The San Francisco Web entrepreneur who's shaken the classified ad business with his Craigslist site ...

1. Craigslist Plans To Make News
The San Francisco Web entrepreneur who's shaken the classified ad business with his Craigslist site
has plans to expand into journalism, too. Speaking at an Oxford University business school forum,
Craig Newmark said his news project will be introduced within three months.
He made it clear his new Web site will have a bottom-up approach to news stories and presentation,
with readers play the role of editors.
"Things do need to change," he told the audience in Oxford, England, The Guardian reported. "The
big issue in the U.S. is that newspapers are afraid to talk truth to power. The White House press
corps don't speak the truth ... they are frightened to lose access they don't have anyway."
Newmark said his news project will involve Web technology to let readers decide which news stories
are the most important. At least one Web site is already working this field. Digg.com invites readers
to submit stories to be posted on its Web site. "Once a story receives enough (votes) from (the site's
visitors) it will be promoted to the front page," the site explains.
Holidays push up keyword prices
The cost of keywords related to entertaining at home rose in the first half of November, according to
an analysis by Semphonic, a firm which helps companies with online marketing. The cost of buying
keywords for search engine advertising rose 8% for kitchen, food and wine-related terms. Prices for
apparel and accessory keywords rose by 10%. "These increases are only evident, however, in low-volume
keywords and suggests that advertisers in these categories are expanding and diversifying
their campaigns," the company said in a statement. "Comparing data from Nov. 15 and Nov. 1, we
see a small rise in both top bids and average cost per click," Semphonic added. The average cost per
click of a generic keyword rose to about $1, while a "branded term" like iPod rose to 53 cents.
Houston paper drops registration
The Houston Chronicle has stopped requiring visitors to provide demographic information in order
to read news stories. "Our goal is to be an open site," said Stephen Weis, vice president, general
manager of Chron.com, according to MediaPost. "We feel that our growth will be from people using
our site as often as they might use a search engine." Analysts said that with demand for online
advertising growing, it makes sense for the Chronicle to make its pages available to as many
readers, and marketers, as possible. Weis said dropping registration came in response, "to
passionate pleas from readers."
Last week, the Hearst Corp.-owned newspaper also signed with FeedBurner to provide RSS feeds of
Chronicle stories. "We recognized the power of this new delivery channel early on and realized we
were uniquely positioned to not only provide subscribers with timely news delivered the way they
want it, but also explore ways to extend our reach beyond traditional media," Weis added, in a
statement.