news media - Cynthia McCune on Diigo

30 Jul 09

In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part-time job. Maybe media won't be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby.
It's going to take us a decade or two to figure out what it is we're doing.
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- More and more people are choosing social filters for their news rather than professional filters. We're tuning out television news, we're tuning out newspapers. And we still hear about the important stuff, it's just that it's not like this drumbeat of bad news. It's news that matters. I figure by the time something gets to me it's been vetted by those I trust. So the stupid stuff that doesn't matter is not going to get to me.
- I don't use the word "media." I don't use the word "news." I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.

27 Jul 09

Op-Ed Columnist - And That’s Not the Way It Is - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...26rich.html - Preview

news media news chronkite nytimes

Watching many of the empty Cronkite tributes in his own medium over the past week, you had to wonder if his industry was sticking to mawkish clichés just to avoid unflattering comparisons. If he was the most trusted man in America, it wasn’t because he was a nice guy with an authoritative voice and a lived-in face. It wasn’t because he “loved a good story” or that he removed his glasses when a president died. It was because at a time of epic corruption in the most powerful precincts in Washington, Cronkite was not at the salons and not in the tank.
The real test is how a journalist responds when people in high places are doing low deeds out of camera view and getting away with it. Vietnam and Watergate, not Kennedy and Neil Armstrong, are what made Cronkite Cronkite.
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- What matters about Cronkite is that he knew when to stop being reassuring Uncle Walter and to challenge those who betrayed his audience’s trust. He had the guts to confront not only those in power but his own bosses. Given the American press’s catastrophe of our own day — its failure to unmask and often even to question the White House propaganda campaign that plunged us into Iraq — these attributes are as timely as ever.
- his finest, and most discomforting, achievements are being sanitized or forgotten

14 Apr 09

What Separates a Blogger from a Journalist? | WebProNews

See the comments

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blogging news media journalism

"This Just In: Professionally written news articles are also sometimes trivial and irrelevant. This isn’t just a blogging thing. But that’s an attitude that continues to thrive in some traditional media circles."
I view popular bloggers in two groups: Sensationalists and Specialists.

The Sensationalists tend to have little regard for accuracy, facts, and contextual data which affords an accurate big picture. They appeal to readers who get an emotional charge and ammunition for their particular point of view or preference for viewing the world.

The Specialists, are people who educated, likely degreed, in the area on which they blog. This group not only provides factual data and context for that data, but often a world view and values which they believe the data and facts support.
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- Yes, blogs sometimes contain inaccurate and irrelevant information. But how is that different from Fox News? Why are they allowed to call themselves News ?
- It's not the person, it's the work product.

Spare change for news | Salon News

www.salon.com/...nonprofit_journalism - Preview

future of news newspapers news media non-profit

newspapers have been driven to the brink by the expectation of making the kind of double-digit profits that large corporate owners demand, and by the financial shenanigans, including loading up on debt, that corporate ownership has brought.
The challenge for nonprofit journalism is both daunting and exciting. Long before the current recession and radical cutbacks, many newspapers had lost their community watchdog function, no longer bothering with the expensive and time-consuming work of investigative reporting. A 2005 survey by Arizona State University of the 100 largest U.S. dailies found that 37 percent had no full-time investigative reporters, and the majority of the major dailies had two or fewer.
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- The Center for Investigative Reporting signals one way forward for nonprofit journalism. Founded in 1977, it has a long history of collaborating with other news organizations, including Salon, to conduct and publish original reporting.
- It funds reporting that finds a home in multiple outlets -- on the Web, in print, and on TV and radio. And it's now starting a California-focused reporting initiative to try to pick up the slack as Golden State newspapers shrink.
- Recently the buzz has been about the Huffington Post, which recently launched an "Investigative Fund" with an initial budget of $1.75 million. More flush is ProPublica, founded in 2007 and edited by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. It's underwritten mostly by the family foundation funded by billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler's mortgage fortune, which has committed $10 million a year to the project. The newsroom consists of 28 journalists, producing stories given away free to other media outlets, including newspapers and Web sites.

09 Dec 08

Tribune bankruptcy: Chronicle of a news media death foretold? - How the World Works - Salon.com

www.salon.com/...index.html - Preview

future of newspapers future of news newspapers news media

The Tribune Co., owner of eight major daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, as well as a bunch of local TV stations, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Historic changes are transforming the media industry, we don't know how it will all play out in the end
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- I am still not alarmed about what this epic transformation will mean for society. One key reason: I've yet to see any evidence, yet, that society's ability to inform itself has been irreparably harmed by the changes catalyzed by the Internet.
- recessions are always hard on businesses that depend on advertising as a critical source of revenue.
- In a really severe recession, companies with unworkable business models are going to go out of business.
- What's the business model for a major media empire these days -- public or private?
- Once upon a time, owning a string of daily newspapers in big cities might have meant economies of scale. Now it just means that they all cannibalize each other while operating Web sites featuring the same AP news feeds, stable of columnists, cartoons and ever diminishing classified ads. Bigger is no longer better
- What we are witnessing right now is a massive shakeout that will cull every news media organization that does not clearly offer that kind of differentiating value.
- when this current economic downturn ends, there will probably be more advertisers than ever before, online. Which means that there will be business models for individuals and organizations that figure out how to attract readers to their content.
- My bet on the media future: Fewer media empire dinosaurs, like the Tribune Co., and a lot more lithe, scampering little mammals. Smaller salaries, but more practitioners able to survive. More filters, of every kind, helping to steer readers to the good stuff. And more information, analysis, context, data and opinion than any of us can possibly consume.

11 Nov 08

Don't Redesign the Print Edition to Ensure Failure

Editor & Publisher column by Steve Outing on what newspapers should do to adapt to a changing environment.

www.editorandpublisher.com/...stopthepresses_display.jsp - Preview

future of newspapers news media redesign

because newspaper print editions are trending toward thinned-down and content-lean versions of their former selves, they need to be designed to hold on to their core audience AND guide the print loyalists toward increasing online and mobile news consumption to make up for the paper editions' new-found shortcomings.
The result of all this -- with the key ingredient being the decline in quality of the print product as a result of significant staff reductions -- will be to force older newspaper readers to do something they've resisted so far: move to online and mobile more as their sources of news, forsaking print editions because they no longer see enough value to continue buying them.
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- Just as with the Chicago Tribune, Tampa has laid off staff, reduced content, and introduced a flashy new look. Again I have to ask, is this really the best approach to retaining the older audience of print loyalists? I hardly think so.
- Of course, most newspapers these days are shedding staff and cutting back in order to survive. So even the smartest print-edition redesign, meant to hold on to print loyalists as long as possible, merely lessens the impact of the reductions. Most newspapers, whether you're willing to admit it or not, are getting worse. Doing more with less staff may be possible, but producing a better printed newspaper with significantly less resources? Get real.
- An ever-degrading print product alone doesn't stand a chance of long-term viability, but a print product that's tied intimately with additional digital content and services has a higher probability of surviving. Those older print loyalists must be trained to perceive that print + digital = a better news experience than when they read only the printed newspaper.
- The key, in my humble opinion, is to retain older readers by making the thinner print edition emphasize serious, quality journalism, retaining or expanding your paper's watchdog role in the community. Forget the stuff that's solely geared toward attracting young readers; they're for the most part gone from print.
  
  Then use the print edition to guide your paper readers to the extra stuff and the goodies that are on the digital side of the business.

30 Oct 08

MediaShift Idea Lab . Agile Programming: Good Model for Collaboration? | PBS

www.pbs.org/...-programming-a-good-model.html - Preview

media collaboration software news news media mediashift

Exploring the content sharing model: Is this the future of the US newspaper industry? - editorsweblog

Content sharing at newspapers

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news media newspapers content sharing AP

US newspapers have recently begun working together on content sharing deals on an unprecedented scale.
There has been much speculation that the driving force behind these agreements is dissatisfaction with the recent changes at AP.
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- one group of five papers in New Hampshire who have had an agreement in place for the past 15 years.

12 Oct 08

The Elite Newspaper of the Future | American Journalism Review

The Elite Newspaper of the Future

ajr.org/Article.asp - Preview

news media future of newspapers AJR

The endgame for newspapers is in sight. How their owners and managers choose to apply their dwindling resources will make all the difference in the nature of the ultimate product, its service to democracy and, of course, its survival.
Acting on a hunch, I got newsroom census data from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In 1978, when the census began, daily newspapers had 43,000 news/editorial workers. Their number grew until peaking at 56,900 in 1990, after which an irregular decline set in. That temporary growth in staffing corresponds neatly with the temporary halt in the readership decline of the 1980s. Having more people to put more things in the paper kept more people reading.
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- After 1990, of course, the effects of the Internet kicked in. When writing "The Vanishing Newspaper," I underestimated the velocity of the Internet effect. It is now clear that it is as disruptive to today's newspapers as Gutenberg's invention of movable type was to the town criers, the journalists of the 15th century.
  The town crier's audience was limited to the number of people who could be assembled within the range of an unamplified human voice. Printing changed everything. It made the size of the audience theoretically limitless and, by the creation of multiple records, enabled more reliable preservation of knowledge.
  The Internet wrecks the old newspaper business model in two ways. It moves information with zero variable cost, which means it has no barriers to growth, unlike a newspaper, which has to pay for paper, ink and transportation in direct proportion to the number of copies produced.
  And the Internet's entry costs are low. Anyone with a computer can become a publisher, as Matt Drudge demonstrated when he broke the Monica Lewinsky story in 1998 and countless bloggers have shown in the decade since. These cost advantages make it feasible to make a business out of highly specialized information, a trend that was under way well before the Internet.
- If they should peel back to some core function, newspapers would still have to worry about the Internet and its unbeatable capacity for narrowcasting. The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.
- But the time for launching this strategy is growing short if it has not already passed. The most powerful feature of the Internet is that it encourages low-cost innovation, and anyone can play. I am ashamed to admit that "The Vanishing Newspaper" contains no mention of Craig Newmark. The significance of craigslist is not just that it uses the Internet but that it empowers public-spirited motivation. Newmark is what business school people call a "bad competitor" because he appears more interested in serving society than making money.
  He does make money by charging certain kinds of users, but the bulk of his service is free. He is like Henry Ford who, after introducing the Model T, lowered prices, increased wages and concentrated on market share rather than maximizing profit. When challenged by shareholders unhappy that their dividends weren't higher, he replied that they should view his company as "an instrument of service rather than as a machine for making money."
- as Harvard's Clayton Christensen has noted, the very qualities that made companies succeed can be disabling when applied to disruptive innovation. Successful disruption requires risk taking and fresh thinking.
- One of the rules of thumb for coping with substitute technology is to narrow your focus to the area that is the least vulnerable to substitution.
- What service supplied by newspapers is the least vulnerable?
  I still believe that a newspaper's most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs.
- The old hunter-gatherer model of journalism is no longer sufficient. Now that information is so plentiful, we don't need new information so much as help in processing what's already available. Just as the development of modern agriculture led to a demand for varieties of processed food, the information age has created a demand for processed information. We need someone to put it into context, give it theoretical framing and suggest ways to act on it.
- Won't democracy be endangered if the newspaper audience shrinks down to this hard core? Not at all. As far back as 1940, the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld discovered that voters get their information from one another as much as from direct consumption of the media. He called this the "two-step flow" from opinion leaders to the general public. The Internet is enhancing that two-step flow, converting it to a many-step flow.
- There is some good news about investigative reporting: Nonprofits are turning out to be an impressive source of support
- The mass audience is drifting away, and resources should be focused on the leadership audience. If existing newspapers don't do it, new competitors will enter their markets and do it for them.

10 Oct 08

Mahalo.com: Human-powered Search

Rec by Sholin, who notes it's "turning into a really interesting news/information mix. The short version...Mahalo = Wikipedia with a small group of paid editors, run by the guy who built Weblogs, Inc. (@JasonCalacanis)

mahalo.com - Preview

web2.0 social mahalo web search news future of news new media news media

03 Oct 08

Teaching Online Journalism » Save journalism, save the world

Straight talk on what it will take to save journalism in the Internet era.

mindymcadams.com/...save-journalism-save-the-world - Preview

journalism mindy mcadams supermedia news media

02 Oct 08

SR.com: S-R to cut staff; editor resigns

Another big cutback but it's "nothing unusual" according to the publisher. Sadly, that's probably true.

spokesmanreview.com/...story.asp - Preview

newspapers news media cutbacks

30 Sep 08

AP: The Modern Newsroom Looks Like a Little RSS Reader - ReadWriteWeb

Comparing news wire services to RSS feed readers

www.readwriteweb.com/...s_like_a_little_rss_reader.php - Preview

news media AP RSS future of newspapers readwriteweb

That ticker doesn't print everything out any more, though, and a constant stream of news is something that millions of consumers now see for themselves inside their RSS feed readers.
o web savvy consumers, the Marketplace might look like an RSS reader that publishes selected stories to a webpage built out of Del.icio.us badges.

01 Sep 08

Obama Outwits the Bloviators - Op-Ed/Frank Rich - NYTimes.com

Columnist Frank Rich on why the new media keep underestimating Obama and his campaign, and how theInternet is changing the campaign.

www.nytimes.com/...31rich.html - Preview

Obama McCain news media nytimes presidential campaign

America is in too much trouble, he said, to indulge in “a big election about small things.”
the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year’s story. The press dysfunction is itself a window into the unstable dynamics of Election 2008.
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- A onetime Democrat who breaks with the G.O.P. by supporting abortion rights might have rebooted his lost maverick cred more forcefully than Palin, who is cracking this particular glass ceiling nearly a quarter-century after the Democrats got there first.
- The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there’s a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she’s a woman. That’s what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.
- Given the press’s track record so far, there’s no reason to believe that the bogus scenarios will stop now. The question of why this keeps happening is not easily answered. Ideological bias, unshakeable Clinton addiction and lingering McCain affection may not account for all or even most of it. Journalists are still Americans — even if much of our audience doubts that — and in this time of grave uncertainty about our nation’s future we may simply be as discombobulated as everyone else.

26 Aug 08

If we must discuss plagiarism, let's talk exorcism too | Salon

Republicans who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

www.salon.com/...index.html - Preview

Biden plagiarism fairness reporting news media politics presidential campaign

24 Aug 08

Crowd Funding - A Different Way to Pay for the News You Want - NYTimes.com

The idea, which they are calling “community-funded journalism,” is now being tested in the San Francisco Bay area

www.nytimes.com/...24kershaw.html - Preview

nytimes crowdsourcing journalism news media business model spot.us

07 Aug 08

Journalist seeking paycheck? Try India | Salon News

It's not just jobs going to India, it's job-seekers too.

If Columbia University can send interns to India, why can't SJSU?

www.salon.com/...index.html - Preview

news media India internships salon

The U.S. news industry is bleeding jobs. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms last year, either through layoffs or buyouts, leaving the industry with its smallest workforce since 1984.
Classified advertising revenues have dropped 30 percent over the last two years
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- a few forward-thinking souls are heading to a land where journalism jobs not only aren't disappearing, but are more plentiful by the day: India
- Indian media critic Sevanti Ninan noted that new TV channels are poaching the best journalists from print by offering salaries as high as $180,000 a year. But all of this growth also means that the labor supply isn't keeping up with the demand.
- In June five graduates and enrolled students from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism headed to New Delhi, where they're starting reporting internships at the Hindustan Times
- The managing editor of the Hindustan Times is Pankaj Paul, and when he dropped by Columbia's graduate school earlier this year he said he had a lot of jobs available and promised students the sort of assignments and exposure they'd never get at a smaller American newspaper.
- Since there are so many new publications opening up in India, there is a lot of demand for native English speakers and people who can bring higher reporting standards to local papers."

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