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Philosophy
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...
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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
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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: 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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....
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...
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...
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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.
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 »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 »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 »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 »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 »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 »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 »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 »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
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
Traditional Media Ready to Elevate the Conversation Online -- with Moderation
Major media sites have started to get the religion of audience participation, but there's been one big hitch: How do you harness the audience's knowledge and participation without the forums devolving into a messy online brawl that requires time-intensive moderation? Over the years, traditional media sites have tried forums, killed them, and tried them again, this time with more...
more »MediaShift
10 MediaShifting Moments of 2007
As the year 2007 sets in the distance, we can take some time to consider the year that was. I'm not a huge fan of year-end lists, but sometimes they help us get a grip on what transpired -- and ponder what's to come. What's perhaps most amazing about 2007 is that two distinct phenomena -- the iPhone and...
more »Digging Deeper
Your Guide to Hyper-Local News
Hyper-local news is the information relevant to small communities or neighborhoods that has been overlooked by traditional news outlets. Thanks to cheap self-publishing and communication online, independent hyper-local news sites have sprung up to serve these communities, while traditional media has tried their own initiatives to cover what they've missed. In some cases, hyper-local sites let anyone submit stories, photos or videos of the community, with varying degrees of moderation and filtering. Pioneers such as "Northwest Voice" in Bakersfield, Calif., and "YourHub", which started in Denver, actually reverse publish select material from their websites in print publications. Both of them are run by mainstream newspaper publishers.
more »Weblogs
Losing the Journalistic Security Blanket
Here's the quiz of the day for 21st Century Journalism 101: What makes news critics howl, able reporters swoon and strong editors weep? (Hint: The great unwashed and untutored of the blogosphere consider them pure manna.)
more »NewspaperShift
Rethinking the Mercury News...with Community Participation
When I was clicking through the website of the San Jose Mercury News metro newspaper, I noticed the navigation bar had the usual tabs for News, Tech, Sports, Business, and finally, Help. But this time, rather than consider this Help tab as a way for readers to get help, I could hear the Mercury News calling out to readers...
more »Your Take
What's the role of unions in the digital age?
Unions have had a long history representing media workers at traditional media organizations. But now they are being tested, as those very same traditional media outlets are creating more and more non-union digital jobs while eliminating union jobs. Unions have always had a role in helping workers vs. the media companies, but now they must figure out how to...
more »Digging Deeper
Traditional Media Evolves for Wildfire Coverage, But Hyper-Local Still Lacking
When people think of community or hyper-local neighborhood news, they typically think of bake sales, petty crime and development catfights. But when a disaster strikes, the stakes for community news are raised, and lightning-quick news updates online can save lives and help residents cope. That was the reality in San Diego and Southern California during last week's series of...
more »Media Usage
California Wildfire Coverage by Local Media, Blogs, Twitter, Maps and More
The last few days have shown that online resources, social media, and collaboration on the Net can make a huge difference in a natural disaster. As the wildfires have spread in Southern California, the evacuees and local residents have utilized the Internet not only to connect and get updated information; they have used it to tell their stories, share...
more »Citizen Journalism
MediaShift Launches Idea Lab Group Blog
A few weeks back, I heard gunshots outside my window. It was pretty scary, and reminded me of my urban environment here in Potrero Hill, San Francisco. But where could I turn to get the story on what happened? Was someone killed? Do police know what happened? In the past, I might have heard something about it on the...
more »Your Take
Should bloggers and newspapers make peace?
Everywhere you turn, newspaper websites are getting the blog religion. They're either adding new blogs from reporters or community members, or setting up an alliance to share advertising, or just buying up big-name bloggers, as the New York Times has done with Freakonomics and by hiring TVNewser's Brian Stelter. Alana Semuels counts all the ways newspapers and bloggers are working...
more »Your Take Roundup
People Will Pay for Niche Content, Ad-Free Newspaper Sites
With the end of the TimesSelect pay service for New York Times editorialists and archives -- and the possible end of the Wall Street Journal Online's paid wall -- I wondered if anyone would pay for content on newspaper sites. Most of the stories there are timely news, meaning they don't hold value for very long, and much of...
more »Digging Deeper
Henry Blodget, Silicon Alley Look for Resurgence
When I mentioned the name "Henry Blodget" to a friend from the old dot-com daze, she wrinkled her nose with disgust. "How can anyone trust what he has to say, when he was the one who caused the bubble in the first place!" she said. Blodget was a financial analyst who mightily predicted Amazon's stock would hit $400 --...
more »Your Take
What content would you pay for (if any) on a newspaper site?
Newspapers online have always struggled with a consistent business model. There have been registration walls, paid content behind walls (including columnists and archives), and various ad schemes from paid search ads to classifieds to interstitial ads that bar entry. Many of the paid content ideas have fallen aside lately, with the boom in online advertising. NYTimes.com dropped its not-so-popular TimesSelect...
more »Philosophy
Why We Love (and Hate) Print Publications
In the course of any dinner conversation with friends or colleagues, the subject of media usually comes up, soon followed by The Question: When will print publications become obsolete? If the Internet gives us access to publications from around the globe on topics so diverse they couldn't possibly fit in a newsstand or our mailbox, why bother reading them...
more »NewspaperShift
The Difficulty of Putting a Number on Journalism Jobs
My story on the shift of journalism jobs from traditional to new media has been causing a stir among media folks, who either see the same shift happening in front of them or think I'm being overly optimistic. Leading the charge against my story was author and blogger Nicholas Carr, who titled his critique, Mark Glaser's dubious silver lining,...
more »Digging Deeper
Traditional Journalism Job Cuts Countered by Digital Additions
If you follow the world of traditional journalism, you can't help but notice the seemingly constant stream of layoffs and buyouts at news organizations. But media observers don't often emphasize the flip side: As newspapers and broadcasters slice their senior-level workforce, they are also quietly building their digital and online teams. For example, when I heard about job cuts...
more »Your Take Roundup
Google News Comments a 'Fabulous Step Forward'
For an experimental feature that barely registers a blip in reality, the idea of letting sources of stories comment on Google News has stirred up a hornet's nest in journalism circles and the blogosphere. Two software engineers at Google News said they would be adding limited comments to news stories that are linked from the news aggregator, giving quoted...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Free Newspapers Lead Way Online in Europe
As big newspapers struggle with shifting business models, a new breed of free newspapers have have found their niche in many parts of the world. According to the Newspaper Innovation blog, 36 million free papers are distributed daily in 49 countries. As newspaper subscriptions lag, advertisers turn to these papers that have a captive audience of commuters desperate for...
more »NewspaperShift
Why WSJ.com Should Open (or Keep) Its Pay Wall
Should he or shouldn't he? Ever since Rupert Murdoch finally wrangled his way into a buyout of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, there has been rampant speculation on whether Murdoch will lift the pay curtain at WSJ.com, making it a free site. While I've begged The New York Times to end their TimesSelect pay wall for op-ed...
more »Digging Deeper
Topix Capitalizes on Forums, Reaches Rural Areas
When local news aggregator Topix decided to set up online forums last December for every city and small town in America, they figured the forums would be a loss leader. After all, online forums have a bad reputation for unfettered discussion, gossip and slander, leading most news organizations to abandon them altogether online. And people on forums are usually...
more »Philosophy
10 Reasons There's a Bright Future for Journalism
There's been a lot of debate lately about the future of newspapers, the future of TV, the future of radio -- the future of journalism itself -- in the face of drastic change brought by technology and the Internet. I've asked MediaShift readers whether they thought journalism's metaphorical cup was half empty or half full and most people saw...
more »Your Take Roundup
'Cup Is Overflowing' for Future of Journalism
If there is one overriding debate in the world of journalism, it's whether technology and the Internet are going to doom traditional reporting or strengthen it in the long run. Putting it bluntly, is journalism's cup half full or half empty? The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper has been the nerve center for this debate, with its reporters pushing the...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Online Map Craze Helps People Visualize Data
It's not often that you find an Internet trend based on something ancient. But that's what's happening with maps. Google Maps has gone from innovative to indispensable and highly replicated in a little over two years. Thanks to Google's open map API (appliction programming interface), just about anybody can create a map for just about anything -- from tracking...
more »Digging Deeper
Web Leads, Print Pubs Improve Environmental Impact
If you've grown tired of answering the question, "paper or plastic?" you can now consider another nagging environmental question when choosing your news source: "Online or print?" Environmental critics have decried "dead-tree media" for decades, saying that print publications rely on clear-cutting forests, energy produced to run paper mills, and gasoline used to deliver publications to each doorstep.While print...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
U.S. Media Fails to Deliver Spanish News Online
Here in the United States, with over "31 million Spanish speakers", you would think Spanish would be our second language online. And you would think that content for the Spanish-speaking community would be not only available, but also rich and varied, if only for the value it represents to marketers. But that isn't the case.
more »Digging Deeper
'Frienemy' Google Not a Threat (Yet) to Traditional Ad Sales
If you browse through Google's job openings, the dozens of advertising sales positions -- from account manager of Print Ads in Chicago to account manager of Google Television in New York -- you'd think Google was a major media conglomerate that owned TV stations and newspapers. Instead, Google has been trying to take its automated online system for selling...
more »NewspaperShift
How the Online Newspaper Can Become a Community Hub
I was talking with someone the other day about the future of newspapers. That seems like the topic du jour with anyone in the news business, or anyone who follows the media. I brought up the recent imbroglio over people who believe that investigative journalism will die with the newspaper printing presses, and I was asked, "Well, how will...
more »Philosophy
Serious Journalism Won't Die as Newsprint Fades
I was reading my local newspaper today -- yes, I still read it in print -- and came upon this unfortunate passage in an otherwise nice report on a maverick newspaper publisher in rural California: "With classified advertising usurped by the Internet, newspapers across the country are facing mounting losses and, in many cases, cuts in staff and resources....
more »NewspaperShift
USA Today Walks the Talk of Audience Involvement
When a major newspaper announces it is redesigning its print layout or website, it doesn't usually merit much attention. The regular readers usually complain about it, and then get used to it, and life goes on. But in the case of USA Today redesigning its website, there was more at play than a new look; the site added social...
more »Digging Deeper
Web Focus Leads Newspapers to Hire Programmers for Editorial Staff
Whenever journalist-programmer extraordinaire Adrian Holovaty speaks at a conference, newspaper executives approach him to ask, "Where can we find another person like you?" Unfortunately, not a lot of people combine journalism with computer programming to create mash-ups like Holovaty's seminal side project, ChicagoCrime.org, which feeds the city's crime blotter into a searchable online database and onto Google Maps. Holovaty...
more »Your Take Roundup
Photojournalists Will Survive in Era of Citizen Photogs
Newspapers will die. Radio will kick the bucket. The packaged music CD is on death's doorstep. There is an irresistible urge to declare one medium dead because of the rise of the new. And so it is when we consider the plight of photojournalists after the proliferation of cameraphones and digital cameras in the hands of the masses, who can now capture breaking news in every corner of the world.
more »Open Source Reporting
Imagining a Future Tense for Newspapers
It's easy to criticize the humble newspaper as being outmoded, out of style and out of business options. What's far more difficult is to imagine how newspapers can take their goodness -- the award-winning investigative reports, the service journalism, the knowledge of the community -- and combine that with new technology and the Internet to reach and interact with an enlightened, empowered audience.
more »Digging Deeper
Reuters Looks to Africa and a Decentralized Future for Media
The 155-year-old Reuters wire service has been reinventing itself for the modern age of decentralized journalism, where millions of people have the tools to capture the news around them. Reuters has made alliances and investments in blog aggregators Global Voices and Pluck, and with Yahoo for the citizen-submitted news site, You Witness News. Plus, Reuters made a high-profile move of putting a correspondent into the virtual world, Second Life.
more »Philosophy
Old Media Company Swears It Really Gets the Web
LOS ANGELES (Goiters) -- Management at the Los Angeles Herald-Gazette newspaper today unveiled an earth-shattering initiative to combine operations of the newspaper and its Internet site -- a change that was crucial to ensuring that the Herald-Gazette appears to finally "get" the web.
more »Digging Deeper
WSJ Gets Comfortable with Blogs, Wants to Boost Community
Historically, the august Wall Street Journal's website has been the antithesis of Web 2.0 and online innovation. The Journal's site, WSJ.com, costs money to access, even if you already pay for the print edition. The site has stressed online columns, as opposed to blogs, and there has been very little multimedia.
more »Your Take Roundup
Traditional Newsrooms Still Need to Walk the Talk
It's much easier to talk about changing than to actually change. That's the lesson everyone learns each year with New Year's resolutions such as "I'm going to lose 20 pounds and exercise more" or "I'll finally start my own business." In the media world, traditional old-world media loves to talk about new media, from podcasts to blogs to citizen journalism. And while many old-line newsrooms have tried out many of these formats, I wondered whether they had really changed their stripes or were just making cosmetic changes.
more »Digging Deeper
Newspaper, Bubble Blogs Feed the Real Estate Obsession
Have you ever gone to an open house even though you weren't interested in buying the property? Have you ever pored over housing price data on Zillow or read through housing ads on Craigslist just for fun? You are not alone. There seems to be a growing obsession with real estate in the U.S., as home prices have soared in the past few years, only to come back to earth a bit in the past year.
more »Your Take Roundup
Bloggers Leading Mainstream Journalists in Transparency
Perhaps I was being a bit purposefully provocative in my question to you -- "Should bloggers avoid conflicts of interest as journalists do?" -- but it didn't take long for readers to correct my thinking. While journalists do have a code of ethics they are supposed to follow, no such code exists for bloggers, which is just fine for many of you.
more »Digging Deeper
TPMmuckraker Thrives as Political Corruption Runs Rampant
If Roosevelt lived today, he might add in "blog" to the list of places where muckrakers do their work -- and he probably would be a bit more scared of the work they're doing. One hundred years after Roosevelt coined the "muckraker" term for journalists who uncover corruption and fraud, bloggers have taken the mantle once reserved for investigative print journalists and created a new brand of muckraking that moves at the speed of the Net and involves collaboration with readers.
more »NewspaperShift
Don't Stick Fork In Editorialists Just Yet
At least not until this proud editorialist gets another job, that is! Actually, after reading the case for abolishing traditional editorials presented by the always interesting Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine.com, I have to nod my head in agreement with much of what he says even as I vigorously disagree with his marquee assertion.
more »NewspaperShift
WECAN Harnesses Wisdom of Crowds for Newspaper
One of the biggest reasons I can't wait to get to the newsroom most mornings is the WECAN project --- the Washington Examiner Community Action Network. This project is barely in its infancy but is worth watching because it combines elements of citizen media and open-source journalism, with a semi-traditional daily newspaper.
more »NewspaperShift
The Case for Citizen Ownership of the Los Angeles Times
Corporate ownership of daily newspapers is reaching the breaking point, especially now at the Los Angeles Times, which is owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Company media conglomerate. The newspaper is facing the same problem that hundreds of other newspapers are facing: Owners and stockholders who want profit growth each year, who want to cut back on editorial staff, and who could care less about the communities and people who actually read and gain insight from the newspaper. And there's that massive problem of people reading dead-tree edition newspapers less and reading electronic online versions more -- leading to smaller profits at the moment.
more »Digging Deeper
Associated Press, MSNBC Video to Support Macs, Firefox
There is nothing more frustrating for Macintosh users or those who use the Firefox browser than going to a video site and hitting a wall demanding Windows and the Internet Explorer browser. But when the Associated Press' Online Video Network first launched last spring in conjunction with Microsoft, the requirements for users were just that: Windows and Internet Explorer. The idea behind the OVN is that Microsoft provides the video hosting, technology and ad sales; AP provides the video content; and small and medium news site partners show the videos on their sites for a split of revenue with Microsoft and the AP.
more »Digging Deeper
Mark Cuban's Sharesleuth Takes Business Reporting to Ethical Edge
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban has one of the best named weblogs, Blog Maverick, because he is nothing if not a maverick in the technology, sports and online worlds. He shepherded his Broadcast.com streaming multimedia company through a successful initial public offering in 1998 and sold it to Yahoo in 1999 for more than $5 billion. Cuban used the proceeds to start high-definition TV networks, HDNet, buy Landmark Movie theaters and buy the Dallas Mavericks NBA team. He's probably the only major team owner who asks fans to email him feedback.
more »Open Source Reporting
Bloggers Gauge Web 2.0 Features for Newspaper Sites Around World
So this is how open source reporting works. On August 1, The Bivings Group released a research report of how the Top 100 U.S. newspaper websites were implementing features such as blogs, podcasts and social bookmarking. (I summarized the findings here.) By August 10, three bloggers located outside the U.S. took it upon themselves to do a similar study of their own country's top newspaper sites to see how they stacked up to their American counterparts. And one German blogger set up a wiki to track results for German newspaper sites.
more »NewspaperShift
Newspaper Sites Hot to Blog, Cool to Podcasts
Newspaper companies are feeling the shift hard, as people go from reading print newspapers to getting their news and classified ads on the Internet. But if there's one thing the Newspaper Association of America can hang their hat on, it's that newspaper websites continue to grow their audiences and advertising revenues. So if people are not reading papers in print, at least they might be getting their news online from the same news source.
more »Citizen Journalism
Can Investigative Journalism Be Done in Collaboration Online?
Robert Parry, an investigative reporter who broke stories about the Iran-Contra scandal in the '80s, wrote about the importance of investigative journalism for his ConsortiumNews.com site.
more »TVShift
Digging Deeper::Big Media Slowly Giving the Audience Some Control
Have you ever watched your local TV news broadcast and railed against the stream of homicides, car crashes and fires? What if you could have a say in what the station was reporting each day? John Schiumo has made that dream a reality for New Yorkers who watch the local 24-hour cable news station, NY1. Last July, Schiumo helped...
more »Citizen Journalism
Opening Up the Grant Process::Help the Knight Foundation Give Away Millions
The email pitch was so cheesy, that I almost didn't open up the message, thinking it was probably a get-rich-scheme spam email: "Last Chance to Help Spend Someone Else's $$$" was the subject line. But for once, this was no empty come-on. The Knight Foundation -- started by the newspaper moguls Jack and Jim Knight -- is asking for...
more »NewspaperShift
Digging Deeper::Can Newspaper Letter Editors Stop Astroturf Onslaught?
People are so outraged by the Medicare drug program overhaul that they're writing letters to the editors of many newspapers to complain. And people are equally upset by gay marriage and are writing letters in support of the Marriage Protection Amendment. But there's one problem with these two sets of letters: Each set contains largely the same text, taken...
more »NewspaperShift
Opinion-Page Makeover::Turn NY Times Columnists Into Bloggers
Last week I tried to channel Ronald Reagan in asking New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to tear down the TimesSelect pay wall. But perhaps I tried too hard to stick to the original speech, without clarifying my points well. Plus, I wonder what would happen if the Times took the opposite tack, and turned all its columnists...
more »NewspaperShift
Your Take Roundup::Newspaper Blogs Must Break Social Control of Newsroom
Something about the juxtoposition of the words "newspaper blog" doesn't ring true. Newspapers and blogs don't seem to fit together naturally unless you're thinking of a blogger who likes to rip apart the bias of a local newspaper. Yet, if you can set aside the early combative relationship between bloggers and newspaper folk (and other mainstream media types), you...
more »NewspaperShift
Open Letter to the Times::Mr. Sulzberger, Tear Down This (TimesSelect) Wall!
An Open Letter to New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Chairman Sulzberger, if you seek peace in cyberspace, if you seek prosperity for your company, if you seek to spread ideas online: Come here to this TimesSelect gate! Mr. Sulzberger, tear down this pay wall! I understand the fear of losing print subscribers to a free website at...
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Take Roundup::Newspapers Are Far From Dead
When I was in London last week, I saw just how connected the populace was in the teeming, multi-cultural city. Everywhere I walked, people were listening to iPods or talking on cell phones or texting their friends. Even San Francisco, where I live, doesn't measure up to the way Londoners are plugged in. But when I went down to...
more »Online Video
Fighting for Open Standards::Cox Newspapers Says No to AP Video
Since launching MediaShift in January, the one post I've written that has received the most vehement response so far was about the Associated Press' new online video service requiring Internet Explorer and Windows. And I even followed up on that with a blacklist and a whitelist of other online video services that either shut out alternative browsers or the...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::Your Guide to Personalized News Sites
The great thing about getting your news online is that you are the person in control of your experience. You can visit the news sites and blogs that you like, and follow a trail of hyperlinks to learn about events happening around the world. And if your niche interests include sumo wrestling or collectible Pez dispensers, then that's what...
more »Online Video
Millions Not Served::AP Video Requires Microsoft Browser
Most people don't realize just how important the Associated Press is. The news cooperative -- owned by its U.S. news organization members -- has been around since 1848, and now supplies 8,500 subscriber news outlets with text wire stories and photos, and 5,000 radio and TV outlets with audio and video content. And online, the service is ubiquitous, popping...
more »NewspaperShift
Citizen Power?::CBS, Wisconsin Newspaper Let Audience Vote
Two recent announcements made me wonder if the mainstream media was really starting to "get" citizen journalism, and starting to allow the former audience into the news process. The Wisconsin State Journal newspaper, run out of the state capital of Madison, decided to let its web visitors vote on one of five articles that would run on the front...
more »NewspaperShift
Washingtonpost.com Walks the Line
The people who run the website for the Washington Post newspaper, washingtonpost.com, really want to empower their readers and give them more online. They offer live online chats with reporters and editors, online forums for readers to discuss Post articles, and a slew of blogs including the Post.Blog, in which "The Editors Discuss Site Policies, Design and Goals." Ah,...
more »NewspaperShift
USA Today Rules the Travel World
PressThink blogger and NYU professor Jay Rosen asks a good question of me: "If there's a Media Shift, what is it shifting from and what is it shifting to?" In the case of newspapers, it's easy to say that the shift is from costly newsprint to less costly Internet and new media delivery options such as email newsletters, mobile devices...
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