online news

Ravi Somaiya considers the deluge of more viral, disposable journalism in an age driven by clicks, along with the backlash from committed journalists. “As publishers desperately seek scale to bring in revenue, many have deplored a race toward repetitive, trivial journalism, so noisy that it drowns out more considered work,” he writes.

The number of independent local news sites generating significant revenue leaves something to be desired. At the top of the list: a site covering the Florida Panhandle beach lifestyle.

Tribune Content Agency is moving into video syndication, bringing its publishing partners into the fold. The new TCA Video Network  “will offer more than 1,000 new videos a day licensed from 150 news and media companies including the AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, Scripps Broadcasting and AFP,” along with content from Tribune’s own Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

The share of Americans for whom Twitter and Facebook serve as a source of news is continuing to rise. This rise comes primarily from more current users encountering news there rather than large increases in the user base overall, according to findings from a new survey by the Pew Research Center. The report also finds that users turn to each of these prominent social networks to fulfill different types of information needs.

EastIdahoNews.com launched last week on the shoulders of a longstanding leader in music and talk radio, Riverbend Communications. Michael Depp looks at the company’s ambition to widen its revenue streams through the site and the early lift it has gotten through on-air promotion and viral stories.

Work has begun assessing the possibility of making the BBC’s news channel online-only. The potential move would have serious cost-saving implications: production costs for the channel are £26.8 million, while its newsgathering costs were £21.2 million.

Newsy, a video news provider owned by the E.W. Scripps Co., has been expanding the breadth of its over-the-top offerings, including a completely revamped (and home built) Roku channel. Its consumers are spending more time with Newsy on OTT than other channels, and are more likely to let its story stream run than users on desktop or mobile.

The growth of Buzzfeed‘s investigative unit to 17 staffers — with two more on the way — reflects the increasing emphasis on serious journalism by the site that has made its name and makes its money from its uncanny sense of what will blow up on social media, for its endless supply of sometimes silly, sometimes transcendent listicles, offbeat tales and wacky photos.

When it comes to where younger Americans get news about politics and government, social media look to be the local TV of the millennial generation. About 6-in-10 online millennials (61%) report getting political news on Facebook in a given week, a much larger percentage than turn to any other news source, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. This stands in stark contrast to Internet-using baby boomers, for whom local TV tops the list of sources for political news at nearly the same reach (60%).

Late last month, a North Carolina news outlet unveiled a new feature on its website: Hover over the name of a sitting state lawmaker mentioned in any story, and you’ll see the top five donors to the legislator’s most recent campaign. The tech tool, called Donor Reveal, not necessarily earth-shattering, but it’s a nice example of the way political journalists can weave transparency and campaign-finance themes into their work in the digital age. But here’s what’s most interesting: Donor Reveal was developed not by some online startup or good-government nonprofit, but by WRAL, Capitol Broadcasting’s CBS affil in Raleigh.

Early next year, the company plans to introduce Reuters.TV, an ad-supported digital service that allows subscribers to receive personalized video content created solely for the platform. Reuters.TV will cost a monthly fee, but the company declined to say how much it will be. The service will initially be available on iPhones and iPads.

CNNgo is the network’s attempt to break the linear model for broadcast television.

News of Yahoo’s talks to acquire News Distribution Network, which syndicates clips from local news affiliates across the U.S., indicates Yahoo is looking to make local TV news a big part of the online landscape. “Local online video is treacherous ground, a field that wrecked would-be disruptors in the last technology boom, but Yahoo might just have the scale, the expertise, and the hunger to finally make it work,” he observes.

Yahoo News has hired Megan Liberman, deputy news editor at The New York Times, to be their new editor in chief. The interim editor was Chris Suellentrop, who will resume his duties as deputy editor.

Carol Marin, Chicago’s preeminent broadcast journalist, will host a new online newscast for the Sun-Times website. Starting next week, The Marin Report will appear at noon Monday through Friday on the home page of suntimes.com. From a studio in the Sun-Times‘ newsroom, she will deliver a 90-second roundup of headlines and highlights of her colleagues’ work. Jim Kirk, Sun-Times media editor-in-chief, said Marin will go in-depth on bigger topics some days, talk to newsmakers on other days, and bring reporters in to discuss major stories.

A group of fifteen Chicago community news sites have joined together to overcome the isolation, launching, this week, the Chicago Independent Advertising Network. The network, which will began running ads on November 1, is an effort to bring the benefits of scale — and the complementary ideas of “safety in numbers,” “misery loves company,” etc. — to the business side of community news.

While news consumption online increased 17% last year from the year before, local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience in 2010, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.