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My (Thwarted) Plan as the New York Times' Public Editor
About six weeks ago, I got a phone call out of the blue from a New York Times editor who told me that I had been recommended to be a candidate for the open Public Editor job at the Times. My first reaction (outside of shock) was to be honored that they would consider me, but I also felt pretty... more »
Who We Are
MediaShift tracks how new media -- from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism -- are changing society and culture.
Social Media
London 2012: The Thrills (and Agony) of the Social Olympics
It's an Olympic achievement. Not just the London Games, but the social media infrastructure behind them. People definitely engaged online during the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. But new apps, better mobile devices, and an Olympic policy encouraging athletes to use social media mean that fans will have more access and interaction with Olympians than ever before. An International...
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Technology
Need Help Cutting the Cord to Cable? This E-Book Will Guide You
We have never really liked our local cable company. Over the years, many of us have wasted time waiting for the cable guy to show up to install or replace the box that doesn't seem to work or been placed on eternal hold while customer service takes its sweet time. And to add insult to injury, every year our basic...
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EducationShift
Covering the Olympic Trials: 8 Lessons in Journalism Education, News and Business
Two blocks from our newsroom, 20,000 fans yelled, clapped and stomped for a world record. A former University of Oregon decathlete, Ashton Eaton, crossed the finish line in time to make history. When Eaton grabbed a U.S. flag in celebration, Tess Freeman, a student photojournalist on our staff, captured the trials' defining moment. For 11 crazy days, elite track and...
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Social Media
As Studios Go Online to Promote Movies, the Mass Media Ecosystem Shifts
Our mass media ecosystem relies on a constant flow of money to sustain itself in its present form. This money comes from many directions, including but not limited to TV advertising revenue, basic and premium cable subscriber fees, and movie box-office receipts. This revenue is gathered by various gatekeepers, who take a cut and then send monies back to production...
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BookShift
A Step-By-Step Guide to U.S. Copyright Registration for Self-Publishers
With the perceived risk among writers of copyright infringement so extremely high it's no wonder self-publishers are increasingly concerned about making sure their work is copyrighted. Many self-publishing service companies now offer copyright services, but you don't need to use them. While they charge up to $150 for the service, it costs only $35 to easily do it yourself. In...
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BookShift
As E-Book Demand Rises, Libraries Struggle With Publishers, Budgets to Deliver
A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Libraries, Patrons, and E-books, offers a glimpse at the current state of American libraries and finds them eager to lend e-books but struggling to do so, primarily because of budget limits and restrictions publishers place on e-book lending. Of America's 9,000 public library systems, 76 percent now offer e-books,...
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Legacy Media
Lessons Learned From Indie iPad Magazine Publishers
It seems like publishing a digital magazine on the iPad should be pretty easy. With some basic design skills, time, and a bit of money, publishing an independent iPad magazine is possible. But being successful -- rising on the Apple Newsstand charts, continuing to gain readers, and making money? Those are much tougher goals. Three independent digital magazine publishers recently...
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MarketingShift
What Hollywood Could Learn from the New York Metropolitan Opera
If someone were to have told you a few years ago that New York's Metropolitan Opera would become a model for digital innovation, you would probably have laughed. Yet, that is what it has become. You might say that the Met is now laughing a bit itself -- all the way to the bank. Now, Hollywood would be wise to...
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Social Media
How the Death of a Janitor Captured a City's Media Narrative for 6 Years
SPOKANE, Wash. -- For years, Otto Zehm lived an unassuming life on this city's margins -- working as a janitor during the day, eating dinner in convenience stores at night, playing guitar with his friends. In the spring of 2006, that quiet life ended after Zehm was taken into police custody for a crime he didn't commit. Today, Zehm,...
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MovieShift
As Vimeo Grows Up, It's All About Community
Last week in New York City, plaid-shirted twenty-somethings descended upon the IAC headquarters in Chelsea to partake in workshops, conversations, screenings and a free Biergarten at the Vimeo Festival While Vimeo might be a household name to most filmmakers, it certainly hasn't reached the broad recognition that YouTube has. But with live events like this and the support of its...
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MovieShift
An Actor's Life in the Digital Age: Trying to Make New Media Pay
I went to my first movie at 4 years old: "Mary Poppins" at the Sycamore State Theater in Sycamore, Ill. It was one of those large theaters with lots of character about it. Beautiful blue lighting glowed along the ledges and pointed to the lavish velvet curtains that surrounded the screen. Dick Van Dyke, who played Bert in the movie,...
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Your Take
Poll: How Often Do You Want to Read Your Local Paper in Print?
It's an idea from another time, another era: getting a print newspaper delivered to your home or office so you can keep current on news. As noted newspaper consultant Ken Doctor recently wrote: "By 2020, we'll be used to a few days a week of print, or maybe just 'the Sunday paper,' and wonder why we chopped down whole forests;...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #51: Kramer, Rosen on Future of Print Papers; Brian Boyer Moves to NPR
Welcome to the 51st episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. This week we take a deeper look at the changes at various local newspapers in North America, lowering their print frequency from daily down to a few times per week. Is this an alarming trend or a natural evolution of newspapers as...
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NewspaperShift
5 Lessons From The Oregon Daily Emerald's Digital Reinvention
The web address: future.dailyemerald.com. The one-word header atop the homepage: Revolution. And the tagline just beneath it: "The Oregon Daily Emerald, reinvented for the digital age." The student newspaper at the University of Oregon -- best known for its five-day-a-week print edition -- is morphing into a more wide-ranging, digital-first "modern college media company." On a special site that went...
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TVShift
Could LinkAsia's Digital Hybrid Model Be the Future for Global TV News?
Last July, a high-speed train crashed in the Wenzhou suburbs of China's Zhejiang Province, killing 38 people and injuring 192. The Chinese government's media apparatus quickly swung into gear, working overtime to quell growing rumors of an engineering flaw that may have caused the crash. But despite the Chinese Communist Party's attempt at full control over China's media outlets --...
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Business
Why We Killed Our College Daily Paper for a More Digital Future
We're about to close the book on the Oregon Daily Emerald. After 92 years, the University of Oregon's newspaper will end its run as a Monday-to-Friday operation in June. Yes, it's the end of an era, and we're sad about that. But it's also the start of a new era, the digital one. Next fall, we will replace our traditional...
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Free Speech
In the Philippines, a Brash Brand of Journalism Can Be Fatal
Two and a half years to the day since the world's worst-ever single mass killing of journalists took place in the southern Philippines, many suspects remain at large, the trial is stalled, and victim's families are being harassed and intimidated. MANILA -- Most days, Philippine presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda does a White House-style briefing with Manila's press corps, spinning the...
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MagazineShift
Magpile Brings Social Sharing to Print Magazine Enthusiasts
Reading a print magazine doesn't have to be a lonely experience anymore. Magpile, a new social site for magazine lovers, offers enthusiastic readers a place to share their favorite magazines and discuss them online. Founder and print magazine fan Dan Rowden, a web developer, noticed that although a number of websites let readers rate and discuss books, magazine fans were...
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Business
Can Web-Only Original Programming Finally Stick?
The days of skateboarding dogs holding sway on the web may be numbered. Technology companies and advertisers are professing their belief in the value of professionally produced original content. Portals and platforms like YouTube, AOL, MSN and Yahoo -- once known for aggregating and optimizing video produced by others -- are spending millions of dollars to develop and acquire programming...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #48: Yahoo CEO Under Fire; Pros and Cons of Metered Pay Walls
Welcome to the 48th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and the Rafat Ali as co-hosts. On this show, we turn to the chaotic soap opera that continues at Yahoo, once an Internet darling on its umpteenth remake. Its new CEO Scott Thompson appears to have padded his bio with a computer science degree that he never received....
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PoliticalShift
Will Online Video Coverage of U.S. Election Eat into Text-Based Stories?
As I've read up online about the 2012 campaign news in recent months, I've noticed I'm doing a lot less, well, reading. I've checked around a bit and confirmed that websites that traditionally focus on text-based journalism -- like Politico.com and NYTimes.com -- are indeed ramping up their video offerings to add a new dimension to their campaign coverage. The...
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Legacy Media
An iTunes Playlist for Magazine Articles? Zinio Thinks Outside the Brand
How many ways can you sell magazine content? In the rapidly changing world of digital magazines, we've seen all kinds of variations: multimedia apps, digital replicas, individual stories, single issues, subscriptions, and even the all-you-can-read buffet model. But these variations have usually happened within the boundary of a single magazine brand, rarely blending content from different publications. Zinio, the company...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #47: Positively Dan Rather; Future of Facebook; Rise of Snip.it
Welcome to the 47th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rafat Ali as co-hosts. On this show, Rafat had the honor (and early-morning wakeup call) to interview news icon Dan Rather at 7 a.m. while Rather was traveling by train to Washington, D.C. Rather has a new memoir out, "Rather Outspoken," and talked to...
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BookShift
Can E-Books Succeed Without Amazon?
E-book author Victoria Hudson doesn't like Amazon or the power it seems to wield with independent writers. She didn't want to sell her book and short stories on its Kindle Direct Publishing Select program, something she calls "too restrictive to authors." Instead she chose an alternative book distributor based in the San Francisco Bay Area called Smashwords. "I want my...
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NewspaperShift
Why It's a Bad Idea for Student Press to Fall in Love with Pay Walls
The Daily O'Collegian at Oklahoma State University is enjoying marginal success with its metered pay wall a bit more than a year after enacting it. At the start of spring semester 2011, the paper became the first U.S. student media outlet to charge a subset of readers for its content online, requiring a $10 yearly subscription fee for individuals outside...
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BookShift
What Is the Role of Libraries in the Age of E-Books and Digital Information?
Public libraries are a major hub through which Americans gain access to e-books and other digital resources, but these institutions' role in the digital transition hasn't been made easy by the nation's recent economic troubles. On April 9, the American Library Association released its annual State of America's Libraries Report, and many of its findings were grim. "Public libraries continue...
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Your Take
Poll: Where Are Your Favorite Places to Share Photos?
You recently went on vacation to an exotic and new locale and you want to show people your great photos from the trip. So where do you post them online? Are you a fan of Flickr or Facebook? What about Instagram? Or perhaps you're part of the thriving photography community on Google+. And let's not forget the old school folks...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #46: Photography Special: Creative Commons, Cameraphones, Instagram, Google+
Welcome to the 46th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rafat Ali as co-hosts. Rafat is celebrating his birthday, we're not sure how old he is, but we know that he loves photography. So this week we are celebrating his birthday by doing a special show focused on photography in the digital age....
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MovieShift
'Carnivàle' Creator Bypasses Hollywood, Launches Transmedia Story 'Haunted'
Discovered on the Internet and known as a storyteller with a unique vision, writer and producer Daniel Knauf, best known as the creator of "Carnivàle" on HBO, has ditched Hollywood and struck out on his own to mine the field of transmedia. With a beta project made public called "Haunted," Knauf's new company, BXX, is jumping feet first into the...
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PhotoShift
Photojournalists Scramble to Video. Is it Worth It?
Few can say they didn't see it coming. but many felt the final nail in the coffin was firmly in place when at the end of 2011 CNN fired 50 photojournalists. The international news network explained its decision in a letter: We looked at the impact of user-generated content and social media, CNN iReporters and of course our affiliate...
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Europe
Spain's iPad Mag, Vis à Vis, Shows Growth, Points to New Path
In a small office in Alcala Street, in the center of Madrid, a team of seven young entrepreneurial journalists are working overtime to produce the next issue of digital magazine Vis à Vis. Conceived exclusively for the iPad and launched in January, Vis à Vis is an interactive, visual and modern publication that wants to reinvent journalism. The first...
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Digging Deeper
Live Coverage of the 6th Annual Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- Once again, I am covering the Logan Symposium on the UC Berkeley campus, a gathering of some of the top investigative journalists in the country. I'll be covering the day's panels and talks via ScribbleLive. I can add in your coverage or tweets, just let me know if you're at Logan via the comments below....
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BookShift
Pew Survey Shows How E-Books Are Changing the Equation for Publishers, Readers
More Americans are reading e-books than ever, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The most impressive stat from the study is that 21 percent of adults had read an e-book in the past year, but adults are still more likely to read a printed book. Seventy-two percent of adults (age 16...
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Legacy Media
5 Creative Strategies for Magazines to Use Pinterest
Despite what you may have observed, you can pin more on Pinterest than recipes, home décor, fashion, and enough DIY projects for a lifetime. Much has already been written about magazines' use of Pinterest. Because the majority of the site's users are women, much of the coverage has focused on how Pinterest has presented opportunities for women's magazines to share...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #45: Rafat Returns!; Cord-Cutting Rising?; Google Surveys Instead of Pay Walls
Welcome to the 45th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rafat Ali as co-hosts. That's right, Rafat Ali is back in the saddle after a nearly three month trek to India, Burma and Iceland. And he's back just in time to talk cord-cutting once again, this time after new research showed that cable...
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PoliticalShift
As TV Biz Resists Disclosure of Super PAC Ads, ProPublica Turns to Crowdsourcing
Two years ago, the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Committee that unlimited political campaign spending by corporations and wealthy individuals was permissible under the First Amendment. To people who believed that moneyed interests already had an outsized influence on the electoral process, the decision was chilling. The ruling provided only one consolation for them: that...
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Public Relations
'Reckless Adrian Grenier': Will Personal Apps be Key to Celebrity Branding?
March marked the launch of "Reckless Adrian Grenier," an app built for the iPad, iPhone and iPod and created by Mobovivo for its namesake, actor and filmmaker Adrian Grenier. Some of you are moaning, "why does he need an app?" but others of you are perhaps "Entourage" fans, and an opportunity to get reacquainted with Grenier, who played Vincent Chase,...
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Social Networking
Infographic: The Role of Mobile Devices, Social Media in News Consumption
Editor's note: This week, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual State of the News Media report. The following is an infographic the organization put together to spell out some of the report's biggest findings and it is used here as a guest post. Click on the image below for a larger version of the...
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NewspaperShift
State of the News Media: Newspapers Need Initiative, Innovation and Investment
When I saw that the media industry's annual report card had been released late Sunday night, I clicked and scanned through the key findings for newspapers -- the industry that has been my daily passion since I fell in love with journalism at my high school paper. I hoped to learn that the wise folks at the Project for Excellence...
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Collaboration
How NPR, Public Media Use #PubJobs to Recruit Talent Collaboratively
Many organizations approach hiring like they do most other functions: as an individual sport. But when it comes to recruiting top talent in today's rapidly evolving media landscape, collaboration is necessary. As the director of talent acquisition for NPR, I believe that talent management is the engine driving public media forward -- and that this engine is best fueled by...
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MusicShift
With Rise of Streaming Services, Music Biz Pushes for Metrics
As I noted in the my SXSW Music 2012 post last week, subscription services and engagement apps are quickly becoming core factors driving the music industry and the conversations surrounding them. Services such as Spotify and Rdio are responsible for an increasing percentage of music consumption. And apps, such as Turntable.fm that are focused on engaging fans over simply...
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PhotoShift
Photos: Location, Highlight, Cyborgs Top SXSW 2012's Buzz List
Every March, the city of Austin, Texas, welcomes the world for its annual South by Southwest Festival, otherwise known as SXSW. The festival consists of three parts: SXSW Interactive, a four-day geekfest for the Internet community; SXSW Film, ten days of international cinema programs; and SXSW Music, a four day non-stop celebration of live music. The Interactive section, known...
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Social Networking
At SXSW Music, Streaming and Engagement Apps Rule
The common ground between technology developers and music companies becomes clearer and clearer every year at SXSW. For many years, the festival has seen a distinct interdependence between the two industries. However, as the Interactive conference transitions into the Music conference, the two industries are beginning to show significantly different trajectories. While the Interactive conference focuses more and more on...
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Collaboration
At SXSW, Austin Alchemy, Creative Culture Lead to Collaboration
One of the highlights of SXSW for me this year was a session called "Everything is a Remix, So Steal Like an Artist," a conversation about remix culture and creativity between artists Austin Kleon and Kirby Ferguson. As the session title indicates, their philosophy is that all artists build upon the work of others -- nothing is 100% original....
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Social Networking
What started out as a casual live music conference has grown into something huge. The South by Southwest conference now encompasses music, film and interactive, and spans 10 days in March. Last year, SXSW estimated that the conference brought in 65,200 people to its exhibit space, and pumped a whopping $168 million into the local economy in Austin, Texas.
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #41: 'The New iPad'; Newspaper Culture Clashes; NewYorker.com's New Editor
Welcome to the 41st episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the George Kelly as co-hosts. Kelly is online coordinator at the Contra Costa Times newspaper and is filling in for Rafat Ali. This week we have an action-packed show with a lot to cover. First up is "The New iPad," announced by Apple on...
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Your Take
What Would You Pay for Access to Your Local Paper's Website?
Does information really want to be free? Or do we all just want to get all the news that's posted online for free? Local newspapers have been struggling to figure out a business model for making money online and in digital platforms -- the main places where their readers want to get news. While the Wall Street Journal has charged...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #40: Pay Walls at L.A. Times, Gannett; TechCrunch Turmoil
Welcome to the 40th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the George Kelly as co-hosts. Kelly is online coordinator at the Contra Costa Times newspaper and is filling in for Rafat Ali. This week the big topic is pay walls, as both the Los Angeles Times and Gannett newspaper chains are planning to charge...
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Collaboration
Can Journalism Find Its Own 'Brooklyn Boheme' to Inspire Collaboration?
In 1980s Brooklyn, Spike Lee knocked on Branford Marsalis' door to introduce himself; Marsalis was soon playing saxophone for several Spike Lee joints. Elsewhere in the same neighborhood, Erykah Badu ran an idea for a rhyme by Carl Hancock Rux, which would later turn into her famous song, "Bag Lady." As the new documentary "Brooklyn Boheme" from directors Nelson...
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Philosophy
Data-Driven Investigative Journalism: No Laughing Matter
Jon Stewart is really, really funny when he makes fun of journalism. In "The Daily Show's" parody of the broadcast and cable news product, the show's writers and producers skewer not only the gloss, polish and stilted tone, but also the editorial decisions. But it isn't just TV. The Onion is really, really funny. It makes fun of print journalism,...
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TVShift
5 Theories on the Death of Cable TV -- And Why They're Wrong
It's become popular to declare the imminent demise of pay television. Whether at the hands of Google/YouTube, or as a product of cord-cutting, there's usually a sense of righteous indignation embedded in the arguments, something like: Cable and satellite companies have been ripping off consumers for decades ... and now their days are numbered. It's a visceral (and therefore...
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BookShift
How Social Media, E-Books, Self-Publishing Change Writers Conferences
At first, you came to the San Francisco Writers Conference to learn the craft of writing, to hear famous writers describe how they became famous, to learn the secrets of how to create a winning book proposal, to become enlightened by publishers about what they want and, most of all, to pitch literary agents, those elusive creatures who seem always...
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TVShift
A Cord-Cutter's Life: 10 Lessons Learned
I cut the cable cord in early 2006. When I tell friends and colleagues I'm a cord-cutter, the biggest misconception -- beyond initial worries about the phrase involving bodily harm -- is that I don't watch TV. I have a 42" flat screen. I watch TV all the time. I just don't watch regularly scheduled, commercially interrupted, monthly bill-required...
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Your Take
Poll: Have You Cut the Cord to Cable and Satellite TV?
There was a time in America when everyone had a dumb box. A boob tube. A TV that had a handful of broadcast channels, many of them not even programming for 24 hours. But now, we live in an age of TV diversity, when people get their shows through so many alternative channels: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, gray market sites,...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #39: Cord-Cutting Special: Comcast Streampix; Google Fiber
Welcome to the 39th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Brightcove's Eric Elia, who is filling in for Rafat Ali. This week we convene a special roundtable to talk about one of our favorite subjects: cutting the cord to cable TV! We had hoped that a Comcast executive...
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MovieShift
How New Platforms, Streaming Media Change the Equation for Indie Filmmakers
Traditionally, there were three main types of distribution for the work of independent filmmakers: theatrical, broadcast and straight to DVD. Most filmmakers hoped for a combination of all three. But everything has changed. The digital online world has opened up new avenues of distribution including video on demand, live streaming, and mobile and tablet applications. Indie filmmakers are harnessing...
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TVShift
Dear Cable and Satellite Companies, Hollywood Studios, and the People Who Make TV: The thing is, we love TV shows. We love the comedy, the drama, the sports, the events, and even sometimes what you call "romantic comedy." We remember fondly those days growing up as kids when the family sat around in the den watching our favorite shows after...
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TVShift
I'm Mad as Hell, But I Haven't (Yet) Cut the Cord
"You can cut the cable, dad," my teenage daughter has told me more than once when I've grumbled about the poor service, unexplained fees and large percentage increases I've had to pay over our introductory "triple-play" rates to our cable company. We did suspend our cable service for weeks a couple of summers ago when we were away much...
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MagazineShift
Why Esquire Created a Trailer for the Zanesville Animal Escape Story
Lights, camera ... magazine article? Esquire recently released a 46-second video trailer for a story in its March print edition, available on newsstands yesterday: "Animals," by Chris Jones, a feature about the escape and eventual killing of zoo animals in Zanesville, Ohio. Magazines have been creating videos to accompany articles for a while now. However, Esquire put an innovative twist...
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TVShift
Special Series: Cutting the Cord to Cable TV
With rising cable and satellite bills, thrifty Americans pinched by the recession have considered cutting the cord to cable. The savings can be enormous, even if the tech know-how can be daunting when creating your new cable-free TV-watching environment. So MediaShift has decided to devote a week of editorial to cord-cutting, with our in-depth guide, first-person accounts, and even a...
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Guides
Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Cable TV (Updated 2012 Edition)
This week MediaShift will be doing a special in-depth report on cutting the cord to cable TV -- who's doing it, why and how. For background, we're updating our special guide to cutting the cord we first published in January 2010. That post has been viewed more than 58,000 times, proving that there's an intense interest by the public in...
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TVShift
Spoiler Alert! Tech Is Changing the Way We Even Talk About TV
(Spoiler alert! The following post includes things that happened on "Downton Abbey," "The Sopranos" and "Dallas.") The post to Facebook on a late Monday morning was simple enough. A photo of actor Thomas Howes as his character William from "Downton Abbey," along with the status, "Oh, William. We will miss you." The post was meant to engage, and perhaps commiserate...
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TVShift
How Apps Are Making the 'Third Screen' a Primary Screen for Historical TV
On the last day of the History Makers International conference, a three-day event consisting of award presentations, panel discussions, and master classes for producers and broadcasters, a particular tweet caught my eye: "At third screen panel at history conference. I feel like a dinosaur." The faster-than-the-speed-of-light changes in the digital world may be making many people feel like dinosaurs, but...
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Public MediaShift
Localore Winners Gear Up to Transform Public Media
The following post is from Jessica Clark, who is the media strategist for the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), which produced the Localore competition. From Fargo to Austin, and Boston to the Bay Area, 10 public stations across the country are now poised to ramp up their innovation capacity. They'll be incubating projects led by winners of the Localore...
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Guides
Your Guide to Crowdfunding Public Media Projects
Need $40,000 to produce a local documentary? Just ask your audience. That's what filmmaker Sam Mayfield did, for a film she's working on about last year's protests in Madison, Wis. In a blog post on January 13, she wrote: We are currently trying to raise $40,000 of our $200,000 budget through Kickstarter, the online fundraising platform that facilitates grassroots investment....
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MagazineShift
Ladies' Home Journal Ventures Into Bold Crowdsourcing Experiment
In 1900, Ladies' Home Journal published an article containing predictions for the year 2000. Though some of the author's predictions were accurate -- Americans are indeed taller, and photographs are now sent around the world -- one key point was missing. The author didn't imagine that in the new millennium, the very magazine that published his predictions would no longer...
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Public MediaShift
How Social Media, Collaboration Fueled Reports on Australia's Refugees
An innovative Australian public journalism project has partnered student reporters and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with a refugee support agency and a social media startup. The aim of the project, #ReportingRefugees, was to tackle problematic media coverage of asylum seekers and refugees in a volatile political climate in parallel with educating students to connect with a "citizens' agenda." The result...
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BookShift
Self-Published Authors Still Rarely Make the Jump to Publishing Houses
For many self-published authors, a traditional publisher is an elusive dream. It means a team of professionals taking over marketing, advertising, publicity and the mechanics of publishing one's own book on paper and electronically. It means already forged relationships with booksellers, critics and other writers -- and it means more time to write, rather than haggling over the costs of...
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MovieShift
6 Filmmakers Talk About Documentary Films in the Digital Age
Lower costs in pro-consumer digital equipment, the crowdfunding phenomenon, and new online and mobile distribution models have opened the door the past few years to many first-time documentary filmmakers in the United States. Independent filmmaking is on the rise, and with that, a trend for more personalized storytelling. Many of today's documentary filmmakers are making bold, stylistic choices more often...
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Collaboration
The 5 Tenets of Open Journalism
I'm not a middle-of-the-roader and wasn't aiming for a compromise position with my discussion paper, "The Case for Open Journalism Now: A new framework for informing communities," published early this month by the University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Lab. Instead, I sought to identify and propel a culture shift that might build a healthier relationship among those who produce...
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Public MediaShift
Public Media: A Wish List for 2012
What's the No. 1 innovation that's needed in public media in 2012? I posed that question to the public media group on Facebook, as well as to some additional colleagues via email. The responses ranged from a focus on cultivating a culture of innovation, to calls for more innovative content approaches, to the need to grow public media's audience to...
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Your Take
What's Your Favorite 24-Hour Cable News Channel?
Cable news used to be so simple. There was CNN and not much else. But as CNN proved the case that people did have an appetite for TV news around the clock, more stations popped up on the cable dial, including CNN Headline News and the more opinionated Fox News and MSNBC. You'd think that might be enough, but not...
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NewspaperShift
For Better and for Worse: The Changing World of Science Journalism
Jeremy Roberts sat still on the shore of the Bitterroot River, photographing a female kingfisher. The chunky, crested icon of anglers would seize a fish, fly away, then return to the same branch to fish again. Time and again she came and went. In addition to the other photos he took, Roberts snapped a picture with his cell phone and posted it to Facebook.
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Business
7 Ways Salespeople Can Better Understand the Editorial Side of News
There was quite a reaction to my previous column, suggesting editors learn more about, and cooperate with, the business sides of their organizations. This time, I'd like to talk to people on the business side about how they can cooperate with the editorial side to work effectively to keep a news organization solid while also increasing revenues and ensuring the...
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MagazineShift
Getting a Tablet Is Easy; Getting Digital Magazines Is a Pain
Buying that new iPad, Kindle or Nook for Christmas is just the first step to becoming a digital magazine reader. While shopping for books and movies is a fairly straightforward process, getting your favorite magazines onto your new e-reading device can be trickier. The ways you can buy a magazine are rapidly multiplying, making it harder for readers to evaluate...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #31: BBC World Invades U.S.; ReadWriteWeb Sold to Say Media
Welcome to the 31st episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali. This week we turn across the pond to the U.K., where the BBC is pushing its BBC World cable news channel to an American audience. The BBC recently made a deal with Comcast to increase its...
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BookShift
Print Books Still Rule the Holidays: The Trouble With Gifting an E-Book
My template for what Christmas should be was set during the holidays I spent at my grandparents' farm in eastern Nebraska. My grandparents had nine children and 23 grandchildren, and the gift exchange resulted in a sea of wrapping paper that my cousins and I would wade through, a bow on every baby's head. Sometimes you ended up with a...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #30: Netflix, Time Warner Make Peace?; E-Books Price-Fixing; Holiday Gadgets
Welcome to the 30th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali. This week we have an eclectic mix of topics. First up is the UBS Media and Technology Conference in New York, where the talk of the conference was the rise of over-the-top video services and talks by...
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Business
Why Our Startup Decided Not To Target the Newspaper Industry
Are there opportunities for technology startups which target the media business? Fred Wilson -- a venture capitalist who has made investments in Twitter, Zynga, Tumblr, Etsy, and FourSquare, among others -- apparently thinks not. As reported on MediaShift on November 15, Wilson told an audience of CUNY students with interests in business and journalism that better opportunities could be found...
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NewspaperShift
How to Transform News Leadership in the Digital Age
Since 2007, Knight-McCormick leadership programs at the Knight Digital Media Center have given me a front-row seat at the transformation of news leadership to meet the demands of the digital age. The more than 100 news leaders who have participated in the programs faced a dizzying array of choices about how to best shape a digital strategy, navigate tricky organizational...
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Your Take
What's Your Feeling About Cutting the Cord to Cable TV?
No one likes the high price of cable TV, but then again, few people like to go without TV. Thanks to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, and gadgets like the Roku box and Apple TV, there's more chance than ever to get the shows you want when you want them. But the lucrative cable industry won't go away...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #29: Spot.us Acquired; Buffett Buys a Newspaper; Cord Cutters Rising
Welcome to the 29th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali. This week we get back from the Thanksgiving holiday and find some interesting mergers happening. First, there's the crowdfunding site Spot.us being acquired by American Public Media (APM) and its Public Insight Network. Guests David Cohn,...
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Legal Drama
Changing Media Landscape Could Topple FCC's Indecency Rules
Since the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has regulated indecency in broadcast programming. It has enforced laws that prohibit broadcasters from airing, at least during certain hours, any "patently offensive" sexual or excretory material. And since the 1970s, broadcast outlets have attacked the FCC for doing so. They've challenged the agency's authority, as well as the constitutionality and consistency...
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Philosophy
Why the World Needs Better Science Journalism
If you regularly do a Twitter search for the words "science journalism," like I do, you'll be amazed, amused and sometimes shocked by the amount of bashing science journalism takes in the Twittersphere. It shows that not all science journalism is created equal, and it's a sign of the times, really: Not all journalists who write about science are actually science journalists. They're general journalists who were -- willingly or out of necessity -- given a science story to cover that day.
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Business
The Challenges of Using Kickstarter to Fund a New Novel
This post is a guest post in response to a MediaShift story by Simon Owens that detailed how one novelist bypassed a publisher to raise money on Kickstarter. In this case, things didn't go quite the same way. Chances are you've never heard of Nick Miller. He's a writer, but you won't be able to find his work in literary...
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Ethics
Juan Williams, Lisa Simeone and Public Media's Quest for Integrity
Trust "is perhaps the most important asset public broadcasting carries forward into evolving public media future," writes Byron Knight. Knight should know. He's had a long career in public broadcasting. Now, he is co-director of the Editorial Integrity for Public Media Project, a ground-breaking attempt to define public media's principles for a digital age. Leading public broadcasters, NPR, PBS, and...
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BookShift
E-Books and Self-Publishing Roundup, Nov. 23, 2011
The best stories of the week from across the web on e-books and self-publishing1. For their children, many e-book fans insist on paper (New York Times)2. Thirteen ways to jumpstart digital revenue (FOLIO:)3. Mobile devices boost magazine reading (MediaPost)4. Five lessons on using e-books for news (Poynter)5. Amazon taps self-published authors for Kindle lending library (paidContent)6. Challenge for publishers in 2012: funding tablet and e-reader product development (eMedia Vitals)7. Penguin pulls new e-books...
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MagazineShift
Finding the Right Blend of Print and Digital at Meredith's Recipe.com
I'll take the Florentine lasagna, please, with a 2D barcode and a mobile app on the side. Food magazines pride themselves on delectable recipes and luscious photography. Recipe.com, whose title is also its website's URL, is a new publication from magazine giant Meredith, and while every recipe is indeed accompanied by a photo, the print magazine's content is thoughtfully integrated...
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Business
Truth and Contradictions: The Global News Industry Looks to the Future
In recent years, the global news industry has been battered by the double tsunami of the economic downturn and technological disruption, as managers of newspapers and magazines struggle to integrate digital media into their business models. Now, over the past two years, the tablet and the smartphone have appeared, promising to again rewrite the relationship between digital distribution and content...
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MediaShift
A Strange, Sad Day in Journalism: Romenesko's Resignation
Aggregation is an underappreciated art. Sure, with a quick tutorial, almost anyone can perform some version of it. But I have stumbled across only a few individuals and media outlets who have done it really well for any length of time on the web. Jim Romenesko has heavily influenced the practice of online aggregation. By many accounts, he was one...
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AdvertisingShift
6 Tips to Support Digital News Through Advertising
This is the first in a series of columns on new business models for news and other media. You'll be able to find other stories in the series by clicking on the Business Models tag. One of the toughest ways to support a digital news operation is via advertising. Over my years working in advertising, helping many and talking to...
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Your Take
Apple has already brought innovation to music, cell phones and laptops. Is the TV set its next frontier? Rumors have swirled for years that Apple would come out with a TV set, but nothing's happened yet. VentureBeat's Dylan Tweney believed there was enough evidence to support an Apple TV set coming out by the 2012 holiday season. Plus, Steve Jobs...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #26: Streaming Video Special: Apple TV Set?; YouTube Channels
Welcome to the 26th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and entrepreneur Rafat Ali. This week is a special look at streaming video services, including the possibility of an Apple TV set and the impending launch of YouTube channels. Guests include tech journalist Dan Frommer of SplatF and Brent Weinstein, head of digital services at United Talent Agency.
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BookShift
E-Books and Self-Publishing Roundup, Nov. 3, 2011
The best stories of the week from across the web on e-books and self-publishing 1. Amazon launches free e-book borrowing for Prime members (CNET Reviews) 2. E-book maker Kobo to become a publisher (CBC News) 3. Next up to sue BitTorrent users: Book publishers (ReadWriteWeb) 4. Our relationship with e-books: It's too complicated (GigaOM) 5. Magazine publishers look to book industry for digital sales...
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PoliticalShift
Convergence 2.0: How Public TV Can Save Democracy
This September, I wrote in MediaShift about the unfortunate effects on journalism that the deregulation of campaign financing could have. The article hinted that public media might be able to offset the damage, and maybe even save democracy. This sounds so grandiose that, to explain how and why, we need to back up a few steps -- quite a few,...
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BookShift
This piece appears in Brian Reich's upcoming book "Shift & Reset: Strategies for Addressing Serious Issues in a Connected Society." Read the Kindle version here. Some people argue that books are outmoded, that there are other media available today that offer more immediate methods for delivering knowledge and insight. But right now, long-form, substantively driven, and thoughtful consideration of...
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BookShift
How Social Networks Might Change the Way We Read Books
Reading hasn't always been seen as a solitary act. Our first experiences with books demonstrate that: before we know how to read, we often have people -- a parent, a teacher -- reading out loud to us. But once we know how to read, there's a sense that we're supposed to read silently and oftentimes, alone. Even so, we're...
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BookShift
Why Self-Publishers Should Consider Using Lightning Source
Self-publishing services are on the rise -- a dramatic one. And because of this, technologies are evolving weekly, and advertising is flowing. If you're using a free subsidy press and e-book distributor to self-publish and sell your book, one service to get familiar with is Lightning Source. Lightning Source has free book cover templates, spine-width calculators, and bar codes,...
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Your Take
What Do You Think About Amazon's Power in Book Publishing?
Bookstores are closing. Book publishers are feeling cornered. Authors are confused. As Amazon becomes a growing power in the book publishing world, where does that leave the traditional players? The Kindle e-readers have revolutionized book reading, with convenience, low prices and portability. So do you think of Amazon as your hero, bringing you more great books at low prices? Or...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #25: The 800 Pound Gorilla of E-Books: Amazon
Welcome to the 25th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and entrepreneur Rafat Ali. This week is the Beyond the Book series at MediaShift, and keeping with that theme the podcast is all about Amazon.com.
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BookShift
Is Amazon Short-Changing Authors?
One day, publishers will mark their industry as existing between two eras: before and after the Kindle. Publishing has changed dramatically since the days when a handful of influential publishers -- mostly located on the East Coast -- determined what America would read.
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5Across
5Across: Beyond the Book: E-Books and Self-Publishing
Print books have survived the onslaught of so many new forms of media over the years, from movies to television to the Internet. But digital media finally caught up to books with the introduction and popularity of e-books and e-readers, with lower price points and the convenience of the "buy" button and quick downloads. Not to mention: who wants...
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Business
E-Book Publishers Must Provide Flexible Access to Avoid 'Media Hell'
Trying to consume an e-book can be an infuriating experience. Consumers like me want to enjoy the digital version of a book when, where and how we want. We love to be able to read it from multiple screens, search it automatically, share annotations, even have the text read aloud as we drive or do dishes.
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BookShift
How a Novelist Bypassed His Publisher and Raised $11,000 on Kickstarter
This week on MediaShift, we are exploring the dramatically changing publishing industry in our Beyond the Book special series. Stay tuned for more pieces like this one in the coming days. Sign up for our new weekly newsletter on e-books and self-publishing here. Tim Pratt was confident enough that his publisher would print a fifth novel in his urban fantasy...
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BookShift
5 Reasons E-Books Are Awesome, Even for the Very Reluctant
This week on MediaShift, we are exploring the dramatically changing publishing industry in our Beyond the Book special series. Stay tuned for more pieces like this one in the coming days. Sign up for our new weekly newsletter on e-books and self-publishing here. When Amazon first introduced the Kindle in 2007, I had no desire to own one. I was...
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BookShift
Special Series: Beyond the Book
Digital technology is disrupting the book industry as never before. The rise of e-books is poised to overtake sales of print books soon, and people are reading books on Kindles, iPads, Nooks and more. Plus, the equation for authors is changing, as they get more tools to go around traditional publishers and go the self-publishing route. We decided to do...
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BookShift
The Book Publishing Industry of the Future: It's All About Content
This week on MediaShift, we are exploring the dramatically changing publishing industry in our "Beyond the Book" special series. Stay tuned for more pieces like this one in the coming days. Sign up for our new weekly newsletter on e-books and self-publishing here. I studied book publishing in graduate school, an aspiration that seems a tad shortsighted these days. At...
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Europe
In Spain, 'Little Black Book' of Journalism Shows Profession in Crisis
Pressure from the publishing industry has weakened the watchdog role of journalists, turning them into lapdogs at the service of corporations and politicians and unable to serve their readers. That's one of the conclusions of Bernardo Diaz Nosty, journalism professor at the University of Malaga. Diaz Nosty, also a journalist, is the author of "Libro Negro del Periodismo en...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #23: Occupied Wall Street Journal; Netflix Backs Down
Welcome to the 23rd episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and entrepreneur Rafat Ali. The main topic on this show is the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, how the media has covered it, and the remarkable "Occupied Wall Street Journal" newspaper. Special guest Arun Gupta is the co-founder of the newspaper and explains the importance of a print publication in political circles.
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Public MediaShift
WBUR Helps Listeners Find Better Health Care Options
Martha Bebinger, a longtime reporter for WBUR in Boston, had been reporting on efforts to control health care spending in Massachusetts for years, but over the past year and a half to two years, interest in the subject intensified among listeners, she said, and it was time to help them be part of a conversation. And so Bebinger and WBUR...
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Collaboration
Can Mainstream and Ethnic Media Collaborate?
While investigative collaborations are blossoming in newsrooms across the country, few are taking place between mainstream and niche media. As a result, news organizations could be missing the opportunity to reach a wider audience, tap into reporters' talents, and uncover stories from perspectives not often examined. Niche media include ethnic media and those that publish in a language other than...
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EducationShift
Students Go Old School, Create Newspaper with Typewriters, Xactos, Film Cameras
As if taking their cues from an entertainment industry increasingly inclined to remake just about anything from the '80s, today's college students seem to be jumping into a collective Hot Tub Time Machine. We watch as our journalism students covet Atari, combat boots, Star Wars and other throwbacks as if they discovered them.
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #22: Remembering Steve Jobs with Two Biographers
Welcome to the 22nd episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and entrepreneur Rafat Ali. This week is a special edition dedicated to Steve Jobs, the technology visionary who died on Wednesday. The news spread quickly online and on social media, with so many heartfelt memories, stories and old videos. And of course, in death as in life, Jobs remained a polarizing figure, with so many admirers and so many haters.
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MagazineShift
Once Magazine Takes the Photo Magazine into the App World
Photographers who might have aspired to see their work published on the glossy pages of a magazine can now opt for the glossy screen of an iPad. Once Magazine, a "visual storytelling" app for the iPad, is a new showcase for photographers' work and related multimedia. The app provides three cohesive photo essays, each with an array of high-resolution photos...
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BookShift
Did Apple Collude with Publishers to Fix Prices on E-Books?
Apple's iBookstore wields enough power to change how electronic books are sold and priced, according to plaintiffs in class-action suits against the Cupertino, Calif., company and several traditional publishers. The complaint alleges that Apple violated antitrust laws by colluding with publishers to keep e-book prices high. Hagens Berman, a consumer rights class-action law firm, filed the original complaint in U.S....
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Your Take
What Do You Think of the New Line of Kindles?
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had his Steve Jobs moment this week, unveiling a slew of new Kindles, a new Silk browser and even a Newsstand. (Here's a handy comparison chart of the Kindles, and here's a roundup of all the media coverage and analysis.) The big point was that Amazon was offering up a new Kindle Fire tablet that was...
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Business
How to Partner With a Pro on Your Self-Published Book
With triple-digit growth in self-publishing services, technologies evolving weekly, and advertising hype, it's tough for authors to figure out which vendors to choose for which services. In this series, I've been looking at three popular paths to get your print and e-book to online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores, without going through the subsidy presses.
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MobileShift
Best Coverage, Analysis of Amazon Kindle Fire Announcement
Amazon recently made waves by announcing its new Kindle Fire tablet, running a custom version of Android and starting at $199. Plus, there were the new Kindle Touch models in the mid-range and the low-cost Kindle, starting at $79 with ads. We scoured Twitter, tech blogs, Google+ and even Quora to find the best coverage and analysis of the announcement....
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Public MediaShift
Public Radio Stations Make Space for Innovation at PRPC
What does innovation feel like? According to newly minted MacArthur genius Jad Abumrad, it's a bit like being chased by a tiger: visceral and gut-churning. Abumrad, the co-host of WNYC's ground-breaking show Radiolab, advised the audience at last week's Public Radio Programming Conference (PRPC) to seek out this life-or-death sensation. Innovation isn't always obvious, he explained in his keynote address,...
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EducationShift
School Libraries Struggle with E-Book Loans
Just as many predicted, sales figures show that more people are opting to buy e-books rather than printed copies. Sales of e-books rose 167 percent in June, reports Publishers Weekly, with sales totaling $473.8 million for the first half of the year. But sales of print books -- both paperbacks and hardcovers -- continue to decline.
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BookShift
How to Get Your Self-Published Book in All Kinds of Stores
With triple-digit growth in self-publishing services, technologies evolving weekly, and advertising hype, it's tough for authors to figure out which vendors to choose for which services. In a three-part series, I'm looking at three popular paths to get your print and e-book to online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores, without going through the subsidy presses.
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BookShift
A Brave New Book World: How Authors Become Entrepreneurs
A few years ago, I interviewed author Ron Carlson about his novel "The Signal." I asked him about his experience with his longtime editor, Carol Houck-Smith, who had recently died. He remembered back to 1977 when he had just signed a deal to publish a novel with Houck-Smith at Norton: It's such a treasure to me to have had this...
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BookShift
How to Self-Publish Your E-Book
With triple-digit growth in self-publishing services, technologies evolving weekly, and advertising hype, it's tough for authors to figure out which vendors to choose for which services. In the coming weeks, I'll be looking at three popular paths to get your print and e-book to online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores, without going through the subsidy presses.
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Your Take
What's the Best Business Model for Metro Newspapers?
Metro daily newspapers have been in a long rut in the United States, with many retrenching, closing or flailing for a new digital business model while cutting editorial staff to the bone. Many papers are watching the pay walls at places like NYTimes.com, and the new launch of the pay site, BostonGlobe.com. And what about newspapers like the Guardian in...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #20: Newspaper Special: Boston Globe Pay Wall; Guardian U.S.; Philly Tablet
Welcome to the 20th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali, the one and only founder of PaidContent. This week is a special edition on newspapers, newspapers and more newspapers. First up, the Boston Globe launched its new pay-walled site, BostonGlobe.com, which is free for print subscribers but costs $3.99 per week for non-print subscribers.
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MediaShift
MediaShift Mixer Co-Hosted with ONA
Please join us at our MediaShift Mixer co-hosted by ONA in Boston as a kick-off to the ONA11 Conference (but you don't have to be registered for the conference to attend). Here's a partial list of the special guests at the mixer: Mark Glaser, MediaShift Dorian Benkoil, MediaShift Jeanne Brooks, ONA Andy Carvin, NPR Professor Jeremy Caplan, CUNY Professor Jere...
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Business
Financial Times Enjoys Life Beyond the App Store
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when app makers were fighting to get featured in Apple's App Store, and crying out in protest if their app didn't make the cut. So it's quite a turnabout to talk to folks at the Financial Times, who have not only removed their apps from the App Store but have thrived with an HTML5 web app that lives outside of the App Store completely.
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Europe
Infographic Explains Hackgate, News of the World Scandal
Maybe you're still confused about the whole "hackgate" scandal in the United Kingdom, where the News of the World tabloid hacked cell phone voicemail messages to get inside information. Perhaps our guide to the scandal was just too dense. Well, here's an even simpler proposition: one simple infographic to explain the whole thing. The infographic was created by security firm...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #18: CNN Buys Zite; DoJ Blocks AT&T; Starz Drops Netflix
The Mediatwits podcast is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry. Welcome to the 18th episode...
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Media Usage
Traveling Back in (Technology) Time With Hurricane Irene
Hurricane Irene brought home for me how our media technology defines eras. On the eastern end of New York's Long Island on Saturday evening, as the storm approached, my family and some friends were having a pizza party for my younger daughter's birthday at Emilio's, a local restaurant in Greenport. As the technology receded, then came back, intermittently and in...
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EducationShift
Teaching Magazine Journalism Beyond the Magazine
While magazine industry professionals struggle to come up with the best ways to use today's technology, magazine journalism educators are working hard to prepare their aspiring co-workers. Journalism schools with strong magazine programs have developed innovative courses and assignments to challenge students to think beyond the printed page. Three magazine journalism educators shared specific innovations and ways of thinking that...
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EducationShift
How e-Textbooks, Online Modules Could Keep Journalism Education Current
Journalism textbooks can be a challenge (or as one commenter on my recent post on the subject called them, an oxymoron) in today's fast-changing media world. The long wait between writing and publication usually means at least portions of a book about journalism will seem outdated when it finally reaches the hands of college students. Imagine trying to write about...
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Business
Publishers Doing an Apple End-Run to Deliver to iPad
Major publishers are starting to deliver content to the iPad outside Apple's App Store, avoiding the company's rules and restrictions that limit what they can do and how much they can earn. Instead of building native apps in iOS, the proprietary operating system for the iPad and other Apple devices, the publishers are using HTML5, the latest version of the...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #16: Why Google Bought Motorola; Yahoo Scoops ESPN Big-Time
Welcome to the 16th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent. This show looks at the week's big news, including the head-turning buyout of Motorola Mobility by Google for $12.5 billion. What was driving the search giant to become a hardware maker? Was...
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NewspaperShift
Revolution in Georgia: Student Newspaper Goes Digital First
The Red & Black, one of the largest and most-feted college newspapers in the country, recently dropped a bombshell on its readers and the student journalism community. In a wraparound section of a special issue published on the first day of the new school year, the University of Georgia student newspaper revealed it will be switching from a daily to...
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TVShift
HBO Go App Shakes Up the Streaming TV Scene
In a second-quarter earnings letter to investors distributed last month, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the biggest threats to his business weren't the likes of Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus, but applications such as HBO Go. "HBO subscribers can watch HBO on-demand through their MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) provider web interface (DishOnline.com, say), or through the HBO Go dedicated...
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Legacy Media
A Parent's Guide to Streaming Media
With recent news that the Nintendo 3DS can now stream videos via Netflix, and iPhones becoming a regular accessory in schools, a world of content has now shifted to the fingertips of youth. But the influx of technology and access to the content have raised concerns over how kids are accessing that content. "There is such a sheer amount...
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Social Networking
Overexposed? Baby Photos in the Age of Facebook
From the moment that pink solid line appeared on the pregnancy test, every little decision felt monumental. Home birth or hospital? Cloth or disposable? Co-sleeper or crib? Sling or stroller? With each choice, I did more research than perhaps a person should do and there was almost always more information than I needed. By the time my last trimester...
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Media Usage
How to Control (Or At Least Influence) Children's Media Access
This week, MediaShift will be running a special series on navigating the relationships between kids and media. Stay tuned all week as we explore topics like this one. Once you have a child old enough to use a remote, the angst begins over how to control access to media. And absent the will to live a technology-free existence, media...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #15: Special Cord-Cutters Edition; TV Networks vs. Streaming
Welcome to the 15th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent. This show is all about cord-cutters, people who like to watch TV without paying for cable or satellite TV (like Mark & Rafat). The big news is that Fox will not allow...
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Your Take
How Do You Like Watching TV Shows?
It used to be so easy. You'd cozy up on a couch, get your remote control (and popcorn) and turn on the TV for a night of vegetation. But now, you have options. So many options. You can watch shows when you want by recording them on your DVR. You can cancel cable TV and use a Roku box to...
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Your Take
What's Your Current Interest in the Phone-Hacking Scandal?
The phone-hacking scandal seems to have everything: tabloids chasing celebrities, celebrities suing news organizations, police getting bribes, politicians cozying up to media moguls, media moguls questioned at Parliamentary hearings, and a media mogul's wife showing off her mean left hook vs. a pie-throwing, tweeting comedian. It has certainly set social media, cable TV (except for Fox News) and mass media...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #14: This Week in Rupert; NY Times' Pay Wall Pays Off
Welcome to the 14th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent. There's a lot of news to cover in this podcast, including Apple's earnings, Yahoo's earnings, the possible sale of Hulu, and more. But the big deal this week is of course another heaping...
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Social Networking
Google+ Terms of Service, Illustrated
Editor's note: When Google+ launched, there was much ado about the Terms of Service, especially in how they related to photos. So, artist Ryan Estrada set out to simplify things with the following infographics, which immediately went viral. He explains below what inspired them. I'm an artist who makes my living sharing my work online, and when I joined Google+...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #13: Smartphone Ownership Booms; This Week in Rupert
Welcome to the 13th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent. This week's show looks at a recent survey by Pew Internet that found that 35 percent of Americans now have smartphones, and that ownership is even higher among people of color. Guest...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #12: Facebook Gets Skype Video; Phone-Hack Scandal in U.K.
Welcome to the twelfth episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent. This week's show looks at the recent launch of Facebook video chat with Skype built in. While Facebook called its announcement "awesome" it was underwhelming for tech and media insiders who have...
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Europe
UK Phone-Hacking Scandal Shows Clash of Privacy with Need to Know
British journalism has just undergone one of the most radical weeks in several decades. "Rocked," "chaos," "shocking" -- use whatever adjectives you like, but news this week that the News of the World (NOTW) tabloid hacked into the phones of child murder victims, families of London's July 7, 2005 terror attacks, and parents of soldiers killed in action has turned...
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TVShift
KOMU-TV Puts Google+ Hangout Video Chat on the Air
As a reporter and anchor for KOMU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Columbia, Mo., and the broadcast lab for the Missouri School of Journalism, I already chat with viewers via Facebook and Twitter on our "Livestream" behind-the-scenes webcam mounted on the news set. Now, KOMU has added yet another delightful distraction to the other side of the set. It's turned me into...
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MagazineShift
Golf Digest Adds Interaction, Depth, E-Commerce to iPad App
It seemed like the first-delivered iPad was hardly unsheathed from its box before News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, apparently unfazed by a rich past of misguided forays into Internet ventures, announced the launch of The Daily, which was immediately labeled the first tablet-only newspaper. And it was mere weeks -- if not days -- after its debut when media critics...
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MagazineShift
Smartphone Sensors Could Revolutionize Digital Magazines
We've all done those personality and health quizzes in magazines. You know, the ones where you suspect that answer A will categorize you as the personality type you're trying to avoid, so you choose B instead. Everyone does that, right? These evasive strategies for magazine quizzes, though, could be a thing of the past as smartphones and tablet devices evolve...
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AdvertisingShift
NY Times Paywall May Be Working, Could Work Better
There's been a lot of hand wringing about pay walls in digital media lately, but not a lot of discussion on how they're working or how to improve them. The pay wall that's gotten the most press, of course, is that of the New York Times -- instituted on March 28. The Times asks people to pay for access after...
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NewspaperShift
The Necessity of Data Journalism in the New Digital Community
This is the second post in a series from Nicholas White, the co-founder and CEO of The Daily Dot. It used to be, to be a good reporter, all you had to do was get drunk with the right people. Sure, it helped if you could string a few words together, but what was really important was that when news...
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Collaboration
Dispatch from IRE: Important Lessons from Investigative Collaborations
From the air-conditioned meeting rooms to the muggy poolside bar, everyone at this year's Investigative Reporters and Editors conference was talking collaboration. It seems that our once doggedly independent industry is beginning to embrace a lesson long forgotten from elementary school: how to play nicely with others. And that might be because there are few alternatives. With newsrooms across the...
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BookShift
Literary Agents Try New Role as Self-Publishing Consultants
With big publishing buying only the crème de la crème of books, and more authors turning to self-publishing, many literary agents are getting squeezed right out of the middle. But some savvy agents are acting as literary consultants to help their authors self-publish, a role that offers up new opportunities and challenges for everybody in the industry. I talked with...
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MovieShift
4 Filmmakers Use Social Media to Crowdsource Their Stories
The second line of filmmaker Tim Burton's new short story is this: It is, of course, a tweet -- and one that encapsulates a new participatory era where contributions and voices from the public are reflected in all forms of art and storytelling, film included. One of the early adopters of emerging media was filmmaker Kevin Smith, who now has...
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Public MediaShift
FCC Report on Media Offers Strong Diagnosis, Weak Prescriptions
A consensus has begun to emerge around the Federal Communications Commission report, "The Information Needs of Communities," released Thursday: The diagnosis is sound, but the remedies are lacking. The 465-page report (see full report, embedded below) is the result of 600-plus interviews, hearings and reams of research conducted over 18 months. It represents the most ambitious attempt yet to come...
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Business
Mirror Awards Celebrate Media: Hoping It's Not Same, Old
The media universe is more multifaceted, and confused, than ever, something Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley alluded to at the Mirror Awards on Tuesday. "Even though we're a technology company, we behave like we are a media company," he said. "It's a question people ask all the time: What is a media company?" By giving Crowley and co-founder Naveen Selvadurai the...
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MagazineShift
Solving the App Development Conundrum for Small Magazines
Even a small magazine can make a powerful impression with a well-designed mobile presence. In some ways, digital platforms can level the playing field for small publishers wanting to attract readers' attention with innovative content and presentations. But getting onto mobile platforms with apps and optimized websites can be a significant challenge for small publishers. While major magazine companies like...
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Social Media
BBC Social Media Summit Fixates on Creating 'Open Media'
Journalists need to shift their mindset to talking with -- instead of at -- the "people formerly known as the audience." That was a take-home message from the recent BBC Social Media Summit in London. It's a notion others (including me) have written about in academic research regarding media representation of minorities. But it was The Guardian's Meg Pickard who...
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Legal Drama
Who Really Owns Your Photos in Social Media?
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced June 1 that the company was partnering with Photobucket to make it easy to share photos at Twitter.com. With a "Twitter native photo-sharing experience," he said, "users will own their own rights to their photos." The implication? That this might not be the case with third-party services. Therein lies the real battle over photo-sharing sites:...
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RadioShift
5 Must-Have Apps for iPhone Radio Reporting
Having the right tool for any job is important, especially when your finished product is due right now. Since February 2010 I've been doing all my field production and reporting on my iPhone for all-news WTOP-FM and wtop.com in Washington, D.C. You can read my in-depth report on how I use the iPhone for reporting in this previous report for...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #9: Twitter Buys Tweetdeck; Facebook's Role in Breaking News
Welcome to the ninth episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week's show looks at the recent purchase of Tweetdeck by Twitter, and the questions it raises about companies starting businesses on the platform of other companies. If you run an app for...
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Social Networking
Newsroom, Community Use Facebook as Key Hub After Joplin Tornado
When Joplin, Mo., was hit with a massive tornado, I knew my community would react. Even though we're nearly 250 miles away, many people in Columbia and mid-Missouri are either Joplin natives or have family there. My newsroom's normally local-focused Facebook page quickly became a clearinghouse for updates about how mid-Missouri could help the tornado-ravaged community. Fans are using the...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #8: LinkedIn's Bubbly IPO; Grueskin on the New York World
Welcome to the eighth episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week's show looks at the big IPO of business networking site LinkedIn, with the stock price doubling to more than $90 per share in its first day of trading, valuing the company...
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MagazineShift
Children's Magazines Cater to True Early Adopters with Mobile Apps
Digital magazines designed for kids are giving new meaning to the phrase "early adopter." Children's magazines have come a long way from those dusty print editions at the pediatrician's office. While adults struggle to join the transition to digital magazines and apps, their offspring are moving seamlessly into the new age of publishing. Kids now have a variety of digital...
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Media Usage
Massive Digital Divide for Native Americans is 'A Travesty'
Perhaps nowhere in the United States does the digital divide cut as wide as in Indian Country. More than 90 percent of tribal populations lack high-speed Internet access, and usage rates are as low as 5 percent in some areas, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Sascha Meinrath, director of New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative calls it "a travesty."...
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NewspaperShift
No Gloom Here: In Latin America, Newspapers Boom
If you spend much time in U.S. newsrooms these days, you might contract a serious case of gloom and doom. Talk is still focused on declining circulations, aging readerships, and the absence of new business models to pay for the production of quality content. But it would be a mistake to assume that this is the case for the rest...
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Your Take
What's the Best Social Media Policy for News Organizations?
So far, most legacy news organizations have been all over the map when it comes to social media policies. The old guard doesn't want reporters and editors to go on Twitter and show bias or give opinions on stories in progress. The new guard wants to mingle with the audience and have some personality on social media. The latest place...
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Social Networking
Canadians Prefer to Get News from Friends (not Editors) on Social Media
Journalists today are expected to be active on social media, sharing observations, anecdotes and links with their audience. Facebook itself is reaching out to newsrooms, recently launching the Journalists on Facebook page as a resource for the media. But a study from Canada suggests more people prefer to get their news via their friends and acquaintances on social media, than...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #5: Who Owns Social Media Followers?; Byliner CEO John Tayman
Welcome to the fifth episode of "The Mediatwits," the new revamped longer form weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week's show is about the various social media policies at news organizations, and how they vary from place to place. Plus, can media companies actually own the followers...
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Collaboration
Highs and Lows of "Post Mortem" Collaboration Between Frontline, ProPublica, NPR
Recently at the Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, Mark Katches, California Watch's editorial director, asked a room full of reporters and editors if anyone wanted to share a "collaboration horror story." There were chuckles, but no volunteers. Horror story may have been too strong a term, but don't be misled by the silence. The thing is,...
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NewspaperShift
Why I Gave Up the Newspaper to Save Newspapering
The following is a guest post from Nicholas White, the CEO of The Daily Dot, a new startup in community journalism. White leaves a long lineage of newspaper men and women in his family to join digital media and explains why. Six months ago, I quit my family's 179-year-old newspaper company. I left not because newspapers are crumbling -- though...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #4: Impressive, Creepy Apple; The iPhone Radio Reporter
Welcome to the fourth episode of "The Mediatwits," the new revamped longer form weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week's show is obsessed with all things Apple -- and iPhone. Apple had a blow-out earnings quarter, nearly doubling its profits and selling more iPhones than ever with...
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EducationShift
5 Great Media Literacy Programs and How to Assess Their Impact
Increasingly, Public Media 2.0 projects are moving not only beyond broadcast to social and mobile platforms, but into the realms of digital and media literacy training. Producers of such projects recognize that in order to participate fully in the new media world, children and adults need to be able to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate messages in a wide variety...
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MovieShift
10 Big Ideas for the Future of Film
Alfred Hitchcock said a film is made three times: when you write it, when you shoot it, and when you edit it. Today there's a fourth: when you distribute it. With all the new technologies and D.I.Y. opportunities available to reach people with your project in fresh and exciting ways, you get to be just as creative when you take...
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Business
Dan Gillmor Excited by Experiments by Entrepreneurial Journalists
Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here. He's an entrepreneur, author and outspoken evangelist of entrepreneurial journalism, but Dan Gillmor wants you to know he doesn't...
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Social Networking
Susan Orlean Explains How Twitter Affects Her Long-Form Writing
As I spoke to Susan Orlean about the role the social web plays with her long feature articles and books, I couldn't help but compare her to another famous writer for the New Yorker: E.B. White. Like Orlean, White had decided to leave the frantic mania of New York City life for a much quieter one in the country, moving...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #3: HuffPost Lawsuit and Grading AOL; 'Write More Good' Author
Welcome to the third episode of "The Mediatwits," the new revamped longer form weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week's show looks at the recent $105 million lawsuit brought against Huffington Post for not paying its bloggers, as well as our grades for AOL's various business moves,...
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MagazineShift
How B2B Magazines Have Evolved into Multi-Platform Brands
You won't see Angelina Jolie on their covers anytime soon. But like their consumer magazine counterparts, business-to-business (B2B) magazines bring in serious money, and have become far more than just print publications.
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NewspaperShift
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, NY Times Feud at Logan Symposium
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- I am at the 5th Annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium, a gathering of the top investigative journalists that happens each year at University of California at Berkeley. Lowell Bergman, a professor at the school and former "60 Minutes" producer and longtime investigative journalist, brings together an invite-only crowd of journalists, technologists, academics and...
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BookShift
The Easiest, Cheapest, Fastest Way to Self-Publish Your Book
You are excited to self-publish, but sorting through the sheer quantity of offerings, claims, and technologies is overwhelming. I spend a good part of each week researching the topic and, for authors of trade paperback books with no or few illustrations, my answer is to use these two services for creating your e-book and print book: Smashwords and CreateSpace. Create...
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RadioShift
How One Radio Reporter Ditched His Equipment for an iPhone 4
It's been more than a year since I packed away my laptop computer, digital recorders, microphones, cables and cameras, and began covering Washington, D.C. with only my iPhone. When I first came to the top-rated all-news WTOP in 1997, the bag phone I carried weighed as much as a bowling ball. Reel-to-reel tape recorders (ask your parents) were the newsroom...
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EducationShift
5 Teachable Lessons From the Washington Post's Mistake
It's rare for the public to see news sausage in the grinder. The gore of the editing process is kept from view. Yet while the factory floor of the newsroom may be less sanitary than a meat processing plant, a glimpse inside the news process may still be more likely to inspire confidence in the final product. We got such...
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PoliticalShift
How Social Media is Being Used in the Scottish Elections
Since Barack Obama successfully tapped into social media during his run to the White House in 2008, every political group has tried to use the digital world to bring in revenue and votes. This year's Scottish Parliament elections, which take place on May 5, will be the first in that country since Facebook and Twitter came to dominate the social...
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Embeds
Video: Robert Scoble on How to Build a Career in Media
I don't know about you, but when I want to find out about the newest tech stuff, I read blogs and their related Twitter feeds. As a newspaper journalist, it puzzles me that somehow those blogs, with their limited resources and short history, manage to beat the mainstream media. Take, for example, uber-blogger Robert Scoble. When Flipboard's servers went down...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #2: AT&T Buys T-Mobile; 'Tweets from Tahrir' Authors
Welcome to the second episode of "The Mediatwits," the new revamped longer form weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week's show looks at the repercussions of the $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile USA by AT&T. Rafat has had both services and will stick by AT&T, but Mark is...
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MovieShift
SXSW Showcases Rise of Multiplatform Storytelling and Collaborative Filmmaking
South By Southwest (SXSW) is an annual gathering of interactive, film and music creatives, executives and marketers in Austin. It is the ideal setting to explore multiplatform storytelling, multiscreen experiences and projects that reflect the talents of the collective. After several days of knowledge-filled panels and hyper-networking featuring digital thought-leaders, there were a few notable trends that made an imprint...
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Europe
Romanian Magazine Uses Facebook for 'Crowd-Publishing' Success
It all started over a beer. One evening in April 2009, Cristian Lupşa and four other young journalists were chatting in a pub in Bucharest, Romania about the low quality of the country's print media. They should start their own magazine, someone joked. They could call it Decât o Revistă, which in slightly broken Romanian means "just a magazine." It...
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MusicShift
SXSW 2011: Music Apps Get Social; Streaming Battle Continues
SXSW is easily the most chaotic experience in the music industry. For the 14,000 people that attend the music conference it provides opportunities to immerse themselves in the ecosystem that powers much of the global business. It is one of the best times to tee up deals and relationships that could power significant developments for the rest of the...
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Public MediaShift
Defunding Public Media Would Stifle Digital Innovation
Political analysts are dismissing last Thursday's House vote forbidding public radio stations to spend federal dollars on content (HR 1076) as little more than red meat for the Republican base. But even if not a single dollar ends up being stripped from public broadcasting appropriations, the current battle threatens to strangle innovation in a sector that was just gaining new...
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Mediatwits
Mediatwits #1: NY Times Pay Wall Blues; Rafat Visits Al Jazeera
Welcome to the first episode of "The Mediatwits," the revamped, longer form weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali, who is working on a stealth startup. This week's first beta show was mainly about the new metered pay wall coming to NYTimes.com and its mobile apps. Special guest Steve...
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BookShift
The Advantages of Middleman Services for Self-Published e-Books
Whether you're a self-publisher or a large publishing house, you're probably dealing with six to a dozen online retailers to sell your e-books. But several companies offer go-between services that simplify the process for publisher and retailer. Should you consider using these middleman services?
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Business
A Twitter Chat About Writer Pay Rates in the Digital Age
With the rise of content farms such as Demand Media and Examiner, and the recent AOL/Huffington Post merger, there has been a lot of talk about how much writers are being paid online. On the farms, the only way for writers or copy editors to get high pay is to work very fast -- likely with poor results. And Huffington Post and many other group blogs rely on an army of contributors who aren't paid at all.
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Your Take
Will You Pay for Access to NYTimes.com?
The pay wall cometh to the New York Times. On March 28, the New York Times will let you view 20 articles on NYTimes.com per month, and thereafter you'll need to pay for one of their new digital subscription plans. Print subscribers will get full digital access, and you can still view articles for free if you're over your 20-article...
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Public MediaShift
IMA + SXSW = Major Discussion on Future of Public Media
Public media makers found a whole new crew to hang with at this year's Integrated Media Association (IMA) Conference on March 10 and 11. Fueling excitement was a new collaboration: The IMA preceded and then flowed into the interactive track of the SXSW festival on the 12th. Attendees at a Knight Foundation-supported array of SXSWi panels on news innovation and...
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MagazineShift
Apple Takes Big Bite Out of Digital Subscriptions for Small Mags
With new restrictions on subscription opportunities -- and the large portion of income from them that will now be claimed by Apple (30%), in particular -- some indie magazines are reconsidering their digital efforts, and wondering whether they're still worthwhile.
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Public MediaShift
World TV Revamps Site to Entice a Younger Audience
How can public media spur multi-platform engagement through a national TV channel? That's the challenge that was posed to the team developing WorldCompass.org, the companion website for the World TV channel, a news and documentary channel now available in parts of 32 states.
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Legal Drama
Will Righthaven Copyright Lawsuits Change Excerpting Online?
Editors' note: An update has been added at the end of this article. Is it an infringement of copyright to post an excerpt from an online news article -- including a link to its source -- on a website, a blog, or an online forum? This practice is ubiquitous in online journalism, but its legal status has been in question...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Shankbone's Wikipedia Photo Portraits Spread Like Wildfire
David Shankbone is arguably the most influential new media photojournalist in the world. He has taken over 1,000 portraits of prominent people across a variety of fields for articles on Wikipedia.org and its foreign language equivalents. Because the pictures are copyleft -- or free for reproduction, alteration, and distribution -- they are used by numerous non-profits, schools, authors, television programs...
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MovieShift
How to Experience the Oscars on Mobile, Social Media
The Academy Awards are less than 127 hours away. While most people haven't seen all 10 Best Picture nominees, the Oscar-nominated reels may still be experienced through the revelry of mobile, digital and social initiatives. For moviegoers who still want the big screen experience of dreams and swans before Sunday, AMC Theatres offers the final chance with its Best Picture...
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Online Video
Closed Captions Should Be Standard with Online Video, TV
When "The French Chef" appeared on PBS in 1972 with captions, it marked the first TV show ever to be fully accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing. For the next decade, people with disabilities enjoyed more and more captioned TV, culminating in a 1990 law that required all TV shows to be captioned. Fast forward to today. When...
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MusicShift
4 Insights on the Future of the Music Industry
The music industry is still in tremendous turmoil. Yet it is also full of the kind of discussions needed to remake and rebuild the industry. Fostering those conversations is the purpose of the revamped New Music Seminar (NMS), the most recent edition of which took place last week in Los Angeles. The conference focused on the music industry's evolving economic...
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EducationShift
Blizzard Builds KOMU Community with Mobile Video, Facebook
I've always dreamed of a time when my community could come together with the help of our on-air and online collaboration. All it took was a blizzard to make it happen. Mid-Missouri was hit with a blizzard-like storm that dumped 17.5 inches of snow into Columbia, Mo., and even more south of the city. The entire viewing audience of KOMU-TV was home and stuck inside.
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MagazineShift
How the Kindle Made Single-Story Sales a Reality for Magazines
I've never seen a "Not for Individual Sale" label on a magazine story. So why can't I buy most individual magazine articles in digital form just yet? Selling stand-alone stories has seemed like a potential business model for magazines and other journalism organizations since the rise of iTunes. Observers hyped an incipient micropayment business model for journalism. But few companies...
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MusicShift
Silverman: CD Sales to Co-Exist with Cloud, Digital Downloads
There's a growing feeling in the American music business that the future will be in the cloud. No one will need physical CDs anymore, but will listen to music on streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify, which will eventually merge into a grand digital jukebox. But industry veteran Tom Silverman, who founded dance music label Tommy Boy Records in...
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TVShift
The Future of TV (According to Hulu)
Distributors will certainly play a role in the future of TV, but we believe that three potent forces will be far more powerful in shaping that future: consumers, advertisers and content owners. Consumers have spoken emphatically as to what they want and what they do not want in their future television experience.
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NewspaperShift
NY Times Defends WikiLeaks Collaboration, Metered Pay Wall
"All the News That's Fit to Print" is both the slogan of the New York Times and the title of the most recent installment of the Kalb Report, a monthly media discussion put on by George Washington University in D.C. Given its title, the overflow audience at last night's discussion between Marvin Kalb and Times executive editor Bill Keller and...
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World View
Will Freedom of Expression Hold in Southern Sudan?
JUBA, SUDAN -- "If someone from southern Sudan trusts you, they will tell you enough to write a book," said Cecilia Sierra Salcido, a Mexican missionary nun turned media entrepreneur who runs Radio Bakhita in Sudan. "We broadcast a special history series, as so much here has not been written or recorded, and so many people have stories to tell."...
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Social Media
In Search of Meaningful 'Social Media Optimization' (SMO)
I must admit that the acronym SMO sends shivers down my spine. It reminds me of search engine optimization (SEO), which in itself is a good and logical thing. Unfortunately, it has led to countless "SEO experts" who have infested Twitter.
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MusicShift
6 Predictions For the Music Industry in 2011
The music industry had a wild ride in 2010. Companies came and went, layoffs hit every sector, rapid growth delivered opportunity, and Spotify still didn't launch in the U.S. This year, 2011, should be no different. Here are some predictions and thoughts about what 2011 may hold for the music industry. 1. A Major Label Shakeup Despite all the talk...
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BookShift
2010: The Year Self-Publishing Lost Its Stigma
For over a decade I've been speaking at conferences about self-publishing to audiences of dejected, rejected authors. There was always a stigma associated with self-publishing, with many people considering it lower quality vanity press. But this year, new faces appeared in the crowd: agents, editors, and publishers eager to understand self-publishing. Why? Self-publishing books has finally reached the mainstream,...
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MagazineShift
iPads, Print-on-Demand Slowly Transform Magazines in 2010
This revolution is going to take its time. It's been a year of high expectations but little fulfillment for those who thought 2010 might forever change the way we read magazines. We've seen that disappointing uses of new tools, limited audience interest, and small initial financial returns are going to result in a gradual shift, not a sudden transformation....
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MediaShift
Special Series: Year in Review 2010
It's holiday time, and that means travel mania, less work and yes, year-end roundups. Yes, they are the lazy way to finish out the year for journalists and bloggers around the world, the ultimate in traffic catnip. But we thought we could take a different approach, doing year-end roundups for each niche we cover at MediaShift, giving our correspondents the...
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MovieShift
'The Social Network,' Streaming Boom Dominate Film in 2010
From Pandora to Palo Alto, digital and social media grabbed movie headlines in 2010. The year started with a box office record-breaker that captured our 3D imaginations ("Avatar") and is ending with David Fincher's fascinating look at Facebook ("The Social Network") collecting awards for film of the year (American Film Institute, Los Angeles Film Critics, National Board of Review, New York Film Critics, et al).
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Public MediaShift
Brazilian Public Media Faces Tough Digital Transition
Belém, BRAZIL -- At the mouth of the Amazon river, vendors at the Ver-o-Peso market display the region's fruits, fish and crafts on splintered tables and rusting carts. They hail prospective buyers who pass by their closely packed stalls. Just a block over, behind the security gate of the Estação das Docas, a collection of renovated waterfront warehouses, eco-tourists stroll...
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BookShift
Books in Browsers? Google, Amazon Bring E-Books to the Masses
For authors and publishers already overwhelmed, last week's news about the Google eBooks store and Amazon's Kindle for web only added to the waterfall of controversy pouring into an already raging river of e-book and publishing hype. The big takeaway from these two announcements, and a recent "Books in Browsers" event that I attended, is that the web browser is...
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Social Media
CNN's Joshua Levs Uses Social Media Savvy in Hard, Soft News
When Joshua Levs left NPR's Atlanta Bureau to become a correspondent for CNN, he found that something was missing. Specifically, it was time. The rapid pace of TV left him with a fraction of the time he once had to present the many layers of a story. In the end, Levs saw that social media could fill the gap and provide an additional avenue for him to share information and connect.
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TVShift
Why I Want a Hulu for Sports (And Why It Won't Happen Soon)
When it comes to television shows and events, we the people have been taking more and more control of what we see and on what medium. The rise of everything from DVRs to streaming Netflix to mobile TV means that we get to decide when we want to watch our favorite shows. More people have taken the plunge and cut...
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EducationShift
J-Schools Shift from Learning Labs to Major Media Players
Perhaps the most striking change for journalism schools is the degree to which we have shifted from being learning labs whose actual journalism (if any) was limited in its distribution and impact, to being significant -- even major -- media players in our communities. It is clear that in journalism schools across the United States major projects are increasingly making substantial contributions toward filling the holes left by the hollowing out of local "legacy" media.
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Social Media
How NewsHour Used Crowdsourcing to Refute TSA Meltdown
Social Media content on MediaShift is sponsored by the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships, a program offering innovative and entrepreneurial journalists the resources of Stanford University and Silicon Valley. Learn more here. During Thanksgiving week, the debate over stricter TSA security measures was turning into the big story. A handful of airport security anecdotes were making the rounds via...
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Embeds
How Storify Helps Integrate Social Streams Into Articles
Curation seems to be the big buzz word in journalism and online content these days. It's also an area that's generating a lot of product innovations. New services such as Keepstream, Storify, Storyful and Qrait are jumping into the space, aiming to offer new tools to help people curate web and social media content. Curation is a way for journalists...
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EducationShift
10 Reasons Our Student Newspaper Blog Stinks
Amid many scoops and successes this semester, The Minaret, the weekly campus paper I advise at the University of Tampa, has endured a major bust. Roughly three months in, our efforts to launch a buzzworthy and newsworthy blog have failed -- spectacularly.
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Public MediaShift
8 Key Lessons the CBC Learned Working with Citizen Journos
The 2010 G20 summit in Toronto marked the first time the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation collaborated with citizen journalists on a large and integrated scale. In the lead up to the event, we noticed our online community was passionate about the topic. As a public broadcaster, we saw it as a perfect opportunity to tap into that conversation and encourage...
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5Across
5Across: What's Next for Public Media?
While most people think of public media as being government-funded broadcasters such as NPR, PBS, BBC and CBC, the definition is being expanded to consider public-serving new media. So that might also include new non-profits such as ProPublica, Oakland Local or Bay Citizen, who all are looking to serve the public as a mission that is more important than making money. But how are these new entities -- as well as the old guard in public media -- going to evolve in the digital age?
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Public MediaShift
Innovative Projects at Public Media Camp 2010
The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net. Ira Glass. Gwen Ifill. Big Bird. These are some of the public faces of public media, but behind the scenes lies...
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Public MediaShift
The Business of Public Radio: WNYC Bulks Up, Builds Out
New York Public Radio, which includes WNYC, the most listened to public radio station in the country, has in recent years developed a lot of ways to, in the words of CEO Laura Walker, "diversify revenue streams." It has increased its member base, used new fundraising techniques, attracted new grants, conducted capital campaigns to buy radio licenses and build new offices and studios, made financial investments, developed new sponsorships, increased web revenues, rented out its event space and more.
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Public MediaShift
How Should Public Media Respond to Efforts to Defund It?
"Here is what I still don't get," wrote NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen in response to my November 18 article, "how can public media develop a strategy or simply a coherent response to the culture war in which it is entangled if it cannot admit to itself or reason publicly with the fact that only one side in the culture war wants to destroy it... and the other one doesn't? What is public media's culture war strategy? Not to have one?"
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Public MediaShift
NPR, PBS Try to Tame Controversy, Embrace Tech at PubCamp
The second annual National Public Media Camp, which wrapped up Sunday night at American University in Washington, D.C., provided an opportunity for representatives from all three organizations to share their experiences and -- more importantly -- the lessons learned. Not surprisingly, the session entitled "How to handle an online revolt" was one of the many highlights of a packed weekend of diverse discussions.
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Public MediaShift
A Viral Video Takedown of Public Radio (in 5 Acts)
Why is NPR such an easy target for comedy bits and video parodies? It doesn't take a regular listener of Science Friday to figure it out. They're a bunch of mega-nerds. With every subtle use of alliteration, every time Robert Siegel says "draconian," and each transitional upright bass interlude, they slap a big fat "kick me" sign in the...
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Public MediaShift
How Public Access TV Evolved into Community Media Centers
The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net. Around the country, community media centers are launching exciting new collaborations with local organizations, neighborhood activists, schools, and media outlets to...
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Public MediaShift
Public Media Experiments Show Promise, Need to Involve Public
The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net. This article was co-authored by Jessica Clark, with research support from Christopher Ali and Erin Roberts. After a slew of reports,...
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Public MediaShift
Special Series: Public Media 2.0
The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net. About this Series How are public media makers and outlets evolving in the digital, participatory age? Stories in this week's special...
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Public MediaShift
5 Emerging Trends That Give Hope for Public Media 2.0
Public media is facing the same pressures as commercial media when it comes to digital: How can they transition to a new age of social media, collaboration and audience interaction? From today until Thanksgiving, MediaShift will have a special in-depth report on Public Media 2.0, with analysis, case studies, a 5Across video roundtable and coverage of this weekend's national PubCamp in Washington, DC.
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MagazineShift
Are Magazine iPad Apps Profitable in the Long Haul?
Magazine editors and publishers are excited about tablet devices like the iPad. In them, they see a chance to give consumers the best that digital media can offer -- and to be able to charge them for the content. But does the profit from the apps justify the expense of building and marketing them? And even when the apps are...
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MagazineShift
City Magazines Expand Audience and Revenues with Web, Apps
Even back in 1888, King Kalakaua of Hawaii recognized the power of city and regional magazines. His royal charter led to the creation of the magazine Paradise of the Pacific, whose goal was to display the civilization of the islands and to draw tourists and business. Kalakaua would be amazed by the transformation of the publication now called Honolulu Magazine....
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Newsweek-Daily Beast Merger; Slate Hurting?
In this week's 4MR podcast, I discuss the recent merger announcement between Newsweek magazine and online publication The Daily Beast. The deal becoming finalized was first reported by Nick Summers, a former Newsweek reporter now at the New York Observer. I talked with Summers about the challenges Newsweek has faced, and his back-and-forth online with Slate's Jacob Weisberg about the current state of Slate.
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NewspaperShift
How I Won the Washington Post Pundit Contest with Social Media
I'll forgive you if you don't yet know it, but I'm America's Next Great Pundit -- or at least that's what Washington Post readers decided last week. After reading everything from blogs to live Q&A chats to video roundtables to traditional Op-Eds, voters on the Post's website winnowed 1,400 contestants down to one: me. I'm not letting it get to...
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Public MediaShift
Inside the NewsHour's Multi-Platform Election Night Bedlam
Elections test how much information a news organization can process and then quickly and accurately share it with an audience. They're also a good time for news organizations to take stock of how far they've come since the last one, and to try the latest journalistic tools (or gimmicks). Four years ago, YouTube was nascent and Facebook had finally opened...
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MediaShift
Google's Schmidt Talks Mobile Revolution, and How Digital Media Could Empower A 'Rogue Evil Person'
On Wednesday night, over 200 movers and shakers from the fields of finance, law, and policy crowded into a meeting room at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York to hear a talk by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the new "director of Google Ideas" (and Council fellow), Jared Cohen. The event was part of the Council's ongoing CEO...
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World View
Canadian Murder Trial a Crucible for Real-Time Coverage
Late last month in a Canadian courtroom, Russell Williams, a former high-ranking colonel in the Canadian military, pleaded guilty to the murders of two young women as well as 86 counts of break and enter, sexual assault and other crimes. His sentencing hearing was widely covered by major Canadian media. Here, Canadian online journalism professor Robert Washburn explains how journalists...
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NewspaperShift
Notable Moments From the 2010 ONA Conference
"Welcome to the conference where journalism supposedly doesn't know it's supposed to be dead." Those were the welcoming words from Online News Association executive director Jane McDonnell as she opened the 2010 Online News Association Conference. Many of the top people in online journalism in the Unites States, Canada and other countries are in Washington, D.C. this week for the...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Knight Fellows Switch from Sabbaticals to Hands-On Projects
Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com. For much of the past 40 years, the idea of a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University was a dream come true for mid-career journalists,...
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NewspaperShift
Newspapers Must Consider More Free, Citizen Media Content
Newspapers can be saved and they can get back to delivering a consistent return on capital to investors, but this can't be achieved using old methods. At CRG Partners, our experience working with newspaper companies in the U.S. and U.K. has shown us that publishers and their executive management seem to believe that traditional cost-cutting methods of layoffs, smaller and...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: A $100 Million Expansion for Public Media?
In this week's 4MR podcast I look at the ambitious plan by American Public Media honcho Bill Kling to add more than 300 new reporters and editors to four local public radio newsrooms, at a funding cost of $100 million. These new reporters would be digital-first and focus on text and multimedia before radio. I spoke to Ken Doctor, who wrote a detailed article about Kling's plan recently.
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MusicShift
10 Truths About the Modern Music Business
I've been covering the digital music business for MediaShift for more than 18 months, and in that time I've chronicled new services and examined key trends and news. Below is a look at 10 things that I've come to believe are true about the modern music business. 1. The "DIY Revolution" has Been Relatively Ineffective Although going it on your...
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MagazineShift
Revamped Forbes Pushes Advertorials, Social Media, Conflict
Earlier this year Kevin Gentzel, the chief revenue officer of Forbes, took a look at what the chief marketing officers in the Forbes CMO Network were doing with their companies. He realized they were becoming content creators -- and that this had big implications for his magazine and other traditional media. Gentzel said this underscored the massive shift that was...
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BookShift
A Self-Publisher's Guide to Metadata for Books
Metadata used to be a wallflower, hiding out at the library with the Dewey Decimal system. Now it's at every party, flitting about gathering and sorting books on mobile devices, e-readers, and websites. Metadata is a core component of digital information and news; so good book metadata is good book marketing. It's an essential tool for all self-publishers. For those...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Howard Kurtz Leaves Post for 'More Nimble' Daily Beast
Howard Kurtz is not only the dean of American media critics, but he has "walked the talk" of his obsession with media. He is a multi-platform juggler, having been in print at the Washington Post for nearly three decades, hosting CNN's weekend show, "Reliable Sources," and writing the Media Notes blog for Washingtonpost.com for 10 years. And he even does...
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Technology
Linden Lab's Rosedale Considers 'Scrum' Method in Newsrooms
My software developer friends talk a lot these days about two words/concepts: Agile and Scrum. At first I thought it was typical dev talk with no relevance for newsrooms, but I eventually realized these notions are part of a major shift in the way all companies -- including media companies -- will have to adapt. As Wikipedia explains it, agile...
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MagazineShift
Narrative Magazine Takes the Literary World Digital
Poetry on your iPhone. Short stories on your Kindle. Or, if you're not yet into e-reading, how about a complete print-on-demand literary magazine? However you like your literature, Narrative Magazine has you covered. Literary magazines aren't exactly known yet for their digital expertise. This genre of magazines has moved slowly into the online realm, mainly publishing limited web content. But...
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Public MediaShift
KETC Works with Community on 'Homeland' Immigration Project
Fresh from their ambitious multi-city Facing the Mortgage Crisis project, KETC/Channel 9 in St. Louis has launched a new community-based news project on another hot topic: immigration. Homeland aims to "apply public media sensibilities, expertise and capacity to address a complicated and polarizing issue," said Amy Shaw, KETC's vice president of education and community engagement. The project includes a website...
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MovieShift
Adrian Grenier Turns Camera on Paparazzi in HBO Documentary
"I'm going to meet Adrian Grenier from 'Entourage' and see his new documentary," I told a friend recently. That friend is a female who's married but also a fan of "Entourage." "Can you tell him I think he's cute?" she said. I think he gets the message. Grenier plays Vincent Chase, the good-looking idiot savant in "Entourage" who makes...
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NewspaperShift
How Aftonbladet Varies Paid Content with Clubs, Micropayments
While newspapers in the U.S. are struggling to find ways to fund online content, Aftonbladet, the most read newspaper in Sweden has been successfully charging for online content for several years. Here's a look at how paid content is working in Sweden. Aftonbladet: Early to the Web Aftonbladet, founded in 1830, is one of the biggest daily newspapers in the...
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Public MediaShift
A Guide to Rising Public Media Networks in the U.S.
While it's taken public broadcasters awhile to catch up to the possibilities and dynamics of social and mobile media platforms, over the past year on MediaShift we have been documenting a flurry of innovation that reveals new possibilities for how the sector might share content, do business, and engage publics. Here's a guide to several types of rising public media...
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MovieShift
How Filmmakers Use Crowdfunding to Kickstart Productions
According to the crowdfunding pitch for the film "Art Machine," a $1 donation will buy you "love and respect from the cast and crew." And if you give $1,000, you get perks like a DVD and a speaking role in the film. That's the promise from director Doug Karr and Chop Wood Carry Water Productions for anyone who supported...
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MagazineShift
Activist Magazines Foster Debate Online, Strong Bonds in Print
Climate change. Immigration. Economic crisis. Consumerism. These are all major issues covered by the magazines Mother Jones and Orion, and both magazines have won awards for their high-quality journalism. At the same time, they are nonprofits with tight budgets and ongoing fundraising campaigns. Both magazines have found new energy through digital media, and have developed many opportunities to get their...
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Collaboration
Public Media Corps Takes on Broadband Divide for Minorities
If there was a reality show about the Public Media Corps (PMC), the intro might sound something like this: "Here's the true story of how 15 fellows, five public media institutions, three high schools, three community organizations, a library and a museum collaborate to bridge the broadband divide." Secretly, I wish there was a reality show about the project because...
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Social Media
Social Media Helps Drive Traffic, Engagement at NewsHour
When the PBS NewsHour relaunched both on-air and online in December, a new homepage was unveiled, a news blog was born and a new correspondent joined the team. But another big change unfolded behind the scenes as well: The addition of a social media desk assistant (myself) dedicated to fostering an online community and better distributing PBS NewsHour content digitally....
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Public MediaShift
While Others Shrink, KQED Expands Cross-Platform News
Last month, KQED News in San Francisco dramatically expanded the scope of its news coverage with a new website, an increase from six to 16 local radio newscasts and the addition of eight news staffers, including six producers/reporters, a developer and a social media specialist. Its expansion will continue over the next several months (look for a new news blog...
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Collaboration
KCET's 'Departures' Exemplifies Community Collaboration
I've written for MediaShift several times about journalistic collaboration between news organizations, such as the Climate Desk project, for example, or Public Media's EconomyStory. But there's another kind of collaboration that's critical to the future of journalism: Collaboration between a news organization and the community it serves. This kind of collaboration is critical for a few reasons. First, as anyone...
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Business
How Metadata Can Eliminate the Need for Pay Walls
You have to admire his chutzpah. Rupert Murdoch, the so-called nemesis of public interest news, is now being hailed by some as its potential savior. Sick and tired of people reading his news outlets for free online, Murdoch has erected pay walls around his sites (or some of them at least). Anyone who wants to see what is published on...
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Online Video
10 Ways to Make Video a More Interactive Experience
I love my iPad. One of the reasons I love it is that it's a great device for watching video. Some mainstream media integrate video very nicely into their iPad applications. However, it seems that all this slickness comes at a price: The conversation with the people formerly known as the audience is often non-existent. It seems that the potentially-messy-but-genuine...
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Social Media
Experts Weigh Pros and Cons of Social Media
OurBlook.com has been conducting an ongoing interview series on the current and future role of journalism and social media. In previous posts for PBS MediaShift, I shared some of the insights we've gathered about the future of journalism, and the skills that will be required of future journalists. In this installment, experts weigh on the impact social media has had...
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Legal Drama
Who Owns Your E-Book of 'War and Peace'? Probably Not You
Who owns your copy of "War and Peace"? If we're talking about a dog-eared paperback copy of "War and Peace" that you purchased in your college bookstore, then you own the copy for purposes of copyright law. But if we are talking about an e-book version of the latest translation that was bought online and downloaded to an e-reader or...
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BookShift
A Self-Publisher's Primer to Enhanced E-Books and Book Apps
In a nutshell, an e-book is a digital snapshot of a book, an enhanced e-book adds multimedia and interactive features inline with the linear story, and a book app is based on a book but acts more like a game with multiple pathways that require the user to interact instead of simply scrolling and clicking.
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MagazineShift
Gourmet Live, Quilting eMag Rethink Magazines in Digital Form
In an earlier age, we learned new skills as apprentices to master craftspeople, absorbing expertise by working side by side. Today, though, you might be more likely to learn a new craft or skill from a website or through a social media buddy -- or even from a digital magazine. Traditional print magazines that teach hands-on skills are extending their...
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Business
Can Social Micro-Earnings Help Micropayments Work for News?
Would readers pay as little as a penny, or even less, for news? They would, if paying was combined with social sharing, micro-earning, virtual currency and a centralized banking system, according to doctoral students Geoffrey Graybeal and Jameson Hayes of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. Graybeal and Hayes propose a "Modified News...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Kindle Gives Amazon More Bang for Less Bucks
In this week's 4MR podcast I look at the surprising success of the Amazon Kindle e-reader in the wake of the hit Apple iPad tablet. While many people expected the iPad to impact the e-reader market, instead the major players cut prices and Kindle sales tripled in the past month. Plus, Amazon announced a new line of Kindles that will cost even less -- with no touch screen or color.
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Public MediaShift
Pop and Politics Blog Becomes Converged Radio Project
These days it's not so unusual for a public radio program to boast a companion blog. But few shows begin online and move to broadcast.Pop and Politics is the exception. Farai Chideya -- a high-profile public affairs reporter, novelist, and the former host of NPR's late and lamented African-American current events program "News & Notes" -- began the Pop and...
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MobileShift
Gaming + Mobile + Social = 'Conspiracy for Good' from Tim Kring
Tim Kring, a long-time television writer and producer, is best known as the creator of the NBC show "Heroes." But he's rapidly expanding his media universe -- last week at Comic-Con he launched a new book project, "Shift," which will debut in August from Crown Books. He has also created a new transmedia project called "Conspiracy For Good" (CFG), which...
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Philosophy
From a business perspective, traditional journalism is rather inefficient. Stories are chosen by a small group whose members often have similar experiences and outlooks. With little knowledge of true market demand, they assign the stories to a limited pool of writers and reporters who may not have the knowledge or contacts to quickly do a top-notch job. The stories...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Kachingle Hopes 'Social Payments' Can Help Fund Content
If advertising alone isn't going to support all the online journalism and content sites, and pay walls will just turn readers away, perhaps there's another solution, a third way: Social payments. More than just simple donations, social payment systems such as Kachingle and Flattr simplify giving money to sites you visit. Both services set up a monthly payment system, with...
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NewspaperShift
The Case for Turning Around Print Media Companies
This article was co-authored by Neil Heyside. The media and publishing industry -- and print publishing in particular -- doesn't have to show up to its own funeral. There's still opportunity to enable profitable, desirable businesses. We're not suggesting that a recent uptick in advertising sales is a sign that publishers can go back to the old days of 25...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Time.com Restricts Access to Print Stories
In this week's 4MR podcast I look at the move by Time.com to restrict access to its print stories online. Rather than set up a pay wall, Time shows abridged versions of print stories and asks you to subscribe to the print magazine or get its $5 iPad app edition instead. That has critics howling. I also talked with PaidContent co-editor Staci Kramer, who considers Time's strategy a "condom" between online visitors and the print magazine.
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NewspaperShift
How Immersive Journalism, Games Can Increase Engagement
The average reader spends 25 minutes a day reading the newspaper, while the average online user spends 70 seconds a day on a news site, according to data from Hal Varian, Google's chief economist. (JD Lasica has more on this presentation.) As a journalist, I'm not satisfied when people just scan my headline and then move on. As a citizen...
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Public MediaShift
6 Key Lessons From NewsHour's Coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has lasted more than two months now. It is the worst spill in U.S. history, and it is likely to continue until at least August. And in covering it, PBS NewsHour has broken every traffic record it ever had thanks to great reporting, our live video feed of the spill and the...
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Legal Drama
What the Viacom vs. YouTube Verdict Means for Copyright Law
Some have called it a license to steal. To others, the recent Viacom v. YouTube court decision was no less than a trumpet heralding the protection of free speech on the Internet. And yet to a third contingency, Manhattan federal judge Louis Stanton's decision was really an exercise in high-minded legal theory. Regardless of your outlook on the case, it...
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5Across
5Across: Arts Criticism in the Digital Age
As newspapers and magazines have cut staff in the shift to digital, arts critics find themselves with less sure footing when it comes to a full-time staff position. According to a recent article in The Australian, 65 full-time film critics have lost jobs on American newspapers and magazines since 2006. Can't local newspapers just use syndicated reviews for movies shown nationally?
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MagazineShift
Magazine Writers Are Slow to Take Up Multimedia
An ideal pitch for a magazine story today would seem to require great possibilities for text and for multimedia. Freelance magazine writers, one would think, would be honing their multimedia skills so they could pitch well-rounded stories to editors who could feature them in print, on the web and on an iPad or mobile device. Surprisingly, though, freelance magazine writers...
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NewspaperShift
6 Takeaways from 'TechDirt Saves Journalism' Event at Google
What will the journalism landscape look like five to 10 years from now? The megatrend of unbundled, specialty-focused niche sources of online information likely spells doom for many of today's lumbering media giants. But opportunities abound for new players, as well as for daring news brands willing to expand their notions of what it means to stay competitive in the...
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BookShift
Want Your Self-Published Book in Stores? Weigh the Options
The rise of online book retailers means that self-publishers have better access to customers than ever. But many authors still want to be on bookstore shelves. The good news is that you don't really need traditional distribution to get into bookstores. The Databases With your ISBN and bar code from Bowker in hand (read my previous post that told you...
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MovieShift
How 6 Big Summer Films Are Using Facebook For Marketing
Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man, believes in "better living through technology." Most marketers would argue that better marketing is enabled by technology as well. One of the primary game-changers today is Facebook and studios are learning how to engage audiences online to spur a better box office. Movie marketers understand the impact that reaching their desired audiences on...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Barnett: Advocacy, Membership Groups to Push Non-Profit News
The erosion of the traditional business model for news has led many to go down the non-profit path. The result is a slew of new non-profit news websites. The Bay Citizen, which launched at the end of May, is the newest and joins the likes of ProPublica, MinnPost, and the Texas Tribune, to name just a few. But as the...
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Thought Leader Q&A
NBC's Ryan Osborn Wants to Use Social Media for Storytelling
Ryan Osborn's story at NBC is the prototypical tale of the young aspiring journalist going from a page on "The Today Show" in 2002 to becoming the first director of social media at NBC News. But what he'd like to do in that job is not exactly typical: Osborn wants NBC to concentrate on using Twitter and Facebook to extend...
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Philosophy
Why Journalists Should Learn Computer Programming
Yes, journalists should learn how to program. No, not every journalist should learn it right now -- just those who want to stay in the industry for another ten years. More seriously, programming skills and knowledge enable us traditional journalists to tell better and more engaging stories. Programming means going beyond learning some HTML. I mean real computer programming. As...
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Guides
Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Landline Phones
The number of landline telephones in the developed world has steadily risen over the past century, but something changed in the last decade: A decline began. The International Telecommunication Union found that there were 57 fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants in the developed world in 2001, but that number dropped to 50 lines by 2007. What happened? The mobile phone revolution started displacing landlines as more people relied on cell phones and voice-over-IP (VoIP) services such as Vonage.
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Embedded Report
PBS NewsHour Collaborations Require Buy-In from the Top
Collaboration is one of the public broadcasting buzzwords of the moment. The new PBS NewsHour is a national news organization that is trying to figure out how collaboration works. Collaboration was one of the bullet points when we announced the changes to the program. As with the staff reorganization, which I wrote about in my previous post on MediaShift, our...
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MagazineShift
'48 Hour' Births Crowdsourced, Print-on-Demand Mag in Public
The first issue of 48 Hour Magazine, though printed on old-fashioned paper, is one of the most technologically interesting magazine projects today. The staff of 48 Hour Magazine sent off its finished "Issue Zero" to MagCloud, a print-on-demand service, at noon on May 9 after a harried two-day submission, editing and design process. Following weeks of building buzz about the...
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World View
CNN's Zakaria Fails to Include Pakistani Viewpoint on GPS
An Open Letter to Fareed Zakaria Dear Mr. Zakaria, My name is Amra Tareen. I'm the founder and CEO of San Francisco-based global citizen news site Allvoices.com. I am a former venture capitalist, an Ivy League-educated electrical engineer, mother of two boys and a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen. I'm writing to provide the Pakistani voice you neglected to include in your...
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TVShift
4 Reasons Why 3D TV Is Years Away From Adoption
After a multi-decade struggle, 3D is finally catching on in theatres. It was a challenge for 3D movies to get where they are today, but I'd say the studios (and theater operators) are finally calling it a success. All the pieces have come together, spurred on by financial support of the infrastructure and much-needed exposure of the latest 3D technology...
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NewspaperShift
Canwest Buyers, OpenFile Bet on Value of Local News in Canada
Two Canadians took a gamble that local news still matters this week. The two represent the hopes of both old and new media. One was a $1.1 billion buyout (in Canadian dollars) of Canada's largest newspaper chain, the Canwest newspapers, led by experienced news executive Paul Godfrey. The other was the launch of a hyper-local, participatory news start-up called OpenFile.ca,...
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Public MediaShift
5 Needs and 5 Tools for Measuring Media Impact
This spring, National Public Radio launched Go Figure, a new blog authored by members of its Audience Insight and Research Group. In an April 1 post, blogger Vince Lampone wrote, "Nearly all listeners have been moved to take action by NPR at some point in their lives. For instance, two in three have done further research into a topic, most have visited a website, and nearly 25% have become involved with a local or national political issue as a result of listening."
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Digging Deeper
DoApp Wants to Dominate Mobile Apps for Local Media
The buzz surrounding mobile and tablet apps is deafening. Media companies of all sizes are considering how mobile apps might help a hurting bottom line, leading them to consider mobile ads or paid apps. The We Media folks even threw a one-day Tablet Throwdown so media companies could show off their iPad apps and talk about possible business models. But...
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Public MediaShift
CCTV Shows How Public Access TV Can Transition to Digital
In 2008, Mike Rosen-Molina wrote on MediaShift about public access TV's "fight for relevance" in the digital age: In an age when it's increasingly easy for amateur filmmakers, citizen journalists, and the general public to distribute videos online, is there any point in having a public-access cable channel? Some argue that public-access television has outlived its usefulness for this reason:...
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NewspaperShift
OurBlook Roundup: Journalism Will Survive in Digital Age
OurBlook.com is a website that gathers opinions from today's top leaders in the hopes of collaboratively finding tomorrow's solutions. It is funded by Paul Mongerson, a retired CEO who has a long history of philanthropy in the journalism world. In December 2008, those of us who run the site launched a future of journalism interview series. To date, we have...
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BookShift
How to Pair Smashwords and Scribd for Ideal E-Book Strategy
Self-published authors are in a unique position to benefit from the increasing consumer acceptance of digital books. The challenge, however, is that so many companies are popping up to offer conversion, distribution and sales. It's tough for authors to know which vendor to choose for which services when it comes to their e-book. The truth is that it's wrong to...
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Public MediaShift
Live-Blogging the FCC Workshop: New Platforms, Strategies for Public Media
This live-blog post is a continuation of the first post covering the FCC's Future of Media Workshop on public media. Panel Discussion III: New Platforms, Approaches and Structures Maxie Jackson III, President and CEO, National Federation of Community Broadcasters Says when he thinks of the future, he wants to stress "independence and impact," in the transition from public broadcasting to...
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Public MediaShift
Live-Blogging FCC Workshop: Public Media in the Digital Era
How should public and noncommercial media evolve in the digital age? Hopefully we'll find out shortly, as I report live from today's FCC's Future of Media Workshop. A who's who of execs, funders and researchers are lined up to speak, and given that this isn't the FCC's usual beat, everyone's curious to see how the day will turn out. You...
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MagazineShift
The Ethics of Digital Magazine Advertising
In my recent discussions with magazine editors, executives and experts, I've heard a lot about how magazines will integrate new forms of advertising, and "monetization" opportunities, into their digital content. From digital editions to social media to mobile apps, magazines are exploring a variety of ways to provide advertisers with novel opportunities to reach audiences, just as they have in...
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Weblogs
Newsrooms Should Use Blogs to Battle Bloat, Complexity
Media professor and writer Clay Shirky recently wrote about The Collapse of Complex Business Models on his blog. That post was in turn inspired by Joseph Tainter's 1988 book, "The Collapse of Complex Societies." Shirky wrote: When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the...
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MobileShift
WePad Takes on iPad with Support of European Publishers
BERLIN -- When I made plans to travel to Berlin to help judge the Best of the Blogs awards for Deutsche Welle, I figured it would be a nice idea to throw a MediaShift party. Then I found out that the new WePad tablet computer was being produced by a Berlin-based company, Neofonie. So it made sense to see one...
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NewspaperShift
Logan Symposium Explores New Models For Investigative Reporting
BERKELEY -- We're gathering at the University of California-Berkeley for Day 2 of the 4th Annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium . There's one presentation and one panel today before the group adjourns this afternoon. Coverage of Day 1 can be found here. First up is Ola Rosling, Google Public Data, who is building free tools at Google...
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NewspaperShift
Collaboration Deepens at Logan Symposium on Investigative Journalism
BERKELEY -- I'm settling into a large auditorium at the University of California-Berkeley for the 4th Annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium . Not to sound too snooty, but it's an exclusive event that's run by Lowell Bergman, professor of investigative reporting at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Of course, Bergman is most famous for his work at...
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MovieShift
How Film Festivals Use Twitter to Boost Attendance, Engagement
Action. Animated. Documentary. Experimental. These are four of the categories that film festivals program in their schedules. But they're also apt descriptions of the Twitter narrative that film festival organizers are weaving into their filmgoer engagement and marketing initiatives. Leslie Feibleman, director of special programs and senior programmer for the Newport Beach Film Festival, said Twitter is similar to the...
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PoliticalShift
How #Spill Effect Brought Color, Collaboration to Media Tweets
Twitter distinguished itself as an important new platform for breaking political news in Australia during the Great #Spill of 2009. This is the second installment in a MediaShift series on the "#spill effect." (You can read the first part here.) It draws on a case study of the event and includes online interviews with eight tweeting journalists who are prominent...
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EducationShift
How Going Online Can Help Save Struggling College Papers
In an old episode of "The West Wing," a leader of an AIDS-stricken African nation tells the president plainly, "It's a terrible thing to beg for your life." The quote comes to mind as I read about the current plight of the Technician, the student newspaper at North Carolina State University. In a recent editorial, the few remaining staff at...
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MobileShift
The conundrum with the iPad is that it's exciting to consider a sleek new form factor for getting news, movies, TV shows, games and web browsing -- but it's less exciting to be first in line to pay the most for the least. We all know the first version of a technology product costs the most and is missing the...
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MagazineShift
Magazines Require Innovation, Experiments in Digital and Print
Some magazine fans may feel like their favorite publications are dissolving into fragments of their former selves: fractured content distributed throughout the web, social media, digital editions and the surviving print versions. But something unique to magazines does still hold at the center, and a new report on the future of magazines suggests that the future for both print and...
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Public MediaShift
Better Coordination Needed to Map Local Media Ecologies
Back in 2008, I co-organized a conference called Beyond Broadcast. That year's theme was "mapping public media," and was designed to both call out the rising importance of maps as a platform for sharing digital media, and to "map" the fragmented universe of public service media projects. The maps I found at the time underscored the siloed nature of news...
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PhotoShift
Photo Essay: Location Apps Battle, Geeks Gather at SXSW
Every March, the city of Austin, Texas, welcomes the world for its annual South by Southwest Festival, otherwise known as SXSW. The festival consists of three parts: SXSW Interactive, a four-day geekfest for the Internet community; SXSW Film, ten days of international cinema programs; and SXSW Music, a four day non-stop celebration of live music. The Interactive section, known as...
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BookShift
The Pitfalls of Using Self-Publishing Book Packages
The rise of self-publishing has made it possible for anyone to be an author. Now, some people are also choosing to outsource their book project by hiring an author services company. On the surface, this seems much easier than finding and hiring a half-dozen professionals to create your book. (For background on the self-publishing industry and author services companies, please...
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Legal Drama
Attributor Helps Media Companies Crack Down on Web Scofflaws
Websites that scoop up content from the mainstream media without compensation are being put on notice: Pay up or risk being shut down. The warning comes from Attributor, a California-based company that monitors web content on behalf of magazine, newspaper and book publishers. Earlier this month, Attributor announced a "new model for online content syndication" called FairShare Guardian. It's not...
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Digging Deeper
Why Newsrooms Don't Use Plagiarism Detection Services
Six years ago, in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times, Peter Bhatia, then the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, gave a provocative speech at the organization's 2004 conference. "One way to define the past ASNE year is to say it began with Jayson Blair and ended with Jack Kelley," he said....
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TVShift
A few years ago, while TV networks were happily setting up Hulu as a place for people to watch shows online for free, the cable companies were fretting. If cable customers could watch shows online for free on Hulu, or through cheap subscription services such as Netflix, who was going to pay for cable service? Sure, the cable companies would...
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4MR
4-Minute Roundup: Google TV Disrupts; Facebook Passes Google
I look at Google TV, the new alliance between Google, Intel, Sony and Logitech to create a new TV or set-top box that will finally connect the TV with the Net in a simple way. Plus, Facebook last week surpassed Google in traffic for the U.S., according to Experian Hitwise, and Facebook referrals to news sites were more loyal visitors than referrals from Google News or the Google search engine. And I asked Just One Question to Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik, getting his take on Google TV.
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MagazineShift
How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-Along, Build Voice
Magazines have always prided themselves on their longevity as a medium and their pass-along circulation -- the additional readers each copy gains when it's passed from hand to hand. Today, social media are providing opportunities for readers to share content and experience their favorite magazines as part of their social activity online. As a result, this is the dawn of...
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Philosophy
How Journalism is Getting Better
Michael Arrington's recent TechCrunch post about old media "guys" who don't get it made me realize how far things have come -- and how much better they've gotten -- in the world of journalism. I worked for more than 15 years in what's now called "legacy media" as a reporter, news editor and business person. All along, there were a...
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RadioShift
NPR, SiriusXM Internships Steeped in Multimedia, Social Media
When you think about internships at media companies, you probably picture people fetching coffee, running errands, or worse. But some internships have taken a different tack, setting up specialized blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages for their interns to help them understand new technology and spread the word about their programs. At NPR, the 40-plus interns put together a...
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NewspaperShift
9 Tools to Help Live-Stream Your Newsroom
"We'd like to write blog posts, but don't have time." That's the oft-heard lament in newsrooms. More and more traditional journalists recognize the benefits of blogging and social media, but many just can't figure out how to add them to their existing workload. I have a solution that seems to work in our newsroom. When faced with this issue, I...
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Public MediaShift
Witness Creates Sophisticated Evaluation Tools for Video Impact
Last month, Jessica Clark and I explored how various Public Media 2.0 projects are measuring their level of success in informing and engaging publics. We found that many public media organizations are struggling to measure impact -- and some are relying only on traditional indicators of reach, as opposed to other elements of impact such as relevance, inclusion, engagement or...
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Public MediaShift
Public Media Twitter Chat Aims to Foster Collaboration
Public media workers and aficionados have a new routine: Every Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, they log on to Twitter for Public Media Chat, which is using the #pubmedia hashtag. The chat, which started about a month ago, is the result of a discussion between a group of public media professionals at PublicMediaCamp in Washington, DC. "Public Media Chat...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Viacom Yanks Shows from Hulu; FT's Pay Model
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the recent move by Viacom to pull "The Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" from Hulu, and run them on their own sites. Plus, the Financial Times said it would start charging for day passes and weekly passes to augment its metered pay system online.
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MovieShift
Can Social Media Chatter Predict Oscar Winners?
The biggest night in movies is two days away, and everyone has an opinion as to who will win an Oscar. While there isn't a proven formula that can tell us which film is going to win, a closer look at social media such as blogs and Twitter can provide some interesting perspective as to which nominees are dominating conversations...
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Citizen Journalism
Are Photos by Aid Workers an Invasion of Privacy in Haiti?
I recently spent a week in Port au Prince, Haiti, helping in a tent hospital set up at the airport. When I arrived back in San Francisco, I wrote about my experience in Haiti on my blog and posted pictures I had taken. I also posted photos on my Facebook profile, including images of smiling children who had just been...
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PoliticalShift
The #Spill Effect: Twitter Hashtag Upends Australian Political Journalism
Australia is gearing up for a national election in 2010 and a core group of influential political journalists in the elite Canberra Press Gallery are tweeting their way along the campaign trail -- and bringing an engaged public along for the ride. Press Gallery journalists are among the most active Australian reporters on Twitter, which entrenched itself Down Under as...
more »Social Networking
<- Go to Photo 15 On a final note, I couldn't resist the chance to show off my rope skills with Internet star Shira Lazar at the Girl + Guy Party. To read more about SXSWi 2010, check out Jason Feinberg's report on MediaShift. For more of Kris Krug's photos from SXSW this year, check out his Flickr photostream tagged...
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BookShift
Self-Publishing, Author Services Open Floodgates for Writers
In 2001, the Wild Writing Women, a San Francisco Bay Area travel writing group of which I was a member, decided to self-publish a book of stories. Why? Because none of us could find a traditional publisher for what we thought was our best writing. We had skilled publishing professionals among us, so we never considered using a vanity press....
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Citizen Journalism
IOC Loosens Citizen Photog Restrictions, Launches Flickr Group
At the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, social media was in its infancy. But in Vancouver, it sometimes seems to overshadow the accredited media. As expected, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are the first Games to truly be impacted by social media. As a result, one question leading up to the Games was whether the...
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BookShift
Book Publishers Welcome Apple Pricing, Mixed on iPad Features
In the aftermath of Apple's January announcement of the iPad, people dished on the iPad name and pundits debated whether a tablet that didn't have a camera, multitasking, or Flash support could compete. But book publishers zeroed in on a different set of questions. These included how the iPad's iBooks app and accompanying bookstore might shake up e-book pricing and...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Olympics Tape-Delay Backlash; PleaseRobMe's Geo-Scare
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the backlash against NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics, with people on the West Coast angry at the network for tape-delaying the best events until prime time. Plus, a new service called PleaseRobMe.com points out the vulnerability of people who use check-in geo-location services such as Foursquare along with Twitter. And I ask Just One Question to NewTeeVee's Liz Gannes.
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Digging Deeper
Best Online Resources for Following 2010 Winter Olympics
Spoiler alert! Thanks to NBC's use of time delay in broadcasting the Olympics to the Western U.S., those who live their lives online during the day are bound to find out what happened long before it airs in prime-time. Anyone who doesn't want to know the results prior to airtime is going to have to avoid just about every website...
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Embedded Report
Merging Online, Broadcast at NewsHour Still a Work in Progress
About two months have passed since we officially became the PBS NewsHour. I wrote my previous update for MediaShift" just after the two staffs -- broadcast and online -- merged into one building and were getting used to having each other around. But, really, how merged have these two teams become? The initial good news is that, after our re-launch...
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Citizen Journalism
Citizen, Alternative Media Converge at Olympic Games in Vancouver
It has become second nature for people to capture experiences, events and news using their phones, cameras and computers. We live in a world were journalism is an action -- and citizens have stepped up to answer that call to action. As a result, the story of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games is by no means limited to the version...
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Public MediaShift
Is There a Master Metric for Evaluating Public Media?
Over the past few months, we've been presenting MediaShift readers with a picture of a more dynamic, engaged, public media future. But how are Public Media 2.0 projects measuring their success in informing and engaging publics? Is it even possible to create a master metric? What are the differences and similarities in evaluating different kinds of projects?
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Digging Deeper
Can Milbloggers Give Unbiased View on '30 Days Through Afghanistan'?
The U.S. military has had an uneasy relationship with soldiers using blogs, video and photos to offer an unvarnished, uncensored view of war. The military brass has responded in the past by restricting blogging by enlisted soldiers, and having commanders review blog posts before posting. But that may be softening with the launch of a new project by the...
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EducationShift
Journalism Fellowships Adapt to Meet Economic, Digital Challenges
For years, journalism fellowships have afforded young and mid-career journalists the opportunity to hone their craft, pick up new skills and learn more about their beats. These paid programs last anywhere from a couple of weeks to a full year, and often require journalists to take time off from the newsroom. The resource site JournalismJobs.com lists more than 40 programs...
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MagazineShift
Can Crowdfunding Work for Narrative Non-Fiction?
In 1978, in the middle of a deep economic recession, an 18 year-old girl named Dolly Freed wrote a book about living in a non-monetary economy called "Possum Living: How to live well without a job and with almost no money." The book described how Dolly and her father were able to live happily in rural Pennsylvania on less than...
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MovieShift
How Digital Marketing Helped 'Avatar' Break the Box Office
Do you remember August 21, 2009? Moviegoers in more than 100 IMAX 3-D theaters worldwide watched 16 minutes of footage from a new James Cameron movie. That same day, Ubisoft debuted a trailer for a videogame based on the film, and Mattel unveiled action figures inspired by the film's characters. A day earlier, the teaser for the very same film...
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MusicShift
Rent vs. Own: The Streaming Music Debate Continues
The exponential growth of Internet bandwidth combined with the ability to significantly compress digital audio has impacted the music industry in numerous ways, for better and worse. Just as file trading created a massive network of pirated music, the ability to stream audio in real-time has allowed for a number of innovative content distribution and promotion methods. Digital music streaming...
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Digging Deeper
Google News to Publishers: Let's Make Love Not War
In the view of some traditional media execs, Google is a digital vampire or a parasite or tech tapeworm using someone else's content to profit. As that rhetoric heated up in the past year, Google has responded not with equal amounts of invective but with entreaties to help publishers. Google launched Fast Flip to help bring old-style page flipping...
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MagazineShift
On-Demand Publishing Opens Up Magazine Industry
Publishing a magazine independently used to mean spending a lot of money ordering hundreds or thousands of printed copies, and then hoarding the unsold inventory in dusty boxes in your garage for the next decade. The new pioneers in on-demand magazine publishing hope to save aspiring publishers from this expensive and cluttered fate. Online services that streamline the magazine publishing...
more »Citizen Journalism
<- Go to Photo 11 A final, fun note: I had a chance to interview U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir, and the entire interview can be found here. This shot of us together was taken by John Biehler. Kris Krüg is a designer, writer, photographer, and webmonkey based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Constantly challenging himself by shooting diverse subjects...
more »PhotoShift
Olympics Photo Essay, Photo 16
<- Go to Photo 15 Citizen journalism is an action. By the simple act of documenting the world around us, whether with fancy cameras or handy cell phones, we actively participate in sharing our experience with the world. We are all journalists and the world is full of news. You can see more of Kris Krüg's photos on his...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: iPad Mania; Yelp Scores $100 Million
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the hype and reality around the latest device from Apple, the iPad. While some have slammed it for what it's missing, it's too early to tell how media companies might use it to sell their content. Plus, Yelp gets up to $100 million from Elevation Partners, helping some employees cash out without an IPO. And I ask Just One Question to Google News' Josh Cohen about whether Google should have started working with publishers sooner.
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NewspaperShift
College Media Should Ignore Siren Song of Pay Walls
The drumbeats are growing louder, as Rupert Murdoch, Steven Brill, and now the New York Times have confirmed: Pay walls or metered pricing systems for online news content will soon be coming to a high-profile website frequented by you. Too little, too late? Journalism's savior? A final nail-in-the-coffin separation between old and new media? The implications for the news industry...
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BookShift
Best Coverage, Tweets of Apple iPad Event
The hype has reached fever pitch on the new tablet device being unveiled by Apple today in San Francisco. You're probably tired of going through tweets, live blogs and photo galleries trying to find the latest and best coverage of the latesty shiny gadget. So we've collected the best coverage around the web in one handy place here on...
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World View
Local Radio Keeps Haiti Earthquake Survivors Connected
In two weeks, Haiti will be forgotten by much of the world. After foreign media leave, which will happen soon, only Haitian reporters will remain in the country as witnesses and a source of information. As it stands today, they are struggling just to keep their fellow citizens informed, which is often the case in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
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5Across
5Across: Environmental Impact of Newspapers, Books, e-Waste
When I cancelled my daily newspaper subscription, I figured it was the right thing to do for the environment. No longer would someone have to print up all that newsprint and deliver it to my doorstep. But what I didn't consider was the environmental impact of all my electronic devices -- their energy use as well as the harm they can do when being "recycled" in developing countries.
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Public MediaShift
Why Youth Media Projects Should Link Up with Public Media
"The issues that we tackle in our films are very powerful," said youth filmmaker Lenah Perez in a newsletter from the New York-based youth media organization, Global Action Project. "I should say the way we tackle the issues is powerful, the issues are important -- to look at the world as the big picture and to fight for this world."...
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EducationShift
Flexibility, Freelance Key for Journalism Grads in Tough Job Market
Stephanie Lim is a bright twenty-something who graduated top of her class in May 2009* from the UBC School of Journalism in Vancouver, Canada. When she returned home to Toronto, she had to face the reality of looking for a position in an industry reeling from fragmented audiences, declining profits and job losses. "Even though I had high hopes upon...
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Embedded Report
How to Use Meta-Stories to Engage the Newsroom, Community
How do we create a community? This question is frequently asked by editors as well as by marketing managers and other business people. More and more, I don't think you can create communities. Communities already exist. You can try and offer them a news service or a platform that the community finds useful and engaging, but forget trying to control...
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Hyper-Local
5 Recent Big Moves In Hyper-Local News
The pace of change for hyper-local news sites and related businesses is dizzying. It's hard to keep up, especially if you try to pay attention to business moves made by large players, as well as innovations that bubble up from local, independent news sites. This year already began with large companies and investors making moves into hyper-local news. At the...
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Digging Deeper
Best Online Resources for Following Haiti News, Taking Action
In the face of devastating news happening far away, there is comfort in making a connection. And those connections often are made online among strangers who are sharing video, photos, stories or tweets about the devastation around them. Such is the case in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a city that was devastated by an earthquake last Tuesday, with tens of thousands feared...
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Social Media
How WSJ Uses Social Media from Behind a Pay Wall
We're not even a month into 2010 and The Economist has already declared it to be "The year of the pay wall." "There are plenty of examples of paid content thriving even when free alternatives are available," according to the magazine. "Punters are happy to pay for multichannel television even though commercial broadcast television is free. Such alternatives thrive because...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: 3D TV Hype at CES; Nexus One Phone
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I consider the hype around 3D TV at the Consumer Electronics Show. While many companies and even cable channels are announcing 3D TV initiatives, it seems doubtful that huge numbers of people will be drawn to the technology this year. Plus, Google unveiled its Nexus One phone to...
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Guides
Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Cable TV
Anyone who gets cable TV or satellite in the U.S. has noticed a pronounced trend over the years: their monthly bill keeps going up. Sure, you can get lots of channels, plus HD channels and DVR functions, but those usually cost extra. According to research from Centris, the average digital cable bill was nearly $75 last year, and the average monthly satellite TV bill was $69. What's causing those bills to skyrocket?
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Public MediaShift
Public Broadcasters Hustle to Fill Infrastructure Gap
In a recent presentation at WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, John Proffitt, who blogs about public media, painted a gloomy picture. In slide after slide, the stats mounted. New gadgets, new social media habits, new channels for distribution and consumption all added up to one conclusion: public TV stations are rapidly losing both value and relevance. In addition to that, urgent...
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MagazineShift
What to Expect From the 'iTunes for Magazines'
Apple appears poised to introduce a much-anticipated product: the once seemingly-mythical "iSlate" or "iTablet," its first tablet-style touch-screen computer. Though the potential of an Apple tablet thrills many fans of the company, it's also piqued the interest of magazine publishers, who -- long before the device's rumored introduction -- foresaw its possibilities for their industry. The announcement in early December...
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Media Usage
Most Popular MediaShift Posts of 2009
I'm not a huge fan of year-end lists, roundups and new year predictions. But I make an exception when these lists give me unexpected insights. Such is the case with this list of the most popular posts from MediaShift over the past year. I didn't limit it to posts that were published in 2009, and tried to trace what made...
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Public MediaShift
How to Avoid Ethical Snags in Non-Profit Journalism
The nature of non-profit journalism invites ethical dilemmas. Over the past few years, dozens of centers of investigative journalism and non-profit websites have been started using money from foundations, individual donors and membership fees. The latest trend is non-profit networks that share resources. Collaboration is a good thing, but it can lead to tensions among collaborators. How can such centers...
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MovieShift
Film Industry Experts Offer 10 Predictions for 2010
Films such as "2001" and "2012" illustrate how the future has long fascinated Hollywood. With a new year on the horizon, I asked 10 executives and analysts, many of whom were in attendance at the recent Future of Film Summit in Santa Monica, Calif., for their predictions about the film industry. Below are 10 topics and thoughts on what the...
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Futurama
Media Mavens Wish for More Collaboration, Less Talk in 2010
Layoffs, buyouts, furloughs, and more than a few shuttered newspapers and magazines. That's definitely part of the story of 2009. Yet, at the same time, many established news organizations pushed online with impressive results, and online-only organizations continued to grow and innovate. Now, with 2009 ending, we have a new year of media to ponder. I contacted a selection of...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Google Phone and Netbook; Kindle Under Attack
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at Google's various moves into consumer electronics. Rumors abound about a Google phone, code-named Nexus One, that could be out as early as the first week of January. And Google also might be coming out with its own branded netbook with Chrome OS by Christmas 2010....
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Digging Deeper
California Watch Says 'Yes' to Open, Networked Investigative Reports
Some investigative journalists have been resistant to change in their profession, but hard times at newspapers have brought about a new sense of experimentation and collaboration. That is evident at the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and its new California Watch project, which attracted major foundation funding from the James Irvine Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and Knight Foundation. When I visited...
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Public MediaShift
Lessons on Collaboration from EconomyStory, Election Projects
"Online: Content is king. I don't disagree. But collaboration is queen. In chess the king is the most important, but the queen is the most powerful." - David Cohn We in public media produce a lot of content, but historically we haven't had a lot of collaboration. That's been changing recently, and I'm fortunate enough to have a front row...
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MusicShift
The Year in Digital Music and Predictions for 2010
As 2009 comes to a close, and the music industry shifts focus to 2010, it's worth looking back at some of the noteworthy events of the past 12 months. This is also the right time to look ahead and predict what will happen next year. For some in the business, this year brought trouble after trouble; for others, 2009 was...
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Public MediaShift
KETC's Mortgage Crisis Project Brings Public into Public Media
Facing the Mortgage Crisis, a multi-platform community outreach project spearheaded by KETC/Channel 9 in St. Louis, has become a model for public broadcasting stations nationwide. Launched July 1, 2008, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the project connects financially struggling residents with appropriate resources. St. Louis was hit hard by the mortgage crisis, and this, along with KETC's...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: The Death of E&P; AOL's Spin-Off
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the recent announcement that Nielsen will be shuttering Editor & Publisher magazine, which covered the newspaper business since 1884. E&P's Jennifer Saba says the loss of classified advertising was as much to blame as Romenesko. Plus, America Online was spun-off from Time Warner yesterday and...
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Legal Drama
Is It Legal for an Editor to Unmask an Anonymous Commenter?
On November 13, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's website, StLToday, asked readers to comment on a story titled, "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?" Soon, a commenter posted a reply that included a "vulgar, two-syllable word for a part of a woman's anatomy," according to an online account by Kurt Greenbaum, the paper's director of social media. Editors at the...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Stanford Program Breaks Down Walls Between Business, Tech Journalism
I am so used to hearing about innovation in journalism that when I first heard about the Innovation Journalism program at Stanford, I assumed that's what it focused on. Not exactly. The VINNOVA-Stanford Research Center of Innovation Journalism actually focused on helping journalists cover the field of innovation. David Nordfors, a Swedish punk rocker-turned-molecular-physicist-turned-journalist, found that journalists were stuck in...
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Weblogs
NYTPicker Covers New York Times Like a Wet Blanket
On Sunday, the New York Times published an Editors' Note detailing a conflict of interest: The "Place" feature about Miami in the T magazine travel issue on Nov. 22 included a reference to the 8 oz. Burger Bar. The writer has had a long personal relationship with a co-owner of the restaurant; had editors known of that connection, the restaurant...
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AdvertisingShift
5 Tools to Help Automate Local Advertising
Promises of whiter teeth, IQ quizzes, and digital dancing people clutter online ads these days. At the same time, experts at future-of-journalism conferences are declaring that news will never again be solely supported by advertising. Neither one tells the full story of the present and future of online advertising for hyper-local and other news websites. Experiments with new advertising technology...
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NewspaperShift
Why Young Journalists in Big Newsrooms Are Risk Averse
I'm going to tell you a secret about my newsroom. The 20-somethings there are indeed fast to pick up new technology such as social networking, RSS and the use of Flip cameras. They are also wonderful colleagues, as well as dedicated and intensely engaged journalists. Of course, that's not the secret. What is surprising is that our youngest colleagues are...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Comcast-NBC Deal; AOL's Robot Army
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift (the Stuffy Head Cold Edition). In this week's edition, I look at the $30 billion mega-merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. Critics already believe the deal could lead to higher cable rates and less free content on Hulu. Plus, AOL's Tim Armstrong said he would use computer algorithms to help in the...
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PoliticalShift
Best of Twitter: FTC Workshop Discusses Future of Journalism
For two days this week, some of journalism's most high profile executives and experts descended upon Washington, DC, for "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" a workshop hosted by the FTC. One exchange of note came between Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington, who spoke separately but did a good job of representing two divergent points of view. Murdoch kicked...
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Public MediaShift
FTC Should Consider Policy Reform to Support Public Media 2.0
It's been a busy season for prognosticators who examine the intersection of public policy and media. Today will be particularly hectic for them, as journalists, bloggers, public broadcasters and policy wonks pack into a session at the Federal Trade Commission to ponder, yet again, "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" (Submit your own thoughts via Twitter here). Two weeks...
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MagazineShift
Condé Nast, Hachette Magazines Push into iPhone Apps
Turning a magazine into an iPhone app might seem as simple as shrinking the printed page to about a sixth of its normal size. But as magazines develop iPhone and other mobile applications to supplement their print editions, they're finding that adapting to the new medium is a significant challenge. Years ago, magazines realized that their websites had to do...
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TVShift
Merging Online and Broadcast Cultures to Reinvent 'NewsHour'
The "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" is re-incarnating itself as the "PBS NewsHour" on December 7. There are a lot of behind-the-scenes details involved in creating the new program, and chief among them is a complete reorganization of our editorial teams to create a merged newsroom for online and broadcast.
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Media Company Layoffs; Omidyar Startup
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the deep layoffs that are planned at AOL, the AP and BusinessWeek. In the case of AOL, the company plans to shed one-third of its workforce, or 2,500 staffers. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar announced plans to launch a news startup in Hawaii that will combine...
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Social Media
Profiles in Courage: Social Media Editors at Big Media Outlets
During a recent trip to see an editor I work with at The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper in Canada, I passed by the newspaper's cafeteria. My editor looked in and pointed at a man who was sitting with his back to us. "There's Mathew Ingram, doing his office hours," he told me. Ingram is the Globe and Mail's...
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NewspaperShift
The Shutdown of UWIRE and the Implications for College Media
Last month, UWIRE.com, an edited college media newswire, mysteriously vanished from the Internet. "UWIRE, a popular service that aggregated articles from student newspapers across the country, promoting student journalism both within higher education and to the outside world, has disappeared," wrote Simmi Aujla for the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this month. Today, visitors to the site receive an error...
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MovieShift
DigiFest Examines DIY to Big Budget Special Effects for Films
Apocalyptic visions and alien invasions descended upon Hollywood earlier this month, to the collective delight of the digital media industry. At the American Film Institute's DigiFest, which was produced by the AFI Digital Content Lab, attendees experienced two days of presentations and screenings focused on new media platforms and creative storytelling using digital innovations. The event spotlighted advanced productions from...
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Social Networking
Media140 Brings Old and New Media Together, With Explosive Results
Over 300 people gathered under the Media140 banner in a concert hall at Australia's national public broadcaster ABC in Sydney last week to consider the future of journalism in the social media age. Media140 is a newly formed global collaboration of journalists, academics and social media practitioners that is staging conferences around the world. The goal is to examine the...
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BookShift
Speculative Fiction Novelists Find Success with Online Donations
Over the years, many authors have tried versions of the online donation model, with mixed results. But one specific genre of writers, speculative fiction, seems to be experiencing a moderate level of success. Back in 2000, Stephen King became one of the first major authors to offer a book online using an "honor system" to solicit donations. The book was...
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NewspaperShift
FT's Long Room Uses Velvet Rope Approach to Online Community
What determines a successful community? The number of unique visitors or page views? The number of comments? Those metrics can be important, but there are also qualitative aspects to consider. Are the discussions on your site respectful and insightful? Are members deriving value from the community? Or are you hosting flame wars that lack intelligence and decorum? In order to...
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Digging Deeper
@FakeAPStylebook Editors Explain Their Overnight Success on Twitter
For anyone who has suffered through reading the entire AP Stylebook for a journalism class, there's a cathartic release when reading the dry wit of the @FakeAPStylebook feed on Twitter. It combines parody of the journalism usage bible with funny repartee and the absurd. That mix has brought amazing success to the people behind the feed: more than 40,000 followers...
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PoliticalShift
10 Projects that Help Citizens Become Government Watchdogs
With the 2010 U.S. elections coming into view, many people are looking for more information about the people running for office -- and the individuals and organizations funding these candidates. Fortunately, there are dozens of initiatives that mine and share the data that influence policy and policy-makers. Many are funded by The Sunlight Foundation, which aims to use "the revolutionary...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Scoble on Twitter Lists; Time, Newsweek Hurting
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at Twitter Lists and how they allow people to group the people they follow on Twitter. Some say they might replace RSS feed readers. Robert Scoble answers Just One Question about how Twitter Lists have changed his life. Plus, magazines are hurting once again, with Time...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers
Evans is the editor-at-large for The Week magazine. He has written numerous books, but his most recent is called "My Paper Chase," a fascinating memoir covering his early years as a cub reporter, copy editor and eventually editor and publisher over decades of distinguished work. He connects what happened in those early years to the changes wrought by technology and the Internet, and what he sees as he watches his wife, Tina Brown, co-found and manage The Daily Beast.
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MagazineShift
Did the Web Kill Gourmet Magazine?
The murder happened in the kitchen with a laptop. That possible explanation for the death of Gourmet magazine sounds like a solution from the game Clue. The 68-year-old food magazine met its end this month when publisher Condé Nast cut it and two other magazines. Some blamed Gourmet's demise on the Internet and its theft of the print audience. It's...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Twitter's Real-Time Search Deals; Bloomberg Rising
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the deals Microsoft made recently with Twitter and Facebook to incorporate tweets and status updates into its Bing search engine. Google quickly announced a deal with Twitter too, but why should we care? Also, Bloomberg bought out BusinessWeek magazine, but the jewel might well be...
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Philosophy
The Right Way For Media Companies to Create Social Media Policies
Swimming in the roiling sea of online journalism, increasing numbers of newsrooms have decided to take up the challenge of articulating editorial policies for social media. Over the past year, news organizations from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times to the BBC have issued protocols for staff on Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs and websites. Recently, the...
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Media Usage
Kicking Ink: The Guilty Pleasures of Print
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C. for "Public Media Camp," it happened again. I was tempted by print. Starting in May, I gave up my print newspaper subscription, and then compared how the iPhone beat the Kindle when it comes to reading periodical publications on electronic devices. My fingers have remained relatively ink-free each day because I get my...
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NewspaperShift
Cats Sleeping with Dogs? Rival News Orgs Share Content, Revenues
Next month, newspapers all over the United States will begin sharing sports stories online and in print as part of an initiative that sprung from the Associated Press Sports Editors. Then, early next year, the Washington Post and Bloomberg will unveil a new co-branded business section on the paper's website that will offer content from both organizations. These are just...
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Public MediaShift
PubCamp Examines New Models, Philosophy for Public Media
"Public Broadcasting has a future and its all about YOU," tweeted Jonathan Coffman at the close of this weekend's bustling Public Media Camp. Coffman, the product manager for PBS Engage, was a key organizer of the event, along with Andy Carvin, a senior strategist at NPR's Social Media Desk, and Joe and Peter Corbett, two brothers who run iStrategy...
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NewspaperShift
Can Programmers, Journalists Get Along in One Newsroom?
One of the explanations for the emergence of the programmer/journalist is the move of news organizations from print (or radio or TV) to the web. While some newspapers have gone online-only, and many are still trying to move to a "web-first" mindset, there are still newsrooms that view the web as a secondary medium. I remember when every step forward...
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AdvertisingShift
8 Tips to Make Sponsored Tweets Work
If Twitter the company is not interested in putting advertising in its product right now, other companies have proven they can do it on their own. There has been an explosion of startup companies that place "sponsored tweets" into Twitter feeds and split the ad revenue with Twitterers. The first one to sell ads into Twitter feeds, Magpie, says...
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MovieShift
Universal's Neil: Original Videos, Word of Mouth Key for Online Promotion
Movie marketers are poised to see a significant boost to their online marketing budgets, according to eMarketer, which predicts studios will spend $2.7 billion by 2013 in online advertising. That's more than double the $1.2 billion spent this year. Digital LA, a networking organization for online entertainment, marketing, advertising and tech professionals in Los Angeles, hosted a "Movie Marketing: Online,...
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Online Forums
7 Keys to Hosting Successful Chats With High-Profile People
In recent weeks we at De Tijd, a Belgian newspaper, have been experimenting with chat sessions where members of the Belgian government are brought in to discuss politics with our community. I'm very enthusiastic about this because I feel that our newspaper has enabled its community to have a direct, high-quality conversation with policy makers. I reported in a previous...
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MusicShift
Record Labels Are Losing Power to Fans, Artists
Over the past month, I received a significant amount of feedback on my recent MediaShift article, What Will Record Labels Look Like in the Future?. People from all areas of the music industry reached out and shared their feelings on future business models, and strategies for moving forward. Regardless of their background, practically every person I spoke with agreed on...
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Public MediaShift
Eight Public Media 2.0 Projects That Are Doing it Right
It's official: "Public Media 2.0" has graduated from theory into practice. "We believe that a successful broadband policy and implementation requires Public Media 2.0," said Ernest Wilson, the new chair of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, at Friday's unveiling of the Knight Commission's new report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age. Echoing the report's...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Knight Commission Report; NPR's Local Venture
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's special edition, I look at the report that came out today from the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The Commission called for strengthening public media, bringing broadcast access to all Americans, and having at least one strong online info hub for each community....
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Business
What Newspaper Cartoonists Can Learn from Web Comics
Earlier this month, Randall Munroe, creator of the hugely popular web comic xkcd, announced on his blog that he would be publishing a book collection of the strip. Given the number of six-figure book deals that major book publishers have thrust upon popular bloggers, there's little doubt that Munroe's millions of monthly readers could have easily garnered him a similar...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Daylife, Getty Give Aggregation Tools to Publishers (for a Price)
Upendra Shardanand re-focused Daylife from being a platform as well as destination site, putting the platform first and letting the site fall further into the background. Recently, Getty Images announced a partnership and $4 million investment in Daylife, with plans to sell Daylife services to its clients, including the SmartGalleries tool for showcasing photos online. Getty joins previous Daylife investors the New York Times Co., Craigslist's Craig Newmark and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington.
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Social Media
Using 'Socratic Conversation' to Unlock a Community's Insight
How can you unlock the creativity and insights of your community? Well, you can give community members a blank canvas and hope they are inspired to paint it with ideas and contributions. You can also provide them with access to experts such as journalists or external sources for chats, discussions and other interactions. Both methods have their merits, but they...
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Business
Can Memberships, Clubs, Cruises Keep Media Companies Afloat?
Late last month, an ad for a new job appeared on the Guardian's careers website. The position for "General Manager - Guardian Club" was notable because it signaled an important initiative at the paper in the form of a new entity, the Guardian Club. "The club will make our most committed readers/users feel they are genuinely part of our organization...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Google Fast Flip; BusinessWeek Sale
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the latest moves by Google to make nice with online publishers. First came word the search giant was working on a micropayment solution. Then came the release of Fast Flip, a visual browsing service for news sites, with publishers splitting ad revenues with Google. Also,...
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New Mediation
The Great Debate on Micropayments and Paid Content, Part 2
In Part 1 of the great micropayments debate, David Carr tried valiantly to defend the idea of charging for heavy-hitting journalism online, while Mike Masnick disagreed vehemently, saying micropayments would seal the doom of newspaper companies. Can the two debaters be brought together to find some common ground? Read on for Part 2. Major Media Without Walls Mike Masnick: We...
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New Mediation
The Great Debate on Micropayments and Paid Content, Part 1
Newspapers need to start charging for online content to survive. If newspapers charge for content, it will hasten their extinction. These are the opposing views in the very heated debate going on among newspaper publishers, editors, journalists and new media mavens. While pay walls for newspaper content have had mixed success -- with the Wall Street Journal Online being the major shining example -- the idea of micropayments for news stories is once again gaining supporters.
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Citizen Journalism
Mainstream Media Miss the Point of Participatory Journalism
The ability of anyone to play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and sharing news and information is seen as one of the big shifts in journalism over the past 10 years. But a growing body of research suggests that the advent of participatory journalism, or user-generated content (UGC), has done little to change the way...
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MovieShift
Movie Apps Get Social as Studios Integrate Facebook Connect
Movie studios fully understand the influence that word-of-mouth reviews, whether positive or negative, have on box office receipts. Social networks are accelerating this conversation as consumers hype or hurt a movie's perception. Many observers speculate that moviegoer talk on Twitter, which often comes straight from a mobile phone inside a theater, can impact a film's opening weekend. As a result,...
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NewspaperShift
In Search of the Perfect Skillset for a Programmer/Journalist
In my first post about programmer/journalists, I wrote about the "how computer-assisted reporting (CAR) evolved into this new role. Although not all programmer/journalists started with CAR, that skillset is still the basis for any programmer/journalist. CAR skills start with obtaining data and public records. Knowing where to find this information, either online or by request, is the starting point for...
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Weblogs
Can Health Care Blogs Fill the Gap Left by Mainstream News Coverage?
Paul Testa recently checked his voicemail and listened to a message from a hospice worker who lives in a conservative district of Ohio. He'd never met or spoken to this person before, but the worker reached out because Testa seemed like the right person to receive some important, inside information about the health care system. Testa doesn't work for a...
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Media Usage
Kicking Ink: How the iPhone Beats the Kindle (So Far)
Last May, I finally took the full digital plunge and canceled my print subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle after 18 years. The cost was becoming too much, and I felt it was a good time to experiment with getting my news in digital form -- and to write about it here. In my first installment of "Kicking Ink,"...
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NewspaperShift
The Five Habits of Highly Successful Community Managers
Talking about communities, and newspaper communities in particular, often leaves people with a warm and fuzzy feeling. It's true that being a community manager enables you to meet wonderful people, but the reality of daily community management can be difficult and unsettling. Every community manager has to deal with community politics (the online equivalent of office politics), disillusionment and a...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Editorial Layer at Wikipedia; NYT-ProPublica Story
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the recent move by Wikipedia to add an editorial layer to some entries, the so-called "Flagged Revisions" that will only allow changes that are approved by certain editors. Plus, the New York Times Magazine will be running a story co-produced with ProPublica that cost $400,000...
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NewspaperShift
Newspaper Editors Want Clear Credit When Bloggers Link to Them
If only every blogger could link to stories the way Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit does. The libertarian blogger, with his hundreds of thousands of readers, offers up dozens of daily snippets that typically consist of a single sentence and a link. Sometimes it's a headline or even a single word -- "Heh." As a result, those being linked by Reynolds...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Magazines Need to Embrace Multimedia Storytelling in Digital Age
This is one in an occasional series on MediaShift where I discuss issues in-depth with thought leaders in online media. The format has changed to give you a profile of the person, as well as more of our dialogue -- including audio clips. If you have suggestions for future Q&As or want to participate yourself, drop me a line...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: EveryBlock Sale to MSNBC.com; Report from Gnomedex
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the recent sale of micro-local data site EveryBlock to MSNBC.com and the issue of its open source code. Plus, Washington Post announced it would discontinue hyper-local site LoudonExtra.com. I also have a special report from tech conference Gnomedex, where UW teacher Kathy Gill is teaching...
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MusicShift
What Will Record Labels Look Like in the Future?
The pioneers of the music industry couldn't have seen this coming in their wildest dreams. When publishers were selling sheet music in the late 1800s, the idea of people privately sharing their product, independent of location and physical constraints, would have seemed ridiculous. But now record labels have been decimated by the digital shift, and are rethinking their entire business...
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MovieShift
Digital Media Summit Explores New Models for Promotion and Creation
My first job was in old media. In the summer of 1986, I spent Sunday mornings constructing the San Francisco Examiner with my cousin, and venturing out via bicycle to share a heavy bundle of news, advertisements and stories from around the world. I was a paperboy. At iHollywood Forum's Digital Media Summit in Los Angeles last month, editors at...
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EducationShift
Why Do Some College Newspapers Still Have No Web Presence?
Summer's almost over and college newspapers across the country will be cranking up to full speed soon. Likely, they'll be getting ready for further adventures in online journalism, expanding their online presence while attempting to keep the print product financially successful. But hard as it is to believe, there are still student newspapers around the country that have no online...
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NewspaperShift
Five Ways to Use Mind-Mapping Tools in the Newsroom
About a week ago, I was in a meeting with some colleagues, preparing our coverage of an upcoming news event. We were jotting down ideas in long lists; it was quite literally linear thinking. But linear thinking isn't always the most helpful way of looking at a problem, because it restricts the way that you associate ideas together and limits...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Murdoch's Pay Gambit; WaPo/Gawker Tussle
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the recent comments by News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch, who says he wants to make people pay to see content on all his news sites. The comment split people into two camps: those who think news sites will have to charge something; and those who...
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NewspaperShift
How Computer-Assisted Reporters Evolved into Programmer/Journalists
It wasn't until half-way through my journalism degree that I realized I wasn't going to be a traditional reporter. I wasn't even going to be a multimedia reporter. I was going to be a programmer/journalist. Putting a slash in your title makes you more important. I haven't been able to track down the first use of the phrase, but the...
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TVShift
Blogs, Twitter Become Force at TV Critics Press Tour
In January 2006 when I launched MediaShift, I sat on a panel at the TV Critics Association (TCA) press tour in Pasadena, Calif., and saw an audience of aging TV critics working at newspapers, largely keeping notes on pen and paper, writing up stories that would run weeks and months later in print. When I returned to the press tour...
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MovieShift
Animated Film Takes Donations, DVD Sales to Pay Music Costs
When New York-based animator Nina Paley decided to distribute her independent animation project "Sita Sings the Blues" online for free, she recalled the fate of 1920s jazz vocalist Annette Hanshaw. Once hugely popular, Hanshaw had almost completely disappeared from public knowledge when Paley decided to include her songs in the score for her film. "How could this happen to an...
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PhotoShift
Can Citizen Photo Agency Demotix Succeed Where Scoopt Failed?
Recently, the "citizen photo agency" Demotix has had reason to celebrate. The site gained fame by selling front-page photos to the New York Times taken by Iranians who captured shots of protests after the disputed presidential election in Iran. Then came another seminal moment when the site got the only shot of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in handcuffs...
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Virtual Worlds
Virtual Worlds Show Promise for Newspaper Communities
In my previous post, I talked about the browser-based virtual environment Metaplace, which I think may provide a way to boost interaction with our community on newspaper website Mediafin. To test how well virtual worlds could be used to build a community, I undertook some experiments in organizing "conferences" in worlds like Metaplace and Second Life. And the results turned...
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EducationShift
Revamped Journalist's Role More About Mindset Than Multimedia Tricks
With a new Web 2.0 service apparently springing up every week, it can be bewildering for a journalist trying to remain relevant in a digital age. Too often, new technology is seen as a burden that adds to an already packed workday. But while many journalists want to embrace new ways of reaching audiences, they flounder when it comes to...
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Legal Drama
Changing the Law to Save Newspapers: Some Modest Proposals
As newsroom staffs continue to shrink and newspapers go out of business at an alarming rate, the difficulty newspapers have experienced in gaining economic traction online has been blamed on blogs and websites that link to content on newspaper sites. According to some, this kind of "free riding" is responsible at least in part for the distress in which newspapers...
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MarketingShift
Personal Branding Becomes a Necessity in Digital Age
In 2007, Atlantic Media's director of digital strategy Scott Karp was named one of the 40 most influential people in publishing by Folio magazine. But Folio wasn't honoring Karp for his work at Atlantic, which publishes the Atlantic Monthly magazine, but was instead fawning over the work Karp did at his personal blog, Publishing 2.0, which covered how technology is...
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MediaShift
MediaShift Looking for Editor, Salesperson, Marketer, Correspondents
I want to update readers on some contract job openings here at PBS MediaShift. Even with the harsh economic downturn (and maybe because of it), I feel like the time is right to actually expand what we're doing here rather than pull back. These kinds of lulls often create openings to make something new or build upon what you've got....
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: NYTimes.com Charging?; AP's Sotomayor Blog
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the latest move by the New York Times to survey print subscribers to see if they will pay for access to the website -- on top of what they're paying for the print edition. Plus, the Associated Press launched a Twitter feed and blog with...
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NewspaperShift
5 Ideas to Transform Newspaper Sites
I sometimes wonder whether we are held captive by old school thinking. At our newspapers at Mediafin, we are in the process of integrating web operations with the print publication, a move which I fully endorse. There's one major risk to this: that we might end up seeing the web as just another way to distribute newspaper articles rather than...
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Weblogs
Newspapers Try Again with Local Blog Networks
Recently, those who visited the front page of the Miami Herald's website began seeing a sidebar item labeled simply "Your Blogs." If you clicked on the link it would take you to a page containing a series of headlines and little snippets of opening paragraphs in a news feed format. If you clicked on one of the links, it would...
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Weblogs
Zombie Bloggers Create Communal Horror Stories
On June 13, bloggers around the world imagined they were under attack by the living dead, writing short horror narratives for the annual Blog Like It's the End of the World Day (which was especially appropriate for me since it fell on my birthday). But there are some bloggers who blog as if everyday were the end of the world:...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Michael Jackson's Death Rocks Web; Guardian Crowdsources
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the way Michael Jackson's death yesterday played out online, going from TMZ to Twitter to the LA Times blog. Yesterday was a record traffic day for Yahoo, and Google News reacted like it was under a hack attack from the huge jump in search queries...
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MusicShift
The Time is Right for Direct-To-Fan Marketing of Music
As the music industry continues to evolve and search for a sustainable and profitable business model, the direct-to-fan (D2F) approach is making great advances, from artists just starting their career up to superstars with massive fan bases. Artists marketing and selling directly to their audience is not necessarily a new or revolutionary concept -- one can find examples of artists...
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Social Media
Rules of Engagement for Journalists on Twitter
Twitter's role in the Iranian election aftermath leaves no doubt about its power as a global, real time, citizen-journalism style news wire service, along with a tool for facilitating dissent, while countering the view of Twitter as simply a zone for egotistical banality. But it also highlighted Twitter's role as a platform and content generator for traditional media outlets,...
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Legal Drama
Criminal Cases Push Newspapers to Identify Anonymous Commenters
Anonymous comments on newspapers blogs are drawing attention from prosecutors seeking information about criminal matters, once again raising the issue of whether newspaper blog comments are protected under state press shield laws. Last fall, I wrote about two civil cases involving claims of defamation, where two separate courts refused to order newspapers to disclose information that would lead to the...
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NewspaperShift
5 Ways a Community Manager Can Help Your Media Outlet
Recently, the New York Times appointed its first ever community manager, someone to "concentrate full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers." Of course, the New York Times is a huge operation, and has an enormous community of print and online readers/users. Do we at...
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NewspaperShift
Being in the hospital on an I.V. for a number of days put me in touch with the suffering of newspapers. I was down but not out. I have polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and one of my cysts had ruptured, causing severe pain and the temporary loss of kidney functioning in my right kidney. Not fun. But while I was...
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Social Media
How Journalists Balance Work, Personal Lives on Twitter
Twitter is continuing to make headlines around the world as it amasses followers. But it's also making an impact on the newsmakers themselves. Journalists are invading the space at a rapid pace and learning to report live, crowdsource stories and engage with a whole new audience...in 140 characters or less. It may not be revolutionary -- many journalists view the...
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MusicShift
MusicTech Summit Breaks Through Tired Memes of Music Confabs
Survival in the music industry, particularly moving forward into the digital space, comes down to two core elements -- relationships and knowledge. And if you have the first one, you might not even need much of the second. One of the quickest, most effective, and fun ways to increase both your relationships and knowledge at the same time is attending...
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NewspaperShift
Laid Off Sportswriters Find New Life Online
Early last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on a dying breed of newspaper baseball beat journalists. "As newspapers cut budgets and payrolls, the press boxes at major league ballparks are becoming increasingly lonely places, signaling a future when some games may be chronicled only by wire services, house organs and Web writers watching the games on television," reported Russell...
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Social Networking
Journalists Should Customize Social Networks to Maximize Experience
Online social networks are essential tools for journalists. They make it possible to build extended networks, search for story ideas, build contacts and dig up information. But even more important, they help to shake up the relationship between the individual journalist and the people formerly known as the audience. But many journalists don't know how to get the full benefit...
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Legacy Media
WSJ's D Conference Fumbles Transition to Web 3.0
CARLSBAD, CALIF. -- The organizers of the tony, high-priced tech conference known as D All Things Digital, included a manifesto of sorts in the program guide titled "Welcome to Web 3.0." In that treatise, organizers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher define Web 3.0 as "the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple...
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Social Media
How Journalists Are Using Twitter in Australia
Twitter became big news once journalists realized its power as a tool for breaking stories during the Mumbai Massacre in 2008. In the aftermath of the micro-blogging platform hitting the headlines, there was an explosion of professional journalists in the Twittersphere. This growth has been fueled by increasing mainstream awareness of the importance of social media to the future of...
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Legal Drama
A Brief History of AP's Battles with News Aggregators
The news is information, and information wants to be free, as the saying goes. But for news organizations, the news is a product that is collected, recorded and sold for profit. And those profits are now under extreme economic pressure, threatening some news organizations with extinction. Both online and traditional news outlets are regrouping, retrenching and reconsidering their business models...
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NewspaperShift
QR Codes Connect Print to the Web
Point your phone at a printed page. Take a picture. Get taken to a website. That's the power of QR codes, codes embedded in print that can link cell phones to specific websites. They've been doing this for years in Japan, and now they are starting to do it in Europe. Sooner or later it will get to the States....
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Weblogs
Media Criticism Flourishes Online, Putting Legacy Media Under Microscope
In November 2007, Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein wrote a piece for the magazine chastising House Democrats for wording in their version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Not long after the column hit the web, Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece arguing that "for the sake of its own credibility, Time Magazine needs immediately to prohibit Joe Klein...
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NewspaperShift
Kicking Ink: The Struggles of a Print Newspaper Unsubscriber
I knew the day was coming, but it was still a shock when the day came. Groggy-eyed in the early morning light, I slowly went down the four flights of stairs in the front of my building and looked down. Nothing. For 18 generally uninterrupted years, I had the San Francisco Chronicle delivered to me, except when neighbors stole...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: WSJ's Social Media Guidelines; NYT's Pay Plans
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. This week I look at the Wall Street Journal's code of conduct for reporters and editors, with guidelines for using Twitter and social media sites. Plus, the New York Times is considering two different plans for charging for online content -- a metering system and subscription system -- according to a report...
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NewspaperShift
PressTerra Tests Newspaper 'Printernet' on Iberian Peninsula
In my March 24 column, I talked about the "printernet," a system of networked desktop publishing where the desktops and printers are spread throughout the whole world. This is another way of describing the new printing model of "distribute and print," where you send a digital file via the Internet to the printing facility closest to the final distribution point...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Kindle DX; Google vs. Newspapers
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. This week I look at the unveiling of the new wide-screen Kindle DX aimed at newspaper, magazine and college textbook readers. Will people pay $489 for it? Plus, I look at the AP and News Corp.'s moves against Google, with the AP playing hardball for running content in Google News. Meanwhile, Google...
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NewspaperShift
Journalists Can Embrace Emotions and Remain Neutral
Very recently I did something weird. Normally, when moderating our online community at Mediafin, I first read the news articles before I read the comments left by community members. Feeling a bit bored, I reversed this. I started by reading the comments and tried to figure out what the articles were about. It was a weird (but rather subversive) sensation...
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NewspaperShift
Should Newspapers Create Consortium for E-Readers?
COLUMBIA, MO -- I am attending a half-day symposium here at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri's journalism school, this time a meeting of the "Digital Publishing Alliance," a group of newspapers and tech folks who are looking at how newspaper content might work on various e-readers like the Amazon Kindle. The timing of the meeting is...
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MagazineShift
Vanity Fair, New Yorker Fan Blogs Give Free PR to Conde Nast
The Twitter user who writes under the handle Vanityfairer would not tell me her real name. She began following me in December after I mentioned the magazine Vanity Fair in a tweet, and for the next few months we exchanged replies and direct messages about the magazine's content and its writers. Though she made no claims to be associated...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Swine Flu Online; Disney Joins Hulu
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. This week I look at the positive -- and negative -- way the Internet, blogs and Twitter have spread information about the swine flu. There are great resources, maps and tracking sites, but it's easy to get in a panic as well. Also, Disney joined up in the video site Hulu, putting...
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Digging Deeper
Building the Ideal Community Information Hub
Problem: Where can people find the local information they need, whether it's about a school board meeting, a new construction project or a nearby robbery? Solution: A community hub, with all the information aggregated in one online source and pushed out via libraries, in-person meetings, community radio, small run print publications and cable access TV. That's my conclusion after studying...
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MusicShift
How Bands Can Avoid Making 7 Big SEO Mistakes
There is an entire school of thought, as well as a sizable industry, dedicated to the optimization of websites to show up higher in Google search rankings. Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques vary from simple content changes to tricks that game Google's system, referred to as "black hat" SEO. Optimization can be a complex topic -- read Mark Glaser's article...
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NewspaperShift
The Fallacy of the 'Print Is Dead' Meme
Common sense tells us that print is not going away. If print is no longer an important part of your life, that is undeniable. But to extrapolate from personal experience to a statement about what is going to happen in the world doesn't work. But that's exactly what many of the people foretelling the death of print are doing. That's...
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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Pirate Bay Case; Oprah-geddon on Twitter
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. This week I look at the recent ruling in the Pirate Bay case, where four men at the file-sharing site were found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison -- but are asking for a retrial due to a conflict of interest by the judge. I also mention @Oprah's entry to...
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Guides
Your Guide to Local Watchdog News Sites
As each metro newspaper downsizes and cuts staff, those reporters are considering their next moves. These sites offer a temporary safe haven for reporters, a chance to not only continue to do reporting, but to do it online in new ways. Rather than write sparingly for the print newspaper, they can now blog more frequently about more subjects and write longer pieces. They might take photos and video to go along with their text stories.
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EducationShift
NYU J-School Students Unsure of Future in Changing Industry
I have no idea what I will do when I graduate. I am majoring in journalism at New York University -- a fantastic university in an incredible city -- but my confidence in what career I will pursue after graduation remains unclear. Should I go after my passion for writing? Should I take a crack at my web video skills?...
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NewspaperShift
Ohio Newspapers Share Content, But Don't Give Up Hope for AP
For many, last week's news that the Associated Press planned to begin to crack down on news aggregators that link and quote its content wasn't news at all. Media industry publications have long been reporting on the friction between the AP and aggregators -- a series of verbal swipes made at conferences and in news articles that perhaps reached an...
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Thought Leader Q&A
How Tech Publisher IDG Grows Revenues During Recession
Patrick McGovern, IDG: "[At InfoWorld.com] our audience numbers and frequency of visits soared. Even though we gave up 40% of revenues from stopping print, we actually had 10% more revenue growth absolutely. The online revenue didn't only make up for the missing print revenue, but we actually had absolute growth."
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EducationShift
How to Teach Yourself About Social Media When J-Schools Fail
Journalism is changing rapidly due to social media, and these changes can be bewildering as people wonder how to keep up. I recently gave a social media workshop for journalism students, and I soon realized that many students were still unaware of social media other than Facebook. They were shocked to hear about feed readers, blogs, or micro-blogging and asked...
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5Across
Everywhere you look there are dark signs for newspapers: bankruptcies, less print editions, the threat of closings in San Francisco and Boston, layoffs and pay cuts. But the journalism of newspapers will live on in digital form online. How will this after-life look? We brought together five people for the latest episode of 5Across who are working for newspapers...
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AdvertisingShift
MediaBids Could Help Solve Ad Sales Process for Hyper-Local Pubs
In a recent post, I argued that the problem facing newspapers today has nothing to do with the notion that news-on-paper is not viable -- instead the problem is a broken advertising sales process. Since then I've discovered MediaBids, which seems to have a good idea for how to fix that problem. According to their website: Since its online launch...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
ProPublica's ChangeTracker Lets You Watch Government's Moves
The Obama administration has already made strides toward greater transparency and better use of technology in government, but has promised even more. It's important to make sure that President Obama and his people act on those promises. One way to do that is to watch the government's footsteps online. ChangeTracker makes this possible, and not just for government sites -- it can be used to track changes on any website.
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Legacy Media
Collaboration the Key to Future of Investigative Journalism
BERKELEY -- The second day of the Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley is more of a half-day with one panel devoted to the future of investigative journalism and a brunch at the Frontline World offices near campus. Just like last year, I had trouble getting an Internet connection in the journalism school library so had to live-Twitter the panel and...
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NewspaperShift
Live-Blogging Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting at Berkeley
BERKELEY -- I am at the University of California-Berkeley for the 3rd Annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium this weekend. It's an invite-only event run by Lowell Bergman, known for his work at "60 Minutes" (and being played by Al Pacino in "The Insider"). The theme this year is "Reporting on Corruption," and included a preview showing of...
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BookShift
Glaser & Son Consider Pros and Cons of Kindle 2
I am what you might call the late early adopter. Rather than live on the bleeding edge, I wait safely until Version 2 comes out with the bugs and problems fixed. I got Windows 98 in '99, waited for the iPhone 3G, and checked out the Kindle 2 rather than 1. But when my e-book reader from Amazon arrived in...
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MusicShift
Maximizing the SXSW Experience with Social Media
Every year, thousands of bands, music industry professionals, and hardcore fans flock to Austin, Texas for the mighty South By Southwest (SXSW) music festival. Over the course of nine days, three distinct but interwoven conferences take place -- Interactive, Music, and Film. For the uninitiated, SXSW can be an overwhelming, daunting experience. But for tech-savvy patrons, technology has made the...
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Legal Drama
'Fox & Friends' Hosts Not Liable for Repeating Associated Content Parody
As newspapers are closing or abandoning their print editions, online news sources are growing in importance -- as are sites that rely on user-submitted news stories. But with so much unfiltered news content available online, how do you separate the accurate from the inaccurate and truth from parody? You might think that traditional news sources would be better able...
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NewspaperShift
Newspaper Cartoonists Engage Audiences (Including Haters) Online
I once worked for a daily newspaper, where there were two things guaranteed to generate letters to the editor: articles about cats and the comics section. Readers didn't have much to say about our coverage of local elections or big trials, but we were sure to receive letters if someone disagreed with the slant of an editorial cartoon or didn't...
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Digging Deeper
New Gatekeepers Twitter, Apple, YouTube Need Transparency in Editorial Picks
There was a time when all you needed was a good record review in Rolling Stone or a stellar book review in the New York Times to get a boost in sales and popularity. But as those old gatekeepers lose their cachet in the digital age, a new set of gatekeepers has sprung up and they don't have bylines. These...
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MagazineShift
'Printernet' Vision Brings Custom Print Publications to Masses
Imagine networked desktop publishing where the desktops and printers are spread throughout the whole world. Publishing means newspapers, newsletters, books and posters in mass market quantities, but versioned and personalized for specific communities and individual users. From the point of view of a writer, it would be easier than ever to see your story in print. If you're a publisher,...
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Public Relations
PR People Must Heed Digital Reality as Newspapers Fold
Last Wednesday morning, as the sun rose over the West Coast, newspaper delivery people in Seattle dropped off the final edition of the Post Intelligencer, one of Seattle's two daily newspapers. The struggling P-I was 145 years old and, by coincidence, 145 newsroom employees were left without jobs. Hearst, which owns the news organization, announced that it will retain 20...
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MagazineShift
Mother Jones Boosts Community in Site Revamp
As digital technology wreaks havoc on the business models of legacy media such as newspapers and magazines, they are now turning more often to the non-profit model. Can they raise donations, micropayments, or get grants? They might want to check out a magazine that's been a pioneer with the non-profit model, and first went online in 1993: Mother Jones. The...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Represent Helps New Yorkers Track Their Politicos
The New York Times' Represent is a data aggregator and sorter that points to information about elected representatives in New York City. If New Yorkers enter an address, they can see their political districts (Congressional, Assembly, Senate and City Council) and representatives. Represent will also track what their representatives have been doing through a recent activity feed from NYT articles and congressional votes.
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NewspaperShift
How Print Publications Can Help Hyper-Local Sites
The New York Times is going into the hyper-local news business, as reported by Zachary Seward at the NiemanJournalismLab. It is just one example of hyper-local -- also called community journalism, beat reporting, or representative journalism -- in action. Other instances include Kennesee State university Professor Leonard Witt's Representative Journalism in Georgia and community news site Patch.com. It's not clear...
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Thought Leader Q&A
BlogTalkRadio Lets Anyone (Including the Pentagon) Start Talk Shows
BlogTalkRadio CEO Alan Levy: "Three or four months into doing this, we started broadcasting live from Afghanistan, with an embed there named Scott Kesterson. Every Friday morning he would be live from Kabul or from Kandahar, and people could listen in and ask him questions. And the soldiers were listening to what was going on...Now, the Pentagon has a network on BlogTalkRadio. Now you know the medium has arrived when the Pentagon is embracing it."
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MusicShift
Five Tips for Musicians to Engage Their Fans Digitally
There was a time when celebrity musicians were positioned as unreachable idols. Those days are long gone; in today's wired marketplace, musicians have to forge a personal relationship with their audience to keep their fans' interest. And for many, that means creating opportunities for fans to have an inside look into all aspects of an artist's life.
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4MR
4-Minute Roundup: Hearst E-Reader; Boxee vs. Hulu
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I talk about how the New York Times launches hyper-local sites right as Google's Tim Armstrong launches Patch.com hyper-local sites -- both in New Jersey. Plus, Hearst says it will develop a new e-reader device like a Kindle, but with a larger, flexible screen, likely coming from E-Ink,...
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BookShift
5 Great Services for Self-Publishing Your Book
In past posts, we've looked at some of the questions a new writer should keep in mind when considering whether to self-publish her opus. But let's say that an author has made up her mind that pushing ahead without a traditional publisher is the way to go. With the rise of new print-on-demand (POD) technology, literally dozens of self-publishing companies,...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Productivity Guru Gina Trapani Balances Blogging, Coding, Community
This is one in an occasional series on MediaShift where I discuss issues in-depth with thought leaders in online media. The format has changed to give you a profile of the person, as well as more of our dialogue -- including audio clips. If you have suggestions for future Q&As or want to participate yourself, drop me a line via...
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Business
Read for Free, Pay for Print or Stuff
The discussion about micro-payments and "pay to read" goes round and round because it ignores a basic fact. Most people, most of the time, do not read newspapers. They view, scan and search newspapers. Selling words to viewers, scanners and searchers is hard, but since viewers and scanners are always background-searching for stuff they might need, selling them stuff is...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Laid-Off Arizona Journalists Start Online-Only Publications
What It Is The Arizona Guardian and Heat City are two examples of web-only news sites started by recently unemployed journalists. The Arizona Guardian is run by four Phoenix-based journalists who were recently laid off from the East Valley Tribune. The Guardian covers legislative issues and other aspects of the state capitol. Heat City is run by Nick Martin,...
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Digging Deeper
Reuters Closes Second Life Bureau, but (Virtual) Life Goes On
The sun shines brightly as I stroll along the curving pier above the water, looking out toward a beautiful island with trees swaying in the wind. There's a looming ampitheater festooned with signs for Thomson Reuters, and a series of concrete buildings that appear ready to hold important meetings. I stride in confidently through the doorway... You might think...
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EducationShift
5 Challenges for Small College Media and How to Overcome Them
When people talk about online innovation in college media, they tend to start big and stay there. And it's true that large circulation college newspapers (and big name journalism programs) have been doing some impressive things online, but the need to innovate extends to smaller journalism programs as well. And for them, the challenges can be daunting. So what are...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Washington Post's 'Web Ninjas' Build Map-Timeline Combo
TimeSpace, a Washington Post project, is a coverage mapping framework that displays content from multiple sources in space (via a map) and time (via a timeline). A display map, covering anything from a single city block to the world, is tagged to show viewers where news is being covered. Viewers can also view the news map as it appeared at different points over the preceding hours or days, giving them a picture of how the news events unfolded over time.
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Guides
E-books are electronic books, or books you can read on your computer or on handheld devices such as e-readers or smartphones. The first e-book was likely created by Michael Hart at the University of Illinois in 1971, when he typed in the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence onto an early version of the Internet. Hart founded the Gutenberg Project, an online collection of e-books that are taken from public domain books.
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NewspaperShift
I am delighted to have the opportunity to be the new "print correspondent" for MediaShift. Every two weeks or so I will be reporting, discussing, opining and answering comments about how new print technology can help untangle some of the problems facing newspaper companies and the future of journalism. Newspaper companies are looking for ways to profit in a new...
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Weblogs
Can 'The Printed Blog' Succeed with Blogs in Newspaper Form?
If the entire media industry is a river that is slowly but persistently moving toward the Internet, then one could picture Joshua Karp as a canoeist paddling against the current, trying to take the online realm and solidify it into print. I first heard of his new business venture, The Printed Blog, from a colleague of mine who runs a...
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Embeds
7 Ways To Keep Costs Low, Content Fresh Using Social Media
Life is tough for the newspaper industry these days, and survival is not assured. Whatever strategy a newspaper takes, one thing is for sure: They need to keep costs low. Yet newspapers still need to compile compelling content that can engage their reading communities. Social media can help a great deal in solving this problem. Here are seven attention points...
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Public Relations
In Hudson River Landing, PR Pros Were Not First Responders
In times of crisis, communications professionals have an important -- and increasingly complicated -- role to play. We used to be the first to offer public responses to catastrophes, able to develop elucidating messages before much of the news media was on the scene. Nowadays, the type of media that will report on a crisis is often as unforeseen as...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Rufus Griscom Mixes High, Low Brow on Babble Parenting Site
Rufus Griscom: "Online content, if it's not user-aggregated or user-generated, is seen as rather old and creaky. But I would argue that there are lots of shades of gray. All of the online content sites are becoming a hybrid of user-aggregated, user-generated and edited content, because feedback and citizen journalism and ratings and suggestions are becoming part of these sites."
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
BronxRhymes Uses Locality, Maps to Track History of Hip-Hop
BronxRhymes is an attempt to raise awareness of the history of hip-hop in the Bronx, the northwestern borough of New York City where the musical style is thought to have originated. The history of hip-hop is illustrated through rhymes and plotted on an online map.
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NewspaperShift
How Niche Bloggers Fill Gaps Left by Local Newspapers, Alt-Weeklies
On December 11, Ben Tribbett checked his phone messages and found two waiting for him from Virginia gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe and Creigh Deeds. And when he opened his inbox that same day he had received an email sent by another candidate, Brian Moran. All three messages were to wish him a happy birthday. The fact that three high-level politicians...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
ProPublica Puts Spotlight on Tracking TARP Money
ProPublica's Show Me the TARP Money is a simple map and chart reflecting the recipients of money provided through TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), a federal program that authorizes the U.S. government to buy assets from struggling financial institutions in an effort to remedy the subprime mortgage crisis. The site shows institutions that have been approved for assistance and keeps a running total of the number of institutions, the amount committed, and the amount invested so far. There is an RSS feed and a widget for the site as well.
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Digging Deeper
Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business
You've probably heard how much the micro-blogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social networking site Facebook can boost your company's profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these startups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren't familiar with...
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AdvertisingShift
College Newspapers Finally Hit by Economic Downturn
As the newspaper industry has struggled with declining revenue, some analysts predicted that college newspapers would weather the storms of the changing media environment better than their peers in the wider industry. (See also this Chronicle of Higher Education article.) Now the national economy indicates that the future might not be quite so rosy: The widespread economic pains in the...
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Embedded Report
The Big Video Debate: Rough or Slick?
Video is one of those new practices we have to get used to as newspaper journalists now working in a Web 2.0 world. One of the key issues is the quality of the video. Do we always need slick, television-style video, which require more specialized skills, or will our community accept "rougher" video, made by amateurs using less sophisticated cameras?...
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Business
Live Blog: RJI TalkFest on Serving Entrepreneurial Journalists
I am virtually covering the all-day sessions at the RJI TalkFest today, held at the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute. I will be watching in via Adobe Connect, where I can hear and see what's going on and chat in the chat room. The agenda includes sessions on community-building, advertising and marketing, news and information and mobile. The live-blogging...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Innovation in Inauguration Coverage
This week, instead of focusing on one innovative journalism project, I'd like to highlight some of the many projects that came up covering Barack Obama's inauguration. The first question I asked myself as I started collecting links was, "Well, this is a cool way to cover the event, but is it journalism? For example, I saw a lot of "official"...
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Online Video
YouTube Helps Video Journalists Get a Start
When discussing the travails of major news outlets online, it's not uncommon for someone to mention the effect that companies like Google and Craigslist have had. But seemingly overlooked in this debate is Google's own YouTube, which has become a breeding ground for unknown and upcoming filmmakers and broadcast journalists. In what way could the online video giant use its...
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Digging Deeper
Vodafone's Child Porn Filter Blocks Innocent Czech Tech Blogs
Last summer, the British cell phone carrier Vodafone announced it would be offering a new filtering service for its Czech customers. "Child pornography and promotion of racism [are] such socially dangerous content that we have access to it automatically blocked for all of our customers," said Philip Premysl, senior manager of corporate social responsibility of Vodafone in the press release....
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Embedded Report
More Time for Blogging! The Future Is Already Behind Us
At Mediafin, we started the year with some ambitious plans for our blogging activities. We want to create new blogs to involve more people, but we also want to become more active on our existing blogs. I'll tell you about what we're doing, the reasons behind it and how things seem to be working out at this early stage, as...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
California Schools Guide: Database of Scores With News Hook
California Schools Guide from the Los Angeles Times is a comprehensive data-based guide to private, public and charter schools in California. The guide includes test scores, enrollment, student-teacher ratios, demographics, teacher experience and reader comments. Schools can be searched by county, city or name, and ranked by each indicator.
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Digging Deeper
GlobalPost Aims to Resuscitate Foreign Correspondents Online
Mr. Powers: How would you like to cover the biggest story in the world today?
Johnny Jones: Give me an expense account and I'll cover anything.
There has always been a touch of glamour associated with foreign correspondents, able to live in far-away lands and report on wars and strife, as in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Foreign Correspondent," quoted above. But today, Johnny Jones would likely be brought back from Europe in a round of cost-cutting at his newspaper.
MediaShift
Top 10 MediaShifting Stories of 2008
Once again, it's time to look back on the year that was, and consider the new media highlights. Overall, it's been a topsy-turvy year, with a deep recession and historic election giving us reason to despair and hope. The economic turmoil pushed people to read online news at historic levels this past fall, and econ blogs became required reading for...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Big Pictures Help Tell Big Stories at Boston.com
The Big Picture is a large-format photo-blog operated by the Boston Globe. Each entry focuses on one topic and presents around 30 images related to that topic: Recent posts have covered the 2008 Greek riots, the Hajj and Eid al-Adha, and scenes from Guantanamo Bay. The photos are collected from wire services and presented with captions at 990 pixels wide.
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Guides
Your Guide to Alternative Business Models for Newspapers
It's easy to see the problems plaguing the business of daily newspapers in America. The Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Christian Science Monitor said it would publish weekly instead of daily. Detroit newspapers announced they would be cutting home delivery to three days per week. Layoffs are rampant and newspaper company stocks are down in the dumps.
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TVShift
Public-Access TV Fights for Relevance in the YouTube Age
Public-access television is a sometimes bizarre world where anyone with the time and inclination can appear on television. It's where you find the rants of Colombus, Ohio, goth Damon Zex and the strange instructional videos of Let's Paint TV, where Los Angeles host John Kilduff taught viewers how to paint and make blended drinks all while exercising on a treadmill....
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Legal Drama
Can U.S. Laws Protect Online Speech from Foreign Libel Suits?
"...in cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance." That's a remark famously made in 1997 by John Perry Barlow, one of the co-founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Barlow's complete statement is well worth re-reading but one implication of this particular remark is that the reach of American constitutional values may be limited by our country's physical borders. When...
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NewspaperShift
Pulitzers Open to Online-Only Entrants -- But Who Qualifies?
When it was announced earlier this year that Joshua Marshall, founder of TalkingPointsMemo, had become the first blogger to win a George Polk Award for his coverage of the attorney firing scandal, many recognized the news as a milestone for online journalism. A somewhat condescending New York Times headline read, "Blogger, Sans Pajamas, Rakes Muck and a Prize." Earlier this...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride Puts Fans in Charge of Bands
The people formerly known as the audience (TPFKATA) are doing more than just fact-checking newspaper stories, time-shifting TV shows and capturing breaking news on their cameraphones. They are also helping run their favorite bands, designing and voting on concert T-shirts, mixing studio albums and even voting on which cities should be included in a band's tour. At the vanguard of...
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Embedded Report
Wikis Still Slow to Catch on Internally, Externally
Our newsroom at Mediafin is transforming into an integrated multimedia operation. To prepare for this, we recently decided to create two wikis to stimulate talk and facilitate media training programs. At the same time we also created another wiki to encourage discussion amongst our readers. In this very early phase of the experiments, I learned that wikis are still an...
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Digging Deeper
Video Report from the Czech Online Media World
A funny thing happened on my way to Eastern Europe last week. I sent out a Twitter message saying I was heading to Prague and Berlin and wondered if there were any bloggers or online media people I could meet. I got a reply from Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), telling me that Radim Hasalik in Prague...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Neighborhood Watch Puts Florida Home Sales on the Map
St. Petersburg Times' Neighborhood Watch is a database application that tracks weekly house sales in Pinellas and Pasco counties, Florida. Readers can search for home sales by county, ZIP code or neighborhood. Median price and sale count trends are tracked and graphed at one year, six month, three month, and one month intervals. On a neighborhood level, the site plots geographical data on Google Maps and suggests listings to prospective buyers by ZIP code.
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NewspaperShift
A Newspaper's Role in Bringing the Community Together
Modern newsrooms have to engage in a never-ending conversation with their community. This may sound self-evident, but it can be a tough sell in a newsroom working under high pressure. So how do you get reporters to buy into the proposition that they need to listen to their audience? They need to see for themselves the enthusiasm that the community...
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AdvertisingShift
Is Six Apart's 'TypePad Journalist Bailout Program' a Gimmick?
The vultures are circling. What was once a small trickle of layoffs at major newspapers has become a waterfall of lost jobs within the media business. One can almost picture the Poynter Institute's widely read journalism industry blog Romenesko sauntering up to Time Inc. and Conde Nast and screaming, "Bring out your dead!" But one advertising and blogging company is...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Should Newspapers Become Online Ad Brokers for Local Businesses?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that's where the newspaper business is right now. With profits slashed, unending layoffs, and online ad growth slowing, newspapers have to be open to new ideas that will help them deal with a media shift like no other. Last week I looked at the concept of crowdfunding, with people paying journalists directly for...
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EducationShift
College Media Has Come A Long Way Online
With the swift pace of change in the media landscape, it's easy to overlook how far college news media has come in a short time. There has been some great innovation in college media, even as some lag behind. I was prompted to reflect on this last month, after reading Going Digital, an Inside Higher Ed article by Brian Farkas,...
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MagazineShift
Pulp Magazines Struggle to Survive in Wired World
Every year Locus Magazine, "The Magazine Of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field," publishes a year-in-review of the genre. This summation always includes a rundown of the circulation of the remaining speculative fiction magazines, sometimes referred to as the "pulps" because of the cheap wood pulp paper on which they used to be printed. In their heyday there were dozens...
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Embedded Report
How Newspapers Can Increase Their Google Juice
There isn't much difference between what appears in a small newspaper's print edition and online. Many photographs make it online that don't make it to print, and the AP stories are usually a widget feed from the AP. However, in order to maximize search engine traffic and the reader's satisfaction, newspapers need to rethink their approach to online content. Online...
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Digging Deeper
Can Crowdfunding Help Save the Journalism Business?
Bands do it. Filmmakers do it. President-elect Barack Obama made an artform out of it. "It" is crowdfunding, getting micro-donations through the Internet to help fund a venture. The question is whether crowdfunding can work on a larger scale to help fund traditional journalism, which is being hit by the twin storms of readership and ad declines at newspapers and...
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Embeds
FriendFeed Widget Motivates Reporters to Use Social Media
Blogs should be conversations. At least, that is how we think about blogging at Mediafin, Belgium's leading publisher of business newspapers and websites. This last week, I have been busy reorganizing our major financial blog, Bear&Bull, adding FriendFeed widgets in hopes of encouraging more audience interaction. The results have been surprising -- although the audience has been slow to react,...
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Embeds
NYU Local Blog Connects a School with No Campus
The idea for NYU Local, the newest addition to New York University's list of publications, was born last year when founder and editor Cody Brown, 20, came up with the idea for a survey to be conducted by the Foundations of Journalism class. The survey question asked other NYU students: "Would you trade your right to vote for an iPod...
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Legal Drama
Judges Rule Anonymous Commenters Protected by State Shield Laws
Political campaigns often produce a blizzard of ancillary election-related litigation -- for an example, just look to the 2000 presidential campaign. When the press reports anonymous accusations during an election campaign, sometimes that litigation involves lawsuits by candidates or public officials seeking to learn the identity of those anonymous sources. In many states, newspapers and other media can protect such...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Current TV's 'SuperNews' Comedy Gauges Success on Web Views
I live about 7 minutes' drive from the headquarters of Al Gore's innovative Current TV in San Francisco, yet my cable system, Astound, still doesn't carry the channel. So when I was visiting my parents last summer in St. Louis, I made a point of checking it out. The first thing I saw was a cartoon spoof of social networking...
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BookShift
6 Ways Authors Can Succeed by Self-Publishing Books
When most authors write a book, they go the traditional route: pitch it to publishers, wait months for a reply, shop it around, wait some more, go through rewrite, and wait some more... But when blogger Sramana Mitra partnered with Amazon's BookSurge to self-publish her new book, she was taking a different route. For a book about web technology and...
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Digging Deeper
How 'Follower Spam' Infiltrated Twitter -- and How to Stop It
When using the micro-blogging service Twitter, by default you get email notices whenever anyone signs up to "follow" you (when you follow someone on Twitter, their Twitter posts, or "tweets," display on your main Twitter page, along with Tweets from everyone else you follow). A few weeks back, I noticed that I was getting inundated with new followers with names...
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NewspaperShift
How Audience Input Shaped Our Financial Crisis Coverage
It has been a while since I last reported about the changing work practices at Belgian business newspaper publisher Mediafin, but, as you may have noticed, something has gone horribly wrong in the financial services sector in the interim. In Belgium, our biggest bank, Fortis, was taken over by the French bank BNP Paribas. Another one of our largest banks...
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Guides
Your Guide to Political Polling Sites
We are an impatient nation. We can't stand waiting until election day to find out who will win an election -- we want to know who will win now. That explains the popularity of political polling simulations, aggregators and analysis blogs in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election. Because we have such a fascination with winners and losers, we want to see the current state of the race on a daily, even hourly, basis, and the web can deliver that in spades.
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Embedded Report
How the Focus on Print Hurts Our Newspaper Site
I don't consider our print and online newspaper areas here at the Bowling Green Daily News to be Byzantine. But to an outsider it might appear that way. On paper, the hierarchy is pretty simple. Our newspaper's website is under the control of the online director. The online director reports to two different people: the managing editor and the general manager (which is me).
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Thought Leader Q&A
Gannett Pushes for More Tech Hires, Data Centers, Niche Sites
These are dark days for newspaper companies in the U.S. There are layoffs in print newsrooms, classified ad revenues are dwindling, and readership is shrinking. To combat these trends, Gannett introduced a bold initiative in 2006 to remake its 85 daily newspaper newsrooms into "Information Centers," making the web the primary platform for 24-hour news, with more video, databases, maps...
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Weblogs
Journalists Consider Risks, Conflicts of Running Personal Blogs
Implementing strategies developed by millions of office workers who have honed the practice of flipping from computer solitaire to spreadsheets at the first sign of a lurking supervisor, I hid my blog from my co-workers. I had been a blogger for nearly four years by the time I entered the newspaper industry in 2006, and when I later accepted a...
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Digging Deeper
Political Fact-Check Sites Proliferate, But Can They Break Through the Muck?
As the U.S. elections near the finish line, the presidential campaigns are throwing around enough verbal attacks and inflammatory advertising to make the average voter's head spin. Fortunately, there are now three excellent sources for fact-checking political discourse online: Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org, the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly's PolitiFact and the Washington Post's Fact Checker blog....
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Digging Deeper
NYU Professor Stifles Blogging, Twittering by Journalism Student
After New York University journalism student Alana Taylor wrote her first embed report for MediaShift on September 5, it didn't take long for her scathing criticism of NYU to spread around the web and stir conversations. Taylor thought that her professor, Mary Quigley, was not up to speed on social media and podcasting -- even though the class she...
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PoliticalShift
How Greenwald's Brave New Films Spreads Its Political Message Online
Last month, Politico's Mike Allen asked presidential hopeful John McCain the seemingly innocent question of how many houses he owned. McCain's response -- "I'll have my staff get to you" -- became a major focus for both the media and Obama's campaign, who repeated it in just about every speech to illustrate that the Republican candidate was "out of...
more »Embedded Report
Does 'Web First' Strategy Make Sense for Small Newspapers?
The Bowling Green Daily News doesn't have a "web first" strategy in the way we run our newspaper. That means that we don't post articles to our website before they appear in print. Apart from some breaking local news, most major stories don't appear on the Internet until after the press is running. Right now, our readers aren't particularly...
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Legal Drama
Court Rules Print-on-Demand Service Not Liable for Defamation
Book publishers can be sued if they publish a book full of libelous statements because, the reasoning goes, a publisher should know what it prints. The publisher reviews the manuscript, edits and proofreads it, and distributes the finished book to retailers. It is involved in every part of the process. But the Internet has given rise to a new...
more »Digging Deeper
Lessons from Katrina Help Media, Volunteer Efforts in Gustav Coverage
When Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast, the evacuation of the area went much more smoothly than during Hurricane Katrina three years ago. This time, the local, state and national agencies were more prepared for a potential disaster. Similarly, online media outlets and volunteer efforts were also better prepared for this hurricane, having learned their lessons from the Katrina...
more »Digging Deeper
The Best 2008 Political Convention Coverage Online
In 2004, the major political conventions gave a few dozen bloggers press credentials, a historic moment for the new media outsiders. And this year, the political conventions have tried to be even more open to bloggers, video reporters, podcasters and new media. The Democratic convention credentialed 120 bloggers, and the GOP has credentialed 200 bloggers, according to Forbes. And the...
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NewspaperShift
Newspapers Can Do Online Video on a Modest Budget
I was as excited as anybody to be able to post video on our website. Our newspaper readers were turning more and more to their computer screen to read our news and it seemed logical that they would appreciate and enjoy seeing video enhancements for the print edition. My excitement soon turned to frustration as I started to run into hurdles.
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World View
How a Protester Pulled Off the Clandestine Radio Broadcast in Beijing
The voices of Chinese human rights activists can be heard on the radio. A former journalist describes the censorship she experienced, and a human rights activist explains the increasing crackdown on Chinese dissidents that has occurred these past few months. A former political prisoner complains about the appalling conditions in which he was held. Have the Chinese authorities gone wild and suddenly opened the airwaves?
more »NewspaperShift
Walls Tumble Down as Mediafin Integrates Print, Online Newsrooms
The company where I work is well-known in Belgium for its print publications. Mediafin is the publisher behind the Dutch language business daily De Tijd and its Francophone counterpart L'Echo. But in recent years, the company's Internet sites have grown to rival the popularity of its print editions. In July, Mediafin websites reached a new high of an estimated 160,000 unique visitors on one single day, an amount roughly equivalent to the average number of readers per day. But even as online journalism continues to reach more and more readers, journalists themselves continue to balk at putting their work online.
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Locative Media Project Aims to Collect Stories of Atlanta
The technology and journalism fields have long been dominated by men, especially in the upper management of big companies. But the J-Lab and McCormick Foundation want to shine the light on new ideas from women who work at mainstream media outlets but want to start something up on the side. That's why they started giving out grants in their...
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Digging Deeper
Commenters Mix Conversation, Self-Promoting Links to Defeat Filters
There was a time not too long ago when you could spot spam comments on a blog from a mile away. There were too many links, the comment was off-topic, and they were trying to promote a pyramid scheme website. But as human and automated filters started catching problematic posters, their techniques became more sneaky. Soon, there were comments...
more »Embedded Report
How Outside Firms Like TownNews.com Can Help Small Newspaper Sites
I decided early on that the best strategy for our newspaper to grow its web presence was to not to hire people, but to find other firms to partner with.
This took us from working with a guy with a server is his apartment to working with a phone company and finally a newspaper-specific host/content management system. We gave up control over many aspects of our website in order to remain flexible.
more »MediaShift
MediaShift Looking for Embeds, Correspondents, Managing Editor
I just wanted to update readers on changes that are happening here at PBS MediaShift and Idea Lab. In early June, I put out a call for new correspondents and "embeds" to write for MediaShift. I want to add more voices to this blog besides mine, open it up to more ideas and diverse opinions, and get better coverage...
more »Digging Deeper
Will Code of Best Practices Help Video Mash-Up Artists Stay Legal?
You just created the best video mash-up ever, taking a speech given by John McCain broadcast on Fox News, remixing it with the song "Ol' Man River," and quick-cutting in clips from gangsta rappers. You upload it to YouTube and other video-sharing sites, and watch the views pile up. But have you run afoul of copyright law? Do you...
more »Embedded Report
NBC's Penguin Story Goes from Web to 'Nightly News'
It was a seemingly prosaic moment at the end of the "Weekend NBC Nightly News" program Saturday, July 5: Lester Holt wrapped up the show with one of those ever-popular cute animal stories. The piece was about a baby penguin rejected by its mother and now being raised by a zoo worker in Boston. But there was a lot more to this story than met the eye, as Holt hinted at with his introduction: "It's a story we first reported on our website. It got a lot of traffic there, so much in fact that we thought maybe we'd air it right here. So here's NBC's Clare Duffy with our report."
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Young Newspaper Journalists Could Flee Because of Slow Pace of Change
As the layoffs and buyouts pile up in U.S. the newspaper industry, and Romenesko becomes a daily wake, there is one other troubling problem: Young journalists are less willing to stay at newspapers because the papers are so slow to change their culture.
more »NewspaperShift
The Newspaper Blurb That Complained to Me
In my daily perusal of the ever-shrinking San Francisco Chronicle print newspaper, I noticed a little blurb tucked away on the front page of the Technology and Business section. Then a weird thing happened. The newspaper blurb actually started talking to me.
more »Guides
The iPhone is the first cell phone offered by Apple Computer, combining its popular iPod MP3 player with a multi-touch-screen smartphone with web browsing. Apple CEO Steve Jobs played the tech world's wizard as he unveiled the iPhone on January 9, 2007 at the Macworld conference, where people lined up to gape at an early version of the phone behind glass.
more »MagazineShift
How PaidContent Succeeded in Mining Digital Media Niche
Rafat Ali was just another freelance journalist back in 2002, and wanted to strut his stuff on a blog, so he started PaidContent to write about his take on the business of digital content. Now he is much richer for his efforts, having expanded the blog into a mini-media empire with venture funding and last week selling it entirely to Guardian Media Group for about $30 million.
more »Digging Deeper
Who Killed the Online Journalism Review and Will It Live Again?
For more than 10 years, the Online Journalism Review was published by the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California as a place to follow the struggles and triumphs in the nascent field of online journalism. But on June 16, editor Robert Niles posted a note to the site titled, Goodbye, explaining that USC was suspending publication of OJR and that he would be leaving the school.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Quick Video Services Spark Conversations, Boredom
Online video has moved way beyond simple video-sharing on YouTube. A growing number of services are allowing users to make video on the fly and stream their material live or near live to the web or from mobile devices. Instant video content, often just conversations between the producer and his or her audience, or video comments back and forth, is much different from content that is recorded, edited and posted onto video-sharing sites like YouTube.
more »Digging Deeper
Online Video Ads Finally Find Their Niche
The numbers tell the story of the disconnect between online videos watched and online video ads sold: In December 2007, Americans watched 10 billion online videos, according to comScore. For the entire year of 2007, advertisers spent just $554 million on online video ads, according to Jupiter, while they spent $21 billion on all online ads. So many people are watching online videos, but so few advertisers are trying to reach them.
more »Open Source Reporting
Educational Centers for Journalism Experiments
Will print newspapers exist in 10 years? How will we fund investigative journalism in the future? How can journalists learn to do reporting, moderating communities, filtering content, building Google Maps and all the other technical and online duties they will need to know?
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Charles Lewis Tries to Solve -- Not Bemoan -- State of Investigative Journalism
The state of investigative journalism in America is in its five-alarm fire phase, with newspaper staffs being severely pared down, and TV news going for flash and celebrity. But Charles Lewis, the godfather of non-profit investigative journalism as founder and former director of the Center for Public Integrity, would rather put out the fire than simply yell "fire!"
more »Legal Drama
AP Badly Mistaken on Drudge Retort
Last week, the Associated Press decided that the Drudge Retort was in violation of copyright laws because it excerpted parts of AP stories and linked to them. The AP legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter to Drudge Retort's owner, the technology book author Rogers Cadenhead.
more »MediaShift
MediaShift Looking for 'Embeds' at Newspaper, Radio, TV
As the redesign and revamp of the MediaShift site continues apace, I am looking for a few good folks to serve as correspondents for MediaShift, so I can get better insight into industries or worlds that I cover only occasionally. My hope is that with a group of 10 to 15 correspondents, I'll be able to give my community of readers and contributors more food for thought and interaction.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Slingbox Lets Me Take Live TV Abroad
Last month, I moved to Spain, and I took my TV with me. Not the actual TV set, but my shows. As I write this, I'm watching a live episode of "Larry King Live," where politicians and pundits are discussing the implications of the Obama victory. It's 9:00 in the morning here in Spain, and even though I'm having breakfast, late-night Larry King and everyone else is truly live, thanks to Slingbox.
more »Digging Deeper
'Technology Sabbath' Offers One Day to Unplug
Lately, I've been experimenting with taking one day each week away from work completely. You might think this would be an easy task as there's a "weekend" each week that allegedly offers up two full days of rest. And yet, as I work at home, the shiny big screen of the iMac beckons at all hours, and I am often in front of its white glow the first thing every morning and the last thing at night.
more »Digging Deeper
Newspaper Vet Malcolm Finds Blog Religion with 'Top of the Ticket'
If you have preconceived notions about political blogging, Andrew Malcolm is here to shatter them. Malcolm, 64, has decades of experience as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief at the New York Times, and later as an editorial board member and feature writer for the Los Angeles Times. He has ink in his blood, but when he was tapped by the L.A. Times to help write the new political blog, Top of the Ticket, Malcolm became a quick convert to the online religion.
more »NewspaperShift
Post-Mortem on the Multimedia Boot Camp
For five and a half days, a group of mostly newspaper journalists (with a few broadcasters and non-profit folks thrown in) took an intensive boot camp multimedia training at UC Berkeley through the Knight Digital Media Center. The idea was to learn as much as possible about shooting and editing video, capturing and editing audio, building Flash animations, doing...
more »NewspaperShift
Flash Techniques, and the Participatory Push by Current TV
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- The week-long training at UC Berkeley in multimedia has now moved to a new phase. After getting basic background on audio, video and photographic equipment, we went out into the field on our group's assignment. My group, Team Gecko, went to visit Professor Robert Full to learn about the work he's done in biomechanics. Full's lab...
more »NewspaperShift
Photography Training and Doing More with Less in El Paso
It's now Day 3 in the marathon week-long multimedia boot camp at UC Berkeley run by the Knight Digital Media Center. We have broken into groups to create various multimedia stories, and later today we'll go out to do our primary interviews and video shoots. My group will be meeting with Robert Full, a professor who studies robotics based on animal movements.
more »NewspaperShift
Hands-On Training with Videocameras and Shooting for the Web
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- After our long storyboarding sessions, it's now time to move into more hands-on training and seminars on doing video shooting, audio recording, digital photography and using Macintosh computers. So far, there's been a good mix of lectures, discussions and collaborative work on storyboards for our projects. The group is very inquisitive, and the instructors have done...
more »NewspaperShift
Storyboarding Basics and Finding Your Dream Job
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- It's Day 2 at the Knight Digital Media Center's week-long boot camp for journalists learning to do multimedia reports. On the agenda for the day is learning about doing "storyboarding," or laying out how a multimedia report will work. And there will also be some basic tutorials on using videocameras and techniques in video shooting. (Some...
more »NewspaperShift
Live-Blogging the Multimedia Boot Camp for Newspaper Journalists
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- With MediaShift, I've always had a plan to add video and audio along with all the text reports I do here. As I want to "walk my talk" about media outlets using multimedia, I felt it made sense to do them myself. This week, I'll be auditing a week-long boot camp in multimedia training at the...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Are Print Newspapers Alive and Well in Spain?
From a picture window in an office from where I am writing in the Gracia neighborhood of Barcelona, I can see the same sights I could see from a similar window in my former neighborhood in San Francisco: pedestrians, taxis, cafes and bookstores. But there is something different about my view here: I can spot three different storefronts specializing in newspapers and magazines, all on one block and on one side of the street. A couple of yards away, there are more newsstands. A visit to the corner cafe reveals something else that's rather curious: the room full of coffee drinkers is full of people reading the news -- not on laptops or iPhones -- but on good old-fashioned pulp.
more »NewspaperShift
Fear and Loathing (and Bad Hooker Jokes) at the Old Media Corral
LAS VEGAS -- When Editor & Publisher and MediaWeek magazines presented the recent Interactive Media conference, it seemed like the perfect time for traditional media execs and managers to examine the interactive landscape and consider innovative approaches to the web. The idea was a good one, and timely, but the execution was sorely lacking. Everything about the conference had...
more »MobileShift
Learning the Limits of Locative Media
Once our "LoJo team" finalized our locative story idea, we had to decide which format and technology worked best. We debated the advantages of driving tours versus walking tours. Driving tours are particularly attractive when tour locations are miles apart, which is the case with some of Chicago's planned Olympic venues. But a driving tour would limit our story to people with cars and to locations with available parking. We ultimately decided on a hybrid driving and walking tour.
more »Thought Leader Q&A
NPR Considers Convergence for Next Generation of Radio Reporters
The younger generation will be our future leaders. We hear that a lot in politics, but it also applies to media companies wondering who will be leading them into a digital future. National Public Radio has two programs -- Next Generation Radio (NextGen) and Intern Edition -- aimed at training young folks to do quality radio reporting the NPR...
more »Citizen Journalism
This Reporter Becomes a Participant at an Unconference
Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution? That's a question you hear a lot when people complain about something that's gone wrong in our modern world. And there's a lot of hand-wringing about the future of journalism and whether it will survive its painful transition in the digital age. But the conference...
more »Digging Deeper
9 Tips to Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With search engines ranking as a top traffic driver for many blogs and content sites, optimizing a site for search engine exposure is an increasingly critical component of any online marketing effort. Search engine optimization, or "SEO," means using technical and not-so-technical techniques to make sure that people searching for topics you write about will find your site. Over...
more »NewspaperShift
Are Veteran Media Execs the Ones Who'll See the Future?
BERKELEY -- We are midway through the first day at the conference, "Crisis in News: Is There a Future for Investigative Reporting?" [You can read my earlier post from the conference here.] One thing that struck me here is that we have some serious bigwigs and executives at major media companies, like the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR,...
more »NewspaperShift
State of Investigative Reporting at Newspapers, Broadcasting
BERKELEY, CA -- I am blogging live from the conference, "Crisis in News: Symposium on Investgative Reporting," at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. It is perhaps the most beautiful day outside here, with glorious blue skies, but investigative journalists are like vampires, hiding out in dark spaces when it's warm and sunny outside. So here we are in...
more »NewspaperShift
Examples of Online Investigative Journalism
This weekend I'll be attending "The Crisis in News: Is There a Future for Investigative Journalism?" hosted at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. There will be a lot of old school journalism types who have been plying the trade of investigative work for decades. Most of these folks work at big news...
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Public Documents + Shoe Leather Reporting = The Smoking Gun's Staying Power
In a world of social network widgets, videoblogs and Web 2.0 gewgaws, sometimes it's the simple things that work best. That's the lesson of Web 1.0 startup The Smoking Gun, a simply designed site that relies on public documents and criminal mugshots to bring in boatloads of traffic. If a prominent politician or celebrity has run afoul of the...
more »TVShift
CBS Considers 'Loyalty Index' Over Pay for Page Views
With so many ways to track a writer's popularity online, should that popularity be tied to a journalist's or blogger's pay? That is a question that's come up quite a few times over the years, and last week I took Gawker Media to task for paying writers based on page views. My basic point was that there should be...
more »PhotoShift
Cheap Editing Tools a Boon for Media Makers
Video, photo and music editing used to be only accessible through complicated and expensive hardware, and software programs such as Avid for video, Photoshop for images and ProTools for audio. But now a vast array of online tools and cheaper software are letting amateurs and pros polish up their work without spending any money. In addition to being free,...
more »Digging Deeper
Net neutrality or network neutrality means that Internet service providers (ISPs) such as cable and telephone companies must treat all traffic equally that travels across their networks. That means that your broadband service provider couldn't block you from seeing a particular site or using a high-bandwidth service arbitrarily.
more »Digging Deeper
The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public
Silicon Valley journalist/blogger Tom Foremski had had enough. Two years ago, he wrote a poison pen letter to the PR industry in a blog post titled Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!, in which he exhorted publicists to break down press releases into sections, tag the information and provide links to more sources. "Press releases are nearly useless," he...
more »Philosophy
It's Time for Newsrooms to Walk the Talk of Change
Seems like nearly every day I get a notice in my in-box about a new conference, a new initiative, a new working group that will be looking at ways that traditional media can change with the digital times. For the most part, these programs have thoughtful people who sincerely want to help news organizations change. My worry is that they...
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Front Porch Forum Makes Friends & Neighbors, But Can It Make Money?
We are a society that lives more and more in our technology-induced bubbles. When we go outside, we wear an iPod; we talk on cell phones while driving. In urban areas, we might never meet our neighbors unless there's a fire or earthquake. But can technology also help bring us together in our physical communities, and help us get...
more »Digging Deeper
The mobile web, or mobile Internet, is the experience of browsing the Net or using Internet functionality such as online maps and web search on your cellular phone or personal digital assistant (PDA). The promise of the mobile web is to let you do things like check email or news headlines, find good local restaurants, and get driving directions while you are on the move.
more »Your Take Roundup
Newspapers Should Focus on Local News -- But Not Forget Bigger Picture
Recently, there was a healthy discussion on Poynter's Online-News email list on the topic of the importance of local news. So I decided to put the question to MediaShift readers as well: Should traditional media outlets start focusing more on local news and leave the national and international stories to other outlets? How far should they go? Before I...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
The Blessing and Curse of the iPod Touch
Here at MediaShift, we have had some less than perfect experiences with mobile devices and the Internet. Earlier this year, Mark wrote "a manifesto about what would make for a smarter smartphone." And last summer "I grumbled about the bad time I was having with my new smartphone." The Treo 680 was under-delivering in the one area that had convinced me to purchase the phone in the first place: surfing the web.
more »Digging Deeper
Semi-Pro Journalism Teams Give Alternative View of U.S. Elections
Elizabeth Gotsdiner got Joe Biden's errant spittle in her mouth. Shantel Middleton got to ride on a Ron Paul blimp. Mayhill Fowler was following Obama canvassers and ended up helping them carry brochures for the candidate. Each of these folks represents a new class of semi-pro journalist tasked with covering the U.S. presidential election in innovative, more personal ways....
more »Digging Deeper
Politico 2.0: Ruffini Blogs, Twitters, Crowdsources Obama Donations
Patrick Ruffini is the epitome of the new breed of political consultant. He's a numbers wonk who swears by Microsoft Excel. He's a tech geek who's had his own political website since the mid-'90s, and he writes for various big-name group blogs such as TechPresident and TownHall.com -- as well as his own blog. And though he has worked...
more »Digging Deeper
Distinction Between Bloggers, Journalists Blurring More Than Ever
The time-worn debate of Bloggers vs. Journalists has finally run its course. For years, traditional journalists scoffed at bloggers as pajama-wearing screamers, while bloggers have pointed to MSM (mainstream media) as secretly biased and obsolete. While the extremists in this argument have had the stage shouting at each other loudly (and it continues to this day), what has happened...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Lately, it seems everybody's a video producer. From YouTube to BlogTV to Seesmic â- it's as if everyone's doing something with a videocamera. Last year, I wondered if the transition from blogger to video producer and host might not be the best route for everyone. It seemed that bloggers were eager to jump formats and just "do video," and the...
more »Digging Deeper
With the advent of the Internet and a growing number of security breaches, people worry that their personal information can be seen and exploited around the world in an instant. If you have incriminating photos online, a potential employer or love interest might find them and make snap judgments. If you shop online with a credit card, a merchant might steal your information and run up charges on your card. If you surf online around major media sites, publishers might use your "data trail" to target advertising to you.
more »Your Take Roundup
Kindle, E-Readers Must Be Cheap, Flexible to Supplant Books
Are e-readers like the Amazon Kindle going to make print books obsolete, or will people's undying love for the printed book continue on in the digital age? While the Sony Reader didn't catch fire, the recent release of the Amazon Kindle has brought another round of debates over the future of the print book.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
5 Reasons I Won't Give Up Books
Last month at the highly anticipated MacWorld conference here in San Francisco, Apple honcho Steve Jobs said some words that left many agape. Those words weren't "Macbook Air" but "people don't read anymore." He was predicting a doomed future for Amazon's new Kindle e-reader. Shocked, I've been going over this for weeks now, trying to cut through the punditry...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Why I Left Print Media for Digital
In new media circles, one of the hottest topics of recent years has been the print-to-digital shift. People pundit about it, shout "print is dead" and wallow in the sadness sparked by nostalgia for a day when this wasn't a question. We've also begun speculating on whether a device like the Kindle will really ever take our attention away...
more »Digging Deeper
In Digital Age, Journalism Students Need Business, Entrepreneurial Skills
The traditional path of a journalism career has clearly shifted. In the past, a journalism student would learn about being a newspaper reporter, then take a job at a small-town paper, eventually moving up to a medium and then larger paper. Now, the reporter might launch a blog, an audio podcast or video reports as a one-person operation, handling editorial and business duties simultaneously.
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