Oakland Local Live!

Oakland Local went live yesterday (well, about 16 hours ago). It was founded by Susan Mernit, who was an early advisor to my startup and a prominent tech blogger. Susan made her mark in technology and media as an executive during the early years of Netscape and AOL, and her recent position as a Senior Director at Yahoo!.

Oakland Local has a New Voices grant from J-Lab, funded by The Knight Foundation, as seed money. Her new venture is riding a trend of where the future of media is going: local and hyperlocal. The question is how will it be sustained and in what form? Oakland Local is taking the nonprofit route which is an avenue that some people believe is the only way for local news to survive. I'm not certain of this, but it will be great to watch Oakland Local develop and become a model for many to consider. More from their website and Susan:

Oakland Local is an independent, non-profit community news and information hub, connecting community and news. Our site combines original investigative and feature reporting with community news and information about Oakland non-profit organizations, community groups and engaged citizens.

"Oakland Local is launching in partnership with 35 local nonprofit, neighborhood & community organizations—we combine postings of their news and information with blogging and with reported stories from a top quality news team (Susan Mernit, Amy Gahran, Kamika Dunlap, Kwan Booth, Ryan Van Lenning and others). We are media partners & collaborators with Spot.us, Newsdesk.org, The Center for Investigative Reporting, New America Media, Endless Canvas, Youth Rising, Youth Radio and Youth Outlook as well. Our site offers forums, a directory of 320 local nonprofits and a blog directory of 180 active local bloggers as well."

Did You Know 4.0

HatTip to Dan W. Updated video on how "a surge of new technologies and social media innovations is altering the media landscape." It's also amazing to think that a majority of this driven by a small area in our world called Silicon Valley.



Love the prior version...

Clueless Old Media... AP Needs to Go to School

This seems like it's out of a Will Ferrell movie. The Associated Press' executive team must be a bunch of Ron Burgundys. Just read the first few links and you'll get the picture. You can't get dumber than these rocks.

"Behind The A.P.’s Plan To Become The Web’s News Cop" TechCrunch

"A.P. Exec Doesn’t Know It Has A YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate For Embedding Videos" TechCrunch

"1. Solve journalism’s data problem. 2. Kill the AP. 3. Invest in the next market." BuzzMachine

"Does AP know how its YouTube channel works?" CNET

"Techmeme founder: WSJ, NYT are aggregators" CNET

"Online news aggregators – friend or foe?" Hitwise Intelligence

"New Media Douchebags Explained"

HatTip to Jennifer. Spot-on and amusing...

Tribune Co. Files for Bankruptcy

Amazing that my old company where I summered during graduate school is filing for bankruptcy. It was bound to happen. The revenue pie for newspapers has been rapidly declining. With less than 5% of people's media consumption, even a couple years ago newspapers retained 30% of company ad spend. Didn't make sense when the Internet had almost 40% of media consumption but only about 5% of advertising dollars. Advertisers were expected to eventually catch on. More from the NYTimes here.

"Society for New Communications Research Announces 2008 Fellows"

Congratulations to Adrian Chan! The Society for New Communications Research announced their 2008 Fellows. 11 Fellows and 7 Senior Fellows enjoyed this honor, and Adrian was one of the Senior Fellows.

"The Society for New Communications Research, a global, nonprofit think tank focused on the latest developments in media and communications, today announced its 2008 Fellows. These new Fellows join the Society’s existing group of business leaders, scholars, professional communicators, members of the media, futurists and technologists from around the globe. The Society’s Fellows collaborate on original research and educational programs focused on the advanced study of emerging trends and developments in media and communications, and their effect on business, professional communications, media and society..."

Adrian and I worked closely together at GoingOn for almost two years. My pain was his pain at times :)

Anyway, he is a wellspring of creativity and excellent thinking in the web2.0 space and online human interaction. He blogged about this announcement and his research focus here.

I also know that he's open to speaking with various social networks if you're interested in participating in his possible research project on social analytics. If so, just ping him!