Journerdism.com Links

Research: news execs still think they have a monopoly

yeltsinfina — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:51:46 PST

"As reproduced below, an incredible 75% news execs think switching off their websites will drive people to their newspapers. Readers, however, are saying they would go to another local website, with other prominent alternatives including regional and national websites, TV and radio (note that news execs also feel that ‘local media sites’ will benefit but users disagree)" (Via Kevin Sablan)

Buying Into Computational Journalism

yeltsinfina — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:13:16 PST

"The report identifies four areas of potential exploration: techniques for data transformation and pattern discovery in investigative reporting; a digital “dashboard” for journalists; new social and technical structures for interactions among readers and reporters; and sense-making advances from other disciplines. All are interesting and worthy, but to me the first two are particularly so."

Marcel Pacatte: Judge Should Laugh Subpoena Request out of Courtroom

yeltsinfina — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:51:01 PST

"The case in question is that of a man who has been in jail for more than 30 years, convicted of killing another man. Student journalists in Protess' investigative journalism course have said they have new evidence that exonerates Anthony McKinney. The judge scheduled a hearing on the matter; Alvarez has asked the judge to force Protess and the students to turn over their notes, their grades, the course syllabus and other items pertaining to the students' investigation, as a way, apparently, to poke holes in the effort to free McKinney. As many, including Protess, have pointed out, you would think Alvarez would be fighting the case on its merits -- pointing out the solidity of the state's case that sent McKinney to prison to begin with -- rather than launching an ad hominem attack on the methods of the student journalists who say they have evidence that will set McKinney free. What Alvarez is doing is dumb."

Esquire’s Augmented Reality Issue Starring Robert Downey Jr. Is Live

yeltsinfina — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:48:33 PST

"The savior of print, this likely is not, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see this model used from time-to-time as a way of pushing users to buy the print edition of a magazine, especially when the content on the other end is something unique and exclusive (in Esquire’s case, it’s more fun and cheeky, but so is the publication). "

Sometimes Twitter Accounts About Sh*t Your Dad Says Get You TV Deals

yeltsinfina — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:05:34 PST

Guy gets a book deal and a TV after making 72 tweets. Wtf?

Former Editor Can't Believe Shit College Newspaper Is Printing | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

yeltsinfina — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:19:53 PST

Pure awesomeness from the Onion.

Toward a Slow-News Movement

yeltsinfina — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:48:12 PST

It comes down to this: The faster the news accelerates, the slower I’m inclined to believe anything I hear — and the harder I look for the coverage that pulls together the most facts with the most clarity about what’s known and what’s speculation. Call it slow news. Call it critical thinking. Call it anything you want. Give some thought to adopting it for at least some of your media consumption, and creation.

Layar Tells CNN: Augmented Reality Will Be Second Only to Voice On Phones

yeltsinfina — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:26:23 PST

"Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald, co-founder of Augmented Reality browser company Layar, was interviewed by CNN today and took the opportunity to claim that AR on phones is going to be so big in the future that only voice will be more popular."

Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp's websites out of Google, abolish fair use, tear heads off of adorable baby animals

yeltsinfina — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:10:39 PST

"For months (years?) Rupert Murdoch has been waving his jowls around and shouting that Google is stealing from him by not paying to index his material. And all along, we've been saying, "Pffft, right. If you don't like it, just add a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index you. Until you do, stop whining and put it back in your pants." Now Rupert has promised to do exactly that. He claims that he's going to take all of News Corp's websites pay-only and have them removed from Google when he does."

Curation: A Dead Idea Of Dead Thinking

yeltsinfina — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:37:12 PST

Curation backlash! (Via Joe Murphy)

Why the mainstream media is dying

yeltsinfina — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:35:56 PST

"And to all those people who go around wringing their hands and saying what are we going to do when the "real newspapers" all die and we have to get our news from Gawker and HuffPo and TechCrunch? Friends, I think we're going to be just fine. Part of it is the form of the media itself. If you're a reporter at the Times, you get one story, and a fixed number of inches, and you're smothered by layers of editors. At TechCrunch it's one guy who can get his teeth into something and there's no limit on how many articles he can do. What really cracks me up is how often I still hear people say that bloggers are mere "aggregators" and the "real journalism" gets done at places like the Times. Because time after time, blogs are simply beating the shit out of the newspapers. They're the ones who still dare to go for the throat, while their counterparts at big newspapers just keep reaching for the shrimp cocktail."

Newspapers and social media sites. What works?

yeltsinfina — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:26:01 PST

"The article comes to the conclusion that each individual newspaper needs to figure out the networking sites that work best for it. Depending on things such as location, circulation, subject-specific media, and relevance, different newspapers require different sites to increase their traffic. Stories about technology or quirky subjects more easily become internet memes and, thus, are more likely to make the rounds on a social media site. It's not about changing the content of the newspaper, but about finding the site that best caters to the content that is already typical of a certain paper. Larger papers tend to benefit more from Digg.com because they are on a more national level. By the same logic, sites like Facebook tend to benefit smaller, more localized papers because users have more friends concentrated around where they live, and thus, who are more likely to lead them to local news and happenings."

NY Times Bill Keller's list of 7 priorities should be every newsroom's list

yeltsinfina — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:01:33 PST

"Keller's list: 1. Where are we going with topics pages? 2. What is the best strategy for community? 3. How to spread the gospel of integration more fully in the newsroom? 4. How do we have the best possible relationship between technology, product, and the newsroom? 5. How do we assure that web-first is getting the priority it needs? 6. We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices. 7. We're going to be paying close attention to article page design. ... The article pages are a major point of entry and we need to turn them into an engine of engagement."

Young People Tweeting More and More

yeltsinfina — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:50:36 PST

"Several other researchers have found Twitter skewing younger in 2009. Sysomos reported that in May, 66% of users who disclosed their age were under 25, and another 15% were ages 25 to 29. And comScore Media Metrix found that 13.5% of Internet users ages 18 to 24 visited Twitter in July, up from just 0.3% a year earlier."

So what exactly is newspaper web ‘premium’ content? Please tell me

yeltsinfina — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:26:21 PST

"Instead, the meme within the industry is something I’ve long supported: Let’s keep most of our news content online free, so that we don’t lose advertisers and high reader numbers, and maintain our “googlejuice,” but let’s create more “premium” content and services that we can charge for … and people will find worthy of paying. But what is this premium content that newspaper companies can produce for the web (and mobile devices) that will get online users spending? This is a difficult question, with so much great information and news available elsewhere on the web for free. And then there’s the little matter of many newspaper staffs having been cut so much in the last couple years. Who’s going to produce this high-value content?"