December 2008
16 posts
A newspaper journalist offers practical online...
My name is Gina Chen. I’ve been a newspaper journalist for 20 years, and I’m worried — but excited — about the future of the industry I love. Gina Chen is really no different than the thousands of journalists in newsrooms around the country, trying to make sense of where the news business is heading. Except this: She’s doing something to help her colleagues along. Save The Media,...
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The story so far: I actually want the news...
So here’s how these things go. You write 85+ posts over the course of a handful of months. Some of them are are considered, thoughtful pieces, many with even a modicum of original reporting. Others are appreciative notes and links to discussions elsewhere. A few are smartassed screeds, one of which takes apart some recent (I’ll still say it) idiocy by Paul Mulshine in the Wall Street...
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Pros vs. Pajamas: The trope that will not die.
The zombie lives, this time in an op-ed in the WSJ from the Newark Star-Ledger’s Paul Mulshine, who conflates the shout of “Copy!” and the pounding of six-part carbons with some golden age of “real” journalism that the modern internetses are killing: When my colleague at the Newark Star-Ledger John Farmer started off in journalism more than five decades ago, things...
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The Sun and Post leap forward with sharing...
I thought the Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun made a brilliant move today, announcing that, beginning on January 1, the two newsrooms would start sharing news and sports coverage. The stated goal is to eliminate overlap and to create efficiencies. The real goal is to forge ahead boldly to help save the business. But then I saw this, and I realized the terrible truth of exactly what business...
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The reports of print's death may not be...
Designer Jason Santa Maria takes a look at the current state of print publishing and decides: Print just might be in its death throes This is not necessarily a bad thing. Here’s his conclusion: The medium of print will not die, but its spot atop the mountain of mainstream content distribution is in its final days. This could bring about a rebirth of design innovation online. We can help...
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We're not going to save the business with bigger...
I need to create a new TextExpander macro that simply says Martin Langeveld has a great post…” God knows I type that enough. The latest is actually a 1-2 punch, presenting practical advice for the sales team and the newsroom at newspaper companies. He gets off to a very good start: 1. Lead with the DotCom brand. Publishers: take out your wallet and check your business card. And have...
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Re-engineering the wall between church and state
Chris Brogan, the well-known social media strategist and evangelist has a post today about what some of us would call journalistic ethics. On December 2, Chris wrote a sponsored post on his Dad-o-Matic blog about K-Mart. K-Mart gave him a $500 gift card to go on a shopping spree and write about it. He took his kids. They bought some clothes and toys for a Christmas charity. He wrote it up, with...
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What happened when the money dried up
I’ve been passing around an odd little YouTube clip of a 2005 Christmas gift from Sam Zell. It shows an animated statue that features a recording of Sam extolling the virtures of an economy that’s throwing off cheap cash left and right, And then, there’s a song: “We’re awash with cash to spend!” It would just be that - an oddity - until you read a piece in the...
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Can an InfoValet guide us to a business model?
[caption id=”attachment_652” align=”alignnone” width=”500” caption=”Photo by Hushed Lavinia”][/caption] Martin Langeveld reports on a conference focused on the notion of an “InfoValet.” It sounds like attendees at the conference spent a lot of time thinking of ways to describe what they’re onto, but I’d put it this way, from...
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Winner, Most Prescient Post of 2008: Mark Potts
It was just shy of one year ago today when Mark Potts swam against the Zellebratory news of the sale of Tribune, in a post entitled “Here Come The Death Eaters,” in which he typed these words: Put that all together, and 2008 may be the year that the Death Eaters start coming for some of the biggest names in the business: Big chains or papers that are overextended financially and find...
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And so it begins
[caption id=”attachment_642” align=”alignnone” width=”500” caption=”Photo by William Couch. 1/31/2008”][/caption] Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are reporting tonight that the Tribune company has hired an investment bank and a law firm for a potential bankruptcy filing as early as this week. This is definitely a long way down the...
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Langeveld: What it means to transform to a digital...
I keep coming back to this: if the people, through their behavior, keep telling newspapers that they don’t want the paper part of the paper anymore AND the paper part of the paper is enormously expensive to create and distribute, then why doesn’t some market take a leap and try going all digital? Yes, there will be financial downsides at first, but especially in the many markets with...
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Jason Calacanis: The 120% Solution
Jason Calacanis suggests a solution to the ills that are plaguing us at the moment. And it’s not necessarily what you expect: Work 20% harder. It was our collective sloth, consumption and sense of entitlement that got us into this mess, and the only thing that will get us out of will be lots of hard work. If you’ve got a good job, you should bust your butt to make your company as...
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Alan Mutter's incredible shrinking newspaper
Yesterday, Alan Mutter promised a detailing of just what newspapers might do when things turn really sour in Q1 of 2009. Today, he delivers. But the list - at least at the beginning - sounds awfully familiar already: The list of potential expense reductions includes squeezing staffing, shuttering bureaus, carving out layers of middle management, telescoping multiple sections of the paper into...
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“If you applied for this job, you may already be a...
Jobs in journalism are becoming rarer with each passing day. But at Scott Karp’s Publish2.com, there’s a great job for the taking. All you have to do is win their contest. It’s a job with Publish2, a start-up focused on helping journalism thrive in the digital age. We already employ two incredibly talented journalists, Tammi Marcoullier and Josh Korr, and we want to expand our team....