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14 Apr 08

The News Business: Out of Print: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

www.newyorker.com/...080331fa_fact_alterman - Preview

journalism newspapers

It’s an almost comically audacious ambition for an operation with only forty-six full-time employees—many of whom are barely old enough to rent a car. But, with about eleven million dollars at its disposal, the site is poised to break even on advertising revenue of somewhere between six and ten million dollars annually. What most impresses advertisers—and depresses newspaper-company executives—is the site’s growth numbers. In the past thirty days, thanks in large measure to the excitement of the Democratic primaries, the site’s “unique visitors”—that is, individual computers that clicked on one of its pages––jumped to more than eleven million, according to the company. And, according to estimates from Nielsen NetRatings and comScore, the Huffington Post is more popular than all but eight newspaper sites, rising from sixteenth place in December.
Only if a post is deemed by a reader to be false, defamatory, or offensive does an editor get involved.
2 more annotations...
- the best way for Web companies to increase traffic is to let users have control, but the best way to sell advertising is a slick, pretty front page where corporate sponsors can admire their brands.”
- Duncan Black, a former economics professor who writes a popular progressive blog under the name Atrios, explains that he, too, believed in what he calls “the myth of the liberal media.” He goes on, “But watching the press’s collective behavior during the Clinton impeachment saga, the Gore campaign, the post-9/11 era, the run-up to the Iraq war, and the Bush Administration’s absurd and dangerous claims of executive power rendered such a belief absurd. Sixty-five per cent of the American public disapproves of the Bush Administration, but that perspective, even now, has very little representation anywhere in the mainstream media.”

08 Apr 08

Are Newspapers Doomed? Or am I doomed for responding to minutae in the comments? :: Britannica Blog

What happened to Britannica after Microsoft and Wikipedia killed it?

I have no idea - but naturally they've got a blog. This week the Britannica blog features a bunch of guest posts about the future of newspapers.

Jeff Jarvis and Terry Heaton quibbled with the process - a series of essays posted over the course of a week. Why, I don't know, but I took their bait and quibbled further.

Here's what I wrote via comments:

<blockquote>
Jeff, Terry, fair points, but geez, lighten up. Britannica (wow - now it’s a blog!) is attempting to curate a conversation and experience, and I think that’s a reasonable and worthy goal. I’m more bored and troubled by the topic than the execution. How long can “the end is nigh” conversation go on? Apparently: forever.

Packaging and dumping, err, publishing, a bunch of content all at once is also 20th Century, also known as a book, or a magazine, or a newspaper, or an encyclopedia. Curation here seems to be about process - recruiting and guiding the key participants, which seems to me has some value that’s also old school, and packaging the experience. What’s wrong with a series? What’s wrong with time as a factor of the experience? You want every episode of your favorite TV shows posted and distributed simultaneously? Or Terry, do you feel manipulated by drama crap when you have to tune in next week to Lost or Ugly Betty or Friday Night Lights?

I don’t have time read all of this at once. I guess it would be more productive for me to have someone else, like one of you, read everything, then summarize and link to the best bits.

Sure, this may be a modest attempt at curation. Maybe publishing everything at once would have generated a faster and bigger reaction and allowed more cross-references and links in the analysis. Maybe it also would have produced a massive and intimidating tome that few would have the time or inclination to read.

See, now you’ve got me blathering on about the process - instead of reading the essays themselves. Now I’ve got to lighten up!
</blockquote>

www.britannica.com/...-care-newspapers-the-net-forum - Preview

newspapers future

31 Jul 06