Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department acknowledged that blogs provide authoritative content when they invited approximately 20 financial bloggers to a two-hour round table discussion.  Eight of the invited financial bloggers attended the round table on November 2, 2009 with the Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, and other senior Treasury Department officials.

Among the financial bloggers in attendance were several whose authoritative content is distributed through Newstex, including:

• Michael Panzner of Financial Armageddon (read my interview with Michael from earlier this year here)
• Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism
• David Merkel of The Aleph Blog
• Accrued Interest

You can read their blog post recaps of the round table discussion with the Treasury Department officials in the following posts:

• Curious Meeting at the Treasury from Naked Capitalism
• My Visit to the Treasury from The Aleph Blog Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
• A Few Observations of My Own from Financial Armageddon
• Financial Regulation: How Would You Have It Work? from Accrued Interest

According to an article in The New York Times, the financial blogger audience surprised the Treasury officials who found them to be better informed than the groups the Treasury officials are used to talking to.

That’s just one more verification of what we already knew — bloggers can produce highly Authoritative Content!

Image: Flickr

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not blogs are a source of authoritative and influential content, then that question was answered this week when President Barack Obama held a special conference call with a group of bloggers to discuss health care reform.

Some of the bloggers on the conference call with President Obama syndicate their content through Newstex Blogs On Demand, and we’d like to give them special recognition today on the Newstex blog.  You can also follow the links below to read more about their experiences on the historic call.

John Aravosis of AMERICAblog

David Dayen of D-Day

Jane from Above Average Jane

(you can read more about Jane from Above Average Jane in this Newstex Blogger in the Spotlight post)

We truly live in an amazing time where authoritative content from sources outside of traditional news media are getting the recognition they deserve.  Newstex is proud to make the content from these blogs available to a wider audience through Newstex Blogs On Demand licensed syndication.

Image: Flickr

The days of newspapers and magazines trying to be everything to everyone are over thanks to the overwhelming amount of information freely available online.  However, the problem in the 21st century is finding relevant and useful information hidden in the cluttered online world.  Let’s face it — Google searches don’t always deliver the exact information you’re looking for.

It’s no secret that newspapers and traditional media like print magazines have been struggling over the past decade with many completely repositioning their brands and content (e.g., Newsweek, Time), adjusting their delivery frequency (e.g., U.S. News and World Report, Playboy) or moving to web distribution only (e.g., PC Magazine, Blender).  However, as the majority of traditional media organizations struggle to find ways to remain relevant and profitable, one brand has remained strong despite the shift in consumer media consumption habits.  That brand is The Economist whose advertising revenue was up in 2008 and print circulation numbers have remained fairly steady over the past several years (via The Atlantic Online).

How has The Economist remained relevant as other media organizations have lost their way?  Simple — niche and focus.

First, The Economist is written in a manner that appeals to a niche audience rather than for the masses.  In the digital world, people can find very specific content through Web searches (albeit, the search process could take a significant amount of time).  These days, people have less patience to accept and consume content that is written with broad appeal in mind.  They want content that is meaningful to them,  and they spend less time on the “extras” that non-niche publications provide.  For example, why should a person read through an entire entertainment magazine when they really only care about one singer or actor?  It’s faster and more satisfying to go to the sources where that person can find a wealth of highly relevant information than to leaf through the many irrelevant pages of a broad appeal periodical.  Most often, that source these days is online, but a few traditional newspapers and magazines continue to survive using niche audience strategies.

The Economist also syndicates its blog content through Newstex, which gets its content directly in front of niche audiences who are looking for the authoritative content that The Economist delivers.  Unlike other publications that push their content across a myriad of sites on the Internet, The Economist has chosen a more focused distribution approach that caters directly to the niche audience they know finds it useful. 

Which leads us to the second part of The Economist’s strategy…

Second, The Economist has a narrow focus — far more so than many of its competitor magazines.  In marketing theory, the law of contraction tells us that a brand will be stronger if it contracts rather than expands because doing so gives it a narrower focus.  A wide, everything to everyone focus actually weakens a brand.  By focusing on what you do best and delivering the best with every customer interaction, your brand will grow stronger organically, and organic growth is much stronger than artificial growth.

There has been so much buzz both online and offline about the fate of newpapers and printed periodicals of late.  Let’s hope there will be room for both in the 21st century.  However, there are lessons to learn from The Economist for both offline and digital content publishers: find your niche and focus on it through a variety of digital touchpoints such as blogs, video, and more.

Image: Flickr

If you have a Kindle wireless reading device from Amazon and enjoy reading books and ebooks on your Kindle, then you might be interested in hearing that the new ebook from Newstex, The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication, is now available on Amazon Kindle.

The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication is available at the lowest price point available through Amazon Kindle, $0.99, which includes free wireless delivery.  You can follow the link to download the ebook for your Amazon Kindle.

You don’t need to have an Amazon Kindle to read The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication.  If you’d prefer, you can view the free ebook here.

We all know that traditional news media is struggling.  Not only is the competition from new media such as blogs, online video, Twitter, and so on threatening traditional news outlets, but more and more consumers are becoming disheartened by the obvious political leaning of major news organizations.  GlobalPost is changing all of that with its new media journalism born of traditional news values.

GlobalPost is a new media leader combining the best of traditional news and new media by forging a new type of news site.  GlobalPost was built by veteran journalists who came from top news organizations such as Hearst, Tribune, New York Times, and major media backgrounds.  The site has grown into a major international news site, linked and sourced regularly by numerous leading news organizations, and is a backbone wire feed for major news outlets around the world.

What makes GlobalPost unique?  Take a look at some of the highlights of the GlobalPost business model:

• More than 65 correspondents/writers covering over 45 countries (see the map below for correspondent locations – they live where the work)
• Independent, objective coverage with “ground truth” — stories are written by in-country professional journalists
• In-depth analysis of important global issues by professional journalists
• Web-based business model
• International syndication service available in print and online
• Free content as well as additional premium content available by subscription

GlobalPost has 3-part a mission:

1. “GlobalPost is embarking on a bold journey to redefine international news for the digital age.  To get there, GlobalPost is relying on the enduring values of great journalism: integrity, accuracy, independence and powerful storytelling.”
2. “GlobalPost follows no political line.  GlobalPost encourages its correspondents to write with a strong voice and to work hard to unearth facts, but we leave opinion on the opinion pages.”
3. “GlobalPost is proud to be an American news organization with a decidedly American voice.  We also intend to seek out and tell the truth as we find it.  To quote the great American newsman and foreign correspondent Edward R. Murrow, we aspire always to report the news “without fear or favor.”

Sound interesting?  It is.  That’s why Newstex is very happy to be partnering with GlobalPost to syndicate GlobalPost’s Authoritative Content to end-user customers around the world who need access to quality content from top sources.  

You can learn more about GlobalPost in the Newstex Publisher INsider, and be sure to check out the GlobalPost website.

The term syndication has a variety of meanings depending on who you ask. For example, Newstex provides licensed blog syndication as part of its package of Authoritative Content offerings to professionals and influencers.

But what does licensed blog syndication mean, and how can it help bloggers? What makes it different from other kinds of syndication?

A new FREE ebook from Newstex, The Truth about Blog Syndication, makes sense of all the myths, confusion, and hearsay about blog syndication.

For example, did you know that there are three primary syndication models and they all affect bloggers differently? The truth of the matter is simple — blog syndication offers a variety of benefits to bloggers, but first you need to understand what those syndication models are and weed through the rumors to get to what’s real.

You can download The Truth about Blog Syndication here. Feel free to share it, tweet it, link to it, blog about it, and talk about it.

The only way that people will really understand the truth about blog syndication is by learning the facts first.

If you have any questions about blog syndication or licensing your blog content for syndication through Newstex, contact Newstex today.

Click to View Free eBook – The Truth about Blog Syndication

It’s an exciting day for Newstex, our distributors, and our publishers.  Today, Newstex announced the official launch of our new Video On Demand product.

In simplest terms, Newstex Video On Demand licenses video content from content owners, and then aggregates it, adds complete transcripts with searchable keywords that tie directly to specific frames within the video (so users can easily skip around to find content of interest), and more.  The enhanced video content is sent as transcripts (each linked to its searchable video) to distributors as blog posts.

There is no other product like Video On Demand on the market.  Already, online influencers like Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.TV (follow the link to read more about Gary), Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and more are licensing their video content through Newstex Video On Demand. 

Stay tuned because Newstex plans to announce its first launch distributor partner this week!  In the meantime, you can follow the link to read the complete Video On Demand press release.

It’s an exciting week at Newstex.  Get ready for a series of announcements starting with today’s announcement of a new partnership between Newstex and JD Supra!

JD Supra, the free online publishing platform for legal documents and attorney work product, today announced that its user-contributed content will be distributed by Newstex. The partnership gives legal professionals a mass channel for sharing their work and expertise.

Follow the link to read the full press release, and stay tuned for more announcements!

We use Twitter at Newstex and have noticed over the past four months a surge of activity on Twitter by many of the same bloggers whose blogs we syndicate.  Many of the "tweets" have become news, in some cases breaking news before it is posted to a blog. The limit of 140 characters makes for short headline oriented posting and the feel of an old fashion "newswire". 

Similar to our Blogs On Demand newsfeed, we have licensed "tweets" from Twitter authors and are grouping the "tweets" into useful real time newsfeeds – we call our product "Newstwits".

Below is the press release – let us know if you think this will be useful for your business.

GUILFORD, CT May 19, 2008 – At the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) NetGain Conference in San Francisco today, Newstex, the Content on Demand® company, announced NewsTwits™, a new product that delivers Twitter content as a newsfeed to information providers and enterprise customers.

Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a social networking and multi-platform messaging service that allows users to broadcast short-form updates known as "tweets" (text-based posts up to 140 characters) to their online colleagues in real time. Messages sent via Twitter are displayed on the sender’s profile page on the Twitter website and are instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

Updates can be sent via cell phone SMS, instant messaging or third-party applications, such as Twitterrific, Twhirl and Facebook. Recipients get their updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email and, now, through the NewsTwits newsfeed from Newstex.

Like its Blogs on Demand™ service, Newstex licenses full-text Twitter content directly from Twitter users and then uses its proprietary NewsRouter® technology to aggregate and deliver to distributors and enterprises in real time. The NewsTwits newsfeed from Newstex easily integrates as a headline feed into countless enterprise-grade applications that people use daily.

For bloggers, content creators and other media professionals, NewsTwits is a syndication model that tremendously increases their profile. Media organizations, financial firms, and government agencies that already use Newstex’s Content on Demand service for millions of their users are finding that NewsTwits makes accessing Twitter-based content a snap. Already, hundreds of syndicated bloggers from Newstex’s Blogs on Demand network have signed up for NewsTwits.

“Blog content has become a ‘must-have’ for millions of researchers and enterprise professionals,” said Larry Schwartz, President of Newstex. “Recently, Newstex has added hundreds of top newspaper blogs to the thousands of full-text, premium blogs that we license and deliver. Now, we are thrilled to be first in licensing and distributing the best user-generated Twitter content via NewsTwits on an editorially-selected, full-text basis for enterprise use throughout the world.”

About Newstex
Newstex offers Content on Demand® and Blogs on Demand™, which includes tailored, real-time news and commentary from thousands of branded newswires, newspapers, magazines, financial and business sources, official government feeds and blogs. Newstex collects full-text digital news and commentary feeds, standardizes the content format, adds stock ticker symbols, indexes stories using PeopleTickering® and topical categories, and instantly delivers the result via easy-to-integrate XML or RSS newsfeeds. In 2007, Newstex was selected for the EContent 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry, while Blogs on Demand was voted “Top New Technology” in Information Today’s People’s Choice Awards. For more information, please visit the Newstex site www.newstex.com and the Newstex blog www.newstexblog.com.

This morning Newstex made two announcements which together offer important proof points in the development of blogs as enterprise ready content:

Newstex will now deliver hundreds of blogs from Corante (the first blog media company) and Gawker Media (including popular blogs like Gawker, Wonkette, Gizmodo, and others) through Newstex Blogs on Demand.

LexisNexis will now deliver full-text Newstex Blogs On Demand content to enterprise customers.

As you know, Newstex Blogs On Demand is focused on distributing important blogs to enterprise customers as a licensed, full-text feed ready to be integrated into the applications (such as LexisNexis) that employees use every day.

Press Releases:
Blog Content from Gawker Media and Corante Available Via Newstex Blogs
On Demand: Full-text blog feed from Newstex delivers full-text,
licensed blogs to content distributors and enterprise customer

LexisNexis Delivers Blog Content via Newstex Blogs On Demand: Full-text blog feed from Newstex now available to LexisNexis customers