mediagiraffe

Links for 4/28/06

From Editor's Weblog: “Think yourself lucky if your big worry is the future of journalism” 

George Brock, the President of the World Editors Forum, says that we need to take a step back from all the hype of journalism, technology, and integration, and think about free expression, which is still a luxury to many.

In many countries it is still a reality that journalists worry more about the censor and the secret police than they do about blogging or multi-platform practices.

From Rebuilding Media: Vin Crosbie on What Is 'New Media'?

Broadcast and publishing executives mistake Mass Media as a catchall phrase for all possible media, as if no other medium can exist except as a Mass Medium. Moreover, they extend this mistaken meaning of medium to cover their own broadcasts or publications.

So entrenched has the contemporary misunderstanding of the terms media and medium become that the mistake limits the abilities of most publishing or broadcasting executives to comprehend what exactly is a medium or the media in which they work.

So, what are media, what is a medium?

From Online Journalism Review:  Can Newspapers Do Blogs Right?

Within the past few weeks two of America's leading newspapers have watched staff-written blogs blow up in their faces. First, Ben Domenech left Washingtonpost.com after outside bloggers uncovered numerous examples of plagiarism in his past work. And last week, the Los Angeles Times suspended the blog of Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Hiltzik (interviewed by OJR just before the scandal broke) after he was discovered to have posted comments under false identities on his and other blogs.

Can newspapers do blogs right? I e-mailed that question to several prominent online journalists. All have experience with "traditional" media and either blog or oversee bloggers in their work...

In USA Today:  Andrew Kantor's Focus on what's journalism, not who's a journalist

Judge Kleinberg got it right when he made it clear that there weren't separate rules for bloggers and journalists.

That's not to say bloggers are or aren't journalists — just that there shouldn't be a distinction. In other words, the same rules apply to everyone.

But — and here's the tricky part — although the rules apply to people equally, we can, do, and should apply them differently to different acts.

Asking whether bloggers are journalists is moot. What's important isn't the person but the product.

Links of Note 4/17/06

From The Editor's Weblog:  Online newspapers should un-bundle content and bundle business

The Internet has arguably been the biggest boon to newshounds since the first newshound scanned his first headline. The nearly infinite amount of content available at the click of a mouse has liberated the reader, creating a freedom that he fears could be taken away by the very newspapers that feed his obsession. At the same time, newspapers are having trouble surviving on the very tool their readers now take for granted. Below are some ideas of how newspapers can keep their readers happy while simultaneously earning revenue.

From The New York Times: Lagging Ad Sales Contribute to Earnings Decline at Newspaper Chains on the significant decrease in ad sales at McClatchy, Trubne and The New York Times companies: 

Executives of all of the newspaper companies said they were hurt by stagnant advertising, particularly in the automotive and entertainment categories, and a continuing rise in the cost of newsprint. The Times Company and Tribune also cited the cost of severance packages after cutting hundreds of jobs.

At the same time, the companies said that their Internet activities were thriving. Those activities still account for only a small share of total revenue and are not big enough to offset the losses from traditional advertisers. But revenue from the Internet is clearly a growth area where the newspapers are shifting their focus.

From the blog Journalism Hope: Death by Google: What News Must Do to Earn Back its Brand

As I’ve said before, journalists today have more “brand value” than media organizations. Sure, people still read the New York Times because it’s the New York Times, but in the post Jayson Blair and Judy Miller era, we read the Times with newly opened eyes. We know the checks and balances that assure one of the strongest brand promises in journalism history are fallible, and that reporters today have much more control and influence that perhaps we once thought.

But does the branding of news go deeper than the journalist? What about the story itself?

The Internet has arguably been the biggest boon to newshounds since the first newshound scanned his first headline. The nearly infinite amount of content available at the click of a mouse has liberated the reader, creating a freedom that he fears could be taken away by the very newspapers that feed his obsession. At the same time, newspapers are having trouble surviving on the very tool their readers now take for granted. Below are some ideas of how newspapers can keep their readers happy while simultaneously earning revenue.

From The New York Times: Lagging Ad Sales Contribute to Earnings Decline at Newspaper Chains on the significant decrease in ad sales at McClatchy, Trubne and The New York Times companies: