NewsTools2008
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...continued...
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...continued...
Crisis in News
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...continued...
Crisis in News
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...continued...
The List
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...continued...
Digging Deeper
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...continued...
Beyond ATNA
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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,...continued...
Year in Review
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...continued...
Digging Deeper
Your Guide to Hyper-Local News
From time to time, I’ll give an overview of one broad MediaShift topic, annotated with online resources and plenty of tips. The idea is to help you understand the topic, learn the jargon, and take action. I’ve already covered blogging, citizen journalism, widgets and other topics. This week I’ll...continued...
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,...continued...
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...continued...
Reinventing Community News
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
Addicted to Pulp
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...continued...
Digital Job Shift
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
Freebie-For-All
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...continued...
Pay vs. Free Debate
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...continued...
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...continued...
Techno-Optimism
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...continued...
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...continued...
Location, Location, Location
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...continued...
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,...continued...
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...continued...
Futurama
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...continued...
Doomsayers Debunked
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...continued...
McRevamp
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
Hold the Presses
Old Media Company Swears It Really Gets the Web
Mon Jan 29, 2007 09:49 PM ET 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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
Not Dead Yet
Don’t Stick Fork In Editorialists Just Yet
Mark Glaser is away on vacation this week, but we’re happy to have Mark Tapscott filling in as a guest blogger. Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog and the Distinguished Journalism Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Glaser will return here next...continued...
NewspaperShift
WECAN Harnesses Wisdom of Crowds for Newspaper
Mark Glaser is away on vacation this week, but we’re happy to have Mark Tapscott filling in as a guest blogger. Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog and the Distinguished Journalism Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Glaser will return here next...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
NewAssignment.net
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: Investigative reporting is to journalism what theoretical research is to science, having the potential to present new realities and shatter old paradigms —...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
Blog Comments
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...continued...
Comfort Media
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...continued...
