It may well be that just creates a new journalistic genre these days. Not as an experiment, but as a response to a clear demand for longer existing journalistic materials which are preferably read on tablet computers and ebook readers. At least that is true for the United States.

A single name, the genus child, not yet, but it already shows typical features: The lyrics are written plays. They are shorter than books. They are longer than typical magazine articles. They have a circumference of about 30 to 90 pages. You will be digitally distributed via specially equipped platforms, such as Amazon (where they are called singles), on Byliner.com or TheAtavist.com. And they sell well.

The most recent example is Jon Krakauer's investigative research "Three Cups of Deceit." In it the in the U.S. very prominent fundraiser and best-selling author Greg Mortensen ("Three Cups of Tea") is unmasked as a fraud and a cheat who should have gewirtschaftet the donations his organization Central Asia Institute (CAI) for the most part in their own pockets. Even U.S. President Barack Obama had donated, according to CBSNews CAI - $ 100,000 from the prize money for his Nobel Peace Prize.

Krakauer has published his research in Byliner.com, seventy pages scope for the price of just under 3 euros. Single in the Kindle Store the current title is a hit: In the period from 18 to 24 April is the text have been downloaded a total of 70,000 times to be (for the first three days was the free download).

Joshua Quittners "Birth of a Way New Journalism" vision in Wired magazine in 1995 was perhaps not so mistaken: he had even then outlines a changing media landscape in which the editorial text production and the subsequent distribution of the printed paper from each could be isolated. In the original he put it:

Nearly two-Thirds of the cost of putting out a newspaper or magazine is the cost of printing it (paper, ink, printing presses) and distributing it (trucks, delivery folks, mail). Uncouple the content from the production and distribution costs, and you see the kind of cash we're dealing with here. Introduce The Possibility did by the end of the decade, 100 million people will be on the Net. Now, Those people give the technical ability to pay 3 cents for each and every story They read. If only 1 million people read, say, one-time story on OJ Simpson, that's U.S. $ 30,000. Pretty soon, you're talking about real money.

Related Links

Writing for the Web about The Atavist

Byliner.com

Quittners Manifesto: "The Birth of a Way New Journalism"

The media magazine celebrates its 25th Birthday - and offers the users of its website to a lapse of a special kind at: Newspaper front pages for the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 are provided in addition to newspaper front pages to the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, newspaper for newspaper, from the bell from Oelde the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung up to the time from Hamburg.

Let's hope that the next anniversary in 2036 will serve a little less dramatic news for such a comparison. For today there is the link.

And of course at this point: Congratulations to Chief Editor Annette spleen, their team and the publisher!

Storify has its service now live for all interested users - now anyone can create their own Storifys.

The idea behind this is as simple as Storifys logical: With Storify individually important, interesting or curious rated text articles can be picked from the real-time flow of the text and compiled Mitmachwebs to new articles.

Written expressions of opinion on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else in the Web2.0 lose it not so quickly in the digital void. The same applies to photos or videos. Everything can virtually held with Storify, preserved, arranged, annotated and rearranged. The responsibility for the clarification of rights issues lies with the user.

As a private beta tester I was able to try out the service itself recently - for a documentary about the Time Magazine Cover on "What we journalists cause" (see below). In principle, the web tool in the practical test, worked quite well. Drag-and-adjust, appears relevant Webfundstücke were quickly arranged for a documentary. However: Storing and publishing work initially unreliable, and the first Storify disappeared almost completely built caching by clicking on "Keep as draft" not only from the preview window, but never to return even from the online store of the web service. Very ugly. After all: the third attempt aggregating and publishing finally went smoothly.

Visually, the whole is not yet fully mature, because the CSS of the importing site should already be taken, so that the visually Storify does not fall out of the ordinary there. Again, there is an "at least": At least the headline now automatically adapts to the style of the site at each site.

A few more numbers: The startup company registered in March 2011, more than four million visits. The private beta testers have created with Storify since the end of September 2010, more than 21,000 Storify stories that are embedded on more than 5,000 websites - including many well-known websites such as those of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, the Guardian or the BBC.

In this video explain the two founder Burt Herman and Xavier Damman what Storify wants and how it works:

Doubles the internal traffic - is this possible? WordPress bloggers say it goes. With free Outbrain widget. The additional program generates context-sensitive goal under consideration, this blog post and link-list as text or as an image-guided teaser series at the end of each blog article.

Optional Outbrain plays on a wish and external links. In the German language version is titled "These products may interest you too," pointed out the additional links. So clearly reminiscent of Amazon.

Additionally it can be set up with the Outbrain widget also an evaluation function. Users are thus allows to evaluate a just-read blog article on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. So that the whole thing graphically convinced the widget accesses the CSS of each topic. And the best part: The widget is installed and set up in 60 seconds. The use of the widget is logged for each blog and made available as a report on outbrain.com. As with any plugin applies here as well: Before ever thinking of the database backup.

For publishers is interesting: Outbrain provides service for business customers that have to do with the blogosphere rather less. So it goes without widget. A number of well-known partners are already on board - Chicago Tribune about Slate to USA Today.

Here on www.texten-fuers-web.de is the widget active for five days. The installation went smoothly. And currently there is a traffic increase of ten percent every day - at traffic enemy's most beautiful sunny weather. This is what Outbrain promises by its own account, and definitely a good start.

Related Links

Outbrain.com site