The Jeff Beckham Weblog

The AP looks at how newspapers are using widgets — small, stand-alone programs people can place on their own web pages or desktops — to “draw in new readers and to boost their brands throughout the Internet.”
In a way, it’s an extension of news feeds and another example that a person doesn’t have to come [...]

[Read more →]

Much has been written already about the New York Times’ decision to end their TimesSelect subscription service. Check out some of the best here:

Jeff Jarvis
Staci Kramer
Rex Hammock
Dan Gillmor

As those folks point out, there’s more there than just freeing the Times columnists from behind a paywall. The Times is also opening up their archives for the [...]

[Read more →]

I’m an unabashed fan of Rob Curley. He recently posted a transcript from his interview with Northwestern’s Media Management Center for a report called “Running While the Earth Shakes: Creating an Innovation Strategy to Win in the Digital Age.”
Curley cuts to the chase in defining why newspapers have trouble in their approach to the web:
“So [...]

[Read more →]

No local publications were included among the finalists for the 2007 Online Journalism Awards.
The Houston Chronicle’s Science Guy was among the nominees in the Beat Reporting (Large) category.
Where last year’s awards were heavily populated with coverage of Hurricane Katrina, this year’s list includes several publications’ coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings.
The winners will be announced [...]

[Read more →]

A couple of weeks ago, the Bivings Report published an analysis of US consumer magazines and the way they use the web. They looked at the top 50 commercial magazines (according to circulation).
Among their key findings:

More magazines are using reporter blogs in 2007 than in 2006. Fifty-eight percent of the magazines researched now [...]

[Read more →]

Texas Monthly Editor Evan Smith announced today on his blog that he’s hired Eileen Smith (no relation) as the first editor of the magazine’s website, TexasMonthly.com.
Eileen has run the In the Pink Texas site and been a senior editor at Pluck.
This should be an excellent hire for the magazine. I met Eileen briefly during a [...]

[Read more →]