Email is Far From Dead (MediaShift.org)

Oh, and The Children Are On Email, Too (MediaFlect.com)

For Kindle, iPad and e-Readers, Openness is Key (Poynter’s e-Media Tidbits

Young Online Newspaper Audience Dropping; Older Consumers Adopting Social Media (ibid)

Why Android Should Matter to Media (op. cit — sorry, can’t resist)

Live from the offices of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the
trade association for interactive marketing in the United States, Dorian Benkoil of Teeming Media sits down for live video discussions with IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg, Magnify.net CEO Steve Rosenbaum and Blip.TV co-founder and COO Dina Kaplan.

Topic

We’re excited to do our first show from the IAB offices as part of our new partnership with the organization. We’ll first sit down with IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg to get his take on why “advertising is creepy,” as the IAB says in its new campaign to fend off privacy legislation, and talk about other industry trends and news. Then we’re joined by the founder and head of video platform Magnify.net, Steve Rosenbaum, and Dina Kaplan, co-founder of Blip.TV. We’ll talk about what is and isn’t working in video, about trends in curation and aggregation, details of sponsorship and revenue, and, of course your questions.

Plus, as always, Dorian’s “Shallow Thoughts” on the media, and recent coverage and interviews from industry trade shows.

And, of course: your questions. Send some now and sign in to get an email reminder before the show is live, December 9, 11:30 a.m. ET.

Register now to ask questions and get in on the discussion right away.

Cocktails & Conversations: Decoding Digital

held by New York Women in Communication and hosted at the AOL offices on 770 Broadway in downtown Manhattan. Here’s the description:

How to Embrace the Change and Successfully Navigate New Media

Move over Twitter! New York Women in Communications is already focusing on the next big thing. Whether you’re in journalism, marketing, advertising or PR, one thing is clear: Digital media is changing everything. Banner Ads, Facebook, viral video, text alerts- these are just a few of the tools we already have under our belt. But what’s next? In today’s increasingly digital world, it’s crucial to keep up and effectively use the tools that we know to anticipate what’s coming next. This all-star panel of digital experts will take a deeper look at the growing impact of digital media within the field of communications and teach you everything you need to know to stay up-to-date (and ahead of the curve) on the latest digital trends.

The other panelists are:

Erin Byrne
Chief Digital Strategist
Burson-Marsteller

Dina Kaplan
Chief Operations Officer
blip.tv

Erin Matts
Chief Digital Officer
OMD

Kristine Welker
Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Hearst Magazines Digital Media

In early 2009, we learned that the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media was looking for help in devising a digital media strategy. The Institute is, in its own words, “the preeminent source of training for reporters and editors on the education beat.” It’s no secret, though, that the number of journalists covering education has shrunk as news organizations have cut back on staff. At the same time, the hunger for journalism about education coverage remains, especially with new initiatives from the Obama administration and budget cuts throughout the country.

Hechinger’s leaders knew that one of the best ways to continue to fulfill its mission “to inform the public about education through quality journalism” was to produce and distribute journalism through other outlets and on their own through digital platforms.

That’s where we came in. Hechinger put out a call, asking for experts who knew digital media from both the business and editorial sides, and could help them devise a strategy. They turned to us for guidance. And over the course of the year, we helped Hechinger craft editorial, business and technology models for digital media based on production of high-quality journalism, funded first by grants, then largely offset by additional revenue streams.

We produced a narrative, as well as financial spreadsheets and presentational materials. We also joined a face-to-face meeting with foundation funders to help Hechinger make its case. In addition, we helped develop an operational plan, workflows and technology choices for an interim site covering a smaller education niche.

Ultimately, Hechinger landed $1 million in grants from the Lumina and Gates foundations. We were thrilled to see Hechinger get the funding, and to be part of the process. We are looking forward to seeing an ambitious new website launch next Spring. The Hechinger Report, as it is being called, will provide in-depth coverage of national education issues on its own and in collaboration with major news organizations.

We know it will all solidify Hechinger’s position as the leader in its field, raise the Institute’s profile and serve as an example for others wishing to emulate the model for producing quality journalism in a time of severe media business disruption.

When folks at the oldest journalism school in the country needed to know more about the world of Web publishing, they called us.

In October, 2008, the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute brought us to Columbia, Mo., for an intensive day-long seminar on the topic of content management systems, or CMS. They had learned of our expertise through our white paper on the topic (available in the right sidebar on our homepage).

Principals Dorian Benkoil and Adam Glenn, along with Amy Webb, our CMS expert and lead author of our CMS white paper, briefed some 30 journalism faculty, staff, fellows and students, as well as representatives from the Missouri Press Association and National Newspaper Association.

Among the topics we guided the group on were the current state of the CMS industry, media trends affecting CMS choices, and how individual organizations can find a direction and make initial decisions on their choice of CMS. We also helped them delve into workflows and business issues in a digital media environment.

Meeting organizer Jane Stevens described how we jumped in to help with this informative overview of the gathering. “If you’re trying to figure out what CMS to choose for your news organization, and you’re confused by the plethora of choices, [their paper] is worth every penny,” she writes. “Even better than reading the white paper is to talk with them in person.”

RJI and Stevens later brought Adam and Dorian on board to help with a related project called the RJI Collaboratory, a social network of entrepreneurial journalists looking to find support and advice for starting up niche news projects. Adam helped launch the Collaboratory in early 2009 and continues to jointly manage it, while Dorian shared his insights on the business of news in a series of detailed blog posts and other resources in the summer of 2009.

The topic? “The Future of Media.” The hour will be packed with as much information as we can get, and Dorian will guide the discussion to make it useful and lively. You can help, by submitting questions. Log onto the Naked Media page now to ask and to get an alert before the show goes live. If you’d like to attend the conference in person, log onto the Website, and when ordering tickets use the special Naked Media code NKMD for $500 off the regular rate (does not apply to the student rate of $495).

In addition to Craig Newmark, the guests are Mark Hollinger, Chief Operating Officer, Discovery Communications; Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, US Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment and Robin Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, FT Search Inc. Newssift.com (a new semantic search engine for business from the Financial Times company).

Some of the main points raised by Dorian were that it’s important to experiment, cultivate and get better over time (”iterate” is one way of putting it). One audience member asked how to use social media like Twitter, which is quick and short bursts persistently, in the course of managing long-term architectural projects. “In the course of managing the project, don’t you find yourself considering a lot of things, checking in often as you make decisions?” Dorian replied, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could, for example, Tweet that you were considering a certain wood for a certain type of situation, say a damp environment, and get feedback from others in the community about woods they’d used that were particularly effective for your situation? Or cement. Or doorknobs.” He made the point that you will not only gain interested followers who want to learn about your projects, and potentially pick up new clients that way, but also get “inbound marketing” intelligence that may be useful to your business.

You can see more coverage by looking on Twitter at the hashtag #aianysocialmedia.

Come say “hi.”