Former
Washington Post editor Steve Coll blogs in
The New Yorker that the way to
save the institution of traditional newsrooms with investigative journalism and reporters in far-flung corners of the earth is for a paper like the
Post or the
New York Times to become a nonprofit organization.
The typical spend rate for endowed nonprofits is in the five-percent range.
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Added by Michael Hickins on January 29, 2009 at 10:27am —
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A lot commentary about the future of journalism and the need for large, well-funded media organizations centers around the need for the fourth estate to stand up to the other, equally well-funded estates.
Seth Godin weighs in with a post entitled "
When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?," notes that only newspapers seem to be able to keep government honest.
I worry about the quality of a democr
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Added by Michael Hickins on January 20, 2009 at 8:00pm —
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Ray Wang of Forrester Research is one of the most influential software consultants, and is never afraid to speak his mind, which makes him a great resource for journalists.
In an interesting turn of events, though, his blog, "A Software Insider's Point of View," now includes a regular "
heard on the street feature" that could easily be confused for a very,very well-sourced article.
Ray's blog shares sever…
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Added by Michael Hickins on January 15, 2009 at 9:18pm —
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Jack Shafer can't help being old. But he can help being
so obtuse.
Answering
David Carr's call for a new publishing business model patterned after iTunes, all Shafer can do is complain about the Kindle (with good reason, I might add) and prattling on about the New York Times Reader, a tech non-starter the Times had the good sense to abandon.
Actually
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Added by Michael Hickins on January 13, 2009 at 12:08pm —
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A couple of finance junkies with an entrepreneurial drive have created a
Tip'd, which combines the best of Salshdot and Digg.
It encourages bloggers and editors to pitch their own stories too, which is fine, but the quality of the site will be dependent on preventing blowhards from hogging all the oxygen.
Content aggregation makes a lot of sense, and adding community can only add value, but all content aggregation sites ultimately depend on content originators. A…
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 29, 2008 at 3:30pm —
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The New Yorker's
George Packer takes Sean Penn to task for daring to pretend he's a journalist.
Penn’s moonlighting shows a kind of contempt for journalism, which turns out to be rather difficult to do well. It also shows that he’s missed one of the main points of Obama’s election, which has Penn shedding tears at the end of his dispatch. Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy. In a m
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 18, 2008 at 12:47pm —
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If Social Security is the third rail of American politics, then charging for online content is the bugaboo of new media.
The New Yorker's financial columnist James Surowiecki dares to discuss what a lot of people are afraid to say--especially given the rise of blogging and the well-publicized failures of most online subscription models (with the Wall Street Journal being a notable exception).
Surowiecki writes that…
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 15, 2008 at 11:40am —
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A new piece on CNN correspondent Michael Ware in Men's Journal makes the journalist seem compelling--and there's no doubting his bravery or his commitment to his profession.
The piece,
CNN's Prisoner of War, shows how hard it is for Ware to get the war out of his head--or even for Ware to drag himself out of the zone of conflict.
It's easy to sympathize with Ware, and Greg Veis, who wrote this piece, tells us a lot about our foreign…
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 13, 2008 at 12:13pm —
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I take my daughter to school on the subway every morning and read the free tabloids like AM New York on the way home. I have to confess that I don't want to shell out for a newspaper I read for free online, like the New York Times, or for which I already pay an online subscription (WSJ, Financial Times), and I also like reading the pop culture stuff without putting more money in Mr. Murdoch's pocket.
Far from fluff, this morning's page two had a story about newspaper closings and timelines of r…
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 12, 2008 at 10:30am —
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Mark Pinsky at The New Republic suggests that
Barack Obama include writers and other members of the press in his New Deal-inspired proposal to rebuild public infrastructure through massive government spending.
The Federal Writers Project operated from 1935-1939 under the leadership of Henry Alsberg, a journalist and theater director. In addition to providing employment to more than 6,000 out
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 8, 2008 at 11:30am —
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Well, sort of. But this is big news: The New York Times is including
blogs and articles from outside sources.
It's going about this rather cautiously, making the feature something like a double opt-in: users have to click on a link to activate the feature, and the feature is switched off by default after 24 hours, forcing users to opt back in.
I also find it ironic that the Times is using an automated system…
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 4, 2008 at 1:15pm —
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Credit rating agency Fitch says several cities may soon be without daily newspapers.
Fitch does not name the cities, but in a statement republished by
Editor & Publisher, noted:
"Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 4, 2008 at 11:30am —
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Back in the early 1990s, my close friend Claude Meunier had an odd job working for French building magnate (and now telecom operator) Francis Bouygues.
Every morning at 7 AM, he got into Monsieur Bouygues' limo and handed him a stack of index cards Claude had put together over the past few hours.
Each card included a news item--ranging from serious news to the scores of important soccer matches or the amorous misadventures of a starlet.
In other words, bite-sized capsules of everything Monsie…
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Added by Michael Hickins on December 3, 2008 at 5:00pm —
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