SEO tricks instead of high quality content.
Heseltine, a director of search at a DC agency prior to joining AOL, writes a regular column for SearchEngineWatch.com on a variety of topics within the marketing industry, and has previously written for other industry sites, such as SearchEngineLand.com (for their in-house marketing column). Simon teaches SEO at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. as part of their Digital Media Management program.
Will discuss how social affects SEO at Digital East
He is among dozens of Internet, digital media, social media, and marketing experts who are participating in Tech Media’s Digital East conference at Tysons Corner, VA, Sept. 28-29. He will discuss the effects of social media on AOL’s SEO efforts at the event.
We asked him to share four quick SEO tips with us.
Four SEO tips
Make sure the search engines can crawl your site
First, he says, “Make sure your site is crawlable (by search engine spiders). It’s amazing how many sites the engines can’t actually crawl because of a mistake with the site’s architecture or robo settings preventing the engines from crawling it.” This is no joke.
WordPress, the blogging system bringing you the TechJournal and tens of thousands of other blogs online, has a privacy setting that has to be checked to allow search engines. When we shifted from a different content management system to WordPress, it was not turned on immediately and of course led to a serious loss of traffic.
“When people move from a staging site to production, a lot of people forget to move the site to public so the engines can crawl it,” Heseltine says.
Find the right key words
Second: “Make sure you type in the right key words. Find out what people are looking for that is relevant to your story and make sure that’s what you target.”
Use key words
Third: “Make sure you use those key words in the headline and the content.
Link to yourself -
And fourth, “Make sure you link to yourself.” By that he means link to your site’s previous content to “spread readers around your site.” There are software products that will help do that. It is otherwise a time-consuming to do by hand. We have noticed that we get hits on that past content when we link to it in newer stories, however, so it does work.
Heseltine doesn’t stop there. “This is important,” he adds. “Write for readers, not for search engines.”
Regarding social media and SEO, which he will discuss more fully at Digital East, Heseltine says, “Even if you are not going to use a particular social network now, reserve your name on them. You don’t want spoofing (where a third party grabs the name and posts using it).
He also offers a warning: “If anyone out there is actually looking for an SEO company and you see a “guarantee” they can get you into the top five or ten results, run, don’t walk to the nearest exit. With all the changes the engines make, no one can guarantee to get you in the top five or ten.”
He didn’t say this, but even if they can, if the company uses so-called “black hat SEO” tactics, they’ll eventually get caught and your company’s Internet rankings may suffer accordingly – which is what happened to retail giant JC Penney.
Tags: AOL, Black Hat SEO, Google SEO algorithm, Huffington Post, JC Penney, Panda, SEO, SEO guarantees, Simon Heseltine, tips on SEO
Posted in best practices, Business advice, Events, Internet/New Media, Marketing | 6 Comments »
Monday, May 23rd, 2011
 RALEIGH, NC – North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue failed to sign or veto a bill restricting further municipal broadband development in the state, asking the legislature to rethink provisions in the bill. By failing to sign the bill, Gov. Perdue expressed her displeasure, but it will become law just the same without her veto.
The bill, supported by commercial providers such at Time Warner Cable, which has made campaign contributions to many legislators and Gov. Perdue, received national attention as Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig urged her to veto the bill in an open letter on the Huffington Post Friday. It was also opposed by the North Carolina League of Municipalities.
North Carolina has the dubious distinction of having seven of the ten worst deals for broadband Internet service in the nation according to a study by Bandwidth.com. Time Warner Cable did just last week substantially increase the speed of broadband Internet service to its Research Triangle area customers, although not to the 100MB a second level of municipal broadband providers.
Opponents to the bill argue that especially in more rural areas of NC, the only way for municipalities to get the ultra-high speed broadband service they need to attract 21st century businesses was to build it themselves. They also see Internet service as a utility as necessary to modern life and business as water or electricity.
As we reported previously, the fastest and cheapest broadband networks in the Southeast are municipal networks.
Time Warner Cable maintains the bill “creates a level playing field,” so municipalities do not have unfair advantages over consumers.
Passed by the GOP-led NC House and Senate, the bill requires municipalities to get voter approval for any funds borrowed to build municipal broadband efforts, forbids them from selling below cost, and limits service areas, among other restrictions.
Gov. Perduec said, “There is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having an unfair advantage over providers in the private sector,” but added this bill could restrict consumer choice. “Instead, I call on the General Assembly to revisit this issue and adopt rules that not only promote fairness but also allow for the greatest number of high quality and affordable broadband options for consumers,” she said in a statement.
It’s too bad Gov. Perdue lacked the courage to express her convictions by vetoing the bill. He suggestion to the GOP legislature to reconsider its provisions are likely to go unheeded. While pro-business groups lobbied for this bill, they are pro-big business and represent those with lobbying dollars. We’re pro-business too and have reported the commercial provider point-of-view on the bill (leading Slashdot.com to point to one of our early reports for the “incumbent” position.
Nevertheless, we think this bill is wrong-headed and will prevent many in NC from getting the type of superior service these municipal networks provide.
- Allan Maurer
Tags: bill restricts NC broadband, Gov. Bev Perdue, Huffington Post, Lawrence Lessig, NC broadband bill to become law, NC Legislature, Time Warner Cable
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Friday, May 20th, 2011
 Lawrence Lessig RALEIGH, NC -A bill to restrict municipal broadband efforts in North Carolina has drawn national attention. Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard Law professor well known for his expertise in Internet legal matters, has written an open letter on the Huffington Post urging NC Gov. Bev Perdue to veto the bill. Perdue has until midnight tonight to decide whether or not to sign or veto the bill.
“North Carolina is an overwhelmingly rural state. Relative to the communities it competes with around the globe, it has among the slowest and most expensive Internet service. No economy will thrive in the 21st century without fast, cheap broadband, linking citizens, and enabling businesses to compete,” Lessig writes in the post.
That’s why several municipalities in the state, such as Wilson, Salisbury and others, created their own city networks.
“These networks have been extraordinarily effective. The prices they offer North Carolinians is a fraction of the comparable cost of commercial network providers. The speed they offer is also much much faster,” Lesig notes.
Lesig notes that many communities and businesses in and out of the state oppose the bill.
Lesig argues, as we have repeatedly, that the Internet is as much essential infrastructure in the 21st century as electricity and water.
Stand with the majority of NC citizens
“And communities that rely solely upon private companies to provide public infrastructure will always have second-rate, or inferior, service,” he writes.
We should note that Time Warner Cable just this week boosted its Internet speed substantially for all NC Triangle area subscribers, but still falls short of the speeds offered via municipal broadband networks in the state such as Wilson’s.
Lesig urges Gov. Perdue to “Stand with the majority of North Carolina’s citizens, and affirm the right of communities to provide not just the infrastructure of yesterday — schools, roads, public lighting, public police forces, and fire departments — but also the infrastructure of tomorrow — by driving competition to provide the 21st century’s information superhighway.” — Allan Maurer
Additional resources:
Tags: Gov. Bev Perdue, Huffington Post, Lawrence Lesig, Legal, muncipal broadband networks, municipal broadband battles, Municipal broadband in NC, NC, restricting municipal broadband, Salisbury, Wilson
Posted in Carolinas, Internet/New Media, IT, Legal, North Carolina | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
 RESTON, VA – People are watching more online video than ever and AOL has climbed into the number two spot for video content, up from seventh in February, possibly due to the way comScore now measures viewers.
According to comScore’s Video Matrix, 174 million Internet users, up 4 million from February, in the U.S. watched online video in March, averaging 14.8 hours per viewer.
Google sites (YouTube) continued to lead with 143.2 million viewers, followed by AOL with 57 million. Yahoo sites were third with 56.4 million, and Microsoft sites fourth with 53.1 million.
Vevo was fifth (52.6 million) and Facebook sixth (48.8 million).
AOL, which has boosted video content on all its properties, also may have benefited from comScore’s switch to unified digital measurement.
AOL has also integrated HuffPost video following its purchase of the news aggregation site.
So, are you watching more online video? We’re impressed with Facebook’s rise as a video source. It’s what steers us to most of the videos we watch these days, although most are on YouTube.
What concerns us, though, is that all this online video viewing makes Internet service providers look for ways to charge based on bandwidth consumed. It’s already happening in Canada and we’re likely to see repeated attempts to do the same by providers in the United States.
Tags: AOL, comScore, facebook, Google, Huffington Post, online video views March 2011, reports, Vevo, Yahoo, YouTube
Posted in Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports | Comments Off
Monday, August 30th, 2010
 ATLANTA – Vertical Acuity Inc. has raised $1.7 million of a targeted $4.2 million mixed securities offering, according to a regulatory filing. Investors include Atlanta-based Kinetic Ventures and Rho Ventures and Roth Partners, both based in New York.
The company previously raised more than $1 million from angel investors and Kinetic.
Principals cited in the filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission include Betsy Morgan, who was previously CEO of the Huffington Post, which grew from 4 to 22 million monthly unique visitors as she helmed the company.
Founded in 2007, Vertical Acuity sells content optimization services.
The company says its platform empowers automated, mass scale content syndication across hundreds of websites, with no formal business or technology relationship between them. In essence, we enable content to “route”.
For a profile of the company we did in 2009 see: Vertical Acuity brings market intelligence to the product level
However, the firm appears to have changed directions somewhat since we last talked with them. We’ll be giving them a call to update you on what they’re doing. Stay tuned.
To contact TechJournal South Editor & Writer Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.
Tags: Atlanta, Betsy Morgan, content syndication, financing, Georgia, Huffington Post, Kinetic Ventures, New York, Rho Ventures, Roth Partners, Vertical Acutiy
Posted in Georgia, Internet/New Media, IT, Money | Comments Off
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
 WASHINGTON, DC – Do you still subscribe to a daily newspaper? When we moved to the Research Triangle in North Carolina in 2000, about every other apartment or so in our large complex had a daily paper plop at the door mornings, and even more received Sunday editions. Now, not a single apartment still receives a daily paper and only a handful get Sunday editions.
In a discussion paper, The Federal Trade Commission suggests a number of remedies to support the news gathering business, primarily the dead tree version. The suggestions include taxing broadcast spectrum, advertising, consumer electronics, and cell phone ISPs, among others.
Using income from new and current taxes, it suggests remedies might include higher postal subsidies for publications, greater funding of NPR and PBS news organizations, a “local news fund,” and tax credits to news organizations for every journalist they employ.
Copyright facts?
It even suggests expanding copyright law to cover “facts,” as opposed to just the particular expression of them covered now. How in the world that could be enforced is beyond us.
It’s no secret that the newspaper industry is hurting. Major papers such as the Rocky Mountain News shut down, and nearly all have slashed their staffs repeatedly. But many of the suggestions in the FTC discussion paper seem thoroughly wrong-headed.
In this month’s Atlantic magazine, James Fallows notes that newpapers never made their money from hard news reporting. They made their money from the targeted advertising in automotive, travel, real estate and classifieds sections.
Some FTC suggestions are “silly”
With the most up-to-date and specific shopping, travel, real estate, automotive and classified information available online, consumers are not going to go back to print for information that is often stale the moment it hits the pavement, regardless of government subsidies.
In a detailed piece in The Huffington Post, Michael Gonzalez suggests that many of the FTC’s suggestions in its discussion paper are downright “silly.”
We agree, although beefing up the PBS and NPR news operations is not a bad idea.
Government subsidies for private news organizations, however, is a disturbing idea. If the government holds the purse strings to your news operation, it also has a powerful and direct means of controlling those operations.
Also, as Gonzalez writes, hobbling the digital world with new taxes to support a dead business model is just not a wise idea.
Personally, we think this problem will work itself out in the open marketplace without undue government interventions. The FTC paper sees only non-profit aid and tax-based government subsidies as new business models for news gathering and that is a flawed viewpoint from the get-go.
Other solutions?
Successful news operations online have come up with a variety of other creative ways to develop revenue streams, including not a few that are primarily advertising supported.
We would be willing to bet many of us will be paying for one or more online news sites such at that of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and/or local papers soon.
But we would also bet that no amount of government support is going to save the print newspaper industry.
By Allan Maurer
Tags: DC, FTC, Huffington Post, newspapers, online news, subsidies, taxes
Posted in Columns, Internet/New Media | Comments Off
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