"Lawrence, Kansas, Convergence Capital USA" and "Watchful Eyes on Kansas Media Innovation" are the two parts of a series on National Public Radio this week about The World Co. and its combined newsroom for the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper and its cable television news divisions, along with a more entertainment-oriented lawrence.com and a separate website for KUsports. (The company also provides Internet access service.)

The NPR program points out a lot that's special about the World Co.'s operation, including its small college community, lack of commercial competition -- and local owners who are willing to accept less than the double-digit profits of large media corporations.

The company has been working on its "converged" news approach for several years, as noted in this Digital Journalist column a while back. It has also been repeatedly recognized for its online innovations. Most recently, it took home three Newspaper Association of America Digital Edge awards last month.

Back to the radio... Here's how the folks at lawrence.com covered NPR covering them.

11:15:21 PM  #  

So says my news librarian friend, Jessica ("j" for short), and she's right... especially librarians with weblogs. This entry from j's scratchpad. is a great example, pointing to online resources I'd never heard of, as referenced in a publication I'd never heard of:

1. Y!Q Beta from Yahoo! supposedly does contextual searching.
2. Clusty, which has been causing a ripple in the blogosphere because of its organization of search results
3. GovTrack.us for legislative information
4. Government Information Online offers live chat with government librarians from many different institutions. (Librarians, after all, are the best search engines.)
5. Contract and Organizations Research Institute (CORI) has information for scholarly researchers about government contracts.

7:13:46 PM  #