So, we're all learning lessons about this here Internet thingee.

The folks who run The Salt Lake Tribune, the Denver-based Media News Group, recently issued a memo to employees - which immediately was posted on Jim Romenesko's journalism-industry blog, for all to read - about where newspapers are going in the online world.

If you can read through the official-sounding linguistic opacity, the upshot seems to be that the company wants to find ways to get Internet users to pay for stuff on the web site. Take this passage:

We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don’t buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay. If a non-subscriber wants the newspaper content in its entirety online, they will be directed to some sort of registration or pay vehicle (and if they are a print subscriber, they will have full access at no charge).

Encouraging Internet users to pay for content - after they have grown accustomed to getting what they want for free - may feel like stuffing toothpaste back in the tube. So I wish my corporate overlords luck in their endeavors.

But if the news industry is learning hard lessons about the Internet, so are politicians.

Take the example of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who apparently thought messages he sent out on the social-blogging site Twitter were only being read by one person - not by anybody in the world.

This is how Shurtleff, as the Tribune's Robert Gehrke reported today, accidentally announced to the world that he will be running for the U.S. Senate seat now held by fellow Republican Robert Bennett. (This news isn't much of a surprise, as Shurtleff has been hinting about a primary challenge to Bennett for awhile now.)

Shurtleff quickly deleted the "tweets," but not before public-radio station KCPW-FM got a screen capture of them.

Oopsie. Gotta be careful on the web - but as the guy who oversees the state's prosecution of Internet crimes, Shurtleff should know that.

Labels: internet, journalism, Mark Shurtleff

Forgive the tooting of my own horn, but the Culture Vulture blog just won a major award - a first place for blog reporting from the Best of the West journalism contest, which covers newspapers big and small in 13 Western states.

Here's what the judge in the contest - Amanda St. Amand, continuous news editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - said about the Vulture:

All five of Means' entries were top-of-the-line good - funny, informative, well-written, timely and made excellent use of the tools available online. For example, "American Idol" tryouts come around to a half-dozen or so big cities every year. After a while, how can you write the same story, or cover the same hopefuls? Easy, if you blog at the Culture Vulture. The "American Idol" entry was a great way to click through quickly, stop on the ones that interested you or skip the ones that didn't.

The same could be said for his blog entry on the Outdoor Retailers. Capturing "snapshots of the strangeness" was smart - it didn't make fun of the outdoor lovers but it did point out some of the more offbeat stuff you can find.

The other three entries - the political party involving the McCain drinking game, the sock monkey and "Dan Savage stands me up" - also were strong. Not a weak link among the five, and I have bookmarked this blog as one I plan to watch.

For a look at the competition, here are the blogs that came in second and third: The OC Weekly's "Navel Gazing" blog, and Larry Altman's crime blog in The Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif. Congratulations to both of them.

Labels: internet, journalism

Something is weird with the universe when Dr. Laura and Salt Lake City's X96 are on the same side on an issue.

But the conservative moralist praised the home of "Radio From Hell" on her blog, for the station's move to pull ads for an online dating service that caters to people looking for an extramarital affair.

Here's Dr. Laura's take, from her blog:

I don’t see morality, ethics, or character in too many places in our society these days, so when I do, it’s time for rejoicing and handing out kudos. So, kudos go out to G. Craig Hanson, the president of Simmons Media Group, which owns KXRK-FM radio in Salt Lake City, who dumped a morally repulsive and exploitative commercial off his station.

As Tribune readers may recall, Hanson pulled the ads for the Ashley Madison Agency after he heard them on "Radio From Hell" on April 6 - and said they shouldn't have aired in the first place.

Hansen told the Tribune (OK, it was me) that he heard the ads and acted on his own to pull them. This morning on the air, "Radio From Hell" hosts Kerry Jackson, Bill Allred and Gina Barberi said they heard the ads that morning, too, and told their bosses that the ads were below the station's standards.

Labels: internet

It may be sad, but not surprising, that a dating web site catering to people already in relationships - and looking for someone with whom they can have an affair - has found a profitable niche in the marketplace.

But one Salt Lake City radio station wants no part of it.

As I reported in today's Tribune, KXRK-FM, a k a X96, pulled ads for The Ashley Madison Agency, after only a few hours. Craig Simmons, president of the Simmons Media Group (X96's owners), ordered the ads removed - and if he had heard them beforehand, he wouldn't have allowed them in the first place. (The ads also are running on The Blaze 97.5.)

The article prompted this e-mail from Bill Mitchell, a nationally-known private investigator based in South Carolina, who worked with "The Dr. Phil Show" on an episode about online infidelity. Here's Mitchell's take on The Ashley Madison Agency:

We set up a sting operation in Los Angeles to see just how their system worked. Within 45 minutes, our female "operative" had 200 men wanting to meet up with her. We caught one of their married members on the streets of L.A. seeking to connect with our producer.

The service they provide is merely driven by RMR (reoccurring monthly revenue), and sadly they are making millions. It’s almost like prostitution. You pay for sex.

Some may find it ironic that such a service is looking for business in conservative Utah. But the numbers - 21,268 members in Utah, with more than half of them joining in the last 12 months - just prove that Utah isn't as different as the rest of the country after all.

Labels: internet

More on the "things are tough all over" front:

The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a conservative DC-based "market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy," has canceled plans to hold its 15th annual Aspen Summit this August at the Sundance resort in Utah's Provo Canyon.

PFF President Ken Ferree issued a statement that reads, in part:

"In light of the current economic environment, we do not think it prudent to spend our supporters' money, or ask others to spend scarce dollars, on a lavish conference at a remote facility."

Those supporters include most of the big corporate players in the telecommunications, media and computer industries. According to the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch, their big issue is deregulation of the media.

Labels: internet, Sundance, television

People at a Provo company are celebrating because one of their products got a rave review in Macworld magazine.

Macworld called the iPhone app Showtimes the "best movie finder" application available. It's made by Avantar, a Provo phone-directory company.

Here's what Macworld's Jonathan Seff wrote about Showtimes:

When it comes to finding a movie, the free Showtimes is my favorite iPhone app of the bunch. Avantar’s app figures out my location, shows me theaters in order of proximity, and ties into the Maps application to give me directions from my current location. It even offers movie trailers and summaries; shows movies by popularity, user rating, or newness; and includes links to MetaCritic, RottenTomatoes, and IMDB pages for movies using an integrated browser.

Labels: internet

Being a Republican from Utah County, maybe newly minted Congressman Jason Chaffetz isn't used to the notion of people disagreeing with him.

That's one explanation for why the tech-happy Chaffetz has blocked a well-known Utah Democratic activist from his Twitter feed.

Misty Fowler, who runs the blog Saintless and was Utah chairwoman for the Obama campaign, reports today that she is no longer allowed to follow Chaffetz' Twitter feed when she's logged in - though she can still read all of Chaffetz' 140-character pearls of wisdom when she doesn't log into her account.

"So, if I really want to, I can still see his updates," Fowler wrote. "Not that it's important enough to me that I'm going to bother, but I do find it childish that a public official would act this way."

Fowler theorizes that a string of Twitter exchanges, where she asked Chaffetz to stop complaining about President Barack Obama's budget and propose his own plan, may have gotten under the rookie congressman's skin.

Chaffetz has forgotten Vito Corleone's sage advice about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer.

Labels: internet, Jason Chaffetz, politics

To columnists, writing about Twitter is kind of like jury duty - we all have to do it once, just to get it over with.

I took up the topic in today's ink-and-paper Salt Lake Tribune, in a Culture Vulture column that detailed the mundane and profound aspects of the Twitterverse - where random navelgazing and nuggets of poetic brilliance can sit side by side.

Meanwhile, the Tribune's colleague Rebecca Walsh also wrote about Twitter, both the pitfalls and promise of the micro-blogging network.

One writer who won't be joining the Twitter world is Roger Ebert, who wrote an eloquent and way-too-long-for-Twitter treatise on the history of communication and where the current technology might take us. Between mentions of early hominids and recounted interviews with the late futurist Arthur C. Clarke, Ebert offers up this bit of wisdom:

I will never become a Twit. I apparently have dozens or hundreds of "friends" on FaceBook; the problem is, the account under my name is a fraud. But this is not the place to deplore Twitter or FaceBook. They are facts of life. I am told I should have accounts on both: They will promote my reviews, let people feel more involved in my life, and make it easy for me to contact them. After nearly 2 million comments on my blog and 9,943 messages in my current "sent mail" file, that's just what I need. More friends.

Unlike Ebert, I have become a Twit - you can find me at twitter.com/moviecricket.

Labels: internet, Twitter

Here's one statistic the Utah Tourism Council isn't going to be touting: According to a new study, Utah leads the nation, per capita, in its consumption of online porn.

According to this ABC News report, analyst Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School crunched some numbers for a company that runs dozens of adult websites. Taking credit-card data from 2006 to 2008 - with the customers' names removed, leaving the purchase date and the customers' zip codes - Edelman found little difference between states with a high rate of online porn sales and those with a low rate.

Edelman's research found that of the top 10 states for consuming online porn, eight of them gave their electoral votes to John McCain in the 2008 election. And the No. 1 state, with an average of 5.47 adult content subscriptions for every 1,000 home broadband users, was Utah.

Edelman told ABC he's not 100-percent sure why people in conservative states seem to use online porn more than their liberal counterparts, but he's got a guess: "One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more."

Labels: internet

So you think it's just the old-school "mainstream media" - us folks who still pump out stuff on paper and ink - who are in dire financial straits?

Apparently, the "new media" folks are tightening up, too.

Gawker Media just sold off one of its better blogs, The Consumerist, to the nonprofit Consumer Union (the folks who print Consumer Reports). This means that, as of Thursday, all your consumer complaints and action alerts will be 100 percent advertising free.

According to The New York Times, Gawker Media is also trying to sell Defamer.com, its LA-based gossip blog, and is shutting down its Silicon Valley blog Valleywag. Earlier this year, Gawker sold its D.C. site Wonkette and its travel blog Gridskipper.

Labels: economy, internet

Here's an idea going nowhere - the sort of idea that only gets major news attention when, a) it's said by a supposedly important government official and, b) when it's a slow news day (like the weekend after Christmas):

Britain's culture secretary, Andy Burnham (that's him on the right), is floating the idea of launching an international ratings system for web sites - something similar to what is now done with movie and TV ratings - to keep offensive material away from children.

"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it," Burnham told The Daily Telegraph (and you know when a politician has to say an idea isn't against free speech, then it's against free speech). "It is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."

OK, here's the crux of what's wrong with Burnham's idea: Who decides what the ratings will be?

• Should web sites rate themselves, as American TV networks do (leading to the confusing alphabet soup of TV-G, TV-Y7 and so on)?
• Should an industry-selected group get the assignment, like the MPAA does with U.S. movies (and look at the double-standards and hypocrisy there)?
• Should the government do it? And how loud will the howls of "censorship!" be then?
• Should a system be based on complaints from viewers (think about the FCC's current system for complaints, hijacked by lobbying busybodies like the Parents Television Council)?
• Who would have the time or resources to monitor millions of web sites - especially the ones (most of them, really) whose content changes daily?

Once again, the only good solution is the simplest one: Parents watching out for their own children, so nobody else has to do the job.

Labels: government, internet