links for 2010-04-28

  • Kevin: Apart from The Wall Street Journal which managed to eke out a small 0.5% increase in circulation in the last six months. The decline, for some titles precipitous, in newspaper circulation continues. LA Times, -14.74%; Washington Post -13.06%; Dallas Morning News -21.47%; and the San Diego Union-Tribune -22.68%. Ouch. Some newspaper groups are returning to profitability. The deep cuts have reduced their cost base, but without a stop to these circulation losses, they will need to do something else.
  • Kevin: Roy gives a good overview of the newly formed Bureau of Investigative Journalism here in the UK. "(Editor Iain) Overton stressed that there would be no political agenda. The bureau's main focus would be on scrutinising government and big business. So it's a high-minded exercise that emulates the pioneering ProPublica initiative in the US."
  • Kevin: While I think there are parallels between how the music and the news industry have responded to the disruptive affect of the internet on their businesses, I think there are important differences in terms of how to support their businesses going forward. One simple difference is that I listen to a song over and over if I like it. Breaking news has a very, very short shelf life. That being said, I do agree whole heartedly with one of the central tenets of this post that the news industry needs to sort its metadata out. This is a fundamental platform issue in terms of digital journalism and should be seen as an important area where the industry can and is cooperating on. The major agencies support NewsML for instance. However, too much of the news and information produced by news organisations is still unstructured and of less use than it should be for the digital age.
  • Kevin: "(Clay) Shirky say find filters – or else." Skip down to the lower third and look at the issues around curation, frustration about search and algorithms.