http://www.ojr.org/ojr New articles from OJR en-us http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/dchase/200911/1794/ By Dave Chase: It is painful to watch the steady decline of newspapers. For some, I expect we're about to see the dead cat bounce as the economy turns around. This will only delay the inevitable. The challenge they face at this late date is immense but surmountable. Their near death experience is similar to what Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) and IBM faced. Only IBM remains a blue chip market leader. However, IBM completely reinvented itself from a "big iron" mainframe and minicomputer driven company to the market leader in I.T. related services. There were some valuable assets that they were able to leverage but it took an outsider like Lou Gerstner to make that wholesale change happen. Meanwhile, the vanguard company of the minicomputer era (DEC) wasn't able to make that shift and sold at a deep discount to Compaq (who in turn was bought by HP). It's important to recognize that IBM and DEC were in highly competitive markets. DEC along with countless other mainframe and minicomputer companies were unable to transform themselves and are mere footnotes of history. In contrast, the newspapers have largely operated in non-competitive markets by comparison. It will take a true newspaper leader and visionary to make this happen as opposed to someone just milking the cash cow until it withers and dies. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:12:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/eulken/200911/1793/ By Eric Ulken: I'm not ashamed to admit it: The first time I saw Twitter, I thought, "What's the point?" Maybe you did too, or maybe you're just more perceptive than I am. Even Twitter's founders have said they didn't know exactly what it was when they started working on it. (Biz Stone: "If anything we sort of thought it a waste of time.") For every Twitter enthusiast, there was, I suspect, a point of realization that this thing could actually be incredibly useful. Some have cited the plane-in-the-Hudson story as their aha! moment. For me, it was less of a moment and more of a gradual understanding. I began to see its potential as a real-time information source when I first learned of a few important news items -- both big international stories and news of a more personal nature -- through Twitter. I began following like-minded people for the interesting links they would post. Before long, information overload took hold. I tried to cull my follow list so I could read everything. I worried I would miss something. Finally, I learned to embrace the firehose and not try to process the whole stream. But still I thought there must be a better way to separate signal from noise. And then I noticed that the most interesting and important items were appearing maybe three or four times in my Twitter feed. Since then, I've wished for a way to mine my feed for those links. Last week I heard about TwitterTim.es and was thrilled to find it does exactly what I wanted. I spoke with Maxim Grinev, the project's technical lead, about TwitterTim.es and where it's headed. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:05:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/200910/1792/ By Robert Niles: 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. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:54:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/200910/1791/ By Robert Niles: 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.) Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:23:11 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/TomEditor/200910/1790/ By Tom Grubisich: 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) Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:27:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/nikkiusher/200910/1789/ By Nikki Usher: 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. Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:19:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/eulken/200910/1788/ By Eric Ulken: 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: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:42:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/200910/1787/ By Robert Niles: 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? Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:39:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/croyal/200910/1786/ By Cindy Royal: 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. Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:36:00 MST http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/davidwestphal/200910/1784/ By David Westphal: 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. Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:13:00 MST