The Huffington Post announced today that it plans to bankroll a group of investigative journalists, directing them at first to look at stories about the nation’s economy.

The liberal-leaning blog site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.

Huffington also announced that the work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post.

The announcement comes as some are worried about the future of journalism, as newspapers across the United States are laying off hundreds or shutting down completely.

Huffington’s move raises the question: Are blogs the new newspapers?

The Huffington Post already has a broader reach, with only seven staff reporters, than most newspapers. As it scales up, it promises to move the idea of a blog site into new territory.

Mashuqur Rahman has created a new WordPress plugin, Twitter Liveblog, designed to let you create and update Live blog posts using Twitter.

Once you’ve installed and configured Twitter LiveBlog with your Twitter account info, it will let you:

• Start a liveblogging post using a Twitter update.
• Add to the liveblogging post using Twitter updates. Each Twitter update will appear as a separate line in the post with a timestamp.
• End a liveblogging post using a Twitter update.

Here’s an example of a Twitter LiveBlog post:

If you give Twitter LiveBlog a try, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Social websites are great places to connect with like-minded people. They are useful for keeping track of the whereabouts and projects of people you know, and people whom you admire. They are especially wonderful outlets for expressing and listening to a great diversity of opinions.

Better watch what you say, and how you say it, though. You could get in big trouble for talking smack about somebody – especially if you’re famous.

Rocker, actress, sometime model and ever outspoken colorful character Courtney Love is alleged to have said some particularly nasty things about an indie fashion designer, on her MySpace and Twitter feeds. And now the designer, Austin-based Dawn Simorangkir, has filed a lawsuit against her.

Simorangkir, also known as Boudoir Queen (? yes, really), has sued Love, lead singer of the band Hole, for libel and breach of contract lawsuit against the singer includes what she calls several “menacing and disturbing” statements posted on the Internet. She also says that Love didn’t pay her bill.

Monsters and Critics, citing an Associated Press report, say that remarks from Love’s Twitter and MySpace pages, and in the feedback section of custom and handcraft website Etsy.com, stated that Simorangkir was a “nasty lying hosebag thief” and accused her of being a drug addict and a prostitute.

Photo: Courtney Love (L) with daughter (uber grunge love child) Frances Bean Cobain, via bitten and bound

World travel publishing house Lonely Planet recently announced the winners of their 2009 Lonely Planet Travel Blog Awards contest. The winner of the sole podcast award in the bunch is the Indie Travel Podcast.

Indie Travel Podcast is the brainchild of Craig and Linda Martin, a husband-and-wife team of traveling podcasters. Craig Martin’s profile explains,

“podcaster and writer Craig Martin has been living on the road since leaving Auckland, New Zealand in February 2006. With a degree in Media Studies and English plus a penchant for Coleridge, he’s currently saving in Australia. Craig podcasts at the Indie Travel Podcast and regularly blogs at Our Crazy Travels along with his wife Linda.”

Episode topics range from tips for eliminating the middle-man in your travel planning, to location-specific travel profiles (as varied as Miami, Florida, and Vilnius, Lithuania), to travel technology (iPhone travel apps). There is even a great series of articles on how to create your own travel podcast. Written articles and podcasts stress the importance of traveling practically, economically, and with a minimal negative ecological impact wherever you happen to go.

Listeners can subscribe to Indie Travel Podcast via iTunes, or using the RSS feed found here.

From the We Can Hardly Wait Department: Sling Media is announcing a mobile player for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The mobile app would allow iPhone (or iPod Touch) users to watch television content on their mobile devices.

The company says, “We’ve been working hard to bring the SlingPlayer Mobile experience to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and we are almost there! By Q1 this year we will submit our first release of our application to the iPhone App Store.”

Sling Media are makers of the Slingbox, a TV streaming device that enables users to remotely view their home’s cable, satellite, or personal video recorder (PVR) programming from an Internet-enabled computer with a broadband Internet connection.

SlingMedia already make a mobile application for the BlackBerry, Windows Smartphone and Pocket PC, Palm, and several other devices, but this will be a first Apple-application for the company.

From the YouTube blog yesterday came word of changes to how the video site announces updates and new features.

“[A]fter watching you guys take to the forums and Twitter to discuss what else has changed, we figured more frequent, casual “release notes” would be good to publish as well. That way you can get a broader sense of what’s new on the site, from major features to cosmetic touches, as well as background on the thinking or motivation behind some of these items. ”

Changes to YouTube include:

• Upload Progress Bar: A new Flash uploader is available “for all supported browsers” and has an upload progress bar that lets you know the status of your upload.
• Simpler HD Parameter: An official URL parameter (hd=1) for sharing HD links.
• Twitter Updates: YouTube have added a “share to Twitter” button (at right) under the Share options. (YouTube does not auto-shorten the video URL, so you’ll have to do the bit.ly or tinyURL thing yourself.)
• YouTube Educational Hub Launches: YouTube EDU is a volunteer project working to collect and highlight educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities. The YouTube team says, “Using YouTube as a vehicle to democratize learning is one of the coolest, unintended outcomes of its existence. “
• Mobile Improvements: In addition to launching a new mobile landing page, the upload flow from phone-to-YouTube should become more streamlined. Stating the obvious [a year behind the times], they say “mobile is a key component of how people will consume video in the future.”
• EasierLogin: If your YouTube account is associated with your Google account, you need only sign in once.
• Cleaner Watch Pages: Changes include -  a) the action links are a bit smaller and more condensed; b) eliminated the tabs for Comments, Statistics & Data and replaced them with expandable/collapsible  sections A broader watch page redesign is underway as well.
• Easier to use YouTube as social network: YouTube have added the ability for users to send an invitation and personalized note to a username or email address. There’s also an “instant friend link” for IM. http://www.youtube.com/my_friends_invite.

New research from Gartner helps explain why newspapers aren’t just failing in print, but online, too: Newspapers publishers are failing to take advantage of social media and the loyalty of their online readers.

Gartner found that newspapers are not helping their readers to use social media to act as influencers. The problem starts with a failure to optimize search at their sites and carries on to a lack of integration between content and social media functionality.

Heavy winter snowfall in the northern Midwestern US, followed by warm temperatures, rain, and more snow has caused ice jams in the Red River, which have in turn begun to cause flooding in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

The Associated Press is reporting that Fargo, North Dakota, residents are using e-mail and social networking sites to keep one another up to date on the flooding, and also to mobilize volunteers to fight the rising river levels:

“When city officials needed volunteers at other dikes, [Fargo resident Kevin] Tobosa suggested setting up a Facebook group. By Thursday, it had attracted more than 4,550 members and was constantly picking up new ones.

“We really need volunteers again today to get the dikes buttoned up and fill the rest of the sandbags,” read a message sent to the group Thursday.”

In addition to calls for help via Facebook, others are using microblogging site Twitter to keep people up to date.

@FargoFloodStage and @CityOfFargo give regular updates of current conditions and needs in the community. Interestingly, @CityOfFargo is not an official city Twitter account, but one run by a citizen trying to keep on top of the flood information. Adding to the up-to-the-moment news, nearby journalists like The Uptake’s Jason Barnett are relaying news (see tweet, above).

Besides serving as a handy tool for marshaling volunteers and warning residents of the immediate area, social media sites also offer a close-up view of the action for people who are concerned, but do not live nearby.

Social media sites are well-suited for disseminating breaking news, for mobilizing support or urging action on an issue, and also for providing on-the-ground commentary. In the last year or so, we’ve utilized these soc med resources heavily, first during Iowa’s Presidential Caucus season, and later in 2008, when catastrophic record flooding threatened many areas across Iowa. I also especially enjoy following sessions at conferences (which I’m not even attending!), by scanning my Twitter stream for updates by participants.

What are some other constructive or innovative uses for Facebook and Twitter, and other social programs?

Photo: Flooding in Fargo, ND, by US Army Corps of Engineers

Forget worrying about how much video the kids are watching these days on the TV and the Internet – new research shows that Baby Boomers are the biggest couch potatoes/mouse potatoes of all.

A $3.5 million, year-long Video Consumer Mapping (VCM) study found that younger baby boomers (age 45-54) consume the most video media, and confirmed that traditional “live” television remains the proverbial “800-pound gorilla” in the video media arena.

Key findings

In addition to the revelation that consumers in the 45-54 age group average the most daily screen time (just over 9 1/2 hours), the VCM study also found that:

• Contrary to some recent popular media coverage suggesting that more Americans are rediscovering “free TV” via the Internet, computer video consumption tends to be quite small with an average time of just two minutes a day.
• Despite the proliferation of computers, video-capable mobile phones and similar devices, TV in the home still commands the greatest amount of viewing, even among those ages 18-24. Thus, in the eyes of the researchers, this appears to dispute a common belief that Internet video and mobile phone video exposure among that group (and the next one up, age 25-34) were significant in 2008.
• Computer use has replaced radio as the No. 2 media activity. Radio is now No. 3 and print media fourth.
• TV users were exposed to, on average, 72 minutes per day of TV ads and promos — again dispelling a commonly held belief that modern consumers are channel-hopping or otherwise avoiding most of the advertising in the programming they view.
• Early DVR owners spent much more time with DVR playback than newer DVR owners. At the same time, DVR playback was even more likely than live TV to be the sole medium.

The Video Consumer Mapping information seems to contradict other recent media research that highlights the growth of Internet media, especially among the young. It’s likely that much of this discrepancy is a result of different demographics in the studies.

Limewire, makers of a file-sharing client, is launching a podcast directory, Limecast. Billing itself as “the Web’s open podcast directory and archive” only has about a hundred podcasts at the moment.

The platform for the directory, however, is intriguing. It is still in the process of being built, and is being created online as a collaborative open-source project. One can assume that the finished product will work with Limewire, which could be a conduit for publishing and obtaining podcast files.

Listeners and viewers of the podcasts will be able to post reviews, suggestions, and tags. The podcast show listings offer several different methods for subscription, streaming, or individual download.

Right now, the project has three sub-project parts: the Limecast podcast directory itself, “Limetracker,” which is a php BitTorrent tracker, and an RSS feed-generating feature.

As NewTeeVee points out, “there’s still a lot missing.” It’s very much still a work in progress. But considering that Limewire is a widely-used, popular client, it’s conceivable that this new directory and publishing application will offer another avenue for podcasters to share their creations, and for their audience to consume their shows.