Web Directions

Craig Saila & Adrian Holovaty — Old Media, New Technology

• In: Resources
• By:jessie
• January 19, 2008
• Leave a response

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 8, 2007.

• MP3 of presentation
• Session descrip­tion
• About Craig Saila
• About Adrian Holovaty

Session descrip­tion

Web based dis­tri­b­u­tion is chang­ing the nature of estab­lished author­i­ties like newsprint and television.

As tra­di­tional media declines, the rel­e­vance of their online brands con­tin­ues to grow in both rev­enue and traf­fic. All of this is lead­ing to a rad­i­cal restruc­tur­ing of how the main­stream media sees itself, and how it oper­ates. From the sur­pris­ingly quick adop­tion of blogs, RSS, and other tech­nolo­gies that fall under the “Web 2.0” label, there are many dis­cus­sion points about what is work­ing, and what isn’t.

In this ses­sion, two experts work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of the web and newsprint will dis­cuss how this change is occur­ring. They will be look­ing at the fal­lac­ies built into online adver­tis­ing and tra­di­tional met­rics which don’t map to how the new Web operates.

They’ll also explore the matur­ing online land­scape and how tra­di­tional media now face a frag­mented mar­ket, pop­u­lated by strong Web brands that offer gen­uine com­pe­ti­tion through their inno­va­tion and nimbleness.

About Craig Saila

Craig Saila is the Senior Web Producer man­ag­ing front-​​end devel­op­ment for The Globe and Mail fam­ily of Web sites, where he:

• intro­duced story-​​based reader com­ments to the news sites in 2005;
• brought the first RSS feeds to a Canadian online newspaper;
• and devel­oped a com­plete redesign of the sites using the Web’s best practices.

Prior to join­ing CTVglobemedia and The Globe and Mail, he worked in dual of role of both an edi­tor and Web devel­oper for: the Ontario Science Centre; Sun Media’s CANOE; a busi­ness mag­a­zine com­pany; and one of Torstar’s early online exper­i­ments, a daily webzine cov­er­ing tech­nol­ogy. In the early-​​2000s, he was also an assis­tant edi­tor for Digital Web Magazine; he also built the tem­plates for that site’s standards-​​based redesign.

For five years, start­ing in 1997, Saila taught basic Web design and online jour­nal­ism at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism. He also helped develop the cur­ricu­lum for the school’s first course in that subject.

Throughout, he’s been writ­ing about Web devel­op­ment and online jour­nal­ism at saila​.com.

About Adrian Holovaty

Adrian Holovaty is a Web developer/​journalist. During the day, he’s Editor of Editorial Innovations at wash​ing​ton​post​.com; just as news­pa­per reporters write arti­cles and TV jour­nal­ists shoot video, Adrian writes jour­nal­ism Web apps. He fre­quently evan­ge­lizes the use of tech­nol­ogy by jour­nal­ists and has spo­ken inter­na­tion­ally about “jour­nal­ism via com­puter programming.”

Cocreator and lead devel­oper of the pop­u­lar Django Web frame­work, Adrian enjoys con­tribut­ing to open-​​source projects, mak­ing infor­ma­tion acces­si­ble to the pub­lic and reverse-​​engineering things. His All Music Guide fixer was the inspi­ra­tion for Greasemonkey, and his site chicagocrime​.org was one of the orig­i­nal Google Maps hacks.

He lives in Chicago, where he was named one of Crain’s 40 Under 40 at age 24. His weblog is at Holovaty​.com.

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One response to “Craig Saila & Adrian Holovaty — Old Media, New Technology”:

1. • By:Some data resources « Cindy’s Take on Tech
   • November 3rd, 2008

   […] Holovaty and Saila — pre­sen­ta­tion at Web Directions, Old Media, New Technology […]

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