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In April, we wrote about one of the changing paradigms in the news media industry resulting from the emergence of social media. Since establishing an online footprint, many news media companies have historically experienced two pain points:

• By allowing anonymous commenting on articles and not encouraging folks to use their real identities online, discussions on media sites can often devolve into vitriolic conversations that devalue the online experience.
• Because the registration process can be such a hassle for online users, media sites often collect inaccurate data on their members.  This "Garbage In, Garbage Out" phenomenon means that many media sites are making business decisions (such as serving personalized content or targeted advertisments, for example) based on unreliable user data.  When media sites force users to register the traditional way, they end up with far too many "John Smiths" from the zip code "12345".

As reported today on VentureBeat, DigiDay and WebProNews, innovative media companies including Tribune Interactive, Meredith, E.W. Scripps, Dallas Morning News, bizjournals and National Geographic Society are using Janrain Engage to solve these problems.

This week, the Los Angeles Times went live with RPX. Visitors to the LA Times website can now easily register or login to the site using an existing identity from Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, AOL or MySpace. The paper chose to only offer login through an existing third party identity provider. If a user does not have an account with one of the providers displayed at login, the site provides a link to quickly setup a Facebook account.