I think the problem is a simple assumption - people will leave the print version of My Local Journal and go to mylocaljournal.com when in fact they go from My Local Journal to Buzzfeed or the Yahoo! homepage or Google News or Twitter or Facebook or RSS of their 10 favorite blogs etc... For example, I don't have a newspaper. I also don't check the local newspaper website. My wife, friends, relatives don't seem to eith…
It depends. In some ways people could argue that a rise in loneliness is linked to increasingly lower levels of community interdependence and engagement.
I know this is garbage to the ears of Silicon Valley types, but I think a lot of people in rural areas would agree with it.
> if a newspaper company wanted to make a real splash on the Web, it would be better off inventing an original website—the next Business Insider or BuzzFeed—and not remodel its newspaper copy. I have to disagree with Chyi here—"create the next BuzzFeed" is not a strategy; it's extremely hard, competitive and they don't have the skills to even attempt it. That said, I think there's a strong argument for having never p…
The obvious answer to this is extending public broadcasting funding to private outlets. Sadly there are too many techno-libertarians out there to see this great techno-socialist solution.
I have recorded one year of imagery in a 1970 newspaper (as a start). Speaking from firsthand experience with comparisons from the last few years, media has taken a huge leap backwards and prejudice and nastiness has increased considerably. This is in spite of most people who haven't compared saying the opposite of what I have observed ("oh, you want to go back to how it was 50 years ago when men were all sexist?").…
And go back to 1900 and you'll find completely biased newpapers (The Arizona Republic used to be called The Arizona Republican: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arizona_Republic ---that's not the only example either) and over the top reporting that would give newspapers (and TV) a run for their money today ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism ). Was it better in the 1970s? Or was the bias better hidden…
Not to mention how much easier it was to centrally control the narrative of a society to dupe them into believing things they would have a hard time getting behind now (like the war on drugs...)
As an-ex journalist who recently left the industry to become a programmer, I'd say one of the issues is the short-sightedness of senior management. When I started teaching myself to code last year, I told my editor as well as a couple of other senior staff members (including the chief exec) about my ambitions to combine coding and journalism. My editor was all for it but there was little she could do besides telling…
I had high hopes for Everyblock, the hyper-local social network (almost a geographic form of Facebook). Besides user-generated content, it aggregated much public information (permit applications, police reports, etc.). It was initially developed through a grant as open source software. I was convinced that newspapers would latch onto the platform. But, that never really seemed to happen. NBC News bought it and shut i…
In the UK we had a company which started out as an investigative journalism agency and then pivoted to selling data on company insolvency (http://www.exaronews.com/insolvency-index). Sadly, they could not make it work but I think more journalists need to be exploring models like that. ProPublica seem to be doing a good job of it at https://www.propublica.org/datastore
As an-ex journalist who recently left the industry to become a programmer, I'd say one of the issues is the short-sightedness of senior management. When I started teaching myself to code last year, I told my editor as well as a couple of other senior staff members (including the chief exec) about my ambitions to combine coding and journalism. My editor was all for it but there was little she could do besides telling…
Yes I agree with your last point. You could package up apps, community, meetups, tutorials, shopping and content around a particular niche. People are much more used to paying to support their hobbies and interests. It would be a premium product that people actually want to buy. I think the magazine and tv industry are much closer to this than newspapers. Just look at some of the BBC titles that have TV, web, magazin…
Another thing media companies are failing to do is providing an API for their content. I think the Guardian, NYTimes and USA Today are the only big international papers with a decent API system. Journalists have so many skills in the area of research, investigation, storytelling etc which I feel we are not exploiting enough. I think the BBC is not the best example to use in the sense that they are not competing commercially. However, I agree they have created products which would work well if packaged up separately.
> As one anecdote, the paper ran an advertising campaign telling people not to use the website on Sundays. ... but why? What did they hope to achieve by that?
I don't know for sure, but Sunday newspapers are typically filled with ads and coupons for local businesses. It's probably the day that is most profitable for newspaper and ad sales together. Why they choose Sunday to stack in ads and coupons, I don't know. Might be related to Church services, I wonder if it's the same for newspapers in other countries?
Sunday is the most widely read and profitable day for newspapers.
It also helps to remember that newspaper readers are not the source of revenue for newspapers. Advertisers are the actual customers. With that in mind, a campaign promoting the best day for advertising makes more sense.
> If the only restriction is on the title 'journalist', what stops people from calling themselves a blogger while doing exactly the same things that a journalist does? I don't think that anyone would be proposing restricting speech in this way, but on the same note, papers such as Weekly World News maybe couldn't pump out more stories about Bat Boy while attempting to call themselves journalists...
Do WWN writers call themselves journalists? There's something to be said for what readers call journalism. It isn't the same for everybody. So, is it the journalist's responsibility to hold to a standard, or is it the audience's fault for thinking that a particular writer is a journalist? This raises the question: can the term "journalist" even be controlled?
The conclusion that a drop in readership is proof that moving to the web was a mistake is extraordinarily shallow. "Readers continue to leave print newspapers, but they’re not migrating to the online editions." Because they have more options. Print products were often monopolies, especially in the early to mid 90s, a hey day for newspapers. There was often a single publication per DMA. What happened then is newspaper…
My plumber isn't allowed to call himself a plumber unless he follows the rules for plumbing. Same for my accountant, doctor, electrician, and lock pick. I get the "free speech" argument, but I still cannot understand why we don't have rules about who can and cannot call themselves a journalist. Coming up with these rules might be tricky, but shouldn't we try? Or have we and I'm just uninformed?
In my opinion, one of the main things that contributed to the reduction in the quality of journalism in america is the removal of what used to be called the Fairness Doctrine[0].
It was so strange to see Reagan feted as he was upon his death. One could argue that, other than Nixon, he did more to accelerate the downfall of America than any other president.