Mark Glaser of PBS' MediaShift has read 600 ideas for how to best serve community information needs, and has distilled them into an eight-step plan to get the job done. Step One: Crack open government data and access. Glaser's project is in connection with a big effort from the Knight Foundation to identify community news and information needs in an era when legacy news organizations may be greatly diminished. Read PBS' MediaShift. --April 30, 2009
April 2009 Archives
There's good news and bad news for newspapers in a new report by USC's Jeffrey Cole, one of the world's leading authorities on Internet trends. Cole found a significant increase in the amount of time readers were spending on newspaper online sites. Simultaneously, it found a large chunk of Americans had quit their newspaper or magazine subscriptions because they could read the same material free on the Web. Read the USC Annenberg news release. -- April 30, 2009
A new report by Borrell Associates suggests that a four-year decline in newspapers' share of local online revenue has ended. The somewhat surprising finding is attributed to the strength of feet-on-the-ground sales forces during an economic recession. Read Paid Content's report. -- April 30, 2009
Sharesleuth.com is an investigative journalism site devoted to exposing corporate misbehavior and securities fraud. The projects are funded by Mark Cuban, entreprenuer and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. The site acknowledges that Cuban sometimes makes investments based on the information uncovered by the reporters, but that this activity will always be fully disclosed to allow readers to determine any conflict of interest. The patron-funded model of journalism raises some ethical questions for journalists as they try to find a way to fund their work. Read the Poynter Online article. -- April 29, 2009
Edward Wasserman, in the Miami Herald, argues that online journalism seems to focus mainly on the op-ed model - -where contributors are not employees of the site, hold some knowledge about the topic for which they write, and are paid little if at all. These contributions are edited by full-time editors of the news source. Wasserman sees this trend as a continuation of journalism's tradition of relying on subsidies to prosper. Yet he also worries about potential conflics of interest, which seem almost inherent in the op-ed model. Read the Miami Herald piece. -- April 29, 2009.
Can Human Rights Watch, the NGO that's eyeing a significant role in the world of journalism, muster the credibility needed to deliver the news even as it acts as advocate for human rights?
That's the kind of question journalists sometimes ask when they hear that NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others are aspiring to fill some of the void created by the shrinkage of news operations. But it's not a question that concerns Carroll Bogert.
"I would say that in general, we do much more than journalists do to assure we have the facts right," said Bogert, Human Rights Watch's associate director.
As Human Rights Watch ramps up a strategy to use its vast, worldwide research to fill growing gaps in news coverage, Bogert's concern is a different one – and it's something that might surprise journalists. The fact is that some of the nonprofit's 75-80 researchers aren't thrilled with the idea of seeing their work translated, in-house, into journalism.
Penelope Muse Abernathy of the University of North Carolina has written a paper in anticipation of an upcoming conference on nonprofit media at Duke. Her piece, “A Nonprofit Model for the New York Times?”, considers four possible nonprofit models for the paper-- (1) establishing an endowment, (2) support from a foundation, (3) purchase by a university, and (4) purchase by a so-called "angel" investor. Read Abernathy's paper (pdf) and the New Yorker commentary. -- April 28, 2009.
Many different proposals have emerged for how government can help the struggling journalism industry, but one UK blogger has a different perspective: "To draw on an old adage: Government should not only give the hungry industry some fish and ensure that the legislative environment is conducive for fishing - but it should also help the industry build the knowledge to devise new ways of fishing." He proposes that the government should be training journalists in new media, so that the industry can better adapt to the changes. Read the For the Media blog post. -- April 28, 2009.
The University of Washington is following the University of Minnesota's lead and forming a Facebook application, joining with Seattle-based company, NewsCloud. In:Site, the new application, will be run by 20 university students who hope to produce at least two original articles per week. The application will focus on interactivity and community-involvement. Read the article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. -- April 28, 2009.
Bill Mitchell of Poynter Online provides a breakdown of the proposed government intervention in preserving journalism, and adds his checklist of qualifications for any bureaucratic interference. He writes that any proposal, from tax breaks to relaxed antitrust regulations, must preserve editorial independence, promote innovation, and encourage news consumption. He emphasizes that the goal has to be to preserve journalism, not the media companies. Read the Poynter article. -- April 28, 2009
This week, the Financial Times began asking its readers to contribute to online editoral content. Readers will contribute to the Arena blog, which launches today. The first topic centers on higher taxes. This development is the latest in a trend of crowdsourcing. Earlier this week, the New York Times put out a similar call for contribution from its readers. Read the Guardian article. -- April 28, 2009
The Windsor Star explains some of the reasons that Canada's newspaper industry is performing better than its counterpart in the U.S. Among the reasons are higher readership, less competition for ad revenue and a less devastating economic downturn. This is not to say that Canadian newspapers are not struggling. Read the Windsor Star article. -- April 28, 2009.
The Internet has been praised for increasing the level of interaction between the producers of news and its consumers. Yet Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times questions just how valuable the online "Comments" section of articles really is. Using Slate/Washington Post columnist Ann Applebaum as an example, Heffernan notes that this journalist, who has been called one of the "world's most sophisticated thinkers," reguarly receives anti-Semitist, angry, superficial, and just plain irrelevant comments for her pieces. Read the New York Times piece. -- April 28, 2009
The Attributor Corp has joined with a group of online publishers to form the Fair Syndication Consortium, a venture that hopes to gain advertising revenue from sites that reproduce their content. Attributor already works with the AP and the Financial Times to track their content, so that those organizations can request that their work be taken down if used inappropriately. Now, however, the Fair Syndication Consortium hopes to use that same technology to track the use of their content and persuade the reproducers to share in the advertising revenue. Read the announcement on the Editors Weblog.
Update: The Consortium, which now includes Politico, Reuters, among others, held its first meeting Monday. Attributor found that for every one viewer who reads an article on the producer's website, another five find it in full elsewhere. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 27, 2009
Even as their newsrooms contract, local TV news stations are adding time to their broadcasts, totaling on average half an hour per day. In these tough economic times, the local news stations hope that by increasing their news hours, they will remain competitive and vibrant operations. Yet local news remains less profitable than in the past, and the vast majority of stations have had to consolidate and lay off workers. Read the Huffington Post story -- April 27, 2009.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a plan that he believes may help newspapers generate more revenue for their content. Google's algorthims will start bringing users the news, adapted to their preferences, without the users even looking for it. Because the news will be personalized and highly targeted, the site can charge for premium ads alongside the stories. Problematically, the content producers will not receive a cut from this additional revenue, but Google says that this will still help the newspapers as they will receive more hits on their sites. Read the Editors Weblog Post --April 27, 2009.
In an experiment aimed at increasing reader interaction, the New York Times has turned to crowdsourcing -- using its readers as the sources for news. The paper has published over 650 pages of Timothy Geithner's schedule as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and asked that its readers supply their thoughts on what is worth noting in the document. The Times has already published some of its own insights and perspective, but is offering the masses a greater chance to weigh in. Read the post in The Independent. -- April 27, 2009.
Fifteen digital journalists from 10 states have been selected for the inaugural class of the Knight Digital Media Center’s News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. Through an intense week of training in audience development, market research, business practices and management, legal issues, and entrepreneurial decision-making, the program will prepare journalists to develop and launch new and sustainable news and information services in the public’s interest.
The News Entrepreneur Boot Camp will be in Los Angeles in May 2009 and is presented in partnership with the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC’s Marshall School of Business, the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and USC Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review.
Alex Jones has led one of the nation's most successful nonprofits on politics and the press for nearly nine years. Like many people, though, he doesn't think the fundamental answer to the news media's precipitous slide will be found in the largess of philanthropists and foundations.
"The solution to what's happening to news media these days is going to be a commercial one," said Jones, director of the
There are two exceptions, though, and one of them is a big one.
Jones wants one or more of the world's richest people to establish a $2 billion endowment that would provide permanent funding for PBS' "NewsHour."
Eric Gertler, in the Huffington Post, writes that newspapers should focus less on producing content that they can charge for online and instead work to leverage their brand. By creating new ventures like resume services, membership clubs and classes, newspapers can start to make money off their brand. Newspapers need to hurry, though, as other online competitors, from Yelp to the Huffington Post, continue to take over spaces where newspapers traditionally dominated. Read the Huffington Post blog. --April 24, 2009
Richard Tofel, ProPublica general manager, praised the substantive work that the nonprofit news organization has been able to produce, citing the coverage of health care for contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Tofel noted that ProPublica could not alone fill the gap in investigative reporting brought on by dwindling newsrooms. Tofel also argued that the organization's next big challenge will be to find a sustainable business model, so it can persist after the grant that began the project runs out. Read the Poynter article. -- April 24, 2009.
PBS MediaShift has put together a compendium of local watchdog news sites, including a description of the sites like MinnPost and the Arizona Guardian. Take a look at PBS's list. -- April 24, 2009
Umair Haque suggests that the New York Times might save itself by buying Twitter. The Times could use the timeliness of Twitter to disseminate the news. Haque suggests that Twitter offers the newspaper viral distribution, context, relational capital, and the ability to experiment with business models. Read the Harvard Business Publishing post. -- April 24, 2009
Over the next two weeks the Knight Foundation is asking the public to help define communities' news and information needs. Journalism's biggest foundation is skeptical that communities will have the information they need to be effective citizens in the digital age. See Knight Foundation press release. -- April 23, 2009
After the close of the Rocky Mountain News, reporters and investors sought to launch InDenverTimes, a news site funded by subscribers. Their goal was to have 50,000 subscribers by April 23, in order to fund their launch in May. As of today, however, the site has enlisted just 3,000 subscribers, causing the site's three investors to reevaluate the project. Some reports have suggested that the investors are withdrawing their support from the project, but the Westword blog suggests that they are simply readjusting their business model. Read the Westword blog post. -- April 23, 2009.
The Department of Homeland Security has stopped its subscriptions to general-interest publications like The Washington Post, Newsweek and the New York Times. Any future subscriptions will have to have prior approval. The department noted that employees would still be able to keep up with today's news, as these publications offer access to the content online. Read the AP article. -- April 23, 2009
The chairman of the New York Times Company spoke to shareholders today, but revealed no new plans for the future of the newspaper. He admitted that the website does not make enough money to support the newsroom, but offered words of comfort to shareholders that the New York Times will not fail: "It is this commitment to excellence that will get us through this turbulent time," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Read the New York Observer article. -- April 23, 2009
Eight more hyperlocal community news sites have received funding from J-Lab's New Voices program. Each will get startup funding of $25,000 -- courtesy of the Knight Foundation -- over two years. Half of the winning proposals are associated with universities. Since 2005, New Voices has provided funding for 48 hyperlocal programs. See the New Voices press release. -- April 21, 2009
You might know him as an astute -- April 21, 2009 critic writing about film for The New Yorker. But David Denby writes about other things as well -- including some ideas on how newspapers survive the Internet age. Read David Denby's letter to the New York Times. -- April 21, 2009
If newspapers go under, the argument goes, blogs and aggregators will lose the source of much of their news. To assess the validity of that assumption, Daily Kos looked at its "front page" posts for the week of April 6 through April 12, and counted up the sources of their linked items. They found that the plurality came from newspapers, 123 items, but that the newspaper content amounted to only 20 percent of the news items that Daily Kos linked to during the week. Read the Daily Kos post. -- April 17, 2009
Starting today, the Middle East Times is available online only via subscription. The publication, which originally began as a printed weekly based in Cairo, had been publishing its content online for free. The online newspaper expressed regret over the change, but emphasized that a subscription model was necessary. The Times will be publishing more limited content in the next couple of weeks as it reorganizes as a subscription publication. Read the Editors Weblog Post. -- April 17, 2009.
The New York Times has launched a new, customizable widget called "My Headlines." Viewers choose from the New York Times list of sections and features to create their own list of news that appears alongside the other headlines on the Times' homepage. This is the latest in the increasingly customizable world of online news. Read the Editors Weblog Post and the New York Times's My Headlines page. -- April 17, 2009
Peter Scheer discusses the legal factors involved in instituting pay walls for online content, specifically the concept of "fair use." He argues that the current interpretation of fair use -- which enables people to rewrite the first few paragraphs of a story while maintaining the central ideas, as aggregators often do -- will hurt some new sources more than others. Those that will suffer have news contained in the lead paragraphs, like wire services and major metropolitan dailies. Long-form journalism, such as that practiced by the New Yorker and hyperlocal sites, will fare better under this definition of fair use. Read the Huffington Post blog. -- April 17, 2009.
An editorial in the Los Angeles Times makes the case for a federal shield law to protect journalists from prosecution if they are protecting their confidential sources. Though many states have such a law, the federal government does not currently offer such protections for reporters. The House recently passed a shield law, and the Senate has an alternative on the table. The editorial finds some of the Senate measures, particularly the definition of protected journalists as one who engages in journalism, as superior to the House version. Read the Los Angeles Times editorial. -- April 16, 2009
Jack Shafer at Slate says journalists should stop criticizing the Huffington Post for copying and rewriting their original content. Shafer notes that such antics are a long-established tradition in journalism, from Pulitizer's blatant theft of Hearst's copy to Time Magazine's deft rewriting of the newspapers' news. Aggregation and substantial borrowing are simply part of journalism. Read the Slate article. -- April 16, 2009
Last month, Time Inc. launched a new experiment with Mine, a customizable print magazine. Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab reviewed his copy today. Though Benton thought the experiment worthwhile, he was confused by the nearly two-year-old content in the magazine, and was slightly uncomfortable with the adaptions of the Lexus advertisements that funded the project. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- April 15, 2009.
Even as newspapers around the country close, New York City is getting another daily Spanish-language newspaper, called NY Al Dia. The paper will launch on April 20, and sell for 40 cents at 1,800 locations throughout NYC. The daily is staffed by 13 former employees of Hoy New York, which closed in December. The new newspaper will compete with El Diario/La Prensa, the existing Spanish-language daily in New York. Read the article from Portada. - April 15, 2009.
Clint Reilly worries that media monopolies would endanger the public good that news outlets are supposed to protect. He suggests that, as newspapers consolidate, we impose three methods of oversight over the news media: a council of citizens to monitor the news, incorporating citizens on the newspapers' editorial boards, and a state newspaper regulatory board appointed by the governor. These three mechanisms would serve as a check to ensure that newspapers continue to serve as the public's watchdog. Read Clint Reilly's blog post. -- April 15, 2009
Just as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer experienced a drop in viewership after the newspaper went online only, a finanical newspaper in Finland has seen a similar trend. According to researchers at City University London, when Taloussanomat switched to an online-only format, it initially saw a small uptick in viewership. Five months later, however, the site found that their unique viewers had dropped by 22 percent. Two British newspapers saw their websites' unique viewers increase by significant margins during that same period. The Finnish newspaper has since gained in viewers, in part due to the global economic crisis. Read the Wall Street Journal blog post. -- April 15, 2009.
CBS anchor Katie Couric strongly defended her 2008 campaign interviews of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, telling a Los Angeles audience Wednesday that her questioning of the GOP vice presidential candidate struck a blow for "old-fashioned" journalism.
Expressing concern about the growing popularity of opinion journalism on TV -- which she said amounted to "ideological convection" -- Couric said the interviews worked because she kept ideology out of it. "I did it the old-fashioned way," she said.
Couric accepted a Cronkite Award at the University of Southern California for her Palin interviews. Other Cronkite awards, presented by the Norman Lear Center, went to George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC's "This Week," to the public television news program NOW, with host David Brancaccio, and to several local TV news organizations.
According to L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal, it isn't just the business models for news that need reevaluating, but journalism itself. Crovitz furthers the thesis of a former Wall Street Journal editor Bernard Kilgore: "It doesn't have to have happened yesterday to be news." During his tenure, Kilgore forced the newspaper to adapt -- by explaining the implications of the financial news for its readers, rather than just reporting yesterday's facts. Crovitz suggests that newspapers today need to adapt to online breaking news in a similar fashion. Read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece. -- April 14, 2009.
Despite the fact that money spent on online advertising is increasing, newspapers have seen a decline in their online ad sales. Alan Mutter, in his blog Reflections of a Newosaur, has the numbers and cites this lag as the reason that publishers are increasingly looking toward charging for their content. He argues that newpaper sites have to become less like newspapers and instead more interactive hubs of activity to compete for online advertising dollars. Read the blog post here. -- April 14, 2009
Steve Outing writes that instead of threatening Google with legal action or withholding content, news outlets should increase their collaboration with the search company. Outing's argument is that attempting to stop Google from linking to their sites is counterproductive, taking eyeballs away from their original content. Instead, news organizations should be coming up with ways to help Google make more money, by optimizing searches and aggregation. With this collaboration, the news sources could receive a share of the revenue from Google's ad money. Read the blog post from SteveOuting.com. -- April 14, 2009.
Starting Monday, the Washington Times will devote a full print newspage to articles written by members of the community. Each contributor will receive a set of ethics standards and guidelines from the Washington Times, and a former editorial page editor will oversee the content that covers the capital and surrounding suburbs. Read the Washington Times article. -- April 13, 2009
The success of MinnPost, the Voice of San Diego and other recent ventures demonstrate the possibilities of nonprofit journalism. Such sites encourage their readers to become paying members and thereby fund the reporting. Yet the editor of MinnPost doubts the nonprofit structue could support the newsrooms of the New York Times or other large papers. Additionally, the article notes the dramatic pay cut that journalists face in working for nonprofit news outlets. Read the Salon.com article. -- April 13, 2009
A host of new, hyperlocal news sites have emerged, offering information targeted to a small, specific locality. Sites like EveryBlock, Placeblogger, and Outside.In aggregate information for residents, and some even do their own reporting. Generating revenue for the sites remains a challenge, however, as they inherently speak to a narrow group of people. They must also address concerns of reliability and sustainability as the sources they pull from are going out of business. Read the New York Times article. -- April 13, 2009
The Atlantic is tweaking its online content, shifting some of its resources to breaking news instead of commentary, creating new verticals such as the Politics channel and the Atlantic's Business, and developing its strategy for mobile content. Even as the Atlantic grows and changes, the site is standing by the decision to drop its paywall beginning in January 2008, reporting that gains in digital revenue have helped offset the slowdown in print advertising. Read the paidContent.org article. -- April 8, 2009
A comScore report finds that traditional news outlets have not yet found a way to capitalize on Iphone applications, despite the hope that this could serve as a revenue stream for struggling media. ComScore's survey of the top 25 IPhone applications found only Flixster, an app devoted to movies, under the News category. Many of the top applications were games, a notable number of social networking applications such as Facebook and MySpace. The report demonstrates that, even as more news sources are developing mobile applications, they have yet to generate a significant amount of consumption. Read the Editors Weblog post and the comScore press release. -- April 8, 2009
Many, including Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin, have proposed that government assist news outlets that are struggling to survive in today's volatile climate. Yet a recent example of government involvement in reporting has raised questions about the ethics of receiving such funds. The parent company of two Ohio TV news stations is receiving over $3 million to run stories within their broadcasts about the new state-sponsored healthcare program. After these segments, the anchor reads a brief disclaimer that mentions the story's sponsor. Is this enough of a separation between government and journalism? Read the Tulsa World article. -- April 8, 2009.
The New York Times offers a summary on the difficulties of converting a free service to paid. Coca Cola did it with water, but newspapers are having a harder time convincing consumers to pay for their online content. The debate continues over paid-vs-free online content, with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times charging for some of their features, while the New York Times and the Los Angeles TImes both reverted to free content after their experimentations with a paywall did not bear fruit. Read New York Times article. -- April 8, 2009
Tim Windsor develops some points he would have liked to see AP Chairman Dean Singleton make when the AP head announced that it might seek legal action against news aggregators. On his wish list: making something better than Google News, creating an online locus for news video, sponsoring curated links and additional ideas for how the AP might be able to adapt to the Internet revolution. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- April 8, 2009
Alan Murray, the editor of the Wall Street Journal Online, gave the Nieman Journalism Lab his advice for news media that are trying to find a way to monetize their websites. Murray rejects the idea that the WSJ alone is in a position to charge for content. He suggests a mix between free and paid content. He also argues that the most popular online content should not be put behind pay walls; instead, news outlets should charge for materials that attract niche markets. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab article. -- April 8, 2009
Yesterday, Michael Kinsley wrote Washington Post op-ed rejecting the idea of government subsidies for newspapers, suggesting such a newspaper would be sadly compromised by government involvement.
Conor Clarke counters in the Atlantic that newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times exist as nonprofits without apparent difficulties. He suggests that government must close the gap between what individuals determine as the value of newspapers, and the value that society finds in newspapers. Read the Atlantic article.
Finally, Kinsely responds that, while the Clarke's argument makes sense, it is suspect if not unconstitutional for the government to attempt to influence what people read. He contends, "Preventing you from reading something (censorship) is obviously worse than causing you to read something (via subsidy), but the latter is still troublesome." Read Kinsely's post in the Atlantic.
-- April 7, 2009
The Associated Press, in addition to making waves as it tries to protect its content online, has announced that they will be cutting their rates starting January 2010. Users will also be able to cancel their subscription with one years notice, rather than the current two-year requirement. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 7, 2009.
Alexander Macgillivray, a lawyer for Google, wrote in the company's blog a reply to the Associated Press's recent announcement that it will seek legal action against those that use its content without permission. Macgillivray argued that Google does not misappropriate AP's work, but rather brings additional attention to the wire service as well as other newspapers around the country. Macgillivray also pointed out that since Google posts AP articles as part of a partnership with the company, the threat of lawsuits does not pertain to the search engine. Read the Reuters article. -- April 7, 2009
PaidContent.org interviewed the chairman of the Associated Press, Dean Singleton, after the wire service's announcement that it will seek legal action against sites that link to or reproduce its content without permission. Singleton said the company is forming "rules of engagement," but that the entire industry has heretofore been too reticient about protecting their original content. Read the PaidContent.org Interview. -- April 7, 2009
The Associated Press announced Monday that any Web site that uses its content must get AP permission and share revenue with the wire service. Any site that did not comply with these arrangements would face a legal challenge. A variety of online sites use AP content, from search engines like Google and Yahoo News, to news aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to articles, and smaller sites that reproduce the articles in full. Read the New York Times article. -- April 7, 2009.
The Minnesota Newspaper Guild has launched an awareness campaign it hopes will save the Minnestor Star Tribune. Using a Facebook page, YouTube videos, a Web site, and other methods of outreach, the guild hopes to raise awarness that the paper is danger of going under. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 7, 2009
Cable providers as well as cable networks are increasingly concerned by the threat of free content online. The fear is that their content will soon be available for free, and networks will have to be funded solely by advertising, like newspapers. One idea is to provide the content online only for cable subscribers, while others are worried that any restriction in online viewing may drive people to piracy and illegal downloads. Read the New York Times article. -- April 7, 2009.
Many have expressed excitement over the new Huffington Post Investigative Journalism Fund, which will support projects in investigative reporting. Others are concerned that the role of the Huffington Post as a funder might bias the journalism towards the left, reflecting the blog's well-known slant. Others doubt that lump-sum journalism is a viable option for the future. In the short-term, it may work, but the long-term sustainability of such funding remains tenuous. Read the Journalism.co.uk article. -- April 6, 2009.
The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation has given West Virginia University $85,000 to produce multimedia content for rural newspapers. The university's journalism school has begun training rural newspaper staffers to produce video and audio content, as well as blogging and social networking. Read the Charletson Daily Mail article. -- April 6, 2009.
The New York Times has launched a new interactive feature that allows readers to upload their pictures of the economic recession to its Web site. The project is titled PUFFY - photo upload form for you - and had its trial run during the Hudson plane crash. The site now has hundreds of photos, in categories of business, home, transportation and others. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 6, 2009.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute is a nonprofit think tank affiliated with the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. The Institute is working to preserve journalism and help journalists make money on their work. One of their first ventures is creating a social networking site that allows solo journalists to connect and collaborate with one another. The Institute is also funding research for a portable, electronic device that would carry the news. The Institute is funded by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. Read the AP story. -- April 3, 2009
In The American Journalism Review, Paul Farhi contends that the Associated Press may have hastened the decline of newspapers by providing online carriers with their wire service. Newspapers, which have watched their medium unravel as audiences move online, own the AP. Thus, says Fahri, they have been handing their online competitors the means to challenge their very viability. Read Farhi's article. -- April 3, 2009
Martin Langeveld does the math on charging viewers for online news, and he guesses that newspapers would be facing a net loss in revenue if they imposed pay walls for their content. There is little data on which to base these calculations, so there are a fair amount of assumptions involved in his assessment, but the conclusions are nevertheless noteworthy. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- April 3, 2009
At The Cable Show, Rupert Murdoch discussed his company's future plans--such as an investment in a four-color Kindle-like device--and dismissed the idea that a closure of the San Francisco Chronicle would be a bad omen for the future. Perhaps most interesting, Murdoch maintained that the New York Times would work well under a pay wall, countering common opinions that the Wall Street Journal is unique among newspapers in consumers' willingness to pay for content. Read paidContent.org post. -- April 3, 2009
Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin wrote in today's Washington Post about the reasons he submitted the Newspaper Revitalization Act, a bill to assist newspapers in becoming non-profits. He argues that, while a non-profit structure might not be optimal for some newspapers, many smaller and more local newspapers would benefit from the creation of a IRS category of "qualified newspaper corporation." Read Cardin's article. -- April 3, 2009
More than 100 Members of Parliament (MPs) have signed a motion that encourages the government to support local journalism, but not the media conglomerates who "have already extracted millions of pounds from their businesses whilst cutting investment in editorial resources." Though the motion does not carry the weight of law, it does indicate that Parliament is unlikely to heed Newpaper Media Alliance's request for governmental assistance. Read the article from the Guardian. -- April 2, 2009
Editor and Publisher suggests a new profit model for newpapers -- Low-Profit Limited Liability Company, or L3C. An L3C is "a corporation that qualifies as a charity under IRS rules but runs as a for-profit business." An L3C is allowed to take money from charities and nonprofits because it serves a social benefit. The Newspaper Guild is currently lobbying Congress for legislation that would state explicitly that newspapers serve this social benefit. Read the Editor and Publisher article. -- April 2, 2009
InDenverTimes.com, the online subscription news site, may be shy of its goal of 50,000 subscribers by April 23, but it has added six more staffers to the original 30. One-year subscriptions cost $4.99, and the site drew more than 100 subscribers within its first hour. The staffers are volunteering their time until the site goes live on May 4. Read the Editors Weblog post.
In England's northwest, two free monthly newspapers are starting publication. The Bury Independent and the Bolton Independent each will employ local freelance journalists but will have no paid editorial staff. These launchings follow the success of the Cheshire Independent in the region. Read the post from the Editors Weblog.--April 2, 2009
Phil Trounstine and Jerry Roberts assert newspapers are in a death spiral. They contend that there are two ways to save local reporting: most newspapers should abandon national news in favor of local coverage so as to become indispensable to residents; or, they say online businesses like Google and Yahoo might pay local reporters to produce content. Read the CalBuzz blog post -- April 2, 2009
An article from the Vancouver Sun discusses the limitations of citizen journalism compared to traditional media. For one thing, amateur journalists often produce content on a narrower range of topics, and the sourcing is often more superficial. A Pew Survey also found that bloggers are no more likely to focus on substantive issues, despite their criticism of the mainstream media, and traditional outlets are actually more innovative in the providing interactive online content. Read the Vancouver Sun article. -- April 1, 2009
Eduardo Hauser in a post for the Huffington Post makes his defense of "The Daily Me," the customizable nature of online news. He argues that we have always filtered news according to our interests, and now only the means have changed. The Daily Me might actually increase interest and engagement with the news, which in turn would lead to more informed citizens. Read Hauser's blog post. -- April 1, 2009
Amy Gahran of Poynter Online suggests some of the ways that the news media might be able to use Google Earth street view in their stories. She cites a Taiwanese blogger who created a virtual tour of National Taiwan University's campus. Gahran argues that news organizations could use these kinds of street images to document the damage of natural disasters or explain the current environment. Read her Poynter Online post. -- April 1, 2009
Hewlett Packard has developed a new Web service called MagCloud, which makes it easier and cheaper to produce magazines. The printing costs 20 cents per page, and the producer is charged only if someone orders a magazine. MagCloud hopes to provide service to any niche market magazine. So far, the site is in testing and has produced nearly 300 magazines on topics from food photography to the history of aerospace. Read the New York Times article. -- April 1, 2009
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