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19 Nov 09
Follow up: The case of the vulgar comment and the school
Kurt Greenbaum from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recounts the lessons learned in a recent comment moderation controversy.
18 Nov 09
The broadsheet as collector’s item. Why not?
Why not turn paper copies into collectibles?
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Envisioning a newspaper as a product, rather than a mere delivery mechanism, taps into a mindset already present in adjacent industries. Savvy musicians and filmmakers long ago embraced limited-run exclusive editions aimed at the top one percent of their fans. That’s why the box set exists: to satiate fanatics. On the publishing side, Sports Illustrated cranks out hard-bound “championship” collections for all of the major leagues. There’s precedent here. And with some newspapers already gravitating toward a glossy magazine aesthetic, it’s not too far fetched to imagine big, bold broadsheets emerging as a high-end option for discerning news collectors and memory seekers.
Nose, face, cut, spite: Blocking Google
Jeff Jarvis weighs in on Rupert Murdoch's "threat" to pull his sites out of Google's search index.
Comment behaviour: How far is too far?
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor's phone call about a vulgar comment cost a man his job. Did the editor's moderation go too far? Matthew Ingram thinks so.
16 Nov 09
Jimmy Wales: AP's 'Landing Pages' a Good, if Late, Idea
Poynter gets some comments from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on the AP's newest idea, backgrounders for major news stories.
15 Nov 09
Is Rupert Murdoch stupid like a fox?
Matthew Ingram ponders what Rupert Murdoch could be thinking when he blusters about taking his toys and going home -- I mean taking his sites out of Google.
14 Nov 09
Rupert Murdoch: for whom the net tolls
Rupert Murdoch's scheming but doesn't understand how the world works, says Cory Doctorow.
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I think that Rupert is betting that one of Google's badly trailing competitors can be coaxed into paying for the right to index all of News Corp's online stuff, if that right is exclusive. Rupert is thinking that a company such as Microsoft will be willing to pay to shore up its also-ran search tool, Bing, by buying the right to index the fraction of a fraction of a sliver of a crumb of the internet that News Corp owns.
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That's my theory: Rupert isn't a technophobic loon who will send his media empire to the bottom of the ocean while waging war on search engines. Instead, he's an out-of-touch moustache-twirler who's set his sights on remaking the web as a toll booth (with him in the collector's seat), and his plan hinges on a touchingly naive approach to geopolitics.
Online Ads Are Booming, if They’re Attached to a Video
Online video is booming, and so are the ads attached to them, writes Brian Stelter from the New York Times.
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At a time when other categories of advertising dollars are shrinking, video ads are booming. News sites are adding more video inventory to keep pace with the demands of advertisers, and benefiting from the higher cost-per-thousands, or C.P.M.’s, that ads on those videos command.
Your readers are paying you — with attention
More responses to Rupert Murdoch's intention to remove his media sites from Google's search index. Ingram says that the move doesn't take into account the value added by recommendations on social network sites.
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What happens is a potential reader runs headfirst into that wall, or has to jump through all sorts of hoops to read it (i.e., check to see if there is a Google News loophole), and that is a significant disincentive to a) read anything further, or b) share any links themselves. It’s the classic cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face problem: you try to generate incremental revenue through restricted access, but by doing so you deprive your content of even more valuable re-distribution through recommendation networks, which in the long run reduces your traffic and thus your revenue.
10 Nov 09
Toward a Slow-News Movement
News happens fast, often faster than facts become available to report. Dan Gillmor wonders if we might all like to take a deep breath before jumping to conclusions on breaking news.
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It comes down to this: The faster the news accelerates, the slower I’m inclined to believe anything I hear — and the harder I look for the coverage that pulls together the most facts with the most clarity about what’s known and what’s speculation.
09 Nov 09
The Real Obstacles to Paying for Content
Jason Fry says that the real barriers to paid content online are the lack of geographic isolation driving the market price of news to zero and the fact that newspapers have perhaps been cut too deeply to be able to produce content people want to pay for.
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I don’t think pay schemes are a slam dunk. Far from it, in fact. There are two huge problems here, as I see things. The first is that with geographic isolation no longer protecting newspapers from competition, readers are awash in a glut of commoditized news, driving the price for a lot of that content to zero. Gralnick’s Web democratization strikes me less as some kind of social truth than as sound economic judgment. The second problem is that many newspapers have been cut so deeply that they may lack the resources to produce unique, compelling content that people would pay for.
Report: Many Newspaper Journos Want a Faster Transition to Digital
A Northwestern University study showed that most journalists are eager to get into the digital world.
08 Nov 09
NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth
Paul Carr criticizes the social media, citizen journalism culture, in which people are more likely to pick up cameras to film a tragedy than to find a way to help.
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And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.
What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference.
And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.
The future of news is entrepreneurial
Jeff Jarvis argues just what the title says: News' future will involve journalists becoming entrepreneurs and finding ways to meet the demands of smaller audiences.
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What should government do? Broadband for all. I’d start – and stop – there.
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I wish that the capital that has gone into not-for-profit news ventures in cities across the country had gone instead into creating for-profit enterprises: so we can prove the market, so we can learn how to make news sustainable. That is god’s work.
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07 Nov 09
Unscientific America Meets Denialism
Michael Specter and Chris Mooney, authors of books about how Americans often deny or discredit science, argue that the Internet has gone a long way to rob science of the authority it once had by spreading rumors, misinformation and lies. Some old school journalism practices could help shore up that information, though.
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Add Sticky Note“What we need to encourage now is the accessibility of the Internet with the standards of what the cyberworld refers to as the ‘dead tree media,’” he wrote. “What we need to defeat denialism are indpendent and thoughtful publications that serve up information that is at least as reliable as newspapers have been.”
- Michael Specter and Chris Mooney, authors of books about how Americans often deny or discredit science, argue that the Internet has gone a long way to rob science of the authority it once had by spreading rumors, misinformation and lies. - on 2009-11-07
06 Nov 09
Twitter still making twits of mainstream journalists
Shane Richmond at the Daily Telegraph criticizes other columnists for criticizing Twitter when they clearly know next to nothing about the microblogging site.
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It looks as though the columnists are closing ranks. In recent weeks Twitter users have raged against the Mail’s Jan Moir for bigotry and AA Gill for baboon shooting. Any one of them could be next. The Commentariat is under threat.
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They’re mistaking Twitter for a publishing platform, which – as I’ve written before – it isn’t. To criticise Twitter for its content (or, I should say, your perception of its content) makes as much sense as criticising the content of the telephone networks or the postal service. Like them, Twitter is a means of communicating. The content communicated has no bearing on its value.
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03 Nov 09
“12 Things I’ve Learned about Online News”
A list of online journalism tips and advice from Jesse James Garrett, president of Adaptive Path, the company behind Web site redesigns for CNN, PBS and NPR.
29 Oct 09
Newspapers Raise Prices to Fight Falling Circulation
Some newspapers are increasing their revenue by raising prices for their papers, even as their circulation numbers shrink.
27 Oct 09
Downie-Schudson: Who are they writing for?
Steve Outing suggests that the Reconstructing Journalism report is aimed more at nonprofit and foundation readers than at the general public.
26 Oct 09
Newspaper Readers Buy Papers for the Content
Ryan Chittum takes a stance against those who argue that news content has no value, that people are really buying ads and not news.
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