|
Archives
By Month
By Category
Contact Us
If you know about a story that we should be following, let us know.
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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....
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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...
more »
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,"...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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....
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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?...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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,...
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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...
more »
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,...
more »
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...
more »
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,...
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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?...
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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.
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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,...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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,...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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).
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »
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...
more »Tags
Best of MediaShift
