The next step in the future of journalism could be led by a Seattle startup. Today, media giant Hearst announced it has started a new website called LMK (Let Me Know), a news aggregator that pulls in Web feeds from sources like the Associated Press and Getty Images, and automatically creates topic pages for individual celebrities, sports teams, companies, and the like. The content filtering technology behind the site comes courtesy of a partnership with Seattle-based Evri, a startup founded by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital.

It’s a big deal for Evri, which has been using semantic analysis and natural language processing to find meaningful connections between entities on the Web. Its technology has led to partnerships with The Washington Post and The Times of London, in which Evri’s widget suggests related articles for readers. But the Hearst deal is more significant, because Evri is actually powering the site.

Will Hunsinger, Evri’s chief executive, says the deal was done about a month ago. He declined to give financial details, but did talk about how the partnership works. Hearst subscribes to Evri’s Web platform, which ingests more than 30,000 sources of content (news, blogs, tweets) and applies natural language processing to produce a massive “semantic index.” When the LMK site wants information about the Florida Gators, say—one of the site’s first focuses is college football—Evri’s software filters stories about the Gators by their timeliness, relevancy, and credibility of sources. It then delivers the primary links and snippets of text and photos to LMK.

“What’s significant is we feel this is a beachhead, or flagship demonstration, of how you can use semantic technology to deliver what appears to be an editorial experience, algorithmically,” Hunsinger says. The benefits of this are twofold. It’s a very fast way of getting news up, and it’s cheap—you don’t need a big editorial staff to pick and choose each story.

Of course, its value all depends on how good the feeds and filtering are. Hunsinger says Evri’s semantic analysis could make news aggregators far more powerful than sites like Google News. That’s because Evri’s software understands that Manny Ramirez is a baseball player associated with steroids, for example—so you can filter content by asking for all stories about baseball players, or stories about players using banned substances, and Ramirez will show up. Most aggregators, including Google, are based on keywords, so you’d usually have to type in “Manny Ramirez” to get stories about him to appear.

Beyond LMK, technology like Evri’s could potentially make the whole editorial side of the newspaper industry more efficient, Hunsinger says. “You could deliver all stories around a particular topic—the entire story behind the story,” he says. That might let reporters and editors spend more time on things like developing relationships with sources and digging up entirely new stories. Examples of aggregation topics might be Seattle sports, or San Francisco politics.

I asked Hunsinger whether being a huge sports fan had anything to do with getting the LMK deal done. He insists it was just “a total bonus.” But he added that his stress level will be going up in about a month, when his alma mater, the Georgetown Hoyas, start their basketball season.

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New England technology and business newspaper Mass High Tech is moving from a weekly to a biweekly print publishing schedule effective in September, publisher Michael Olivieri said yesterday. The Boston Globe reported that MHT laid off four employees in the restructuring, which will see the paper shift from 24 pages a week to 32 pages every two weeks. In the story in MHT, Olivieri described the change as a natural step in enhancing the “web emphasis we have been working toward for some time.”

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Randy Drawas, chief marketing officer at Moscow, Russia-based antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, shared some disturbing statistics with me earlier this week. In 2007, he said, Kaspersky’s researchers detected as much malicious software activity on the Internet as they had in the previous 11 years combined. In 2008, malware volume doubled yet again. And in 2009, the company estimates, more than 30 million unique malware programs will be found in circulation on the Internet, many of them targeting consumers.

In an effort to help Internet users learn about these threats and protect themselves, Kaspersky this month launched a security news site called Threatpost. Based out of Kaspersky’s US headquarters in Woburn, MA, and edited by journalists, the site is designed to provide objective news, analysis, and education about issues like worms and viruses, software vulnerabilities and patches, and spam and botnets.

Kaspersky will be the site’s sole sponsor and advertiser. While Drawas says the Threatpost’s editors won’t overtly hawk Kaspersky products as solutions to readers’ malware headaches, the site “provides us with unique marketing opportunities just the same.”

To lead Threatpost’s editorial operation, Kaspersky has hired two veteran technology journalists: Ryan Naraine and Dennis Fisher. Naraine is a former editor-at-large for security at enterprise technology weekly eWeek who also blogs about security for ZDNet; Fisher is the former executive editor of the Security Media Group at Needham, MA-based TechTarget and former news editor at eWeek.

Naraine and Fisher launched the site on March 9 to coincide with the SOURCE Boston security conference. The plan, according to Naraine, is to write roughly four original news stories every weekday and to link to six or seven security-related news stories published elsewhere on the Web. In that sense, the site is a conscious imitation of the Huffington Post and other outlets that consist in large part of information culled from other sites. “It’s mostly an aggregation model,” says Naraine. “We really believe in this send-them-away mode—because if we do it right, tomorrow they will come back and see what else we have.”

Personal blogs by both Naraine and Fisher, weekly podcasts, slide shows, guest editorials, and a “watchlist” of security-themed video clips are also part of the Threatpost recipe.

When I spoke with Naraine earlier this week, I was naturally curious about how he plans to maintain the site’s editorial independence, in light of the fact that his employer is in the security business. “Dennis and I are under no illusions about this tightrope we’re walking, being employees of Kaspersky and writing about security,” Naraine said. “Maintaining independence is absolutely critical if this thing is to work. Our big thing was having a full understanding with the company that they have to be hands-off. But what we also understand is that this is a Kaspersky project. They are investing heavily. So obviously, you are not going to see product news from Symantec or McAfee featured strongly—but neither are you going to see overt pimping of Kaspersky products.”

I was also curious about what balance Naraine wants to strike between “educational” content explaining security threats to readers and community discussion and other more collegial or peer-to-peer forms of communication. “Security is a different animal” from other forms of technology journalism, he responded. Most readers “are not looking for a deep journalistic piece about a business model. They come in looking to be educated—’How do I find this patch, how do I disinfect my machine, what is a botnet, what should I be doing to keep my machine immune from falling into these types of attacks?’ Every time a reader comes to a story they must find some sort of information that helps them protect themselves.”

Drawas says Kaspersky will measure the success of Threatpost not simply by its traffic levels or whether it leads to increased sales of Kaspersky’s software, but by by the strength of the community it builds: “How many people join, how many people subscribe to our newsletter or our alerts….This is also an opportunity for [Kaspersky's business partners] to promote what they are doing and provide them with an outlet if they feel that they have something meaningful to share.”

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Seattle-based Internet startup Evri is announcing today that it has formed a partnership with The Times of London, one of the UK’s leading newspapers, to provide content recommendation software for online articles. For selected stories in the Times Online, Evri’s widget shows up next to the text with a list of links to related articles from the paper’s archives (and some outside websites). The news comes on the heels of a similar deal with the Washington Post that Evri announced last month.

It’s all part of Evri’s continuing efforts to build its audience, says Neil Roseman, the company’s founder and chief executive. Evri was started in 2007, and is backed by $8 million from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. The concept is to use natural language processing to understand connections between entities on the Web—people, products, things—and help you browse what you’re interested in more efficiently. While it’s not intended to replace search engines, Evri does want to change fundamentally how people browse the Web. (Roseman recently wrote about presenting some new features at DEMO 09.)

Financial terms of the Times Online partnership weren’t disclosed, but it is important for several reasons. One, it is a “very significant traffic source,” says Roseman, who points to the site’s 20 million-plus monthly users. Two, it “reinforces our focus on English language articles, not just American journalism,” he says. And three, it “helps further prove the model.”

That model says people will appreciate being directed to other content on the Web that is related to what they’re reading about, not just because it contains some of the same keywords, but because the underlying meaning of sentences in the articles is related. Roseman gives the simple example of Evri’s software being able to tell the difference between Michael Jackson, the pop singer, and Michael Jackson, an actor, from an article’s context.

But one of the technical challenges is how to understand meanings and relationships reliably in everything from a 140-character message on Twitter to a full article in The Economist, say. “That hadn’t been done before with natural language processing,” Roseman says. “The technology is definitely getting better.”

Roseman, a former vice president of technology at Amazon, says he has learned …Next Page »

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Declaring that “quality journalism in America is threatened more profoundly today than at any time in our history” by the accelerating death throes of the traditional newspaper and TV news businesses, two veteran Boston-area journalists yesterday launched GlobalPost, an online-only source for on-the-ground international news of the sort that’s increasingly scarce in the mainstream media.

Philip Balboni, the founder and longtime president of New England Cable News, and Charles Sennott, a staff writer and former foreign correspondent at the Boston Globe, say in the site’s mission statement that they want to “redefine international news for the digital age.” They’ll do that by hiring top correspondents who live in the countries they’re covering to write with “a decidedly American voice” about complex international issues—without all the expensive encumbrances of the traditional media, such as printing presses and satellite TV equipment.

“American television networks today largely cover the ‘hotspots’ of international news, and even then, not comprehensively,” the founders write in a statement about GlobalPost’s business model. “U.S. newspapers have significantly cut back their foreign bureaus. Ironically, this comes at a moment in history when globalization is sweeping across all continents.”

Balboni and Sennott hope to counter that trend by providing a daily mix of text articles, photos, videos, podcasts, and blog posts that both delve into the details of conditions in countries where correspondents are located and highlight cross-cutting regional or global issues. The operation, which is a kind of professional, for-profit echo of the Global Voices project launched in 2005 by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, already has 65 correspondents in locations as varied as Pakistan, Senegal, Bolivia, and Zimbabwe. Many are freelancers or correspondents for other publications; for example, Jane Arraf, GlobalPost’s at-large Middle East correspondent, is the Iraq correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.

For financial support, GlobalPost is counting on a combination of online advertising revenue, syndication deals with online and newspaper partners, and a soon-to-be-introduced membership system called Passport. Individual Passport memberships will cost $199 per year and will provide access to “exclusive content on key economic and political events”—including monthly newsletters, short text alerts on breaking news, and live conference calls with correspondents—that won’t be available to readers of the free site.

Sennott, who is the site’s executive editor, said in an interview yesterday with WBUR’s mid-day local news program “Here and Now” that GlobalPost hopes to restore something of the Edward R. Murrow tradition of passionate, engaging international coverage tailored for American news consumers.

“We’re looking for people who have a passion for a country, a language facility in that country, who want to be there based as writers or videographers or radio reporters and who are great at telling stories,” Sennott said. “We almost don’t care what medium you want to tell it in. We just want to know that you know how to tell a story that’s grounded in fact, that’s well reported, that has a sense of the American ear for a narrative, and that really understands and is unabashedly in an American voice—not in any way nationalist or jingoist, definitely not, but understanding that you’re writing to or doing a video for an American audience that needs to understand the world.”

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One of Seattle’s best-known technology investors, Tom Alberg of Madrona Venture Group, had a conversation a couple years ago with David Brewster, the founding editor of Seattle Weekly, about how the Internet was transforming journalism. “Tom said, ‘Local news is a big opportunity, and online media is a big opportunity. Let’s brainstorm some ideas,’” Brewster recalled.

The idea that emerged as a company in April 2007, Crosscut, has proven it can build a growing audience, but not a sustainable business model. This past week, it laid off editor Chuck Taylor (a highly-respected former managing editor of Seattle Weekly) in an effort to conserve cash. The company is now considering whether to switch from its for-profit operation that relies heavily on online advertising, to a nonprofit model supported primarily by a broad network of donors, sort of like National Public Radio, with supplemental income from events and ads.

Whatever Crosscut does will be watched by a lot of people in Seattle politics and government, as well as by journalists around the country, who are yearning for a sustainable way to cover public affairs as mainstream newspapers continue in a downward spiral. Crosscut got off to a promising start last year, with $500,000 in seed capital from a group of 25 prominent people in Seattle, including Alberg, former Environmental Protection Agency director William Ruckelshaus, former Mayor Paul Schell, University of Washington computer science professor Ed Lazowska, and ex-city council member Jim Compton. It has more than doubled its number of unique visitors per month in the last year, with more than 73,000 visitors at last count and more than 225,000 page views a month, Brewster says. One early story about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, shortly after she was named Sen. John McCain’s running mate, nearly melted its servers with traffic. But the buzz didn’t generate enough dollars from advertisers, especially as the economy headed into recession this fall, to make the for-profit model look like it could work.

“When people look around at starting this kind of thing, you look at cities with high rates of Internet adoption, a highly educated population, and a high interest in civic matters,” says Brewster, Crosscut’s publisher. “Seattle, Minneapolis, and Vancouver, BC, are a few natural cities for this. Our thought was that advertisers are moving to the Web, Web ads are moving to the local level, and the mainstream media is losing altitude. It provides an opportunity.”

Notice the use of the present tense with regard to the word “opportunity.” When I saw Taylor post an update on his Facebook page over the weekend that he was looking for a new job, my first reaction was that Crosscut must be toast. Brewster says that isn’t so. …Next Page »

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Where are John and Todd? A month after Luke reported that venerable Seattle tech reporters John Cook and Todd Bishop left the Seattle P-I for new roles at the Puget Sound Business Journal, they have officially surfaced today at a new website, called TechFlash. Billed as “Seattle’s technology news source,” TechFlash will offer breaking news and analysis on the Northwest’s tech industry—from startups and investors to big companies—as well as guest columnists and interactive features.

The TechFlash site, which is run by the Business Journal, is now in beta. Senior tech reporter Eric Engleman of the Business Journal will also contribute to the site. Among its inaugural posts are a story about Bill Gates’s new holdings company (with the awful name of bgC3), and a report about a closed-door meeting held at Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group to address the economic crisis. Congratulations on the launch, gentlemen—we’ll see you out there.

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Fans of John Cook and Todd Bishop, never fear. The highly-regarded tech reporters who quit the Seattle Post-Intelligencer together yesterday will continue blogging like they have for years at the P-I, in a new role at the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Today, the Business Journal said it is creating a new website featuring Cook’s coverage of venture capital and startups, Bishop’s writing on Microsoft and other large tech companies, along with assorted tech stories from reporter Eric Engleman, a five-year veteran of the Business Journal. The new site “will combine rigorous reporting with the immediacy of online publishing,” the Business Journal said in a statement.

The move is a big shift in strategy for the Business Journal. It’s part of the American City Business Journals chain, which covers local business in 41 cities around the country. The Puget Sound Business Journal newspaper has a paid weekly circulation of 18,000, and is read by an estimated 70,000 people in the region each week, says publisher Emory Thomas Jr. It’s taking the plunge into online publishing because technology industry readers demand the kind of fast-twitch, in-depth coverage that Cook and Bishop are known for around town. The site will also feature guest columnists, experts in their fields who will offer ideas and insights. The stated aim: To become “The Northwest’s Leading Technology News Source.”

This, of course, sounds a lot like Xconomy, which launched in Seattle in June. It’s a serious push, but Thomas didn’t want me to get the idea that the Business Journal is turning its back entirely from its bread-and-butter print newspaper. “Print is going nowhere but up for us,” he says. “But we know that a segment of our readers get their information almost exclusively online. We want to provide a product to readers and players in that community where they gather their information, and that’s online.”

Cook expects the site will incorporate news from other Business Journal properties around the country, and that he and Bishop will send some of their Seattle-based posts to those sites in return. The online-first emphasis, however, is something the Business Journals chain hasn’t really tried before, Thomas says.

One reason for Cook and Bishop to go with the Business Journal is for its extensive list of contacts and resources in the local business community. “It makes a ton of sense for Todd and I to link up with it,” Cook says. In an email to his contacts today, Cook added, “I recognize that startups are hard and that most new ventures fail. But I am energized by the opportunity to combine traditional journalism with the world of new media.”

The site should go live “within weeks,” Thomas says, so readers will soon be able to judge for themselves about the results. Best of luck, gentlemen, we’re sure to see you on the battlefield.

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The Puget Sound Business Journal got significantly stronger today. Two of Seattle’s best-known technology journalists, John Cook and Todd Bishop, have resigned from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to take new jobs at the crosstown Business Journal.

Cook, the author of the widely-read John Cook’s Venture Blog, joined the newspaper in April 1999. As he says in his biography on the blog, Cook has covered hundreds of entrepreneurial ventures over the past decade in Seattle – from Avenue A to Zillow.com.

Bishop, who covers Microsoft, will be doing his second tour of duty at the weekly Business Journal. He joined the P-I in 2002, according to his biography on the P-I site. His Microsoft blog has been named to the Blog 100 list of top tech blogs by CNet News.

“We’re thrilled to have them joining the Business Journal,” says Angelynn Talcott, director of marketing for the Business Journal.

Cook, reached via email, said he couldn’t share many details about the new gig just yet. “I can say that there is more to this than us simply joining the Puget Sound Business Journal as technology reporters. Happy to share more details very soon,” he says.

The news was surprising to technology leaders. “These are two of Seattle’s best tech business reporters. It’s a coup for the PSBJ,” says Ed Lazowska, the Bill & Melinda Gates chair of computer science at the University of Washington, and an Xconomist.

The news was first reported by Brier Dudley at The Seattle Times.

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