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A while back, Billboard made a series of posters featuring various pop-stars portraits done in a newsprint-esque CMYK format. Each color is represented by a stamp that represents an artist who influenced the artist in the picture, for example the Lady Gaga picture is as follows: C= Madonna, M=Queen, Y=David Bowie and K=Cyndi Lauper.
The CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and key black.
Just as the CMYK artists symbolically represent the parts and sounds that make up Lady Gaga’s music, brand impressions inform the way a consumer constructs their understanding of your product or service.
“Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.”—David Ogilvy
Branding is the act of creating a symbolic association within the user about your product or service. It is about using words and images to create a psychological or emotional tie between the user and the brand. The Economist has done a good job of branding itself as the go-to news source for the ‘aspiring intellectual.’
Negotiating a brand image, as a news organization, is tricky business - media companies can very easily blur the line between editorial content and brand reputation. The Economist makes it clear that what is on the outside of the publication does not influence what is on the inside.
“Success comes from standing out, not fitting in”–Don Draper, Mad Men
I recently got into a fruitful debate with a blogger about the merits of Newsy that he ultimately posted on his blog. My central point, which is at the core of Newsy’s unique model, is that ‘fair’ news is a myth. Editorial bias inevitably makes its way into the equation when determining what is ‘newsworthy.’ The use of search as a variable could neutralize this effect a little, but the democratic nature of a public press requires some kind of editorial interjection to keep one opinion or world-view from dominating public discourse.
There are no facts, only interpretations. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Newsy’s format expands the number of voices in the conversation by juxtaposing news coverage from different sources – highlighting different viewpoints. To survive, news outlets have split their audiences, each attempting to carve out and speak to a niche group. Somewhere in the differences between these viewpoints lies a greater level of truth that only individuals can mete out for themselves. We expose these differences to allow users to come to their own conclusions.
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Newsy app now available in Intel’s New AppUp Center for free
Columbia, MO (PRWEB) February 4, 2010 — Newsy, a multi-source video news service producing daily videos for web and mobile devices, today announced it has developed an application for Intel Atom-powered netbooks. Newsy is the only news service that analyzes the key differences in how a story is being reported by various news organizations around the world.
Available to download from the Intel AppUp Center for free, the Newsy app offers 2- to 3-minute news videos designed for quick and easy viewing. The Newsy app is perfect for netbooks - offering short video news analysis for people on the go.
“Our new Newsy app reaches the fast-growing netbook community,” Newsy.com President Jim Spencer explains. “Newsy is the leader in multi-source, multi-platform video news.”
The Newsy app is one of the first applications available in Intel’s new AppUp Center. Owners of Windows-based netbooks can go to the AppUp Center, download the store and install the Newsy app.
Newsy is building apps for several platforms - its popular iPhone app quickly ascended the list of free news apps in the Apple App Store. The Newsy app for Intel Atom-powered netbooks enables users to share videos via Twitter, Facebook and email as well as read and post comments - which are instantaneously synced with the website.
A news analyzer, not a news aggregator, Newsy.com offers context with convenience — in 2 to 3 minutes, users understand the nuances in news coverage from different media sources.
About Newsy.com
Newsy.com (http://www.newsy.com) is a multi-source online video news site that monitors, analyzes and presents the world’s news coverage. Through short video segments available on the web and mobile devices, Newsy.com accelerates the understanding of how a news story is covered differently by media outlets around the world.
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Everyday there’s a deluge of articles about Twitter but I found yesterday’s Huffington Post column one of the most relevant to Newsy.
Tom Morris’ post ‘Twisdom: Twitter Wisdom‘ explains how Twitter, when done right, enables people to build connections with people all around the world who want to share nuggets of information. Through this cyber community, a wealth of insight and perspective is bestowed upon those who participate – something Morris calls ‘Twisdom.’
Newsy has been a believer in Twitter from the beginning - we use it as a source for Newsy videos and we check to see the news topics that are trending on Twitter so we can produce videos with multiple perspectives on the topics that people are thinking about.
Twitter has been a great way to drive traffic to the Newsy site - visitors who come to Newsy from Twitter stay for up to 20 minutes. We encourage people to follow @Newsydotcom to learn about the day’s videos and other Newsy nuggets - we recently celebrated our 600th follower. And as of this week, you can now follow @NewsyRSS to get Newsy video headlines as soon as they are published.
This week’s Newsy video “To Tweet or Not to Tweet, That Is the Question,” looks at some of the professional athletes who are Tweeting and how sports associations are reacting. Another story this week, ‘A Twitter TwOpera,’ is about an opera created from Twitter submissions.
So far, Newsy videos about Twitter have been popular but we’d love to hear what you think!
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Whether you are liberal or conservative, Froomkin’s firing should be a source of disappointment. First off, the following should be clarified: Is Dan Froomkin, recently fired from The Washington Post, a liberal? Absolutely.
However, in his journalism, Froomkin also largely transcended party loyalty, instead remaining loyal to ideas rather than people–a fairly rare trait. He was, above all else, a watchdog journalist, and he was an equal-opportunity critic when it came to applying his standards to all politicians, including Democrats.
In a recent article in The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald quotes The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen (emphasis Greenwald’s):
“Indeed, far-right complaints notwithstanding, Froomkin has spent months scrutinizing the Obama White House, cutting the Democratic president no slack at all.”
Read the entire article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/19/washpost/
In the marketplace of ideas, let Froomkin’s perspective stand up against the conservative William Kristol’s, Krugman’s against Krauthammer’s. But don’t silence someone because of their political leanings, as appears to be the case with The Post’s firing of Froomkin.
As Greenwald writes:
“Post writers disliked Froomkin because he pointed out the radicalism and deceit of the Bush presidency and (both with his words and actions) highlighted their profound failure to do so, and because the neocon-Right complained about him to the Post.”
Is there anything that insults our nation’s democratic sensibility more than the silencing of dissenting voices? Whether that silencing comes from the government or news organizations should make little difference.
No side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on wisdom, and the second an individual begins to believe his or her political party is always correct, they have shut themselves off from the ability to learn. The marketplace of ideas may be imperfect, it may be messy, but in a democracy, it is the best we can ask for. We should never seek to silence the voices with which we disagree, but rather engage and even learn from them.
At Newsy, our objective is to take news events, provide varying perspectives on them, and then let the audience decide. Our only agenda is to provide a sufficient amount of views to let the audience ascertain the core truth about the news. Of course, this works best with an audience willing to hear all sides before making up their minds.
Froomkin surely wasn’t right all the time. But his perspective was valuable, if only because it was unique. In all likelihood, Froomkin will reemerge, but until he does, the marketplace of ideas is one perspective poorer.
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As news has become more abundant, its value has decreased. News consumers, especially Generation Y, increasingly get headlines from various sources online with little or no loyalty to any organization. This shift in behavior has challenged traditional media companies’ business models and left them scrambling to find a path to profitability.
In his excellent post, ‘The Future of News Is Scarcity,’ Nic Brisbourne discusses how a basic rule of economics - every abundance creates new scarcities - can be applied to the news business. The rule is good news for media companies, which are looking for new ways to make money in the 21st Century.
Why? The abundance of has created a new opportunity for providing thought-provoking analysis of multiple sources. Many of today’s most interesting and popular stories go beyond just simply reporting what has occurred – they bring in relevant context.
The New York Times experiments with this concept in its sections The Lede and The Opinionator – other successful news websites with this model include The Huffington Post for politics and TechCrunch for technology news.
Newsy.com is a trailblazer in offering consumers context with convenience - we’re the only online video news site analyzing various news sources and packaging them in one easily digestible package … because multiple sources help you decide the real story.
