It’s been a week heavy on Media Innovation Awards planning, Marketing Conference preparations and more. Unfortunately, when I get really busy, the blog sometimes gets pushed to the bottom of the list of things to do – I’m sure other bloggers can sympathize. At least, I hope so.

‘If It Catches My Eye’
For a while now, we’ve known that most teenagers will not go out of their way to find news – for many, it’s just not part of their daily habit. However, if news is presented in places they already go online, news consumption increases a lot.

This week, the Media Management Center at Northwestern University released a study called “If It Catches My Eye: An Exploration of Online News Experiences of Teenagers.” The study focuses on how news organizations can increase teen readership by doing things like “learning how to catch their eyes, diminish their angst, go where they are on the Web, enlist parents and teachers in the cause and help them develop a news persona.” The report is available through the Media Management Center’s Web site.

OpinionJournal and WSJ.com Opinion Section Merges, Goes Free

It’s starting: The Wall Street Journal is slowly taking down the online pay wall, this week with the Journal’s opinion section. Since 2000, The Wall Street Journal Online had both OpinionJournal.com, a free site with some of the newspaper’s editorials and op-eds with extra multimedia stuff, and it had WSJ.com/opinion – the paid for, complete version. Those are merging into one free site with all the content from both the newspaper and online versions, and it will be accessible through both OpinionJournal.com and WSJ.com/opinion.

When Television Trumps the Web

While surfing the Web and making periodic phone calls, I watched the caucus and primary returns on CNN last week and earlier this week. So, yes, I was televisiphonernetting. But the televisi-part was what really held my attention.

I could have just followed the story on the Web (as I did later those nights), but the thing that kept me in front of the television was the great job CNN did using computer touch-screens and moving graphics to explain the different processes in the states. It was like sitting in a high-tech classroom. So although a news outlet could have produced a self-driven interactive Web feature explaining the caucus process, watching Wolf Blitzer scatter the chips across the screen as he explained it was really educational. Sometimes video just works, and this was a rare instance where the television actually trumped the Web for me. So, nice job, CNN. (That said, the Des Moines Register also did a really good job explaining the process with their interactive graphic.)

This Week’s Worthy Reads
Interview with Off the Bus Project Leader Marc Cooper (NewAssignment.net)

If You Build a Social Network, Will Advertisers Come? (washingtonpost.com)

Thanks to Strike, Online Video Consumption Way Up (TechCrunch)