Many newspapers are using maps in great ways already on the editorial side.... But maps can and should be used in advertising, marketing and local search, according to panelists participating in “Maps: Not Just for Driving Anymore,” a Search Engine Strategies-sponsored session this afternoon at the Interactive Local Media conference in L.A.

Two people separately told me some newspaper people are looking for competitive information – specifically, what are other types of media doing in the local search space.   The answer, in a nutshell, is video, mobile and reviews. The following is an overview and some resources to learn more, and I’ll add to this today as more information comes in during the ILM:07 conference.

Get a few people in a room and throw out some words. That was the main suggestion from people talking about keyword research and keyword selection to drive Web traffic at the Interactive Local Media conference today.

Part of the reason NAA sent me (and Pili Linares, who works in the NAA advertising department) to the Interactive Local Media conference this week is because the “local space” and search, search engine optimization/marketing and local directories are quickly becoming a very, very important part of newspapers’ strategy. But when one of the moderators this morning asked how many people in the audience had local search programs in place, few hands went up. Even fewer people said they were satisfied with their programs. Even though this area is important, it’s clear many companies have a long way to go with it.  

I’m a fan of long plane rides. They give me a chance to disconnect and catch up on some reading and sleeping (or not sleeping – I had a screaming, kicking, 2 year old seated behind me).  So tonight I read “If You Build It…” from the Columbia Journalism Review on the changes at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I’m catching up today on the 300+ e-mails I got while I was out of reach (partly by choice) last week, vacationing in London.

One thing I noticed was that everyone there seemed to have a high-end phone (Web-enabled, etc.), and – perhaps unlike here – people in England actually used the full capabilities of their phones. This observation pushed me to look back at the Online Publishers’ Association study from this spring, “Going Mobile.” And, sure enough, it does seem that mobile phone users in the United Kingdom do actually use the full capabilities of their phones more than mobile phone users in the United States. Here’s the report. To further back this up, Telephia late last year reported people in Europe are adopting the mobile Web faster than their American counterparts.

And right after I got back this weekend, I saw this article from The New York Times: “Mobile Web: So Close Yet So Far.” Michael Fitzgerald wrote the mobile Web seems to be a really hot area right now, but “It all looks good, but the wireless communications business smacks of a soap opera, with disaster lurking like your next dropped call.” The challenges include the need for a truly high-speed data network for mobile (not even the iPhone can flawlessly deliver on that) and difficult to use mobile browsers. It’s possible that the Google platform and other developments in the next five years will really make the mobile Web more user-friendly and faster.

Fitzgerald wrote, “For now, widespread use of the mobile Web remains both far off and inevitable.”

“Far off”, however, doesn’t mean newspapers can ignore the mobile Web. Technology changes quickly and it’s vital that newspaper Web sites be on the mobile Web now. The most prolific users of the mobile Web in the future – the people who will give your newspaper lots of mobile page views and support your advertising – are probably going to be many of the same people already using it today (the early adopters).

A few quick unreleated catch-ups:

NAA: Online Advertising Grows Significantly in 3^rd Quarter
Advertising expenditures for newspaper Web sites increased by 21.1 percent to $773 million in the third quarter versus the same period a year ago, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America. The increase reflects the fourteenth consecutive quarter of double digit growth for online newspaper advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004. The continued year-over-year gains have demonstrated the importance of newspaper Web site advertising, which now accounts for 7.1 percent of total newspaper ad spending, compared to 5.4 percent in last year’s third quarter. Read more here.

New York Times’ Web Editor Spruill Taking Questions
Fiona Spruill manages The Times’s Web newsroom, which is made up of the 60 producers and editors who are responsible for publishing NYTimes.com 24 hours a day. Her staff is focused on creating a site that takes full advantage of the online medium by creating original multimedia, encouraging reader participation and packaging the news in smart ways. She’ll be taking questions all week from site visitors. Ask her a question here.  

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Also, I’ll be taking off for The Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media (ILM:07) Conference in Los Angeles. Anyone else going? Let me know.  I’ll try to post newspaper-related items of interest to the blog later this week from the conference.

It never fails: As soon as I send the Online Publishing Update off for editing, I find a few things I should have put in it. (At least I'm consistent...)

So here are a few things that should have made it into the OPU, but didn’t.

Amazon to Release E-Book Reader with WiFi, Newspaper E-Edition Downloads
Amazon is releasing an e-book reader equipped with Wi-Fi, so readers can purchase e-books without having to go to a Web-connected computer, download and transfer the book. The Wi-Fi connection will go straight to the Amazon.com e-books site.

Here’s the important part: you can also download digital editions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal every day. CNet’s News.com reported, “The company is also said to have forged agreements with somewhere between 50 and 100 newspaper publishers, in addition to the daily New York Times and Wall Street Journal features. Kindle owners are expected to be able to select from a long list of publications for automatic download.”

A quick search for “Kindle” and “e-book” on Amazon.com this morning yielded no previews of the device.

SPTimes, CQ Launch Political Fact Checker Site, Widget
The St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly jointly launched a new fact-checking Web site called Politifact.com. The Web site puts candidates’ claims through a “truth-o-meter” and rates the claim on a scale. The newspapers also created their first widget, allowing other sites to post the fact checker. See Politics West for an example of the widget in action.

In only semi-related news, I will be out of the office with very limited e-mail access next week. American University Prof. David A. Johnson will be filling in on the Online Publishing Update Monday and Wednesday. There will be no OPU Friday, as NAA staffers will be sleeping off tryptophan-induced comas.

Randy Bennett will continue to post entries to the Imagining the Future of Newspapers blog , so please add that to your RSS reader!

Since you’re already on something of a break if you’re reading blogs instead of working… here are a few more things to read....  

Mort Goldstrom, VP of Advertising for NAA, wrote in an e-mail this morning that if the points of the Zillow-newspapers partnership announced this morning are to 1.) maintain the industry’s position as the premier marketplace for real estate, 2.) to aggregate a database that helps consumers in the participating markets, and 3.) to make doing business with newspapers easier for those in the real estate business, then those are all good things. However, he wrote, “All of that remains to be seen.”

“The clear consensus was that our ideas, which look bold from an insider view,
appear to be just tweaks around the edges when you’re looking with fresh eyes.”

 - Matt Mansfield in a blog entry on Rethinking the Merc 

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I just wanted to point to this blog from the San Jose Mercury News. I included it in one of the Online Publishing Updates last week, but it really deserves more attention.

The Mercury News is reevaluating itself, as a lot of newspapers are doing to various extents. But unlike most other papers in transition, the Merc is blowing up its newsroom in a very public way. Chris O’Brien and other newsroom leaders are going directly to readers and non-readers to find out how those people are using the newspaper (or not using it, as is the case, sometimes). Ultimately, the newspaper wants to figure out how to be a better, more useful, more relevant media company.

And to make the process even more complete, the newsroom is blogging the entire process with Rethinking the Merc. In an introductory post, O’Brien wrote, “We're sharing our ideas because we want you to know why we're doing all this. We'd like your guidance on our progress. This is your news organization, after all. And we aim for this process to be wide open, in the best spirit of innovation that's made this valley a leader around the world.”

The Merc has also launched a Facebook application to keep tech-savvy readers updated with the latest Rethink blog entries.

One of NAA’s purposes for existing is to help newspapers share ideas and learn from each other. This is a good tool to do that. Props to the Mercury News for taking this on.

This weekend brought the official launch of the Future of Newspapers Blog, an NAA project highlighting the perspectives of some of the brightest newspaper and digital media thinkers. In the next month, we’ll publish more than 20 essays, including those from Howard Finberg (already posted), Jay Rosen and Jan Schaffer (to be posted later this month).   

Welcome to the Digital Edge blog version of the Online Publishing Update!

The past several months (this election cycle is starting ridiculously early!) have brought voters a bunch of tools from newspaper.coms to help cut through the blabber and compare messages.

The New York Times just launched one of these tools earlier this week. The tool is a graphic representation of the Oct. 30 Democratic presidential candidate debate.

To be honest, I thought the page hadn’t loaded correctly when I first looked at it, but the boxes show how long each candidate spoke and in what order, plus it allows you to search on a term such as “Iraq” to see how many times each candidate mentioned the word. (See screenshot below). Each box also has a pop-up of that portion of the debate transcript. The second tab has the entire debate video and transcript.

It’s a fun tool to play with, and particularly useful for voters who are interested in one specific issue. Good idea!

 

 

It seems that now would be a good time to really ramp up your newspaper’s search engine optimization, maybe embed Google maps with all your events calendar and venue reviews. If you don’t yet have a mobile site for your newspaper, get cracking! 

There was too much good stuff this morning to include in the e-mail edition of the Online Publishing Update, plus some stuff that hit the wires or was posted after our initial deadline. So, here’s a bonus Online Publishing Update.  

On the radio on the way home Friday evening, I heard General Motors is allowing "qualified" people to borrow a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle for three months this winter as part of a market research project. I'm something of an environmentalist and I like new toys, so I went to GM's Web site to sign up for Project Driveway as soon as I got home.

The qualification process included answering a series of questions -- starting with my e-mail address, then age, gender, ethnicity, household income, zip code, current car, driving habits, job (industry/position), motivation for signing up ... the questionnaire took so long to fill out that I was late picking up my husband from the train station.

After nearly 15 minutes wondering when this questionnaire would end (there's more?!), I got to the final Web page.

"We're sorry. You are not qualified for our program at this time.... But if you'd like more information, please give us your contact information...."

"Ha!  No way, GM," I thought.  "After giving away a marketer's treasure chest of personal, professional and financial  information, I'm not giving you my home or work address. In fact, I'm irritated with you because your company just wasted 15 minutes of my time and I've gained nothing."

In retrospect, I think I would be happier, and have a more positive image of GM, if the Web site had a message such as, "Thanks for filling this out; we'll be in touch if you are chosen."  Maybe others won't agree with me there, but I'm going with "Ignorance is bliss." Or, at least, "Ignorance is better than immediate rejection."

This is something of a marketing question:  Is it better to leave someone hanging with false hope, or be honest with them? Is honesty always the best policy? Does the answer change if the honesty hurts a current or future customer's feelings?

In full disclosure, I do own a GM vehicle -- a bright blue Saturn coupe I bought when I got out of graduate school. It's my second Saturn, in fact.  After this and other (long-story) mishaps with GM, it also might be my last.

A few days ago, I wrote about news sites using maps to track news, such as the L.A. Times and San Diego Union-Tribune did with the recent wildfires, and The Oregonian did with bicycle accidents. 

Yesterday, YourStreet officially launched. The Web site automatically detects where you live and displays news and information about your local area. The site isn’t too robust yet and there are kinks: For example, the site thought I was coming from Springfield  (more than 10 miles from where I am), and there was very little news from my home or work neighborhoods. Later on Friday, the homepage switched so the site no longer auto-detected your location, instead asking for your address or zip code. (For more on the behind-the-scenes working of YourStreet, see the YourStreet blog.)

The creators have received a ton of praise for the concept, and I’ll add my accolades. The site is easy to use and understand. You can join as a member, which allows you to place yourself on the map, start conversations and add news stories to the map. You can also edit your profile with a photo, hobbies, favorite hangouts, etc. The more people who join, the more interesting the site will become.  

It would be even better if the site added the components of washingtonpost.com’s Local Explorer – also worth checking out – which includes crime, recent real estate sales, schools, businesses and more. More robust social networking features, localized ‘best of’ lists, reviews/ratings of local businesses, localized events calendars and more would help this site take off.

Yesterday, washingtonpost.com launched a new Facebook application called newsTracker (image at right) that feeds headlines into your Facebook profile page. You can see it in action on my personal Facebook page here, and download your own here.

The new app is essentially a mini-RSS reader for washingtonpost.com articles (and articles from other sources) with social networking components. In an easy two-step process, Facebook users can choose a layout for the application (tabs, columns, etc.) and select keywords or search phrases (you can have up to 30 at once). The application automatically updates with relevant headlines from washingtonpost.com and a ton of other news Web sites including Reuters, the BBC, and The New York Times.  newsTracker also shows search clouds of your friends’ newsTrackers and breaking news from washingtonpost.com.  Clicking on a headline in the list brings you out of Facebook and onto the news site with that article.

In addition, you can share the headlines through Facebook. Six of my Facebook friends (all of us working in the newspaper industry) have added the application since it launched yesterday morning.

I’ve been waiting for a newspaper to do something like this, and washingtonpost.com’s newsTracker is the first newspaper we’ve heard of to use Facebook’s open API this way. 

For a while now, NAA’s New Business & Audience Development division has been talking about pushing headlines and information out to people instead of forcing readers to come to your site. This is a unique way of making the news accessible to more people and making news a part of their day-to-day online lives.

newsTracker doesn’t – and probably won’t ever – replace a true RSS reader. I have more than 60 sites I check for newspaper.com news and commentary for the Online Publishing Update. For that, I’ll stick with my Bloglines.

But this is a great application for those who want to show a mini-RSS feed of their hobbies or interests on their profile to share with others. Some of my searches, for example, are washingtonpost.com’s Celebritology (I’m a very mild celebrity news junkie) and some health and running information, since I’m starting to run again to prepare for 8Tuff on St. John. These are things I read in my downtime.

It’s also a good way to reach out to teens and college students who may not go to the newspaper Web site on their own to find news that interests them. (Of course, the flaw in that idea is that those teens and college students still have to put the application on their profile.)

WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive’s first Facebook application was the Political Compass, which launched this summer. With that application, Facebook users can answer a series of multiple choice questions about current issues (immigration, gun control, etc.) and the application gives places your political views on a scale going from liberal to conservative. Rob Curley of WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive wrote on his personal blog, “our biggest misconception was that the Facebook crowd wouldn’t want news content.”

He continued, “Though I still believe it’s true that the vast majority of those who turn to Facebook multiple times a day aren’t going there for traditional news content, I didn’t fully understand that you don’t need the vast majority of the Facebook community to like something in order for it to really work. It’s such a big place, you only need some of them to want or like it in order for it to still be quite effective. Kind of like a newspaper.”

I hope more newspapers do this. More information about how washingtonpost.com did it is available on Curley’s blog.

By the way, there is an NAA Facebook group, if you’d like to join. If your newspaper comes out with a Facebook application, we’ll place it on our group’s page.