I’ve been thinking about USA Today’s admirable conversationalizing of its site. I don’t think it will do what they want, although I’d be happy to be wrong (which means I must be happy most of them time).

The problem is that the best newspaper is the meta-newspaper, the one that pulls together articles from every conceivable source, from USA Today to the India Times to Aunt Margie’s blog. Why would I go to one of the sources as my news home when I can pull them all to me? Sure, I’ll go to read an article linked to in one of the aggregation sites, but that’s not what USAToday.com is after. Against their wishes, their content is coming unstuck…which is the best way to get my “eyeballs” to come to their site.

It may be that one of the news sources can reinvent itself as the best damn news aggregation site, but it’s not probable since they’re likely to prefer their own content. The site will have to compete with the very best aggregators around, although the newspaper’s brand and market presence and trustworthiness does count for something. We’ll see how it turns out.

(I still think the USAToday site needs to provide a thumbs down option as well as a thumbs up button. Don’t they know we readers want our revenge?) [Tags: usatoday media newspapers journalism marketing everyth everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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The University of Alabama at Birgmingham has a lab full o’ bloggers in Antarctica. They’re posting up a blizzard, and filing photos at flickr as well. Very cool, so to speak. (Thanks to Jeff Keeton for the link.) [Tags: blogging anarctica science everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Q: What is the opposite of Venice?
A: The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

This is a hotel so large that I got agoraphobia when I walked in to it.

I arrived late last night to keynote the New Communications Forum this morning, and headed straight for the gambling area. Cocktail waitresses stroll the casino hangar in outfits that seem to have been designed forty years ago by horny thirteen year old boys.
Lose I did. I started on the quarter video poker, but the betting algorithm is too mechanical — hold onto the Jacks and higher, discard the rest — so I switched to a slot machine to eliminate any pretense of skill and get the whole thing over with. Six minutes later, I’d lost my entire bankroll. There’s ten dollars I’ll never see again.

I haven’t yet seen the Venetian’s mock canal (mockanal? nah, that doesn’t come out right), which I’m looking forward to because of how smug it will make me feel.

The truth is that I sort of like Vegas because it is what it is and nothing more, although I’m not crazy about what it is. And, yes, I do know how lucky I am that I get to go places. Truly.

Now, on to the conference, which promises to be interesting, although I can only stay for the morning. [Tags: travel vegas gambling venice new_communications_forum]

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Terry Heaton and Steve Safran discuss the news that MySpace is getting into the news biz. Fascinating. This could be a big way we put front pages together for one another (where front page = feed, aggregator, outcome of any recommendation engine, or a vague handwave in a particular direction).

Today for me basically consists of a few hours at home between planes, but I did have a chance to poke at the USA Today networked journalism foray. It’s definitely getting there, although only having “thumbs up” buttons for articles, and no “thumbs down,” I suspect will doom that feature to irrelevance. But, we’ll see. And they can always add opposed thumbs if they want to. [Tags: media msn news journalism myspace everythin everything_is_miscellaneous terry_heaton]

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Global Voices is seeking a full-time Outreach Director to coordinate efforts in promoting blogging, podcasting, videocasting, photoblogging and other forms of citizen media throughout the world. If you’re interested in leading an exciting new focus of Global Voices’ mission to both amplify and spread the power of self-publishing, check out Ethan Zuckerman’s full description of the position.

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