Knewsroom, the crowdsourced online newsource has just launched in beta.

From their website:

“Knewsroom™ is a community-directed news publication where not only do you have a voice—you get paid to use it. “The Knews” gets published every morning, featuring the previous day’s top stories in Politics, Business, Technology, Design, Sports, and Entertainment.

What makes it in? The community decides.

The best part? 20% of every dollar we generate in advertising gets split with the people who make the Knews happen: writers, readers, evangelists…anyone looking to turn extra brainwidth into extra cash.”

If you want to learn more details on how it actually works go here.

I like the idea of Knewsroom but the results are pretty much what you’ll find on the frontpages of most of the major news sites.  Today has stories on Clinton’s toothless win in WV, Edwards support of Obama, death tolls from China and the Celtics win again at home.  Not exactly breaking any new ground here.

Thanks to Tilzy for highlighting the work of PopWaffle because it’s really charming.

The semi-regular videos are a combination of crayon drawings and stop-motion animation used to deliver recent pop culture news and events with a bit commentary thrown in for good measure.  Here’s the latest episode:

And here is a very clever “interview” with the creator:

Good stuff!

Well, if it’s Wednesday there must be a new comedy site aimed at the young male demographic launching on in the webosphere.

This week it is BushLeagueTV, which uses the blog format to present their original videos.  What else is BushLeague, you ask.  Well, it depends on who you ask…

ReelPop: [BushLeague] is a hodge podge of dude-analia, i.e., in their words, “jackass opinions on video games, tech, news, sports, boobs, 101’s, and all the other essential tools every dude needs” — a suh-weet grab bag that apparently doesn’t have room for “original premise.”

Mashable: One aspect of BushLeague that stands out is its range of programs, which has segments for video game review, how-to segments for things like planning poker night and breaking into porn, or two guys taking apart gadgets (and maybe putting a few back together). My personal favorite so far is a segment called “Can I Still Eat It,” which features a woman that examines items in a guy’s fridge, determines if it’s actually still edible, and makes the guy eat it.

NewTeeVee: While the topics are a bit tired at this point (another place for gadget reviews?), some of the shows on Bush’s docket sound interesting. Bush League 101 is a how-to show for dudes that explains topics like “How to set up a poker night,” 24 Hour Game Review has the team playing a new video game for 24 hours straight.

I watched a couple of clips and fear the biggest problem is lack of originality.  Everything looks good, technically, but the subject matters and their approach are well-trod paths that I can’t see the over-served 16-24 male demo flocking to.

I also thought it was interesting to see the blurring out of nudity in the “How to Get Into Porn” video (yeah, not a good sign when you are using such blatant link bait right at the launch - where do they go from there).  One reason people might go to these sites is the opportunity to see content not censored by big media but as big media gets involved in funding these projects they force out anything that would make it feel different than TV.

Zadby.com is currently out in beta and joins the ranks of a number of other services out there that are trying to bring together independent video producers and brand marketers.

Here’s their pitch:

“Zadby is an online marketplace where advertisers, marketers, and brand managers can connect with freelance video producers to create innovative product placement videos for distribution through outlets like YouTube and MySpace. Advertisers define what they want in a campaign; video producers shoot the videos; and Zadby facilitates, tracking the views and paying the producer on a per-view basis. It’s a low-risk proposition for a brand since it is view based and video producers get bucks for what they are doing anyway.”

The process seems to be different from project to project with each potential sponsor setting the terms.  For the most part, if you see a commission that appeals to you they want you to go off, make your video with the product placement, post the video and then they will decide if it qualifies for payment.

Payment seems to be CPM based.  The current commission, from Polk Audio, is offering CPM rate of $12.80.

It’s definitely too soon to tell in terms of whether this sort of model can work but I do like seeing new ways for independent producers to cashify their efforts.

Here is the list for the top 10 cable programs of last week:

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (USA)
2. NBA Playoffs - Hornets/Spurs (ESPN)
3. NBA Playoffs - Cavaliers/Celtics (TNT)
4. Monday Night RAW (USA)
5. Monday Night RAW (USA)
6. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (USA)
7. NBA Playoffs - Jazz/Lakers (TNT)
8. NBA Playoffs - Hornets/Spurs (ESPN)
9. SpongeBob SquarePants (Nickelodeon)
10. NBA Playoffs - Jazz/Lakers (ESPN)

If this is the first time you are looking at this list let me first let you know that, believe it or not, wrestling (”Monday Night RAW”) and SpongeBob are almost always in the top 10, so that’s not interesting, just vaguely sad.

What I find completely weird is that the first two Indiana Jones movies did so well.  Sure, Indiana Jones 4 is due out shortly and there have been a lot of ads for it but why would so many people want to watch a movie they’ve almost certainly seen before but this time with endless commercials and all the “good stuff” taken out?

This is the strange power of TV and passive viewing.  It’s the one thing the internet just doesn’t offer.  You can’t channel surf the web like you can with cable.  With the internet all of your viewing is choice-based and lots of times that’s dandy. But sometimes we don’t want to make a firm decision.  We want to flip around until something hold our interest.

I would venture that many of the viewers of the Indiana Jones movies on USA last week stumbled upon it and didn’t turn on the TV with the intent of watching that movie.  It was just on.  And sometimes that’s enough.

Loren Feldman of the often rant-heavy blog 1938 Media has decided to see if people will be willing to pay for the occassional post, to the tune of $.99.

“Why am I doing this? Because I want to. It’s an experiment. I know that most of 99 percent of you aren’t going to pay 99 cents ever. So it goes. But you know what? Content has to be paid for at some point.” (via CNet)

I definitely think this is an interesting and worthwhile experiment but I am not convinced that Loren is providing enough value for the fee.  His videos are pretty rough and his posts are interesting but rarely worth more than, say, a copy of both NY dailies.

It would be interesting to see if he tried a pay-what-you-like scheme.  Anyhow, here’s his explanation:

Lindsey Campbell, the host of the the CBS-produced web-news show MobLogic, went downtown to cover the Al Sharpton-led protests about the Sean Bell shooting and she, along with Al and others, got arrested.

This produced some rather compelling footage for MobLogic and raises interesting questions about the role of the journalist in the digital age. Where is the line between reporter and participant?  What happens when that line is crossed?

As NewTeeVee points out:

“I think the real difference — and improvement — lies in the towards-the-end shot of Al Sharpton, rubbing his eyes, wearily answering Campbell’s questions for MobLogic’s camera. I’ve never seen such a professionally “on” figure allow themselves to be captured so “off” before, seemingly without calculation.”

This is another example of the ways in which the traditional news media is being challenged and, in many cases, beaten, in the pursuit and delivery of current events.

Beloved writer of the edgy hipster, Chuck Palahniuk, is promoting his latest book, SNUFF, with:

“Never before seen footage of cult classic adult film star Cassie Wright, star of SNUFF by Chuck Palahniuk. Stay tuned for Chitty Chitty Gang Bang and The Twilight Bone. Stay tuned for Chitty Chitty Gang Bang and The Twilight Bone.”

You can watch the first (relatively-SFW) clip below.  While there’s something mildly humorous about it, it doesn’t seem to do much to sell the book or entice me to go read it.  I can understand what might draw someone to view the clip without knowing who Chuck Palahniuk is or even knowing that it is an ad for his book but will that same person be compelled to find the book after watching this?

I’ve heard that blog posts with lists tend to do really well so I thought I’d try one out.  I’ll let you know if the rumors are true.

According to Variety:

“[Caron] Daly and Madison Road will launch in July “The Really Big Internet Show,” a daily five-minute webcast that will feature the day’s most talked-about original online videos. Justine Ezarik, an Internet vid star who goes by the name iJustine, will host.”

So, here are my 10 Reasons Why Carson Daly’s “The Really Big Internet Show” Will FAIL (and one of them isn’t “Carson Daly”).

10.  Why would I watch clips of viral videos instead of just watching the clips themselves?

9.  Why would I bother waiting a whole 5 minutes to find out which videos they’re going to show when we all know the list will be hotlinked on the same page?

8.  The target audience for a show like this will have already seen every video they mention.  If they haven’t seen it, it probably isn’t a legitimate “hit.”

7.  You know this is going to be ad supported in some way while the videos it talks about will likely not be.  Which would you rather watch?

6.  Even though everyone likes funny little clips they can pass around to friends and mention at parties nobody cares about them enough to watch a show ABOUT them.

5.  iJustine is totally cute and has a great presence but what she has to say about silly videos isn’t going to be “must-see TV”.

4.  Sure, it’s only going to be 5 minutes long but 5 minutes can be forever online.

3.  This show brings absolutely nothing new to the table.

2.  G4’s Attack of the Show already has a relatively successful podcast/site called Around the Net that covers this ground and has the faithful following that Daly’s show wants.

1.  Daily shows are brutal to produce and anything short of massive early success will lead to a quick burnout from all parties concerned.

Everyone likes to talk about the death of traditional news outlets like papers and the evening news.  Of course, that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested in current affairs.

In fact, I would argue that many people are mostly concerned that they aren’t getting the news currently enough.  This has led to all sorts of email alerts, readers and other ways to “stay on top” of the news.

Now, it is beginning to look like Twitter might be the next stop for news junkies (via CNet)

“I live in Beijing, which is about 950 miles from the epicenter. Along with others, I first learned of the quake via Twitter, which has been lit up with first-, second-, third-, and many-hand information about various personal experiences, and hundreds of links to other reports. By contrast, mainstream media such as Sohu.com were partially responsible for a massive rumor mill that pervaded Beijing on Monday evening, with an apparently incorrect prediction of a quake in Beijing between 11:00 p.m. and midnight local time–right now.”

And SAI says YouTube is the place to be:

“Want to know what that giant earthquake in China’s remote Sichuan looked like? Better yet, want to know what it’s like to experience a 7.8 magnitude quake? Someone claiming to be a Sichuan University student posted the following video to Tudou (SAI 25 #22), where it’s No. 2 on the homepage, and it was reposted on YouTube.”

This is part of a growing trend of non-traditional “news” services scooping the more traditional destinations.