online - Cynthia McCune on Diigo

11 Aug 09

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.
“Teachers need digital resources to find those documents, those blogs, those wikis that get them beyond the plain vanilla curriculum in the textbooks.”
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- In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer announced an initiative that would replace some high school science and math texts with free, “open source” digital versions.
- “In five years, I think the majority of students will be using digital textbooks,”
- “We’re still in a brick-and-mortar, 30-students-to-1-teacher paradigm,” Mr. Habermehl said, “but we need to get out of that framework to having 200 or 300 kids taking courses online, at night, 24/7, whenever they want.”
- digital textbooks could widen the gap between rich and poor.
- the online onslaught — and the competition from open-source materials — poses a real threat to traditional textbook publishers.
- The move to open-source materials is well under way in higher education — and may be accelerated by President Obama’s proposal to invest in creating free online courses as part of his push to improve community colleges.

09 Jul 09

What if the business model for news ain’t broke? | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog

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journalism business model online

So why do we find the likes of Facebook, Digg and the mighty Google – and perhaps soon Amazon- adopting the ad-funded model to support services and software.
Pay walls may work for niche information but not for mainstream news and exclusives. That’s something that even the Wall Street Journal, poster child of the paid model, accepts.

22 May 09

Getting Money from Readers Who Won't Pay for Online News

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

future of news newspapers online steveouting

Charging on the Web won't work for general-news publishers, and there are better alternatives.
the current thinking of a growing number of newspaper executives. To paraphrase: "We believe that our local reporting has high value, it costs us a lot to produce it, so we will retrain the audience that they must pay for it."
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- Newspapers' local content is not as important as it once was, or as newspaper executives still believe it to be. The demise of some newspapers (Rocky Mountain News, Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for example) and the degraded quality of many others due to severe cuts and layoffs has opened up opportunities for a wave of fledgling replacement news providers, both for- and non-profit. Generally they are small and/or target niches, but they're getting better and some are growing to represent a looming threat to local newspapers by offering up similar or the same coverage for free.
- The move to hide locally produced content behind a pay wall gives new hope to other competitors, including local TV stations. If the biggest newspaper in town is going to shoot itself in the foot, it gives a savvy TV outlet's executives the chance to grab the dominant spot by creating a free news and community Web site that goes well beyond today's typical local-TV sites. It could even use the laid-off newspaper journalists in its market -- a talent pool looking for something else to do -- to accomplish this, probably at bargain rates.
- Yet another model is to sell a custom news phone app rather than give it away.
- ideas for what to offer to a newspaper's paid members:
- learn to sell something else to support the journalism.

05 May 09

Jeff Jarvis: No Newspapers at Any Price

www.huffingtonpost.com/...pers-at-any-pric_b_195189.html - Preview

future of news newspapers online

The insane response to this change is to resist it and mourn it. The sane response is to find the opportunity in it.

Don't bail. Build.

It may be too late for newspapers to find that opportunity. But others will find it. That's not doomsaying. That's optimism.
It makes less sense every day to try to preserve and protect - to invest in - what is obviously a failing model. Every day that papers keep printing is a day that they haven't reinvented themselves for a new reality.
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- Their cushion is gone, and only those papers that can move decisively to the Web will survive.
- We're clearly now seeing a path to the end of the printed daily newspapers -- a trend that is escalating much faster than we had anticipated," Cole said.

18 Apr 09

True/Slant Tests Web Journalism Model - WSJ.com

online.wsj.com/...SB123922742849502695.html - Preview

future of news business model online WSJ AOL advertising

True/Slant is run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.

It is launching with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics. Each of these contributors gets a page to house their journalism and, it is hoped, an active social network of followers who will regularly discuss the articles they read there. Each page also will feature headlines of stories elsewhere on the Web selected by the contributors. These "headline grabs" link back to the originating outside site.
True/Slant is run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.

It is launching with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics. Each of these contributors gets a page to house their journalism and, it is hoped, an active social network of followers who will regularly discuss the articles they read there. Each page also will feature headlines of stories elsewhere on the Web selected by the contributors. These "headline grabs" link back to the originating outside site.

19 Mar 09

Tom Watson: Clay Shirky is Right: Newspapers' Death is Journalism's Loss

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ky-is-right-news_b_176260.html - Preview

future of news newspapers online journalism

It's not about old journalists versus the rising amateurs. It's about the disappearance of one of the carrying beams of our democracy and what, if anything, will replace it - and the loss of that "everyday truth."
The Internet has been a destructive force for many business models, but none threatens the basis of the republic as much as the digital knife busily sawing at the fraying Achilles tendon of American newspapers.
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- this is not something that proprietors of professional journalism failed to see coming - and they've tried almost every model for revenue generation that came along over the past decade and a half. All have failed.
- The models just don't work - nothing online sustains a newsroom of 100 reporters and editors working in a beat system. Cut and paste works online. Endless commentary works online (but only pays the aggregators, in most cases). Endless links work. Newsrooms do not.
- "You're gonna miss us when we're gone!" has never been much of a business model.
- We are early in the rise of semi-pro journalism, but well into the decline
  
  of an older way of life within the tribe of professional journalists. I call them a tribe because they share a culture and a sense of destiny, and because they think they own the press-- that it's theirs somehow because they dominate the practice.
- Projects that cause people to exercise their right to a free press strengthen the press, whether or not these projects strengthen the professional journalist's "hold" on the press.
- She agrees that there is nothing on the horizon to replace newspaper, even while arguing that newspaper-owning companies aren't generally motivated by the public good (true) and that democracy hasn't exactly thrived under the model now disappearing (true, to a degree).
- The newspaper world is slowly asphyxiating, starved for the oxygen of classified advertising and simultaneously kicked in the chest by a massive recession that is hastening the tombstones in the graveyard of newsprint.
- The newspaper world is slowly asphyxiating, starved for the oxygen of classified advertising and simultaneously kicked in the chest by a massive recession that is hastening the tombstones in the graveyard of newsprint.

14 Mar 09

In Hard Times, Freelancers Turn to the Web - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...13freelance.html - Preview

freelancers journalists online

Freelancers in a wide range of fields can use sites like those operated by Elance, oDesk and Guru to advertise their work and bid on jobs; employers can use the sites to assemble a contract work force.
Her rates — for copywriting, marketing and résumés — have climbed to $100 an hour after starting at $50, she said, and she has steady clients, both corporate and individual, in places like Australia, Ireland and Kuwait.
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- Rachel Pennig, manager of customer support for PBwiki in San Mateo, Calif., which creates collaborative wikis for clients, said she found at least half of her 12-member team on oDesk.
- The sites all operate on the same principle as eBay, enabling workers to build their reputations. All the sites issue 1099 tax forms and other documentation, saving trouble for employers. The sites survive on fees, charging employers or taking a commission from freelancers' pay, often 5 to 10 percent.

24 Feb 09

Bighow: the manifesto - things we believe in

Things we believe in: A Cluetrain Manifesto for journalists and bloggers.

bighow.com/things - Preview

blogging journalism free speech online guidelines

Speak like a human. Ditch the suit-speak.
In future there will be more reporters.
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- Simplify, simplify.
- In future, there will be more journalism, more curators and more
  editors
- Markets are conversations. Markets consist of human beings, not
  demographic sectors. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. Public Relations does
  not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets. By
  speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build
  walls to keep markets at bay. [Thanks, 'The Cluetrain Manifesto']
- These are brave new times for news and
  publishing.
- Today, everyone is a reporter.
- Point to what's next. Be the explainer-in-chief.
- Point to the best sources.
- Schools don't have a monopoly over knowledge.
- Make something useful, help people use it and then get out of the way.
  - Craig Newmark
- Share good stuff.
- Stop over-sharing.
- Listen to understand.
- Work on something that matters to you more than money.
- Connect people and ideas - build tribes.

Bighow: Handbook of online journalism

Resources for journalists, bloggers, citizen journalists
tweeted by @macloo

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online journalism future of news links tutorials

30 Jan 09

The All-Digital Newsroom of the Not-So-Distant Future

Good stuff.

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

future of newspapers online

Some of those newspapers will live on purely in digital form, reinvented (and inevitably downsized significantly).
We will also likely see some single-publisher towns lose their newspapers. Some of those communities may go newsless, but in others we may see the print edition disappear but re-emerge as a digital news operation with the same brand name.
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- Sadly, any newspaper that sheds its print edition will lay off a lot of people. Pressmen, drivers, everyone in the circulation department -- all gone. For a large newsroom, a lot of journalists will lose their jobs, perhaps one-half to two-thirds. (I hope I'm being pessimistic, but I doubt it.) A leaner news operation will probably mean a significant thinning of newsroom middle-management ranks. A smaller advertising department is likely.
- Surviving journalists who get the jobs in the reinvented news operation will likely include the most popular columnists and the "star" reporters
- The transformed newsroom will be filled with multi-functional journalists who are comfortable carrying around a digital camera and tiny video camera; who make it part of their routine to record audio for possible use in podcasts or multimedia project sound clips; who are regular users of social networks and understand how to leverage them to communicate with and attract new readers, and share some personal information about themselves as well as promote their work; and who are comfortable and willing to put in the time to engage and communicate with their readers or viewers, including participating in reader comment threads accompanying their stories.
- there will remain a place for photojournalists -- but they'll need to be adept at video and not just still news photography. They'll need to know how to do video editing and production, and produce multimedia content.
- that may make this digital newsroom younger than today's print newsrooms
- the post-paper news entity will need people focused on inventing and developing mobile news features and applications, and thinking about how to make money from mobile users. Smartphones (Apple's iPhone, Blackberry Storm, et al)
- At the managerial level of the news entity formally known as the newspaper, we should see a chief technical officer (CTO) position, and a head of social media.
- Every journalist is a blogger, and a beatblogger, and a social network junkie.
- increasingly blog entries and tweets get posted online unedited by trusted staff journalists.
- In my view of the newspaper sans paper, every journalist is a personality, not just an anonymous byline.
- If an environmental reporter succeeds in building a valuable community, for example, he may find within it individuals who work, say, in the Forest Service or who head up a trails advocacy group, who are talented writers or speakers and can be persuaded to write occasional columns, opinion pieces, or submit video shorts.
- beatblogging isn't just or really about saving money; it's about bringing niche-interest communities and journalists together and improving and expanding the overall news product.
- Here's what the reporter/blogger will routinely do:
- Long-form stories and features.
- Regular blog entries (basically short articles)
- Instant updates.
- you should view these paper-to-digital news transformations as a solid step forward toward the future of news media

16 Dec 08

Detroit’s big news as seen from a key design insider - SND Update

A new business model for newspapers?

"It’s official: The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, will become the first major U.S. newspapers to cease seven-day home delivery." Now it will be all online, with print copies delivered three days a week (Th/Fri/Sun).

update.snd.org/...the-big-news-in-detroit - Preview

future of newspapers future of news online

It’s official: The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, will become the first major U.S. newspapers to cease seven-day home delivery.
Hello to three-day delivery: The JOA will instead focus on Thursday and Friday delivery of both papers and Sunday delivery of the Free Press only. Those days are the most lucrative for advertising and have often been considered in the newspaper world as the “money” days for both sales and circulation.
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- A new pricing model for subscriptions and a push to online: Sevens days of access to an e-edition would also include the three days of home delivery.
- Dorsey has been working closely with IDEO, the Silicon Valley design firm, on transforming the way the newspaper approaches serving its audience.
- Some critics have panned the process with IDEO, worrying that the design firm does not completely understand how to work with the news media.
  
  The influential designer Juan Antonio Giner of Innovation called it “the way to death” in a posting last week, and the Gannett Blog has been buzzing with rumors about IDEO’s role.
  
  But the leaders of the transformation defend the IDEO process.
  
  “IDEO challenged some of the assumptions the media industry makes about how people want and desire news,” said Dave Hunke, CEO of the Detroit Media Partnership and Publisher of the Free Press. “We spoke to and observed a broad spectrum of people in their homes, at their places of work and in everyday settings and this guided the development of new offerings that will have a positive impact on southeastern Michigan.”
- we’ll have to look at ways to maximize reader connections through all existing and newly developing channels (ex: Kindle, iPhone, etc and whatever comes next). That is definitely part of our planning.
- Clearly one of the biggest design challenges is to try to continue serving current single copy readers and perhaps even improve their experiences, while also appealing to long-time home delivery customers and trying to serve their needs.

01 Dec 08

How to Publish Without Perishing - NYTimes.com

Do books have a future?

www.nytimes.com/...30gleick.html - Preview

books Google online

authors, publishers and Google have reached a historic agreement to allow the scanning and digitizing of something very much like All the World’s Books
One could imagine the book, venerable as it is, just vanishing into the ether. It melts into all the other information species searchable through Google’s most democratic of engines: the Web pages, the blogs, the organs of printed and broadcast news, the general chatter. (Thanks for everything, Gutenberg, and now goodbye.)
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- the book is technology that works
- Words, too, can be converted into bits, but there’s something peculiar, something particularly direct, about the path from the page to the brain.
- For some kinds of books, the writing is on the wall. Encyclopedias are finished. All encyclopedias combined, including the redoubtable Britannica, have already been surpassed by the exercise in groupthink known as Wikipedia. Basic dictionaries no longer belong on paper; the greatest, the Oxford English Dictionary, has nimbly remade itself in cyberspace, where it has doubled in size and grown more timely and usable than ever. And those hefty objects called “telephone books”? As antiquated as typewriters.
- much of the book world is being upended before our eyes: the business of publishing, selling and distributing books; the role of libraries and bookstores; all uses of books for research, consultation, information storage; everything, in fact, but the plain act of reading a book from start to finish.

10 Oct 08

Xark!: 10 reasons why newspapers won't reinvent news

I no longer believe that (non-national) metro newspapers will play a significant role in the reinvention of the press in its 21st century configuration.

xark.typepad.com/...10-reasons-why.html - Preview

future of newspapers future of news innovators web online

I no longer believe that (non-national) metro newspapers will play a significant role in the reinvention of the press in its 21st century configuration.
I no longer believe that (non-national) metro newspapers will play a significant role in the reinvention of the press in its 21st century configuration.
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- The chance to act with foresight in advance of the coming wave came and went, and now these once-proud press flagships are swamped, broken and sinking.
- The newspaper dilemma: Change the product in hopes of attracting new readers and you piss off your loyal core. Do nothing and you'll watch your circulation drop every day on the obituary page.
- No budget for research, development or training means most newspapers can't see what's coming, don't have the necessary tools for survival and couldn't use those new tools effectively anyway
- most newspaper payrolls are bloated with pluralities of resentful Luddites who struggle with the complexities of e-mail
- Until Web becomes the primary profit-center within newspaper companies, all the incentives within their business operations will point toward the status quo.
- In 2008, all meaningful political discourse -- the essential element of social currency -- takes place on the Web. Print (and televised) political coverage is now but a pale shadow of the real action online.
- Boosting short-term profits by cutting quality is obviously a losing strategy, and the recent wave of newspaper layoffs and buyouts only exacerbated the trend.
- You'll never successfully reinvent your company if you're punishing the innovators, killing the messengers, rewarding the political infighters and sneering down your noses at the "pajamas-clad rabble" you blame for your troubles.

29 Sep 08

Newspapers: Vanishing faster than you think » Invisible Inkling

Philip Meyer, author of The Vanishing Newspaper, in AJR on the vanishing newspaper.

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newspapers journalism online internet

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
And the Internet’s entry costs are low. Anyone with a computer can become a publisher, as Matt Drudge demonstrated
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- 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.”
- There is no mass audience.
  There is no barrier to publication.
  The cost of operating legacy organizations increases indefinitely as profit decreases indefinitely.
  There is nothing cyclical about this change.

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