Beta has been up for ten days and we really want your feedback – please go to Newsy.com and create an account and let us know what you think. Thanks!

Newsy.com will roll out the week of October 27th. The team is focused on producing excellent content and spreading it throughout the web. Buzz about our site has already begun – we are looking forward to your feedback to help guide us to becoming a successful online video news web site!

The first week in the newsroom went swimmingly – students are testing the technology that will power our ability to provide multiperspective news. Strategic communication students are learning the ropes of interactive PR – they are quick studies! Getting ready for the big announcement on Wednesday!

After a long hot summer, we are pleased to announce that we are ready to roll. The newsroom is fully operational in time for the students’ arrival.

Get ready for the next generation of news coming to you soon.

Nope – have just been MIA on the blog lately as we have been working around the clock on a new company focused on multisource online news. We’ll have news by the end of December. Season’s Greetings!

It’s a Fox News slogan but it applies to last night’s episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” where Maher lost control of his audience and the lost his cool. Don’t get me wrong, I like Bill Maher most of the time – he is funny and insightful and I applaud HBO for airing the incident in their west coast feeds (it sure will get the show a ton of press). Maher’s decision to tape in front of a live audience, just like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” adds a dynamic element to these hybrid news/comedy/analysis shows. Comedy Central producers crank up the audience audio for the openings of both Stewart and Colbert. Live TV audiences are used to create a connection with the at-home TV viewer of adoration and approval of the presenter and to build excitement. As Maher found out last night, it doesn’t always come without a price.

Fair use copyright law allows for brief samples of copyrighted works to be used for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research. Yesterday, I wrote the talented and smart Larry Lessig to ask him a fair use question and he quickly and kindly wrote me back this morning. The project I am researching involves content analysis of television network news coverage. To briefly summarize his thoughts, Larry felt the scenario I proposed should be protected by fair use but that most of the industry does not. Multi-source journalism benefits the industry and the user.

It would greatly benefit copyright holders to loosen their tight grip on their copyrights. Yahoo’s Jumpcut could allow users to create mashups using a list of copyrighted Top 40 songs that artists have made freely available to Jumpcut users – the artist will greatly benefit from the user-generated and user-distributed content. Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” cut to footage of hurricane Rita’s terrible damage to New Orleans is a perfect example. It’s been two years and I still see Karmagrrrl’s video when I hear the song. And yes, I bought the song. Sampling sells.

Recently, two news networks and one very large cable system have resorted to the “loud” strategy – thinking that speaking louder will cause people to listen. CNBC and Fox News on-air personalities have begun to speak louder and faster – check it for yoursef, switch back and forth from any of the other major news nets and see. CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Dylan Ratigan and his posse of alpha-shirted males think they are more credible if they give you stock advice with a bombastic approach. Fox News, which has almost completely stopped covering the war in Iraq, now bloviates at a volume and pace that mirrors Bill O’Reilly’s (sorry, I cannot bear to link to Bill) outbursts. Comcast broadcasts their local tv ad insertions at a considerably higher volume than that of the network they are transmitting. And they wonder why customers, empowered with their DVRs, are no longer listening. Interesting interview and insight on the future of TV advertising from Kim Malone of AdSense.

Two big events happened last week, The San Francisco Chronicle announced cutting 25% of their newsroom staff (as well as several managers) and Microsoft announced their $6B (yes, that is a “B”) acquisition of Aquantive.

During the late 80’s/early 90’s while working for a company called, believe or not, “Multimedia, Inc.” (they owned several newspapers, tv stations, cable systems and tv programming), I spent a lot of time doing my best Elmer Gantry impression exclaiming, “The Internet is coming, the Internet is coming” – the newspaper industry, for the most part, sat on their hands.

Microsoft is good at playing catch up, but $6 billion for Aquantive? Google’s pioneering ship has sailed and when you look at a pie chart of Google’s overwhelming search/advertising market share it looks a lot like a Pac Man icon closing it’s mouth and winning the game.

In 1999, I joined Ask Jeeves with the goal in mind of answering people’s questions. After all, I embraced the information theory that a more informed public will make better decisions. Since studying media management in graduate journalism school, I have tried to help the public become more informed using new media. So how have we done?

Two days ago, I read the Pew Study of “What American Know 1989-2007″ a gut wrenching study that says despite 24 hour cable news, the internet, blogs, rss and everything else…”Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public’s news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs.”

We must do a better job and progress is being made with social media and the great work Google, Yahoo and others are making with search. While we have made information much easier and convenient to find and discover – we have not made it easier to retain. That is where “save” and “share” will help people after they “search”. In fact, with the giant increase in information, content and advertising since the 1980s it is somewhat remarkable that the numbers have not gone down. That said, we still have a lot of work to do. The survey and methods are not flawless but it is worth a read.