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4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Media Company Layoffs; Omidyar Startup
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the deep layoffs that are planned at AOL, the AP and BusinessWeek. In the case of AOL, the company plans to shed one-third of its workforce, or 2,500 staffers. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar announced plans to launch a news startup in Hawaii that will combine...
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 »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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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 »Legal Drama
A Brief History of AP's Battles with News Aggregators
The news is information, and information wants to be free, as the saying goes. But for news organizations, the news is a product that is collected, recorded and sold for profit. And those profits are now under extreme economic pressure, threatening some news organizations with extinction. Both online and traditional news outlets are regrouping, retrenching and reconsidering their business models...
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...
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4-Minute Roundup: HuffPost Investigative Fund; AP on Mobile Apps
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. This week I look at the new Huffington Post Investigative Journalism Fund, which has $1.75 million to start a new non-partisan site that will do investigative work and then give it away to any news organization. I also look at the latest moves by Disney, distributing video on YouTube and possibly on...
more »Digging Deeper
AP Warms Up to Blogs, Citizen Media at NowPublic
There's something bland and homogeneous about an Associated Press wire story. Just the facts, ma'am, in classic inverted pyramid style. The satirical newspaper The Onion has made a mint mocking the news wire style, and the blogosphere has targeted the AP and Reuters for hidden agendas in their oh-so-perfect objective style.
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.
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