Editor's desk: Week of October 2, 2006

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Friday October 6

The stats are in and here

are the most-read stories on nzherald this week:

1.

Wild weather with more to come

2.

Kahui interview a 'major development'

3.

Brethren's investigator went berserk at station

4.

Smash victim's 'miracle' survival

5.

North Shore land-slip hits landmark

- - - posted 12.09pm by Neil Sanderson

Thursday October 5

Reader Comment:

Hi Neil, Thanks for linking to my

interview with refugee Shahzad Ghahreman

in your June 27th Editor's Desk.

I thought you might be interested in reading Part II of the series -- an

interview with former refugee Lan Le-Ngoc

. It was recently posted on Public Address. Lan's comments at the end of the interview with regard to the anti-refugee rhetoric of Winston Peters and Don Brash are particularly interesting given Peter's accusations earlier this week.

- - - posted 7.30pm by

David Heywood

The average podcast has 70 subscribers,

calculates MarketWatch.com blogger

Frank Barnako

. That's based on

Feedburner's

announcement that the 71,000 podcasts it carries have a total subscriber base of 5 million.

[+audio]

Feedburner vice-president Rick Klau

talks with the

San Francisco Chronicle

, and suggests podcasting will grow in popularity next year with the release of Internet Explorer 7.

- - - posted 2.45pm by Neil Sanderson [hat tip

Steve Rubel

]

One of journalism's most colourful characters,

New York Times

writer R.W. (Johnny) Apple, has died of cancer, aged 71. Mr Apple spent more than 40 years at the

Times

as a correspondent and editor and there's a wonderful

obituary of the "Falstaffian" journalist

on nytimes.com.

You have to admire someone who "thought nothing of beginning a sentence by saying, 'The first time I made lunch for Julia Child...'."

- - - posted 2.15pm by Neil Sanderson

Paying for interviews

is a good way to land a news organisation in disrepute. But often it's hard to tell what the payment was really for.

In the case of US television network ABC's one-hour special on crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, a payment of perhaps half a million dollars was ostensibly for the rights to broadcast the Irwin family's exclusive footage of the crocodile hunter's exploits.

The

Daily News

, however, suggests that the money may have secured an interview with Terri Irwin.

The newspaper says CBS was also prepared to pay big money to the Irwin family. But on its

editorial blog

CBS maintains it would only have paid for rights to the video footage, not for the interview.

- - - posted 2.00pm by Neil Sanderson

Wednesday October 4

Following the cold-blooded murder of schoolgirls

in an Amish community in the United States, news organisations scrambled to provide background on this little-known religious sect. At nzherald, we chose to use

Independent

writer

David Usborne's profile of the Amish

, which including references to their hallmark rejection of modern conveniences such as electricity and cars.

For reporters closer to the scene, however, it would be reasonable to expect some reporting from the Amish heartland in Pennsylvania.

The

Columbia Journalism Review

contrasts the approaches taken by two New York City newspapers. In the

Daily News

, a reporter at the scene described the Amish in a way the CJR describes as "evocative, respectful and informative". In the

New York Post

, however, the reporter spoke only to "experts" on the Amish, one of whom confessed ""I don't even know if I could begin to comprehend how this [tragedy] might affect those people."

A good illustration for all of us that there's no substitute for actually going to the news scene and talking with people face-to-face.

- - - posted 1.58pm by Neil Sanderson

Tuesday October 3

New Zealanders make heavy use of the internet

when deciding on a holiday or MP3 player, but tend to rely on other media or personal experience when it's time to buy a car or mobile phone or select a bank.

A survey by AC Nielsen

in 41 countries shows Kiwis are less likely than people in other countries to turn to the web for help with purchasing decisions.

Globally, the web was the most popular source of shopping information, but in this country we are more likely to rely on personal experience as well as advertising in print and on television.

Window shopping still works too, especially when looking for fashions and jewellery, the survey found.

>> More survey results

It's worth bearing in mind that reported use of the web was relatively low in New Zealand even though the survey was conducted online. Data were collected in May and June.

- - - posted 1.40pm by Neil Sanderson

Publisher Fairfax

says it will integrate its property and employment classified websites (until now known as propertystuff and jobstuff) into the

Trade Me

site. Fairfax purchased Trade Me, the enormously popular auction service founded by Sam Morgan, in April.

Trade Me has offered property advertising for just over a year. It launched employment ads in August, at which time Fairfax NZ chief executive

Joan Withers denied

the move would cannibalise jobstuff.

"I think Seek should be far more worried than jobstuff," she told NZPA.

She said Fairfax would run a two-brand policy, but that strategy appears to have been abandoned, with the company's new Group Head of Digital, Nic Cola, saying today that stuff.co.nz "will withdraw from employment and property listings".

Fairfax will also attempt to increase traffic to stuff.co.nz (the country's third-most-popular news site after xtramsn.co.nz and nzherald.co.nz) via a navigation link from Trade Me.

- - - posted 12.35pm by Neil Sanderson

Monday October 2

Blogger Jeff Jarvis

has a humorous

comparison of television production

at the big networks and at your local video blogger, ending with his prediction that the big networks will surely collapse under the weight of their "bloat". Along the way he refers to the high professional production of a two-part interview he gave to video blogger

Amanda Congdon

. Unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, the video streaming from Amanda's blog to NZ isn't very smooth. But if you're patient, it's interesting stuff.

- - - posted 1.50pm by Neil Sanderson

Video-sharing site YouTube

is under increasing pressure from a range of companies angered by what they regard as copyright violation.

In response, the site, which is less than a year old but already delivering more than 100 million video downloads per day, has signed a deal with Warner Music to develop technology that would signal whenever Warner's material is used in a video posted on YouTube.

As

Saul Hansel reports on nytimes.com

, YouTube would then pay Warner a share of the advertising revenue earned on the site. [Hansell's article also has an interesting profile of YouTube founder Chad Hurley.]

It's not just music that's being pirated by YouTube users. Entire television programmes are uploaded to the site. "Much of the activity on the site is watching clips from the

Daily Show

, the

Colbert Report

and other broadcast programs," writes Hansel.

Under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, YouTube may be able to get away with this, as long as it responds promptly when asked by a copyright owner to remove material from its servers.

Ironically, while some TV executives are quick to demand YouTube remove their material, others see in YouTube a way to market their programmes. NBC, for example, has bought advertising on the site and even uploaded episodes of

The Office

.

- - - posted 10.30am by Neil Sanderson