Idea Lab

News Ecosystem Demands Collaboration, Not Us vs. Them Mentality

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

One of the great tragedies that I see in the current debate about the future of journalism is the way the discussion continues to be framed around a series of binary choices. Newspapers or blogs. Print or online. Journalists or algorithms. In each case, there seems to be a simple-minded belief that the future will inevitably be one or the other. I consider this tragic because the result is a lot of dead-end debates that devolve into spitball fights about whether one will replace the other. My belief is that the better conversation is about how these things should complement...

• July 16, 2009
• 8 comments

Where's the Innovation in Business Models?

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've been following closely a theme that has developed here in recent days. It began last week with David Sasaki's post about the legacy of the Knight family, continued with Dan Gillmor's call for more entrepreneurial thinking in journalism, and was amplified by J.D. Lasica's call for newspapers to innovate or die. All great thoughts, and worth reading to the word. But I have a particular interest here. As a business reporter at the San Jose Mercury News the past nine years, I've been living at the tragic center of the events being addressed to some degree by each of...

• March 13, 2008
• 17 comments

Rethinking Newspapers

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've been reading with fascination the email threads in the Rethinking the Mercury News project, which launched a Google Group discussion this month. In news circles, the San Jose Mercury News is considered one of the top-tier mid-size papers in the country. after its sale to MediaNews last year, the paper has been undergoing a series of cost reductions, resulting in staff reductions, slimmed-down sections and less original news coverage. In other words, like almost every other paper in the country, it's feeling the pain, both financially and journalistically. Not sure if MediaNews breaks out finances by newspaper, but...

• November 19, 2007
• 4 comments