Does immediacy of news create unrealistic expectations for war?

In an excellent article at newmediazero today, editor Michael Nutley raises the question: do readers' immediately gratified news appetites give them expectations that the war will progress quickly?

Michael says:

"No doubt these expectations were set by the politicians, but already the sense of impatience that operations have become bogged down is noticeable. Yet as US defence analyst Harlan Ullman told The Guardian earlier this week, 'The war just began on Wednesday. That's like saying to Eisenhower, four days after D-Day, why the hell haven't you got to Berlin yet?' In a situation where our leaders have promised us a swift campaign, does online news encourage dissatisfaction with war fought at a normal pace?"

When you're used to updates every minute, do you switch off when there's no new incidents for hours or days?

Kitty humour under fire from RSPCA

The Register reports on an attempt by the RSPCA to have dark humour site Bonsai Kitten shut down on the basis that it "encourages cruelty to kittens".

While some may find the site's content in poor taste, it's a joke site and the RSPCA acknowledges that it's a hoax - not really believing that anyone has attempted the "long lost art of body modification in housepets" the site promotes.

The RSPCA has contacted Bonsai Kitten's ISP requesting that the site be shut down, but as of today, it's still out there.

An old English dictionary gets a modern treatment

I've recently been asked to help proofread a few scanned pages of a 1300-page old English dictionary as part of the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Project. The project aims to digitise the 1898 dictionary which is based on the manuscript collections of Joseph Bosworth.

Project coordinator Bekie Marett says the skills of volunteers and English-studies students are vital to the success of digital content projects like these, that contribute to a wider historical knowledge.

While it's important to preserve ancient texts in their original state, making these publications freely available to a wide audience is essential in providing easy access to original research materials.

Internet journalists arrested in Cuba

Wired News reported last week on the jailing of ten independent journalists, most of whom published online, by Cuban police. Reporters Without Borders placed that figure at 23 by Monday this week.

Unofficial news is illegal in Cuba and Julia Scheeres in Wired News says that the increase in independent journalists in the communist country has "followed the rise of the internet, with independent media professionals filing their stories by fax and phone dictation to editors in the United States".

However, while this informs readers around the world about Cuba on the inside, people actually living in the country can rarely afford internet access and so miss the news the government deems 'subversive'.

Paid-content market to reach US$2 billion this year

Released at the Online Media Conference in the US this week, Jupiter Research's investigation into consumer spending on paid online content projected that the market for paid content will grow by more than 20 percent a year for the next four years to reach US$5.4 billion in 2007.

Reported by internetnews.com, Jupiter suggests that the US$2 billion figure for 2003 noted in the research would be spent across a wide range of different types of content "making it difficult for any one company to collect a significant share of that spending".

Jupiter also plans further content-related research this year, with Content and Programming focusing on tactics and the impact of online content on traditional media. Their European Content and Programming research stream is set to include investigations into revenue streams for content creators and distributors in internet, mobile and dTV sectors.

More attention on war coverage

It's unsurprising that the online media should be so self-absorbed at the moment and that war coverage is the catalyst for analysis of a range of formats.

We reported yesterday on the popularity of news alerts via SMS, and recently another newly discovered official and unofficial news tool, the weblog, has really come to the fore during the Iraq conflict. These two formats really sum up what readers seem to be looking for from online news - speed and more personal analysis. Rather than responding to the broader political leanings of a news publication or TV station, readers appear to be hunting a truly personal slant. In these days of spin, people want to know what others really think.

In this vein I was interested by this story from E-Media Tidbits covering news correspondent Kevin Sites' gagging order from his employer. CNN has asked Sites not to cover the war in his independent blog while stationed in Iraq for the news company. One audience member responded to the situation saying "the image of freelance journalists leveraging THEIR OWN intellectual content is one that must leave [established media] all shaking in their boots".

While newspapers have been supporting and exploiting the use of columnists and the 'personal' column style for years, it seems that genuine personal opinion must still be officially sanctioned if it's to be palatable to big media companies.

A short, but excellently slanted article on war coverage is also from E-Media Tidbits, To Cover or Not to Cover War, This Is the Question by Carla Passino, content director at IPC Media. When there's a major global news story underway, is every part of the media duty-bound to cover it? Carla says, and I agree, that as a topical issue it should be incorporated into your editorial strategy, but only where it actually fits.

Other reports on online media coverage of the war in Iraq:

mbites.com on the launch of an English-language version of Al-Jazeera
From the NY Times online: War Is Test of High-Speed Web
E-Media Tidbits looks at how the BBCnews sites are coping: Straining Under the Load, But Managing This Time

Surge in mobile news alerts in China

As war on Iraq was announced last week, online news sites began receiving a deluge of visitors. In China, where cable news services don't run 24-hours and the mobile phone market is enormous, sites which offer mobile text alerts have been enjoying a great upsurge in traffic.

Reports published by Wired News and ZDNet show that Chinese news sites such as Sina.com received huge volumes of traffic in the moments after the first missiles were launched - Sina.com's traffic doubled to 40 million visitors in the six hours follwing the first attack.

Sohu.com, a Chinese portal site received over 20,000 registrations for their text message news service within the first few hours of the war, ZDNet reported, paying around the equivalent of 2 GBP for the service. Sina.com editor-in-chief Chen Tong says they expect subscriptions to their SMS news service to double to 1,000,000 subscribers by the end of the year, due to the interest in news of the Iraq war.

Government sites risk wasting taxpayers' money

The Register reports on yet another investigation into the state of government and public sector websites.

The research by Parallel Ltd's Nexus Watch was conducted over eight weeks and investigates 70 sites, finding a number of issues including page load times that were more than three times the recommended speed, taking an average of 22 seconds. The longest download time was at the Job Centre Online which took one minute and 20 seconds to load.

In the report's foreword, Tim Moore, Parallel Ltd director says that the report's intention "is not to embarrass any one organisation with these results; it is only to encourage the public sector as a whole to review its approach to web management".

The Register article quotes Moore as saying "if the UK government fails to provide effective services that ensure real benefit to the public, then they run the risk of wasting taxpayers' money".

Access to credit content covering developing countries

EContent Xtra reports that Skyminder, the online data aggregator and credit information provider has created new agreements with local, country-specific information providers in developing countries to allow readers to access company reports.

This kind of information has traditionally been difficult to get hold of and Skyminder now offers online access to company information in regions such as South and Central America - including Mexico and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, the Baltic and ex-Soviet nations, Gulf States, Israel, Asia Pacific Rim and Pacific Islands, and Africa.

Get to work, don't you know there's a war on?!

Californian developer of productivity and security solutions 8e6 Technologies warns that employers may face lower employee productivity due to the quality of online news about the war with Iraq.

The company refers to a number of online subscription services offering live and archived video. Recently ABC News launched its 'ABC News Live' focusing on breaking news and live events, Yahoo introduced its premium online video service 'Yahoo Platinum' last week and the new 'NewsPass' from CNN offers video as well.

"The customers of these services are obviously looking for updated video news while they are away from their televisions", said Eric Lundbohm, Vice President of Marketing for 8e6 Technologies on their website. "That means they will largely being using them at the office on the company computers and internet line, producing additional amounts of traffic and load on the company’s network bandwidth."

Lundbohm suggests that companies monitor their employees' internet usage and implement an acceptable use policy.