Toluu

Notes from a Teacher

It's about the journalism

Thursday squibsYesterday

Interesting stuff from the mediasphere:

• Should Newspapers Become Online Ad Brokers for Local Businesses? Why wouldn’t I like this idea? After all, I wrote about a similar idea a year ago. (Looking back at that post, based on the lack of comments and trackbacks, it seems no one paid any attention to me.)
• Random Musings on the Discussions About Journalism. A compendium of thoughts from John Zhu. I particularly think we need to pay some attention to his second bullet point, in which he points out that what will lose in journalism isn’t the big stories (you know, the ones newspapers keep pointing to as the rationale for their continued existence in their present form) but the small ones that matter to an awful lot of people.
• Comments: Messy and flawed, but valuable. On a day when I was forced to move to full moderation for comments on our college news website, I found Mathew Ingram’s post particularly relevant.
• Overload! This CJR article is much longer than it needs to be, but

Wednesday squibsNovember 19

From the reader today:

• The 7 Greatest Stories in the History of Esquire Magazine… in Full. Seven very good reads, including Richard Ben Cramer’s classic “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?”
• 10 changes in journalists role (and 5 things that remain the same). A great spot-on post from Alex Gamela that offers as good a list as I’ve seen of the skills now required for being a journalist.
• Old Media Interview: Stephanie Romanski, Web editor of The Grand Island Independent. A great interview with Stephanie about battles fought, victories won (and a stalemate or two) by the web editor of a smalltown newspaper. Old Media, New Tricks earlier interviewed Erica Smith, another piece worth reading.
• Stuff White People Like: Journalism? A think piece about journalism and “overculture.” It’s really worth reading and giving some thought to.
• Why feds won’t bail out newspapers. The idea that

Something’s up (updated)November 19

Something is happening with CanWest shares: the price just jumped 13 cents and the volume of shares being traded is almost three times as high as the average.

CanWest closed at 72 cents a share yesterday. At the moment, it’s trading at 85 cents, a mark it has only hit once in the past five trading days. The average volume of shares traded is 438,300: right now, there have been 1,413,739 shares bought or sold.

I haven’t seen anything in the news feed to explain what’s going, although I have noted a change in what analysts are saying about the stock: of the nine analysts traced by Marketwatch, five are now recommending that investors hold on to their stock. (The other four are still saying “sell.”)

The sudden surge must be making hearts beat a little quicker in the financial offices of the media giant, although the stock remains well off it’s 52-week high of $7.50 a share.

UPDATE: At the end of the day, share volume was huge: 3,082,861. The final news wasn’t good for CanWest, however. After spending a couple of hours at the 85-cent mark, the stock plunged again, down as low as 68 cents, and closed at 70 cents, down two more cents from yesterday.

This is really not good newsNovember 19

From the MidEast News Source website:

Iranian Blogger Could Face Death Sentence

An Iranian blogger has been arrested in Iran and charged with spying for Israel. He could face the death penalty if found guilty.

Hossein Derakhshan, known around the world as the father of the Iranian blogosphere, was recently arrested upon returning to Iran from Canada.

Jahan News, an Iranian website affiliated with Iran’s intelligence community, reported on Monday that he admitted to spying for Israel.

Derakhshan, a 33-year-old secular Iranian, has been living in Toronto for the past seven years and holds Canadian citizenship. It was in Toronto that he started writing his blog, Hoder, in both English and Persian.

Derakhshan has participated in many international forums as a representative of the younger Iranian generation.

As bloggers, journalists, citizens, we need to do what we can. Hossein is a Canadian citizen, so my first step will be emails to the PM, opposition leaders and my newly-elected MP.

There’s more coverage available through this Google News search.

Monday squibsNovember 18

The internet, as always, is chockfull o’ goodness.

• Crosscut.com editor steps down as the Seattle site goes non-profit. I didn’t read about this is my daily Crosscut email, but at Poynter. Going non-profit means a briefly interrupted cash flow, so editor Chuck Taylor is stepping down, “at least for a while.”
• Calling on the American Press Institute to go one more step. The people in the room discussing what’s next for newspapers, writes Jason Kristufek, should be the “energetic, tech-savvy, open-minded individuals who embrace the chaos and for whatever reason still care about this industry because the ability to do really cool things still exist.”
• Not Dead: The Paid-for Online Model. Monday Note is becoming one of my favourite reads, because of posts such as this one that argue that while the fully paid-for model doesn’t work online, there are possibilities.
• Paper Losses. Mark Potts channels Alan Mutter and takes a look at the depressing state of American media company stocks and the apparent massive loss of shareholder faith in the future of newspapers.