Looks like the Daily News beat the L.A. Times soundly with its new-media expedition into the dark and uncharted lands beyond the dead-tree forest:
The Daily News is getting ready to launch a Web 2.0-driven community-news/ social-networking/ blogging portal called ValleyNews.com. There's little content in the still-in-beta site, but the platform looks to be very solid, and the concept itself is working very well elsewhere:
I wrote a piece for OJR earlier this week about the Bakersfield Californian's dramatic transformation from old-school newspaper into bleeding-edge media company. With a mix of blogs, podcasts, citizen-journalism, social networking, SMS info services - the works - they've bumped pageviews up 30% and grown a whole new business division.
ValleyNews.com looks like Los Angeles Newspaper Group's bid to match Bakersfield and beat the Times in the struggle for post-newspaper-era footholds. Here's a walkthrough ...
Getting In, Building a Profile:
First off, the site requires a lot of damn personal information, e.g. name, address, phone number and birthdate.
Absolutely none of that is any of their business (though the name is probably proper to keep straight if you'll be publishing articles), so if you cherish your privacy, you can easily defeat it with garbage info. I picked Sherman Oaks from the Valley-only neighborhood pulldown, since I lived there from '93 to '96:
Mack Reed
1234 MYOB Lane
Sherman Oaks, CA, 90909
(909-555-1212)
DOB 01/01/1904
What's worse, they don't let you anonymize your personal info - it's still required for setting up your profile. However, I can't verify whether they make any of the personal info public, since you can't see anyone's profile yet. Mine delivers a 404 page:
Server Error in '/' Application.
The resource cannot be found.
Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Requested Url: /User.aspx
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2300; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2300
Whoops: Stylesheet problems with the Terms of Use page. ENLARGE
Events Calendar App:
The calendar app looks solid - it breaks down events by date and type.
I posted an event - the back-end interface is fairly slick, although there's absolutely no place to put a URL for the event's site - with a rich-text editor as well as the option of using raw HTML. (Hackers, take note).
Blogs:
I also set up a little blog - again, the back-end interface is very straightforward, although the Title block is misleading - the title you choose becomes part of the URL, while the 75-character "description" actually appears in what looks like the title block. You can upload images easily and - again - the image uploader is very straightforward and handles all the heavy lifting as far as image attributes.
The platform lacks trackbacks and there's at least one major interface glitch - click on the BLOGS link and you get a page that says "BLOGS." and a link that says "All Categories" - which links back to the same page.
But it is still under development.
And this is either a joke, or someone's already abusing it. Check out the Texas Hold'Em blogger:
Sherman Oaks \\ Hobbies & Interests \\ Games
Blog Entry 3 of 3 ONLINE GAMBLING
Let's talk about POKER people. Don't you love it!! I do. My website of choice is Partypoker.com. my game is Texas Holdem. You will see me at the World Poker Tour one of these days. respond, let me know how your game is going.
Stories:
This is probably the meat of the operation, as far as the old-world editors of the Daily News are concerned: Let the public publish their own news articles and pictures, and we'll have a strong, dedicated user-base to whom we can traffic ads via the site and sponsor messages via email (unless they opt out).
This definitely seems to have worked in Bakersfield, where editors told me they're getting upwards of 200 submissions a month at the NorthWest Voice, their regional biweekly print-and-online publication.
I posted something short on ValleyNews.com. The interface was slick, hassle-free and - surprisingly - completely unmoderated. The story went up the second I posted it.
Pretty amazing that they're ready to trust the public that deeply, but honestly, openness (with a modicum of vigilance) will be the Daily News' best shot at building a sustainable culture and contributor base. I consult on operations like this and, time and again - I've seen trust repaid far more than it's abused.
By contrast, the L.A. Times allowed its intriguing and promising "wikitorial" experiment last year to crash and burn because it couldn't handle the notion of people testing the trust it was offering them.
Had the editors simply yanked the notorious final "Goatse" edit, published the other 300-or-so "safe" revisions of the Iraq wikitorial online and the final version in the paper, and then launched a new topic right away, the experiment would have been hailed as a blazing success instead of a scandalous travesty.
The media-consuming public is gravitating more and more to participatory content these days - blogs, message boards, wikis, social networks. They want a voice in the mediastream, a way to communicate with each other about what's important beyond what news organizations tell them is important.
The companies that move with that flow - and extend their users a little trust - are going to do better than the rest. Looks like the Daily News took a strong step in that direction.
I wonder when they launch ...
UPDATE:
FYI, you'll find that none of the content I posted this morning is there any more, with the exception of the calendar event. After reading my notes on spoofing addresses and phone numbers to protect your privacy, the Daily News deleted my account and my content - see the comments below.
FURTHER UPDATE:
The URL ValleyNews.com has been down for the past few hours - or at least throwing this rather wordy error message:
Server Error in '/' Application.
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
DotNetNuke.HttpModules.DNNMembershipModule.OnAuthenticateRequest(Object s, EventArgs e) +968
System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication+IExecutionStep.Execute() +60
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +87
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2300; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2300
I'm guessing they shut the front door to keep the riff-raff out until the place is ready for visitors, but perhaps editor Annie Hundley will comment if I've made the wrong assumption.
Meanwhile, the curious can still access the beta ValleyNews.com site through its parent network URL, valleynews.yourhub.com.
