Embedded Report

NBC's Penguin Story Goes from Web to 'Nightly News'

by Tim Peek

It was a seemingly prosaic moment at the end of the "Weekend NBC Nightly News" program Saturday, July 5: Lester Holt wrapped up the show with one of those ever-popular cute animal stories. The piece was about a baby penguin rejected by its mother and now being raised by a zoo worker in Boston. But there was a lot more to this story than met the eye, as Holt hinted at with his introduction: "It's a story we first reported on our website. It got a lot of traffic there, so much in fact that we thought maybe we'd air it right here. So here's NBC's Clare Duffy with our report."

• July 29, 2008
• 2 comments

Your Take

What's the future of wire services in the digital age?

by Mark Glaser

With all the fuss lately around the Associated Press and its legal tussle with Drudge Retort over lifted quotes, there's been a renewed focus on the future of the AP and its role as a newspaper cooperative. The Wall Street Journal noted that newspapers were becoming disgruntled by the high cost of being an AP member and that the AP wasn't providing enough return for that cost. One problem is that AP is putting more efforts into courting digital business and isn't giving enough back to the papers who back it. So more generally, do you think the AP will have role to play in the digital age?

• June 30, 2008
• 2 comments

Open Source Reporting

Educational Centers for Journalism Experiments

by Mark Glaser

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?

• June 23, 2008
• No comments

NewspaperShift

Hands-On Training with Videocameras and Shooting for the Web

by Mark Glaser

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...

• May 19, 2008
• No comments

Jennifer Woodard Maderazo

Why I Left Print Media for Digital

by Jennifer Woodard Maderazo

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...

• January 31, 2008
• 14 comments

Digging Deeper

In Digital Age, Journalism Students Need Business, Entrepreneurial Skills

by Mark Glaser

The traditional path of a journalism career has clearly shifted. In the past, a journalism student would learn about being a newspaper reporter, then take a job at a small-town paper, eventually moving up to a medium and then larger paper. Now, the reporter might launch a blog, an audio podcast or video reports as a one-person operation, handling editorial and business duties simultaneously.

• January 30, 2008
• 20 comments

Digging Deeper

Traditional Journalism Job Cuts Countered by Digital Additions

by Mark Glaser

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...

• August 23, 2007
• 42 comments

Philosophy

10 Reasons There's a Bright Future for Journalism

by Mark Glaser

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...

• June 28, 2007
• 20 comments