Archive for April, 2009

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J-Schools Play Catchup (NYT)

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

Sunday’s New York Times does a quick survey, assembles some anecdotes, and draws a few conclusions…..

The changes [in media] are forcing colleges and universities to rethink what a journalism education should look like. The perennial debate about journalism programs — theoretical teaching versus professional skill building — has been displaced by more urgent questions: How can you help students find sustainable business models, while introducing the formerly verboten subject of the business side? What are the implications for the craft of journalism in the shift to digital? And how do you position students for an uncertain future in the media?

via J-Schools Play Catchup – NYTimes.com.

The online headline, as headlines are wont to do, oversimplifies the conclusions one easily can draw from the story: For one that, that J-schools perhaps saw this coming somewhat before the people running paid newsrooms. (The print presentation, in the Education Life section, is way different.  In fact, the first deck is “J-schools boom despite crisis.)

Boom is not far off. I don’t think that the more than 100 admitted-but-not-yet-enrolled graduate students who attended a two-day Medill open house this week (Thursday at the downtown newsroom, Friday in Evanston) felt like they had applied to a place that’s a lap behind.

Is there lots yet to figure out? Sure.  I kinda think that’s one reason I’m here, to help.

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The new skillset for online reporters [Nieman]

Friday, April 17th, 2009

At the Tribune, we talked about the use of social networks as “where journalism meets marketing.”  At Medill, there is a huge emphasis on audience understanding.  It all leads to the same place – one where journalism reaches the people who most will benefit from it, who most want it, who will be most likely to consume more of it.

“My generation, the notion of marketing your own copy, that was like dirty. You know, don’t make me get near that. That’s somebody else’s job. But in fact, now, marketing — we don’t call it that, but that’s a big part of what online journalists do. Figuring out which blogs they need to be in touch with in order to keep their audience together, using Twitter to drive traffic to your stuff, figuring out the right mix.” — Alan Murray, The Wall Street Journal

via The new skillset for online reporters: speed, marketing, audience-building, tweeting, and “having a good time” » Nieman Journalism Lab.

My own list is at the end of this speech from April 2006.  Your mileage may vary, but I like mine pretty well.

Posted in By others, Digital media, Journalism | Comments Off

Can the Statusphere Save Journalism? (techcrunch.com)

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

The last sentence of this excerpt goes right to the heart of the matter.  A long post, but a good one, from Brian Solis.

Worthy content combined with evangelism and clever promotion will earn visibility and expanded syndication through retweet (RT), link shares, Diggs, Stumbles, bookmarks, tweetbacks, Likes, and other forms of social syndication. With each new instance of sharing, content reverberates through extended social graphs. Content becomes a social object that inspires communication and action.

via Can the Statusphere Save Journalism? .

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I have heard people rant and rave and bellow…*

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

 

Note to self: Good news sells, too.

Note to self: Good news sells, too.

Wednesday night when I got around to updating my Facebook status, I was in a whole different state of mind than I was Monday morning after reading the NYT business section.

Apparently I was in a whole different state of mind than a few other folks, as well, based on the public and private reactions to my announcing that I had “Spent a day with smart high school students after spending a couple weeks with smart college students. I feel good about the future, including the future of journalism.” 

(Of course, this was before I read the Sun-Times Media Group’s 2008 annual report, full of cheerful phrases like “the economic obsolescence occurring in the newspaper and printing industry,” but I digress.) (more…)

Posted in By ORY, Crystal-ball gazing, Digital media, Essays, Journalism, Medill | 1 Comment »

Bankruptcies, Closures Plague Industry (VOANews.com)

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Along with Northwestern colleague Mike Smith, I chatted with a Voice of America reporter recently about the newspaper industry’s path through its current thicket.

 

In March, the Chicago Sun Times newspaper filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was the latest in a series of newspaper bankruptcies and closures across the United States. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, the recent troubles come as new and emerging digital technologies are putting the future of news print, once revered and unassailable, in question.

via Bankruptcies, Closures Plague Newspaper Industry - VOANews.com

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Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin

Monday, April 13th, 2009
This way to the egress (NYT)   

This way to the egress (NYT)

(or do you say “Upharsin”?)

Only 7:45 a.m. and it’s taking all my available processing resources to synthesize this morning’s NYT business section, which includes:

  • A feature on how Boston is taking to the idea of having the New York Times Company shutter the Boston Globe;
  • Yet another piece on hyperlocal web sites featuring Adrian Holovaty and evaluating the world of “news without newspapers”;
  • David Carr musing on last week’s “saber rattling” by the Associated Press, on behalf of its members, in pursuit of revenue others generate from newspaper content; 
  • A disquisition on the truth about magazine subscription prices (in many cases, nearly zero) and the chances of successfully raising them (The Economist and People seem to be succeeding); and
  • Various dispatches of varying lengths from the front lines of regime change.

There is little hint of après nous in this dystopian account of le déluge. I’m thinking there would have been enough gallows humor on the copy desk yesterday in NYC to create an entire stand-up routine.

If anyone, after being weighed in the balance of the marketplace, is found not wanting.

The magazine story is the most cheerful of those above, if only because it contains quotes from executives who not only believe in the value of their journalists’ content and filtering, but are willing to test their beliefs in the marketplace rather than sit by and see their kingdoms divided.

David Carr concludes, in what I can easily turn into another unintentional reference to the aftermath of Belshazzar’s feast,

“… newspapers have walked back the cat on the cost side as far as they can.  Their gaze will inevitably turn toward consumers and the portals that serve them. The reckoning is at hand.”

As long as, while their gaze shifts, they think about what will bring pleasure and value to those consumers, creating a habit-based business as successful as those whose models are eroding by the minute, or by the inch.  Otherwise, the Medes of Sunnyvale and Persians of Mountain View will indeed divide the spoils.

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Serendipity regained (WSJ.com)

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Amazon.com Inc. is developing a new version of its Kindle electronic-book reader featuring a larger screen, according to people who said they have seen a version of the device. . . .The move could help Amazon better compete for the business of newspaper and magazine publishers looking for new distribution platforms for digital content.

via Amazon Is Developing Bigger-Screen Kindle – WSJ.com.

There is a lot to like already about the Kindle as a platform for magazine and newspaper content, but I haven’t read much about the reason I think it works, and is worth paying for: unlike the Web sites of most newspapers, the Kindle preserves a key newspaper-reading experience: Serendipity.

People read newspapers, whether they realize it or not, as much to discover things they didn’t know they were interested in as to find out more about what they’ve already heard. It’s a pain and an annoyance to have that experience on the Web, and prepopulated searches and alerts do nothing in that regard. But flipping through a Kindle index of a newspaper’s contents gives one the ability to see everything in the paper and dig into something unexpected.

Reading today’s (print) New York Times reinforced this for me, again; a wonderful, if sad, piece about the damage that the Italy earthquake caused to centuries-old works of art was worth the price of admission. Not only was it a look at the issue from a current point of view, but it had a healthy dose of explanation of why and how cultural heritage matters to Italians. I wouldn’t have gotten up in the morning to go looking for it, but once in the paper it was about the first thing I read. (The WSJ had a similar piece that I got to later.)

Preserving these sorts of experiences, the kind that build and reinforce habits by making the reader feel good about herself/himself and about the folks who provided the information, is a key need as media businesses find their way in the digital present and future. Better Kindles and e-readers are just one small part of the solution.

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And it took the U.S. till 1967… (PR 2.0)

Friday, April 10th, 2009

It took 20,000 years for the world population to reach 200 million people; it took 5 years for Facebook.  (ORY note: Of course there was a shortage of digital images to share in Eden and environs, limiting early growth.)

via PR 2.0: Facebook Now 200 Million Strong.

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