OJR front page archive for October 2009
Starting your news website: A checklist for students and mid-career beginners
October 29, 2009
My post today is intended for students, mid-career journalists or anyone else thinking about starting an online news site, but without the faintest idea of how to start.Here is your guide and checklist.
Now, I'm assuming that you already know how to report and how to write. I'm not covering that. Nor will I be getting into more advanced issues surrounding how to manage a business that includes contractors, freelancers and employees. Those are topics for other days. Today's post simply provides a check-list of technical tools that you'll need to get a basic, one-person news site on the Web, to lay a foundation for future expansion and success.
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Does your site really need to be in Google News?
October 28, 2009
With print newspaper circulations crashing faster than the reality-TV hopes of Balloon Boy's family, you could forgive newsroom managers for chasing every available source of new readers. For many online publishers, affiliated with newspapers or not, the Holy Grail of traffic is inclusion in the Google News index.Get in Google News, and links to your stories will be e-mailed to millions of Google's news alert subscribers, whenever your stories hit the right keywords. Post a hot story quickly, and you could end up on Google News' highly clicked front page.
But is inclusion in that index or other search engines' news indices really worthwhile for the majority of online news publishers? I'm going to argue... no. (Well, at least it's not worth making a fuss over.)
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Wanted: Less rhetoric, more critical thinking about 'The Reconstruction of American Journalism'
October 23, 2009
The new report "The Reconstruction of American Journalism" by Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson is one more example of what what's wrong with the debate about the future of journalism. The Columbia Journalism School-sponsored report shovels out overviews, conclusions and recommendations by the pound, but with barely a few grams' worth of critical thinking. Jan Schaffer, in her reaction to Downie and Schudson, said it best: "Darts for the mile-high, inch-deep reportage." Schaffer, who is executive director of American University's J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism and Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter and business editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, zeroes in on the report's fatal weakness:"If we really want to reconstruct American journalism, we need to look at more than the supply side; we need to explore the demand side, too. We need to start paying attention to the trail of clues in the new media ecosystem and follow those 'breadcrumbs.' What ailing industry would look for a fix that only thinks of 'us,' the news suppliers, and not 'them,' the news consumers? I don't hear from any of those consumers in this report."
Alan D. Mutter, whose Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, provides a good share of the small amount of rigorous, economic-centered thinking that's gone into the journalism crisis, also gave a mostly scathing review to "The Reconstruction of American Journalism."
Downie and Schudson come to their drastic recommendation of a "National Fund for Local News" using the kind of sleeves-rolled-up but shallow analysis that typically informs newspaper editorials on big issues (e.g., health care reform and the U.S. role in Afghanistan)
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Where does news come from?
October 20, 2009
Time after time again, people who want to save newspapers claim that newspapers are the primary source of news. But is their claim actually founded on anything other than self-importance?I love newspapers. I want them to survive, in some form, but it's important to investigate where the truth in one of the linchpins of the "newspapers need to survive argument" comes from.
Tom Rosenstiel offered the claim before the Joint Economic Committee hearing on "The Future of Newspapers: The Impact on the Economy and Democracy," on September 24, 2009. He's not the only one. John Carroll used to say that 80 percent of news came from newspapers. Len Downie and Robert Kaiser similarly claimed that newspapers were the originators of most content for most broadcast and cable news. And many studies of online blogs show that much of the linking originates from mainstream media, often newspapers.
But are newspapers where it all begins? In an online world, that's only sort of true.
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This headline not written for Google
October 20, 2009
I'm amused by a discussion on SEO and headline-writing taking place at the Nieman Journalism Lab site and on the Canadian blog MediaStyle. It seems a seminar on SEO for editors at The Globe and Mail offended the Canadian paper's online books editor, who interpreted it as a charge to dumb down headlines.Most commentary has focused on the question of why his post was removed from the Globe and Mail's books blog, In Other Words. I'll let others tackle that angle. What I'm interested in is whether the writer, Peter Scowen, has a point. I believe he does, even if it's poorly expressed:
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Freedom of the press ought to belong to all... not just to approved 'journalists'
October 16, 2009
Can you do journalism and not be a "journalist"?Do people declared "journalists" get special speech and press rights that other American citizens do not enjoy?
Can anyone enjoy the right to free speech and free publication, even if that individual is not a full-time professional reporter?
These are some of the important legal questions that American politicians and bureaucrats must confront now that the Internet has made possible for people other than employees of major media companies to reach large and widespread audiences.
In recent weeks, federal officials seems to be favoring a view that certain individuals enjoy more speech and publication rights than others. New regulations from the Federal Trade Commission and a proposed federal shield law create legal double standards for individuals creating information for the public - one for employees and contractors of media companies and another for everyone else, including self-employed publishers.
This split calls into question what the First Amendment means, and whom it was intended to protect. Henry Mencken famously said that "freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." But with the Internet making a "press" available to anyone for free, does that "press" have to be of a certain type, or reach a certain number of people, to qualify for First Amendment protection?
5 Comments | Archive Link
Developing an Effective User Experience
October 13, 2009
A few months ago, I wrote an article entitled “Making Media Social: News as User Experience”. I talked about the online trend, driven by social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, of users having the growing expectation of participation on the Web. Users want to be able to upload photos, comment on posts or videos and interact with graphics. They want to make connections with others who share the same interests. Some news organizations are experimenting in developing unique and meaningful user experiences that can satisfy these new user requirements, while others are just beginning to consider a foray into this area. While innovation is key, and there are no firm rules, I thought it might be helpful to discuss some considerations and questions that may help guide the process of developing user experiences that will be perceived as valuable by your users. 2 Comments | Archive Link
Old Media vs. New Media: Let's call this one off
October 7, 2009
It's been a lot of fun, this long-running sniper's war between Old Media and New Media. We've all enjoyed some hilarious slap-downs, all marveled at the sheer idiocy of the morons on the other side. (Oh, and let's not forget their over-the-top mean-spiritedness.) But all fun things must end. It's time to put the Old vs. New Media war to rest. 13 Comments | Archive Link
USC Annenberg gets a new name - USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
October 7, 2009
Recognizing the critically important role journalism plays in a democratic society and USC's role as a leading institution for educating and training journalists, the University of Southern California Board of Trustees has voted to change the name of the USC Annenberg School for Communication to the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.
We have grown accustomed to daily reminders that journalism is in a period of great unsettlement. What we recognize here on this special day, by adding "journalism" to the Annenberg School's name, is that this is also – and primarily - a period of enormous promise. We have asserted, here together, that journalism is a subject worthy of the attention of a great University.
And surely it is, particularly at this moment. For, even as its traditional models collapse, journalism is being reinvented. It is being reborn in new and exciting ways every day. And with this name change, we make clear the vital roles that Annenberg has played, and WILL play, in that reinvention.
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No more whining at 2009's Online News Association conference
October 2, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - If there's a theme to this year's Online Journalism Association conference, it'd be: "No More Whining."Several of us have commented on the lack of the whining from newspaper-dot-com employees, which weighed down past ONA gatherings. Perhaps now, at long last, a tipping point of online news managers from traditional news companies have moved beyond the old print-driven model of trying to protect crumbling monopolies, and instead are now embracing competition, so that they may engage it.
Or, maybe, most of those folks got laid off and now they have no choice but to compete.
Either way, the focus has moved beyond protecting the past and on to finding one's way through the future. As Paul Bass of NewHavenIndependent.org said during a session yesterday, "The only people who think journalism are dying are working at dying news organizations."
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