re Topix, Sun-Sentinel's reader comments site; Venture Beat: Online news gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars

Some of you are already quite familiar with the downside of using the Topix reader comment boards affiliated with newspaper websites.

If you're in South Florida like me, it's pretty likely you're familiar with it from having seen the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's, where scurrilous, hateful and racist comments were/are routinely posted there just for the hell of it, and people could literally post things things there that were/are NOT factually true, with no fear of it being deleted, despite what the newspaper lamely claims.

Want to accuse someone you don't even know of being drunk at 9 a.m. and causing a traffic accident? Welcome aboard!
This is from today about the Channel 10 news van accident in Fort Lauderdale:
3 hurt in accident involving WPLG Ch. 10 live truck in Fort Lauderdale
http://discussions.sun-sentinel.com/20/soflanews/fl-van-overturn-20101015/10

I saw things there repeatedly about someone I knew that were NOT at all true, but it hardly mattered that it wasn't true, because there it stayed, day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month.
(For the record, it was from West Hollywood Dissident.)

If you wanted to publicly say that your ex-girlfriend/ex-husband or ex-roommate was a vampire, a deadbeat, a drug user, a fleeing felon or a Justin Bieber-lover, that was the place for you to vent your wrath!
And it shows!

Well, this Oct. 13th article from Venture Beat informs us about the TOPIX geniuses' newest strategy to get more political advertising $$$.

But fortunately, some smart readers chime-in and share even more personal horror stories and ruin the TOPIX party.
Sweet!

I found the article today after I received an email in my inbox from Topix this morning telling me -deceptively- implying that someone had a new message, presumably responding to something I'd written at some point in the past.

That seemed odd, since I haven't used it in a while since their site was such a mess.

Such a mess, in fact, that I'd written an email to the Sun-Sentinel's management many, many weeks ago.
Official response? ZERO!

Way to be accountable, legacy media!

-----

Hi Hallandale Beach Blog,

CitizenTopix sent you a message on Topix.

To see the message, click this link:
(I deleted this for obvious reason to post it here on the blog.)

Topix

-----------

But rather than seeing a link I'd click to see the new comment -and my own original comment, since they didn't say what the subject was- as with the DISQUS comment system, http://disqus.com/, which I use when commenting on material at TheWrap and the various mediabsitro.com industry websites, it was essentially a sales pitch from TOPIX's new effort, Citizen TOPIX.

-----------------

CitizenTopix

“Sounding off for the citizens”

A Governor, Sheriff, and Dog Catcher walk into a bar...

Topix Election 2010: Citizen Sound-Off is the place to discuss the November 2nd Midterm elections that matter to you. From big-name governor races all the way down to hotly contested county commissioner seats, you can share and debate your opinions with folks from down the street or across the state.

Get started right now: http://www.topix.com/pr/election2010

Are we missing a race for your town? We could use your local expertise!
Just head over to this form and fill in the blanks:
http://bit.ly/topixelections

Vote early. Comment often.

See you at the polls!

Citizen Topix

------

As you might imagine, they were NOT persuasive.

------

Venture Beat

Online news gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars

October 13, 2010 Riley McDermid

With its launch of Election 2010: Citizen Sound-Off today, online news aggregator Topix is now the only website to couple localized voter information with a platform for open participation. But can it channel this big election into even bigger ad dollars?

Read the rest of the post at:
http://venturebeat.com/2010/10/13/online-news-gatherer-topix-aims-for-election-ad-dollars/

-----

See also:

"Entertainment Industry Analysis, Breaking Hollywood News" in TheWrap http://www.thewrap.com/

http://www.mediabistro.com/

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/

http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/

http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/

http://www.mediabistro.com/sportsnewser/

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/

Informed speculation on the future of "South Florida blogs" on the Miami Herald's website. Hmm-m-m...

Towards the bottom of the Miami Herald's webpage in the space between BLOGS and COLUMNISTS, you'll find the link for South Florida blogs.

Not that most of you who come to this site regularly have been wondering about it but... yes, people have noticed the minimized role of the South Florida blogs on the Miami Herald's website since they tried to persuade certain bloggers to become part of their News Network.

See my earlier post on this topic from April 13, 2010, and at the bottom of this post, see the article the Herald's own Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos felt compelled to write about certain other Herald news partners.

A week ago today... the road not taken with the Miami Herald and some 411 about Beth Reinhard to consider http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/week-ago-today-road-not-taken-with.html

In fact, to be honest, though I noticed it myself many weeks ago, most of the people who have noticed this change for the worse and mentioned it to me are bloggers who get many more daily hits than I do, and since many of them run ads, unlike me, this change in focus is actually co$ting them, even while it has no real effect on me.

And, lest you forget, I remind you that the Herald went ahead and listed me on their webpage without ever contacting me about it, as I noticed it only after I'd been on the "Communities" list for a bit and someone emailed me about it.

If their emails are any judge of what they're really thinking, it sounds to many South Florida bloggers currently on the Herald's site that the newspaper is just trying to string them along until some time in the near-future, possibly the Holiday season, after they've achieved what they deem to be the optimum geographic coverage they've always wanted.

Then they'll "reluctantly" announce a change of plans and simply eliminate the listed blogs they don't have agreements with.

That's a long way to go to cut your own throat, but it wouldn't be the first time this year the Herald's management has made what I and many other readers paying serious attention believe are critical or fatal errors, since for many months, after a lot of initial promotion on the website, as you can see for yourself from the photo I snapped above around 1 a.m., there's currently no photo, graphic or interesting eye-catching icon to call your attention to the "South Florida blogs" on the Herald website.
Just a link in black - South Florida blogs

Personally, I don't think that's by accident.

Miami Herald
OMBUDSMAN
When partner goes too far, who is responsible?

May 23, 2010

By Edward Schumacher-Matos

It used to be said that the best way to get your opinion heard in a newspaper was to own one, a privilege -- and abuse -- that still reigns at some small community papers.

The Herald has recently entered into online alliances with several of them as an innovative way to aggregate community information across South Florida into one site for readers and advertisers. Some, such as The Key Biscayne Times, maintain high professional standards, but Herald editors are finding themselves entangled with the owners of others whose ethics are challenged by readers.

"I cannot believe that The Miami Herald is allying themselves with the Community Newspapers," wrote Doug and Yvonne Beckman, for example, of a 12-paper chain in South Florida. The Herald has partnerships with the chain's South Miami, Cutler Bay and Pinecrest editions, and the chain's owner, Michael Miller, says he is negotiating to add more.

Yet, the Beckmans (no relation to the late Commissioner Jay Beckman) continue: "There [is] no worse example of yellow journalism I have ever seen. In South Miami that rag is commonly known as the 'Mullet Wrapper.' For years and years the owner has openly interfered with politics in South Miami in the most egregious way."

"Michael Miller is no journalist," wrote another reader, Dean Whitman. "He is not governed by any standard of journalistic ethics with regard to accuracy, objectivity or disclosure of conflicts of interest. His goal is simple, to change the zoning governing height and density of commercial property that he owns on 62nd Avenue in South Miami. This property adjoins a residential neighborhood to the west and Miller wishes to increase the currently zoned height from two to four stories."

NOT HIDING
Miller in an interview acknowledges that he writes about the building, for which he has been suing to change the zoning since 1997, but he said he does so openly in his column, without hiding his self-interest.

Reviewing a number of past issues of the South Miami newspaper, I found that most articles were straightforward, offering information on local events and services. Most of the reader complaints, however, concern Miller's weekly "Around Town" column, and I can see why.

It is a compilation of often unsubstantiated political gossip, much of it harmless, some of it playing favorites.

One column was offensive, making reference to an anonymous death threat letter received by Vice Mayor Valerie Newman, an opponent of Miller's zoning change. The letter said she might end up like Commissioner Jay Beckman, who was allegedly shot to death in 2009 by his teenage son.

Miller wrote: "If you know who just might want to waste their time sending such a note to Valerie, please let the police know as they would love to add this to her package of goodies. And speaking of packages, I hear that Valerie will soon get her day in front of the Ethics Commission on the charges that were initiated by the late Jay Beckman.

"Hmmm . . . One big mouth civic activist told me a few months ago that Jay Beckman had 'turned against us.' Golly, I thought, then the guy winds up dead?"

Whitman noted: "Consider what the response of your readers would be if an esteemed Herald columnist such as Carl Hiaasen, Fred Grimm, Leonard Pitts, or even Glenn Garvin wrote such things. Certainly such things have no place in a legitimate newspaper."

Of course, the column did not appear in The Herald itself. The Herald links to its community newspaper partners from the home page of MiamiHerald.com. But the Herald does highlight on its home page some of the articles from the partners. Two or three Herald articles in turn appear on the partner sites. The Herald pays to help develop the partner sites, and splits advertising revenues with the partners.

The arrangement greatly expands the local news in the Herald's Web edition without having to pay for the reporting, Miller noted. The small allies get to tap into The Herald's large Web traffic. Both sides win economically. Readers are better served by the deep information offered by The Herald's site.

'INVENTIVE'
"The partnership with community sites is one of the most important and inventive things we've started this year," Herald Executive Anders Gyllenhaal told me.

And what of the ethical concerns? Is The Herald tarred when one of its partners commits a transgression? Separately, is The Herald validating those transgressions by featuring or linking to them on its home page?

UNDEFINED LIMITS
"Any new project like this will have its struggles, and we are going to continue to work on how this all fits together," Gyllenhaal said. "The idea is that each of the sites has independence, but that we share the website, the content and also the ad revenues.

"Readers' complaints and objections about coverage are going to come up no matter what the publishing system is. If readers don't like something originated by The Herald, we're the ones who respond. If they don't like something from one of the partners, the partners are the place to go with the concern."

My position is that there is a limit -- undefined, still -- about how much The Herald can accept in its partners. The community papers are valuable for being close to the ground, and in a practical sense can't be held to the same rigorous standards as The Herald. But Miller, at least in his South Miami paper, goes too far. The Herald should rein him in, or cut him off.

Hallandale Beach Blog recommends outside.in as a news source

Update: outside.in was acquired by Patch in 2011 and is no longer is in operation.
"After 3 years & 4 months of organizing the web around neighborhoods, outside.in has been acquired by Patch."

While I suspect that for many of you, the existence of this company I'm going to speak of has long been "common knowledge," Hallandale Beach Blog was very pleased to recently discover a new source for local news and info that will do much for bloggers all over the country who want to keep their own unique voice, and NOT become simply an echo chamber for the MSM, responding only to whatever the columnists, reporters and editors of the large newspapers in their towns deign to make public.

(That said, I'm aware of the fact that they have a financial connection with the Washington Post.)

The company is called outside.in and they are, so they say, "The web’s leading platform for neighborhood news and conversation."

By going here, you can not only find recents posts of, well, mine, but also find posts by other bloggers and news sources around the world that mention these same communities that we both share an interest in.

In the short weeks since I first discovered this site, I've been able to find more than a fair amount of interesting news about these communities that I'd never have known about otherwise, thru more traditional search engines or tools.

It's actually rather addictive as you think of more and more places that you can keep tabs on.

As larger numbers of consumers become aware of outside.in and realize that its sheer ease of use and great utility for keeping up with places and topics of interest to them really sinks in, literally
allowing users to see maps indicating where these described activities are taking place, word-of-mouth will quickly spread.

There are also great functions on the page that allow you to look for these posts by either name, zip code or topic, within the community, to really zero in on a topic of interest.

The high degree of personalization is what I like best.

http://outside.in/Aventura_FL

http://outside.in/Hallandale_FL

http://outside.in/Hollywood_FL

http://outside.in/Miami_FL