Newspapers started small, cheap and with different standards | Howard Owens - The Diigo Meta page

• 26 Jun 09
  

  Marcel Weiss

  journalism

  • James Gordon Bennett, Horace Greeley, E.W. Scripps and Joseph Pulitzer were not just earlier versions of Woodward and Bernstein. They were entrepreneurs, visionaries and risk takers who experimented and explored the capabilities of new technologies with a goal of meeting readers needs and growing audience.

    
    

    They put ads on their front pages. They ran straight murder trial transcripts. They sent row boats out in the harbor to meet incoming ships so they might be the first with the news Europe. They produced multiple editions in the race to build reader loyalty. With the penny press, they disrupted the incumbent six-penny newspapers. They pushed partisan positions. They crusaded, some times to the point of unjustly influencing the course of events.

  • It took a long time for newspapers to build the cash flow to afford big time, expensive investigative journalism, and for publishers to recognize its value (and some of them still aren't convinced) in helping to retain readers.

    
    

    So if it took newspapers more than 100 years to build the business and content models that we all now cherish, why do we expect a fully formed online model to emerge in just 10 years?

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  Rhys Daunic

  Re: the transition to online journalism vs. paper.

  article newspapers journalism for:dstortion for:Cpablo for:dtek for:learntolive

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