Showing posts with label website news. Show all posts
* Keep the article body clean
For various reasons, when crawling an article, Google News checks to make sure it can find the article body. If your article body is broken up by
tags, ads, sidebars or other non-article content, we may not be able to detect the actual article body, and reject your article as a result. In addition, if you place the beginning of your article's body near the title in the HTML, we'll be more likely to extract the correct title and snippet.
* Make sure article URLs are permanent and unique
If you reuse article URLs, our system may have difficulty crawling and categorizing your stories. In addition, make sure your article URLs have at least three digits that don't resemble a year (for example, 5232 is ok, but 2008 is not.) You can get around this requirement by submitting your articles in News Sitemaps. Also, please note that session IDs can confuse our crawler, and we may not realize that two distinct URLs actually point to the same page. You can learn more about some of these requirements here.
* Take advantage of stock tickers in Sitemaps
Google News Sitemaps allow publishers to specify stock ticker symbols for companies mentioned in individual articles. Using these symbols helps us better identify the subjects of your articles. You can read more about the format we use for this data here.
* Check your encoding
We occasionally see articles that declare themselves to be encoded in one format (say, UTF-8) and are actually encoded in another (say, ISO 8859-1). Don't do this. It hurts us.
* Make your article publication dates explicit
In order to help our crawler determine the correct date, please make the actual publication date of your articles explicit. You can do this by placing the article date and time in the HTML, between the title and the body. Also, you can remove other dates from the HTML of the article page, and add the required
Note that the article times and dates displayed on Google News reflect the time at which we originally crawled the articles, and may not be the same as the publication date.
* Keep original content separate from press releases
If your site produces original content and distributes press releases that you'd like us to crawl, make sure to separate your original news content from your press releases by creating two different sections on your site. As you may know, Google News labels press releases distinctly in order to alert our users that the article they're about to read is a press release. If your original news sections have links to press releases, adding the rel="nofollow" attribute to all links that point to your press release articles will ensure that they're labeled correctly. You can learn more about this attribute here.
* Format your images properly
To help Google News identify your images and crawl them along with your articles, use fairly large images with reasonable aspect ratios and descriptive captions. Make sure to place them near their respective article titles on the page and make the images inline and non-clickable. Images in the JPEG format are more likely to be crawled correctly.
* Article Titles in Google News
In order for Google News to crawl the correct titles for your articles, make sure the title you want appears in both the title tag and as the headline on the article page. In addition, don't hyperlink the headline on the article page - after all, your reader is already there! And it's always a good idea to have links that point to your articles use the article title as anchor text.
If you found these suggestions helpful, you might also want to check out our more generalWebmaster Guidelines. The Webmaster Guidelines aren't necessarily specific to Google News, but much of the wisdom you'll find there can help make your site Google News-friendly. Our Publisher Help Center contains lots more information about many of these topics. And you can always check out the Google News Help Forum to give us feedback on these suggestions, and share other tips and advice with webmasters and News users.
Akky Akimoto at the Asiajin blog recently reported that Google Japan was paying bloggers to review a new Google widget. Using pay-per-post service CyberBuzz, blog posts like the following popped up, strangely resembling each other, as Asiajin reports: The Google Hot Keywords blog widget [link to Google’s page] can show you what is in fashion now, and what other people are interested in. It’s appealing that you can view buzzwords from the previous day or the previous week. I am sometimes surprised to see that such words are so popular! Personally, I like the “fortune-teller” feature from the previous week’s ranking. When I click on a keyword, I am quickly taken to Google’s result page and so I enjoy the feature. I might not have noticed them by myself, but now I understand that these things are what people care about. I am participating in CyberBuzz’s campaign. Asiajin says, “CyberBuzz is one of the biggest pay-per-post agencies in Japan and are known for their high payouts,” with some posts getting “$100 for a single entry.” Asiajin explains “These articles, which look almost the same as regular ones, have ’ad’ tags ... [at the bottom], which are very subtle, and will no doubt not be noticed by many readers,” adding “So they are now link-building using monetary incentives to try to crook their own search results in a malicious way.” TechCrunch comments, “It’s interesting to see that Google, a company that not too long ago radically took action against PayPerPost bloggers in the US [see Google’s Matt Cutts’ post], today thinks the concept is suitable as long as it helps them advance in Japan”. By now, Google Japan issued an apology. Asiajin translated the post: Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products. It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google’s search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.
Are you looking for a way to monetize Facebook, MySpace, Bebo et al? This company offers solutions that are geared both towards advertisers and publishers, and these include demographic targeting that takes into account location, gender and age. For its part, publishers are provided advertisements that are pre-filtered by way of ad tags. You can procure as many of these tags as you wish, and put them into practice right away. For the time being, only publishers will be able to use the site to the full, as some adjustments are still taking place regarding the advertising services on offer. If you are a publisher you can get started by furnishing some basic contact and profile information and submitting the URL of your newly-launched application. This solution is presented by Triana Global, and it has launched recently (that is why some features are not already fully implemented). If you would like further information, a contact form is included as part of the “About” page. You can also reach this Los Angeles-based team at media@shopit.com in order to dispel any doubts that you might have.
Blu Mag is a three column, blue theme, with sliding menus, featured posts and sliding tabs. It is a Search Engine friendly theme, with widgetized sidebars and footers. Blu Mag is easily customizable and you get the maximum control over the theme’s layout. The Footers, Featured Posts section and Thumbnails can be easily disabled or enable through the Theme Options Page.
Two column simple theme designed for blogs / sites which do not expect any comments
Two column theme ready for social bookmarking and advertisements with a widgetized sidebar and rotating headers
Glassy Evolution is a glassy looking WordPress theme which has five difference colors black, green, blue, red and gold, that allow user to switch from one to another based on their needs. The theme has two columns, fixed width and right sidebar.
Thanks to its open-ended design and a thriving user community, Twitter is fast outgrowing its roots as a simple, easy-to-use messaging service. Enterprising hackers are creating apps for sharing music and videos, to help you quit smoking and lose weight -- spontaneously extending the text-based service into one of the web's most fertile (and least likely) application platforms. Hardware hackers have set up household appliances to send status alerts over Twitter, like a washing machine that tweets when the spin cycle is through, or a home security system that tweets whenever it senses movement inside the house. Others have incorporated Twitter into their DIY home automation systems. Forgot to turn off the lights? Send a tweet to flip the switch by remote control. "It's so simple and easy to access, people are thinking of more and more uses for the platform," says Dan Wasyluk, creator of the Twitter-based Snipt service. Wasyluk launched Snipt last week as a way to let programmers share short snippets of code over Twitter. Launched in 2007, Twitter quickly became a darling of the life-and mind-casting interneterati. But some saw boundless possibilities in the 140-character limit, and what was a slow trickle of innovation is now quickly elevating what is essentially a micro-blogging service into one of the internet's most important technologies, along with instant messaging and e-mail. Though it's main use -- sending and receiving short messages to your social network -- is often dismissed as time-wasting trivia, Twitter's potential as a broad internet platform is just beginning to be fully realized. Twitter has grown into a ubiquitous presence -- you can send tweets from your phone, your desktop and your browser -- that has potential to not only facilitate communication among humans, but even to make machines do your bidding. Businesses are starting to be built around it. Botanicalls, for example, sells a Twitter-enabled hardware kit that lets your neglected house plants alert you when they're thirsty. The company has developed a tiny moisture sensor attached to a circuit board with an Ethernet port. You stick it in your plant's soil, and when the moisture levels drop below a certain level, your plant sends you a tweet begging to be watered. Using Twitter's application programming interface (API), a programmer with even a modest amount of experience can create a webapp that gathers public data from Twitter, or uses it to send links, commands or bursts of information. "[Twitter's] open API is a huge reason it has grown into such a platform," says Wasyluk. File sharers were the first to rush in. The photo-sharing service TwitPic, one of the oldest Twitter mashups, lets users send pictures to their followers by storing a photo on its servers, then passing the link around on Twitter. Now there are newer apps like Tweetcube and Twittershare, which let users share larger media like MP3s and videos. Twitter's limited format of short, text-based announcements are a natural match for sites like TrackThis, which you can use to get status updates on FedEx and UPS packages, and Tweetajob, which job seekers can use to get real-time updates about new job openings. Anyone who needs help quitting smoking can use Qwitter to monitor their progress. Those looking to lose weight can turn to TweetWhatYouEat or TweetYourEats. Hardware hackers have put a new spin on the Twitter mashup -- as it turns out, just about anything that can be plugged into the internet is capable of talking to Twitter. Programmer Ryan Rose rigged up his washing machine to send him a tweet when his clothes are done. He just follows his machine's twitter account (it's PiMPY3WASH) and he knows when to go downstairs and move his undies to the dryer. Linux hacker Shantanu Goel set up a video camera and some motion-sensing software on a PC connected to the internet. If anyone breaks into his house or goes snooping through his room, the software detects the movement and sends out a tweet. Tech-savvy environmentalists can install Tweet-a-Watt, a gadget that plugs into your wall socket and connects to your wi-fi network. Once a day, the pocket-sized device broadcasts stats of your daily energy usage to Twitter. Whether that sort of transparency results in embarrassment or bragging rights can be determined by a system like the one created by Justin Wickett. The Duke University student wired up his home so he couldturn his lights on and off remotely, just by sending a text message to Twitter from his mobile phone
Yesterday tons of people wrote that my description of Facebook’s new status API as a “Twitter killer” was absolutely ludicrous. They claim that I don’t understand the difference between Facebook and Twitter and how Twitter is much more than just status updates. Trust me, I fully understand the difference between the two services. I would argue that the ability to “follow” people you aren’t connected to and the ability to @ reply (”at reply”) to other users is just a feature. Whoever decided to take the day or two to make this product will be rewarded for taking the time as it will surely generate a ton of buzz. Any good product must satisfy the needs of the user and the first question to ask is if there is a need for a Twitter replacement. I’ve made some fundamental assumptions that suggests there is a need but feel free to argue otherwise. The average user probably wouldn’t switch products because they are fine using products that they’ve spent the time to learn how to use. I don’t think Twitter users are average though. I think Twitter is still used by mostly early adopters. If Twitter has in fact become mainstream then the odds of a “Twitter Killer” is much less likely. The need for a “twitter-like” product is clear but ultimately I would argue that much of what is provided by Twitter is simply a set of core features that can be easily replicated: While Facebook’s new status API will bring in a wave of new applications, the death of Twitter still requires the rapid development of a new product that is distributed through Facebook. Not all Facebook users understand why Twitter is so powerful, yet provided with a public timeline of their friends’ statuses, I believe they would rapidly begin to see the value. Will Twitter disappear tomorrow? Probably not, but there’s a huge opportunity to duplicate the majority of the functionality provided to Twitter users directly to Facebook users. I would argue that this product would make it easier for Facebook users to understand what the power of a twitter-like product provides and help bring such a service to the mainstream. Twitter clearly has an opportunity here though. They already have many of the features I’ve outlined but they don’t yet have the full Facebook integration that I described. At this point though, I still fervently believe that the status wars are not yet over and a new company could come into power.
Since the majority of people think that Nick’s smoking crack for calling Facebook’s new API a “Twitter Killer”, I’ve decided to outline the blueprint of a product that duplicates Twitter’s features yet uses Facebook as a backbone for each of these status updates. I’m going to call this product “FB Tweet” but you can call it whatever you want. I began programming it but decided that I was only putting my existing projects aside and ultimately it’s not worth the time for me personally.Is There A Need for “FB Tweet”?
FB Tweet Features
Conclusion
Different tracking services show different numbers when it comes to measuring which social network is most popular, but at least one now places Facebook with a significant lead in the US. Compete has updated its data for January, and the service now shows Facebook seeing a full 10 million more visitors each month than MySpace.
With Facebook growing another 14.9% from December to January, the site now reaches 68.5 million people each month, versus 58.5 million for MySpace. Granted, Compete is the only service we track showing such a disparity, though the gap is narrowing on other tracking services as well. Nielsen Online’s year-end numbers put Facebook’s domestic traffic within 3 million of MySpace, while comScore still has MySpace with a significant but shrinking lead.
Meanwhile, Twitter’s growth continued to accelerate in January. The microblogging tool grew 34.7% from the previous month, and a whopping 812.7% year-over-year. It’s still tiny compared to the two leaders though, reaching a total of 5.9 million people in January. Of course, that doesn’t account for all of the people that access Twitter solely through a third-party app.
There are many things going on in the world nowadays, and there’s really no way to keep up with them. Whether it be a birthday party, your parents’ anniversary, or your graduation, keeping track of events is hard.
Some people use online calendars and Facebook, but what about other events that are beyond your control? That’s where CalFeed.com comes in. With it, you’ll be able to keep track of events in your area, allowing you to know what’s going on and when. This is great for the social sleuth, who is always on the lookout for things that might be interesting. Activities are varied, and should provide you with the wide selection of things you’ve always wanted to do.
You can receive event alerts for your area through Twitter, emails, RSS feeds, etc., so there’s no need to worry about missing out on anything. On the whole, a very useful site.
Some people use online calendars and Facebook, but what about other events that are beyond your control? That’s where CalFeed.com comes in. With it, you’ll be able to keep track of events in your area, allowing you to know what’s going on and when. This is great for the social sleuth, who is always on the lookout for things that might be interesting. Activities are varied, and should provide you with the wide selection of things you’ve always wanted to do.
You can receive event alerts for your area through Twitter, emails, RSS feeds, etc., so there’s no need to worry about missing out on anything. On the whole, a very useful site.
Gandhi is a blue, three-column wordpress theme with a left and right sidebar. It is a Search Engine friendly theme, with widgetized sidebars and footers and a smart Featured Posts Section.
Pranav is a three-column theme with a left and right sidebar. The theme is rich in colours and has a new look. Like my other themes, it is SEO-optimized, with widgetized sidebars and footer. It again has a great looking Featured Posts section with automatic thumbnail displays. The layout is completely configurable through the Theme’s options page.
MIMBO is a clean, customizable magazine-style theme for WordPress. It’s also a simple framework which can be modified with child themes
Hybrid News is a child theme of the Hybrid theme framework. It was developed to take advantage of WordPress 2.7’s threaded comments and sticky posts. It comes loaded with 10 widget sections and a front page featured article slider.
Majapahit is a free WordPress theme with magazine/newspaper style. It has 4 columns homepage, with expandable 6 category newsbox.
Simple, clean and yellow background, two column, widget-ready, and threaded comment ready.
Two column, fixed width, widget ready, gravatar ready theme with support for threaded and paged comments
A liquid, playful and simple two-column theme supporting widgets.
Two column theme with threaded comments support.
Single column, widget ready, gravatar theme
Just a few months back we told you about the launch of an updated version of the Yahoo! Calendar. The all-new Yahoo! Calendar Beta offers a host of great features like open standards (iCalendar), personalization with Flickr and drag-and-drop functionality to name just a few.
Since launching the public beta back in October, the Calendar team has been working hard behind the scenes to add more of the fantastically fabulous features (how’s that for alliteration) that you’ve been asking for. So it is with great pleasure that I can tell you they’ve just released some really exciting new stuff for you to enjoy:
- New Search: You can now search both Calendar and Notepad based on words in your event titles or notes.
- To-Do Lists: Now you can have multiple to-do lists (i.e. Personal, Work, etc.), and you can share to-do lists just like you can share your calendar. And if you don’t like to-do lists, you can hide them (just click and drag the to-do list to close it).
- Print: There’s a new print button that allows you to print your Month, Week or Day view.
- Right-click: A new right-click shortcut menu lets you add and view events, plus more. Give it a try!
Sounds pretty good, right? I especially like the new right-click menu to easily add an event to my calendar. If you haven’t tried the All-new Calendar Beta yet, maybe now is the time. You can move yourself over to the new calendar by following this link: http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com
(1) 99Chats - Generate embeddable chat boxes for your website or social networking profile (Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, Hi5 etc). Generated chats are customizable in terms of colors and size. Read more: 99Chats - Embeddable Chat Boxes For Your Website. (2) Feedrevolution - Simple website which could prove useful to music lovers, especially those who are always on the lookout for brand new music releases. Read more: Feedrevolution - Track New Music Album Releases. (3) NetflixInstantWatcher - Offers an alternative way to browse netflix movies, as they say, it is Netflix for impatient people. It categorizes the huge database of movies at Netflix which you can watch instantly. Read more: NetflixInstantWatcher - Browse Netflix Movies Faster. (4) TrackerChecker - Monitors over 500 private torrent sites and tells you where you can get an account. Read more: TrackerChecker - Lists Private Torrent Sites open for Registration. (5) WorldNamesProfiler - If you’ re interested to know where in the world all the other people with your surname live then check out surname map World Names Profiler. Read more:WorldNamesProfiler - Surname Map Of The World.
Check out some of the latest makeuseof discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For even more app reviews subscribe to makeuseof directory.
Chasing a good deal is always a popular pursuit. And with the current economic conditions, saving money has never been more important. Many look to shopping site Woot as a way to garner steep discounts on random products. It's a site that has grown in popularity thanks to one simple catch: supplies are limited and there's only 24 hours to make the purchase.
Now, a new discount site has taken the Woot model and made it decidedly earth-friendly. So you'll be saving green - while being green. Meet EcoSteal.
Like Woot, EcoSteal offers one discounted product at time. Unlike Woot, there doesn't appear to be a time limit. The product remains available until supplies are exhausted. At the moment, for example, there's a Mountainsmith women's backpack that's made of 100% recycled materials available for $40 US - less than half the retail price.
And while the products are fleeting, EcoSteal asserts that being socially conscious about purchases isn't: "Being green is not a fad. It is not trendy. It is a new way of life that we all must live by and embrace." One thing is for sure: saving money and doing something good for the planet is a combination that's going to attract a number of fans.
EcoSteal users have the option of buying up to three of the available product. In addition to the discounted price, they'll be charged for shipping. (Unfortunately for our non-US readers, EcoSteal is currently only shipping to the United States.) All purchases are final, unless there is a defect or error on EcoSteal's part.
To see what eco-friendly deal you can snag today, head over to EcoSteal. Or if you want to be in the know on the latest green offerings, register for the EcoSteal alert service.
EcoSteal users have the option of buying up to three of the available product. In addition to the discounted price, they'll be charged for shipping. (Unfortunately for our non-US readers, EcoSteal is currently only shipping to the United States.) All purchases are final, unless there is a defect or error on EcoSteal's part.
To see what eco-friendly deal you can snag today, head over to EcoSteal. Or if you want to be in the know on the latest green offerings, register for the EcoSteal alert service.
The tagline of this new web-based endeavour speaks for itself: “Share your music on Twitter”. You couldn’t ask for a more concise definition of the service on offer, really, and the system is implemented in such a way that it is instantly accessible to everybody.
Basically, you log in using your Twitter credentials and upload your music through the site. Once this has been taken care of, a tweet is put your way including a link back to the song you uploaded. This link can be then be employed to share the tune with your followers.
As the programmer (a musician himself) explains, he found the process of uploading music to different sites and generating links manually a time-consuming process. Hence, he wanted to create a centralized spot for the streamlining of these operations, and the site was born.
A note on usage: this site is meant to be employed by those who want to share their own creations with others. It is not supposed to be used as a way to access illegal files on the Net. It is a place where original music can be stored, streamed and posted to Twitter, and all the many musicians who use the popular micro-blogging platform are certain to appreciate such an initiative. If you are one of them, the site is certainly worth a look.
Basically, you log in using your Twitter credentials and upload your music through the site. Once this has been taken care of, a tweet is put your way including a link back to the song you uploaded. This link can be then be employed to share the tune with your followers.
As the programmer (a musician himself) explains, he found the process of uploading music to different sites and generating links manually a time-consuming process. Hence, he wanted to create a centralized spot for the streamlining of these operations, and the site was born.
A note on usage: this site is meant to be employed by those who want to share their own creations with others. It is not supposed to be used as a way to access illegal files on the Net. It is a place where original music can be stored, streamed and posted to Twitter, and all the many musicians who use the popular micro-blogging platform are certain to appreciate such an initiative. If you are one of them, the site is certainly worth a look.
Oh Twitter, how versatile you are. There’s so much that can be done through Twitter, that Twippr.webs.com shouldn’t come as a surprise. With this new service for the increasingly popular (and almost, if not already, mainstream) Twitter, you’ll be able to send money, much like you would with PayPal.
All you have to do is follow the site through Twitter, send a message that says how much you want to send and to who, and they’ll take care of the rest, using your PayPal account. Why should you care about this? Well, because it’s basically the most useful Twitter apps has been created for a while. Without leaving your Twitter account, you’ll be able to settle debts, send money to your friends (what’s a better gift than cash?) and do whatever else you want.
It would be interesting to see other businesses adopt this model. For example, can you imagine doing your online shopping through Twitter? That would be huge, and Twippr is on the right path.
Can you be defined as a bit of a tweetaholic? Are you keen on listening to music while online? That is quite a common combination, and the solution this review revolves about is geared towards people with these two likes.
In general terms, Song.ly makes for sharing links leading to online audio files via Twitter. That is, you submit the link in question and the same will be transformed into a short link for micro-sharing that you can put across by tweeting.
The one thing you must understand is that the track itself must be hosted online – Song.ly does not offer the option to download the audio file to your computer. It does, however, include a built-in player that will let your friends listen to the song on the spot.
This service is still in its formative stages, and it will be interesting to see where it heads to from here. I think that full incorporation with other browses besides Firefox should top the list of priorities. What do you think?
Most are saying that the cloud is the future. You know, the theory that you can keep all of your information online, in order to access it from any computer. Well, if you’re a believer in the cloud, then you’re going to love Hordit.com. With the site’s service, you’ll be able to store anything, be it pictures, spreadsheets, PDF files, links, articles, etc.
What does this mean? Well, that you’ll be able to keep track of your online life no matter where you are, all you need is an internet connection. Setting up the service is easy, all you have to do is sign up and start uploading things. Links and files are all neatly organized, allowing you to find them when you need to bring them back. The downside to this? The download speed seems to be a little slow for our taste, making downloading big files a bit of a hassle.
In no way should this deter you from using the service, as it’s one of the few sites that allows you to keep everything in store, without differentiating from files, links, and videos.
I stumbled upon a useful site earlier today that's worth sharing. Called SimilarWeb, this small Firefox (and soon Internet Explorer) add-on sits on the side of your browser and pulls up sites that are similar to the one you're currently on. It works remarkably well--at least with major sites. For example, visiting YouTube brings up a long list of other video hosts. The same went for social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. You can scroll through these and open them up in new tabs, or pick from one of the tags SimilarWeb believes to be related to that page.
This will pull up an entirely new list of places it thinks you should visit. What makes the service shine is that users can re-arrange the lists and submit new sites that are not yet in SimilarWeb's index. There are thumbs up and down buttons which can raise or lower a site's standing on the list. Down-voting any site will actually remove it from the list. As a result, if users continue to vote the list gets more accurate. There is a notable downside to using this extension: your browsing performance will take a hit.
For some reason it needs to load its own results before it loads the actual page, which in my case meant waiting an extra few seconds when visiting a new site. That might be a deal killer for some, although it can easily be avoided by learning the keyboard shortcut that dismisses it from running in the sidebar.
You can also pull up the results from a drop down menu next to your browser's address bar. SimilarWeb would make a good companion for the now toolbar-free StumbleUpon, which actually learns from your browsing habits to give you pages it thinks you'll like. Combined with this you'd get another avenue of exploration.
A new Twitter app that goes by a hard-to-pronounce name, Twtwlst can be defined as a gift registry that is free and open to any person who desires to give it a try. The system makes for creating wish lists for very different occasions: birthdays, baby showers, graduations… and once a list has been put together, it can be easily embedded on any website or profile page for all to see and act upon. 
It goes without saying that the lists themselves adhere to the character length that sets micro-sharing apart. The one aspect that must be mentioned is that when listing out each item you will be able to provide a link where that specific product can be readily purchased by your friends and peers. Other than that, the site is completely intuitive, and - in the same vein of other apps that have been developed by the twapps team - there is not even need to register or create an account in order to get going. Just station your browser at www.twtwlst.com and see whether it will accommodate your needs or not in person.
There's been a lot of talk lately about the decline and fall of newsweeklies, some of it fueled by the shift of U.S. News & World Report to biweekly, and then monthly, publication. But U.S. News hasn't given up on the idea of the weekly news digest. In fact, later today, in a soft launch, it will rolling out a new product: a "digital newsweekly" that reproduces, in pixels, what the magazine once did in ink and paper.
"We're creating a tailored product for readers that does what the old newsweeklies did, which was to stop time for people and say 'What the heck happened over the last week?' and make sense of it," says editor Brian Kelly.
U.S. News Weekly, as the new publication is called ("It sounds ironic," acknowledges Kelly) will be produced and delivered as a downloadable PDF file, laid out in the form of a magazine, complete with a cover and table of contents. For years, publishers have been offering such digital editions of their magazines with the help of vendors such as Zinio, but U.S. News Weekly is a whole new, albeit related, publication, edited for a somewhat different audience than U.S. News & World Report. Whereas the parent title has gravitated toward advertiser-friendly topics like health and education, the digital weekly will be "very Washington-centric," says Kelly, with a tighter focus on politics and policy.
Since there's less ad support for that type of content, U.S. News Weekly will be a premium product: A one-year subscription will cost $19.95 (although subscribers to U.S. News & World Report will be able to download it for free). "This is what every editor's trying to figure out right now -- how can I pay my reporters to do reporting?" says Kelly. "You've got to figure out a way where, on some level, the consumer is going to pay for some type of content." (Of The New York Times's much-maligned premium-content program, Times Select, Kelly says, "I always thought that was an experiment they never should have abandoned. If you can get 200,000 people to pay for a product, you're doing very well.")
The upside for the readers, he notes, is that they're only paying for content -- and not for the expense of shipping and printing. And because there's no need to budget time for those processes, U.S.
News Weekly will have near-instantaneous turnaround: The magazine will close on Thursday night and be made available at noon on Friday."I don't think the newsweekly concept's outdated," says Kelly. "I think it's the delivery method that's outdated. To produce a great report, close the magazine on Thursday night and then readers don't get it until Monday -- that's insane.
