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Kevin: "Newsroom employment at U.S. dailies plunged 11 percent last year, the most in at least 31 years, to levels unseen since the early 1980s, the American Society of News Editors said. Newsrooms lost 5,900 workers to 46,700 in 2008, after shedding 2,400 jobs a year earlier, the Reston, Virginia-based newspaper organization said in a report today."
links for 2009-04-16
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Kevin: Charlie succinctly describes changes in journalism in this post when he writes: “I have already written at length about how journalism is no longer a product but a process. It is not a manufacturing industry anymore, it is a service. And as I have said, it must now find ways to be part of other networks rather than simply create online spaces of its own. This is truly Networked Journalism.”n
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Kevin: This is a comprehensive list of not only how to increase the number of followers for your news organisation but also a good overview of services that journalists can use for Twitter such as BackTweets, which allows you to see who is linking to your stories on Twitter.
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Kevin: ”
OverviewSome 74% of internet users–representing 55% of the entire adult population–went online in 2008 to get involved in the political process or to get news and information about the election. This marks the first time that a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey has found that more than half of the voting-age population used the internet to get involved in the political process during an election year.” -
Kevin: Seven great examples of how data can be used to help tell stories and show trends, in other words to do great journalism. The examples show how Twitter can be used to chart the spread of flu in New York City, how data shows the frequency of fatal traffic accidents across the US and how a map helps show the areas of Toronto with the highest rate of sexually transmitted disease.
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Kevin: “Researchers from City University London have published a report showing one European newspaper’s steep drop in revenue as well as unsteady Web traffic after it became an online-only publication.”
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Kevin: Dante Chinni at the Christian Science Monitor looks at the closing of the Ann Arbor Daily News. The reaction he reports by people in Ann Arbor: ‘unfazed’. (I used to work at MLive.com, which published the website of the Ann Arbor News.)
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Kevin: Kos of the Daily Kos responds to this common comment: ‘Whenever we debate the future of newspapers, inevitably someone asks, “if they go out of business, where will blogs get their stories?'” He lists the sources for stories on the Daily Kos over the last week. Newspapers counted for 20%. He says: “It’s always sad to lose a good source of journalism. But we live in a rich media environment, easily the richest in world history, and the demise of the newspaper industry will simply shift much of the journalistic work they did to other media.”
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Kevin: The Next Web blog has an interesting analysis about what they see as Google’s social network play – building a network of apps with sociality cooked into them – for instance, Gmail with GTalk, Maps with Latitude and Google Reader with sharing and commenting features. They also have some suggestions on how the social experience could be better such as easier ways to add friends, add a friend stream and improve the design and how all of the apps work together.
links for 2009-04-15
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Kevin: The Washington City Paper, my old hometown free alt-weekly, has news of a shake-up at the Washington Post. It looks like the Post will be 'flattening' their editorial structure and offering buy-outs to editors. It's the fourth round of buy-outs at the paper since 2003, the City Paper reports
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Kevin: The Guardian's Martin Belam blogs about how the video of London police attacking Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests. Tomlinson died shortly after the attack of a heart attack. The video has prompted an inquiry into the incident. Martin shows how the video 'spread The Guardian brand across media', and talks about how novel this is in terms of British media. Before this, the BBC, Sky or ITN would be the only news organisations with exclusive video. The video, taken by an American who works in financial services, was offered to the Guardian after investigative work by Guardian reporter Paul Lewis.
Martin does a great job showing how the video spread and how Guardian branding on the video on YouTube was carried far and wide, although some outlets tried to minimise the branding with video-player overlays. He also highlights the differences in use and attribution between online and print. Print often failed to attribute the video.
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Kevin: A relatively easy way to combine Google Maps and Street View with Microsoft's Virtual Earth in one embed. However, unless I'm missing something, this is only for a single point. But a nice quick and dirty mashup if you want to see quite a bit of information about a location.
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Kevin: Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent in Asia, interviews a group of young Chinese behind a site called Anti-CNN.com, which was launched to counter what they felt was a distorted and inaccurate picture of their country presented in Western media.
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Kevin: This is a really thorough tutorial Matthew Stoff and David Durrett of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches Texas on how to not only use Twitter for breaking news from the field but also how to easily display it on your site. This was written in the US where Twitter works on SMS, but they show how it can be used with a service called TwitterMail so that someone can easily use this with a Blackberry even if it's not possible to install a Twitter app for the Blackberry such as Twitterberry. However, by using a mail-based system, they are correct in saying that you'd want to be careful who you share the account details with.
links for 2009-04-15
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Kevin: The Washington City Paper, my old hometown free alt-weekly, has news of a shake-up at the Washington Post. It looks like the Post will be 'flattening' their editorial structure and offering buy-outs to editors. It's the fourth round of buy-outs at the paper since 2003, the City Paper reports
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Kevin: The Guardian's Martin Belam blogs about how the video of London police attacking Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests. Tomlinson died shortly after the attack of a heart attack. The video has prompted an inquiry into the incident. Martin shows how the video 'spread The Guardian brand across media', and talks about how novel this is in terms of British media. Before this, the BBC, Sky or ITN would be the only news organisations with exclusive video. The video, taken by an American who works in financial services, was offered to the Guardian after investigative work by Guardian reporter Paul Lewis.
Martin does a great job showing how the video spread and how Guardian branding on the video on YouTube was carried far and wide, although some outlets tried to minimise the branding with video-player overlays. He also highlights the differences in use and attribution between online and print. Print often failed to attribute the video.
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Kevin: A relatively easy way to combine Google Maps and Street View with Microsoft's Virtual Earth in one embed. However, unless I'm missing something, this is only for a single point. But a nice quick and dirty mashup if you want to see quite a bit of information about a location.
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Kevin: Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent in Asia, interviews a group of young Chinese behind a site called Anti-CNN.com, which was launched to counter what they felt was a distorted and inaccurate picture of their country presented in Western media.
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Kevin: This is a really thorough tutorial Matthew Stoff and David Durrett of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches Texas on how to not only use Twitter for breaking news from the field but also how to easily display it on your site. This was written in the US where Twitter works on SMS, but they show how it can be used with a service called TwitterMail so that someone can easily use this with a Blackberry even if it's not possible to install a Twitter app for the Blackberry such as Twitterberry. However, by using a mail-based system, they are correct in saying that you'd want to be careful who you share the account details with.
links for 2009-04-15
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Kevin: The Washington City Paper, my old hometown free alt-weekly, has news of a shake-up at the Washington Post. It looks like the Post will be 'flattening' their editorial structure and offering buy-outs to editors. It's the fourth round of buy-outs at the paper since 2003, the City Paper reports
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Kevin: The Guardian's Martin Belam blogs about how the video of London police attacking Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests. Tomlinson died shortly after the attack of a heart attack. The video has prompted an inquiry into the incident. Martin shows how the video 'spread The Guardian brand across media', and talks about how novel this is in terms of British media. Before this, the BBC, Sky or ITN would be the only news organisations with exclusive video. The video, taken by an American who works in financial services, was offered to the Guardian after investigative work by Guardian reporter Paul Lewis.
Martin does a great job showing how the video spread and how Guardian branding on the video on YouTube was carried far and wide, although some outlets tried to minimise the branding with video-player overlays. He also highlights the differences in use and attribution between online and print. Print often failed to attribute the video.
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Kevin: A relatively easy way to combine Google Maps and Street View with Microsoft's Virtual Earth in one embed. However, unless I'm missing something, this is only for a single point. But a nice quick and dirty mashup if you want to see quite a bit of information about a location.
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Kevin: Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent in Asia, interviews a group of young Chinese behind a site called Anti-CNN.com, which was launched to counter what they felt was a distorted and inaccurate picture of their country presented in Western media.
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Kevin: This is a really thorough tutorial Matthew Stoff and David Durrett of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches Texas on how to not only use Twitter for breaking news from the field but also how to easily display it on your site. This was written in the US where Twitter works on SMS, but they show how it can be used with a service called TwitterMail so that someone can easily use this with a Blackberry even if it's not possible to install a Twitter app for the Blackberry such as Twitterberry. However, by using a mail-based system, they are correct in saying that you'd want to be careful who you share the account details with.
links for 2009-04-15
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Kevin: The Washington City Paper, my old hometown free alt-weekly, has news of a shake-up at the Washington Post. It looks like the Post will be 'flattening' their editorial structure and offering buy-outs to editors. It's the fourth round of buy-outs at the paper since 2003, the City Paper reports
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Kevin: The Guardian's Martin Belam blogs about how the video of London police attacking Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests. Tomlinson died shortly after the attack of a heart attack. The video has prompted an inquiry into the incident. Martin shows how the video 'spread The Guardian brand across media', and talks about how novel this is in terms of British media. Before this, the BBC, Sky or ITN would be the only news organisations with exclusive video. The video, taken by an American who works in financial services, was offered to the Guardian after investigative work by Guardian reporter Paul Lewis.
Martin does a great job showing how the video spread and how Guardian branding on the video on YouTube was carried far and wide, although some outlets tried to minimise the branding with video-player overlays. He also highlights the differences in use and attribution between online and print. Print often failed to attribute the video.
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Kevin: A relatively easy way to combine Google Maps and Street View with Microsoft's Virtual Earth in one embed. However, unless I'm missing something, this is only for a single point. But a nice quick and dirty mashup if you want to see quite a bit of information about a location.
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Kevin: Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent in Asia, interviews a group of young Chinese behind a site called Anti-CNN.com, which was launched to counter what they felt was a distorted and inaccurate picture of their country presented in Western media.
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Kevin: This is a really thorough tutorial Matthew Stoff and David Durrett of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches Texas on how to not only use Twitter for breaking news from the field but also how to easily display it on your site. This was written in the US where Twitter works on SMS, but they show how it can be used with a service called TwitterMail so that someone can easily use this with a Blackberry even if it's not possible to install a Twitter app for the Blackberry such as Twitterberry. However, by using a mail-based system, they are correct in saying that you'd want to be careful who you share the account details with.
links for 2009-04-15
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Kevin: The Washington City Paper, my old hometown free alt-weekly, has news of a shake-up at the Washington Post. It looks like the Post will be 'flattening' their editorial structure and offering buy-outs to editors. It's the fourth round of buy-outs at the paper since 2003, the City Paper reports
-
Kevin: The Guardian's Martin Belam blogs about how the video of London police attacking Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests. Tomlinson died shortly after the attack of a heart attack. The video has prompted an inquiry into the incident. Martin shows how the video 'spread The Guardian brand across media', and talks about how novel this is in terms of British media. Before this, the BBC, Sky or ITN would be the only news organisations with exclusive video. The video, taken by an American who works in financial services, was offered to the Guardian after investigative work by Guardian reporter Paul Lewis.
Martin does a great job showing how the video spread and how Guardian branding on the video on YouTube was carried far and wide, although some outlets tried to minimise the branding with video-player overlays. He also highlights the differences in use and attribution between online and print. Print often failed to attribute the video.
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Kevin: A relatively easy way to combine Google Maps and Street View with Microsoft's Virtual Earth in one embed. However, unless I'm missing something, this is only for a single point. But a nice quick and dirty mashup if you want to see quite a bit of information about a location.
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Kevin: Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent in Asia, interviews a group of young Chinese behind a site called Anti-CNN.com, which was launched to counter what they felt was a distorted and inaccurate picture of their country presented in Western media.
-
Kevin: This is a really thorough tutorial Matthew Stoff and David Durrett of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches Texas on how to not only use Twitter for breaking news from the field but also how to easily display it on your site. This was written in the US where Twitter works on SMS, but they show how it can be used with a service called TwitterMail so that someone can easily use this with a Blackberry even if it's not possible to install a Twitter app for the Blackberry such as Twitterberry. However, by using a mail-based system, they are correct in saying that you'd want to be careful who you share the account details with.
links for 2009-04-14
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Kevin: A list of open-source and closed-source content-management systems. The list has a cursory look at strengths and weaknesses of the systems. Open-source systems WordPress and Drupal are given good reviews, especially on the strength of their development communities. Expression Engine is one of the closed-source options that is given good marks. For those looking to create their own social news networks ala Digg, check out Pligg. It's useful as a basic comparison of various options out there.
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Kevin: A great collection of Firefox add-ons to help developers and designers.
links for 2009-04-10
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Kevin: Danny Sullivan is a journalist and has some straight talk for newspapers complaining about Google. The whole post is worth reading but can be summed up succinctly: "Fix your problems; don't look for scapegoats."
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Kevin: Robert Thomson, the Australian-born editor of The Wall Street Journal, calls internet aggregators who don't pay a fee to content companies "parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet".
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Kevin: Anil Dash looks at the arguments being made by the Associated Press as it battles 'misappropriation' of its content (members content if we're being absolutely honest) and how their arguments differs from some of the values expressed by bloggers. "If the Associated Press made its argument on the basis of credibility and reputation, transparency and accountability, as the web-native publishers have, it would be far easier to defend their desire to share in the business model developed by the aggregators."
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Kevin: Andy Baio, a journalist and programmer (creator of Upcoming.org), looks at some of the differences and different assumptions pertaining to attribution amongst journalists and different types of bloggers in conjunction with how the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital is excerpting content from bloggers. All Things D is making the effort to engage with the bloggers that have been excerpted, but there is a pattern of traditional news organisations taking bloggers' content, sometimes entire posts without payment, and then criticising for quoting news stories. Mainstream media can't have it both ways.
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Kevin: Dave Cohn defines his terms, and it's incredibly useful for those unfamiliar with some of the terms he uses including citizen journalism, stand-alone journalism, pro-am journalism, networked journalism and open-source journalism.
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Kevin: "Joe Rospars, the man behind President Barack Obama's new-media effort during his election, said the campaign didn't win because it used the latest technology. Rather, its secret was a holistic approach — one easily copied by regular marketers — that integrated digital tools into the overall strategy. "
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Kevin: Heather Dougherty at Hitwise looks at data showing referrals for News & Media websites. Search tops everything by a healthy amount. Also, another important take away from the data is that aggregators send traffic to news sites. "Although several of the online aggregators are at the heart of the content distribution argument, they do successfully send visits to news properties rather than keeping them upon their own websites."
What content will people pay for?
Four years ago, I went to the Web+10 conference at the Poynter Institute in Florida. It was an honour to meet some of the pioneers in digital journalism, many of whom I had corresponded with online for years but never had the opportunity to meet. It was 2005, long before the depth of the crisis in newspapers was obvious to all, but everyone was asking the same question: How do we pay for professional journalism? Contrary to popular belief in the industry, newspaper websites were profitable, some quite profitable, but those profits could not sustain the size of newsroom that big-city metros in the US had at the time, newsrooms that dwarfed the size of the British national newspapers.
The crisis has been coming for years as newspapers have seen circulation declines for decades, but the Great Recession is amplifying pressures on newspapers. You read blog posts and articles from journalists and editors who say that the public should pay, must pay for ‘quality journalism’. We hear arguments that they will pay as content becomes scarce with the decline in the number of journalists and the number of newspapers. Leonard Witt, the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University in the US, says in this post:
So will people pay for high quality journalism and information? I do think so because I know one person intimately who already has. And trust me that person is very tight with his money.
Keep in mind, I am saying high quality news and information. Run of the mill junk is a worthless commodity. High quality journalism is scarce and will be more so in the future, and that’s when everyone who loves great journalism will begin to pay.
But I tend to agree with David Kohn, of spot.us, who says this in the comments:
I think this is right on Lenn – as you know, I tend to agree with you. But more and more I’m realizing that certain types of news and information that journalists think is priceless have less value than others.
David elaborates on his point back on his blog citing lessons he’s learned from various citizen journalism and crowd-sourced projects.
Increasingly I’m of the belief that the newspaper industry is relying far too much on its values in its estimates of what readers value enough to pay for. We need some solid facts and figures on what people will pay for. I might be hoping for concrete data that just doesn’t exist right now, but I think we as journalists have to move from asserting what people should pay for and do a little reporting and research to find out what people will pay for and the types of services that might be able to subsidise professional journalism.
Technorati Tags: newspapers, revenue, business models
