links for 2009-01-29

  • Kevin: A plan to save newspapers. "Turn them into nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities." I'm not sure about this. I think that one of the problems with newspapers is that they aren't connected with communities. Insulating them from profit-loss might make the journalism loftier but also more irrelevant. Having said, having worked for the BBC and now the Guardian, having some insulation from market fluctuations has its benefits.
  • Kevin: Henry Blodget of the Silicon Insider says: "George Soros just predicted that the global economic collapse could end up being worse than the Great Depression. How do we know? Because Reuters' editor in chief, David Schlesinger, Twittered the speech live from Davos. Journalism evolves!"
  • Kevin: You'll have to download a PDF, but it's an interesting look at Barack Obama's use of social media. "Although the Obama campaign was revolutionary in some respects, it ultimately used the same
    tools that many campaigns had previously employed. However, the campaign did everything
    incrementally better than its competitors." Pay special attention to the section on mobile.
  • Kevin: An interesting analysis (much of which I agree with) about the upcoming report by Andrew Currah from the Reuters Institute about journalism. "This report is not without value, but as an analysis of how newspapers are dealing with the transition online it doesn’t really offer an fresh insights."
  • Kevin: Joanna Geary talks with Mark Comerford about the 'new journalism' and when she had her aha moment.
  • Kevin: Straight shooting from Dan Gillmor who watched and blogged about the housing bubble from one of the centres of the catastrophe, California. He writes: "Our government's current operating principle seems to be bailing out people who were culpable in the financial meltdown. If so, journalists are surely entitled to billions of dollars.

    Why? Journalists were grossly deficient when it came to covering the reckless behavior, sleaze and willful ignorance of fundamental economics, much of which was reasonably obvious to anyone who was paying attention, that inflated the housing and credit bubbles of the past decade."