ABC.com

NightTline, the half-hour digital Twittercast from ABC News' Nightline, will be available via Ustream Mondays at 12:30 p.m. ET, in addition to its already existing availability on the Nightline Website and ABC News NOW.

NightTline is hosted by Nightline's anchors and correspondents.

Nightline executive producer James Goldston said:

Nightline is always looking for new venues to engage with our audience. We are excited at the opportunity to collaborate with Ustream.

And Ustream president and founder Brad Hunstable added:

Bringing ABC's Nightline Webcast to Ustream provides an even greater depth and breadth of news coverage and analysis to add to our high-quality, premium programming. Ustream's shared viewing experience will add to the dynamic conversations and interactivity around this ongoing show.

ABCNews president David Westin announced the promotions of ABCNews.com editorial leaders Deirdre Michalopoulos and Ed O'Keefe in an email to staffers.

Michalopoulos was elevated to senior managing editor, shows and show integration, and she will be responsible for managing, developing and creating content for all ABC News program sites on ABCNews.com, as well as ensuring that the digital content fits with and reinforces the programs and managing relationships with New York-based programs.

And O'Keefe was promoted to managing editor of ABCNews.com, assuming responsibility for daily production, managing technical issues and continuing to integrate initiatives such as redesign and search-engine optimization.

Michalopoulos and O'Keefe will continue to report to ABCNews.com vice president Jon Dube.

continued...

ABC News.com today launched a revamped Good Morning America web site that seems to have GMA news anchor Chris Cuomo quite excited, if this introductory video (also see below) is any indication.

Cuomo walks us through the new look and features, which include an improved, widescreen video player, a nagivation bar across the top of the page, new sections and web-only extras.

Among the new sections are Pets, Healthy Living, Parenting and Your Money. All of these sections have subsections. Your Money, for example, includes a subsection called Womenomics, which, of course, is another term for deficit spending (I'm kidding, I'm kidding!). And Recipes includes the favorites of culinary stars such as Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck and Paula Deen (but no Chris Cuomo, the anchor notes, his professionalism admirably containing his bitterness).

The videos include text if you prefer reading to watching, or as Cuomo says, "if you're intensive in your study." Which strikes me kind of funny. Intensive in your study of what, "Hand Sanitizers or Soap: Which Works Best"?

All levity aside, the new GMA site is pretty slick-looking and feature-rich. As for me, I gotta go with bar soap. I guess I'm old-school that way.

ABC News President David Westin offered up an insightful analysis of the challenges facing his network in particular and journalism in general at a Media Institute Awards dinner in Washington Thursday night.

Westin (at least according to his prepared remarks obtained by John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable) dismissed the notion that "we need to start injecting opinion into our reporting" and said quality reporting alone no longer was enough.

"We have to go from a world in which we try to do a better job of covering the same news as everyone else to a world where we're bringing our audiences news that no one else is," he said.

Hard to do in a world where news often is broken by non-journalists on Twitter, and where online news and information sources continue to proliferate and compete for page views (if not necessarily for advertising dollars). But Westin suggested broadcast news organizations can separate themselves from the pack through enterprise reporting, specialization and having a "unique voice."

Eggerton writes:

In doing his own hard thinking, Westin came to the conclusion that one of ABC's competitors is ABC, or at least a version of ABC co-opted and repurposed.

"Each of us has ended up competing against even ourselves," he said. "Aggregators and search engines patrol the Internet, looking for bits and pieces of our reporting to post in short form on their sites. Some of the small ones simply take our reporting and reproduce it - at least until they're discovered and forced to take it down. The largest and most reputable provide links to our websites that can, indeed, generate traffic for our own sites. But let's face it, most of us rely for much of our information on brief summaries, just the way most of us read much of a newspaper by looking at the headlines and perhaps skimming the first paragraph. So, in a very real sense, one of the strongest competitors for us at ABC News is ABC News itself."

I only wish John Eggerton had broken up that last quote into the bits and pieces I prefer. I'm certainly not going to read the whole thing! What is this, The Iliad?

ABC News Digital promoted Elizabeth Barrett to executive director of mobile, broadband and operations and Frank Kavilanz to executive director for corporate development.

In her new role, Barrett will oversee strategic planning, business strategy, production and operation of the ABC News Mobile and Broadband businesses, with responsibility for enhancing and expanding ABC News' content distribution and managing all operations for ABCNEWS.com, ABC News NOW, ABC News Video-on-Demand and other convergent platforms and devices, as well as the ABC News Digital Graphics Department. She will be tasked with developing and refining the best production strategies and work flow to distribute content across several platforms, delivering ABC News programs and ABC News NOW content to cable, broadband, mobile and Web partners.

And in his new role, Kavilanz will be responsible for developing the overall growth and monetization strategy for ABC News Digital by building analytical and market rationales aimed at launching new digital products and services, partnering with the sales, digital, operations and editorial teams to build business plans and develop market entry strategies covering all news and information platforms, including online, mobile, interactive TV and Internet-protocol TV.

Barrett and Kavilanz report to ABC News Digital senior vice president Paul Slavin.

The World Newser, the blog for ABC News' World News with Charles Gibson, celebrated the anniversary of its relaunch Thursday, and executive producer Jon Banner told WebNewser he is "gratified by the success it has had in the short time since the redesign." Page views for The World Newser are up 282% compared with August 2008, while page views on the World News page were up 38%.

Banner said the increases in page views have been "pretty consistent since we relaunched the page with the blog, which is just the second step in many steps to spread content across multiple platforms and get it to people wherever they are."

On the decision to place the blog smack down the middle of the World News page, Banner added, "That was a mandate from me, putting the blog front and center. Everything else is side dishes, and the main course is the blog."

Banner said the mission shared by himself, senior broadcast producer Tom Nagorski and senior domestic producer Tom Johnson is to "continue the conversation with our audience that we only really get to talk to on television for a half-hour every day at 6:30 p.m.," and to "try to get our material out, coming fast and furious, and keep it really interesting and vibrant to a digital audience," adding that the three of them—as well as numerous other senior producers, correspondents, digital reporters, producers and even desk assistants—are doing their "day jobs and digital jobs all at once."

When asked if there was any resistance to the double duty, he said people were "tripping over themselves" to get material onto The World Newser, saluting "real efforts by us and across the entire news division."

continued...

ABC.com will relaunch in the next few weeks, and a beta version of the new site is currently online.

The biggest difference after a quick comparison: The beta site no longer instantly launches the video player. The beta site also rotates ABC shows in its lead position, giving users the option to click through to pages for the respective shows. And an ad for a Lost T-shirt is displayed prominently, perhaps signaling a stronger push into merchandising.

Tired of all the questions about whether 150 years was enough of a sentence for Bernie Madoff, as if tacking more years on would have made a difference? For a serious look at the man behind the most infamous Ponzi scheme ever, check out Brian Ross Investigates: The Madoff Scandal, a new multimedia Kernl from Hyperion featuring ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross.

Each of the four weekly installments, with accompanying video, will provide direct exclusive reporting and timely information, and the content will be available throughout ABCNEWS.com, as well as on the Hyperion site.

Users can also install the Kernl on their own blogs, Facebook pages and other social-media platforms.

The World Newser, the blog for ABC News' World News with Charles Gibson, is taking a global view of Michael Jackson's death with dispatches from countries including Germany, Kenya, Pakistan, China, France and Japan, along with a look at how the news of Jackson's passing affected the online world.

In one particularly interesting entry, The World Newser shared the lyrics to "Morphine," a song from Jackson's Blood on the Dance Floor album, which contain numerous references to Demerol. TMZ reported Friday morning that the singer's death may have been caused by an overdose of the pain medication.

What better reason for ABCNEWS.com to bring back the Primetime link on its menu than ABC News Primetime: Questions for the President—Prescription for America, in which President Obama tackled questions about one of the most contentious issues facing his administration: health care.

ABC News Primetime: Questions for the President—Prescription for America continues on Nightline Thursday at 11:35 p.m. ET.

In one particularly interesting exchange Wednesday night, Obama deals with the devil. In speaking about health care, he said, "Absolutely, people are afraid of it. People are concerned -- they know that they're living with the devil, but the devil they know they think may be better than the devil they don't. And—and that's understandable."