Canadian Online Publishing Awards winners announced

The Tyee,a Vancouver-based news site, won three prizes for best website design, best news and best community feature in the first annual Canadian Online Publishing Awards, announced last night in Toronto.

The awards, created by Mastheadonline, recognize excellence in online editorial and innovation by Canadian magazine and website publishers. [disclosure: I was a judge in one of the categories]

Entries were made in "red" and "blue" categories; red for consumer, custom, religious, and public association websites and blue for business-to-business, professional association, farm, and scholarly websites.Winning websites receive a certificate, promotion to 12,000 advertising professionals and media buyers through the Media In Canada e-mail news bulletin, plus additional media and promotion, including coverage on MastheadOnline. Among the other winners were:

Best overall magazine website – Red
Torontolife.com —St. Joseph Media

Best overall magazine website – Blue
Salon52 —Salon Communications Inc.

Best overall online-only website – Red
DailyXY —XY Media Ventures

Best overall online-only website – Blue
ITBusiness.ca —IT World Canada
       
Best website design – Red
The Tyee —Countercurrent Media Ltd.

Best website design – Blue
Advisor.ca —Rogers Publishing

Best Blog – Red        
Home [Eco]nomics Blog on Granville Island —Canada Wide Media Ltd.
   
Best Blog – Blue    
University Affairs Margin Notes —Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada
   
Best Video – Red    
Fashionmagazine.com —St. Joseph Media
   
Best Video – Blue    
Trucknews.com —Business Information Group

Best E-newsletter – Red
20-Minute Supper Club —St. Joseph Media

Best E-newsletter – Blue        
Click! Weekly —Lloyd Media

Best Cross Platform - Red       
Albertaventure.com —Venture Publishing Inc.

Best Cross Platform - Blue       
Canadian Literature: CanLit Poets —University of British Columbia

Best News – Red        
The Tyee —Countercurrent Media Ltd.

Best News – Blue        
IT World Canada —IT World Canada

Best Community Feature – Red & Blue       
The Tyee – Green Your Campbell Cash —Countercurrent Media Ltd.

Best Article or Series – Red        
Granville Online – Ecofashion Series —Canada Wide Media Ltd.

Further information on the awards, nominees and other details from Canadian Online Publishing Awards website

Time Inc. pondering whether to launch its own e-reader

Time Inc. is apparently considering creating its own e-reader, in competition with the Kindle by Amazon and others. According to a story on an NBC website, an internal memorandum suggests that the company has radically shifted its attitude towards the technology. The document is a printout of a slide presentation, complete with handwritten notes.

The Time Inc. presentation, titled "New Platforms & Business Models for Publishers," is dated June 25, 2009, which shows how rapidly Time's internal strategy shifted. The version obtained by NBC shows handwritten notes updating the presentation, which circulated as recently as August, which indicate Time plans to launch something within the next three months.

"We’re speaking with a number of hardware and software companies as well as other content companies about various projects," said Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges when asked about the project. "At this point we don’t have anything else to say publicly."

Whether this is simply blue-skying about possibilities, such as providing an e-reader as part of a subscription, there is no question that various larger publishers are exploring similar ideas -- News Corp. and Hearst among them. Hearst unveiled its own plans for an e-reader in March. At that time, but Time Inc. then said they had no plans to enter the field. Clearly it has changed, or is changing, its mind.

"Portable digital reading devices are emerging as a big publishing opportunity," a slide on the presentation reads.

"Whoever defines the interface wins," another slide concludes.

A slide labeled "Key components to the winning model" includes a "commerce engine" -- an online store like Amazon.com; "product design" including "tools for research, design innovation and manufacturing," which suggests plans for a physical gadget; and a "consumer-facing brand" -- a name for the device and service akin to Amazon's Kindle.

The presentation suggest Time Inc. might acquire other companies or merge its Maghound subscription service into the new, separate venture.

Publications lining up with Journalism Online system

Pooh-poohed as it was at the start, Journalism Online, the system for helping newspaper, magazine and online publishers to make money from their content, seems to be catching on. More than 170 daily papers have signed on and more than 500 publications in total have agreed to join, representing more than 90 million unique monthly visitors.

The company was created by several partners, including co-founder Stephen Brill, and allows affiliates to set their own pay models, including sampling, micropayments, the ability to turn pay walls on and off and so on. It says one of its unique attractions is that readers can establish a single account to access multiple publications and platforms (whether they will -- or should -- do that is the crux of critics' complaints about such a system.)

Brill says: "By creating a platform of flexible hybrid models for paid content that maximizes online advertising revenue while creating a new revenue stream from readers, Journalism Online has helped shift the debate over charging for online new from 'if' to 'when and how.'"

Brill added that many publishers have moved past the "abstract debate" and are now working toward some kind of paid content model. The executives of Journalism Online figure that by focusing on 10% on avid readers, on average a Web site would keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue if it put in place a paid-content strategy.

Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of Journalism Online, said that he noticed a change in thinking among content providers over the past several months. "Every publisher we have met with is now seeking to generate revenues for online access, which is a huge shift in strategy," he said in a statement.