Important reads: How HuffPo wins SEO battle; How things went wrong at Fox, CNN

Two important reads:

• Frederic Filloux illustrates why the Huffington Post continues to suck traffic away from trad media on the trads' stories by effective use of search engine optimization.
• Tom Goldstein, publisher of SCOTUSblog, has a very detailed, long timeline on what went wrong in the reporting of the Supreme Court's health care decision. This would be a great reading assignment for any reporting, management or ethics class.

Danger: Journalists reporting science/engineering

Well, the problem here may be that there was no reporting. So complains Daniel Grossman in an e-mail and at his blog. And he's right. CNN, especially, went a little ga ga over this diamond-shaped airship concept from design firm Seymourpowell (beware, the site is entirely in Flash), which ever so helpfully provided high-res images on its Web site for folks to grab.



A look at the CNN story shows how much outside reporting -- aside from talking to someone at Seymourpowell? Lets' see. Oh. ... None. But there are some really sweeeeeet images.

Not to fear. Grossman slices, dices and dissects what he calls a nice piece of "journalism fail." I'd tend to agree.

Look, I have no problem reporting this stuff - people should see where advanced minds are thinking of going, and I did many such stories myself. But it needs leavening. Maybe parts of this are actually stuff we might see in the future. But it takes reporting to figure that out.

CNN goes a la carte

CNN, which began selling its content akin to a wire service earlier this year, has now broached the wall to a la carte service, a term that wire services have struggled with for years.

(See, the dirty little secret is that there are a lot of cross-subsidies inside the wires, just as there were with the old phone company; it's why papers in the smallest states, for instance, have been able to get a state report nominally on par with that of some of the largest. Start selling things individually, however, and a lot of things that make for a well-rounded wire report likely get ditched.)

Editor and Publisher reports CNN is selling single copies at $199 each through the CNN Wire Store. So it's not exactly whip out the credit card and buy a few. Still, I can see more than a few publishers doing the calculus - and puiting more pressure on AP.

CNN gets a (second) life

Mediaweek reports that CNN will set up a bureau in the online world Second Life.

In the space, the network will create a variation of its i-Reports, the real-world vehicle through which average citizens contribute eyewitness reports. CNN will equip Second Life denizens with kits enabling them to transmit copy and photos. Visitors to Second Life will be able to get the latest news via kiosks scattered throughout the virtual community.

And the network will act as a sort of journalism school, offering guidance to avatar citizen journalists via weekly “news meetings” directed by CNN.com staffers. And it’s possible that down the line top CNN personalities including Larry King would conduct virtual training sessions for budding cyber journalists.

And you think we already have enough trouble figuring out "citizen journalism"?