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- Newsrooms must get active to survive the economic meltdownDecember 19 2008
- By Robert Niles: The past few weeks have seen the newspaper industry accelerate toward a previously unthinkable collapse. The Tribune Company (one of my former employers) filed for bankruptcy. E.W. Scripps put the Rocky Mountain News (another one of my former employers) up for sale, and might close the 150-year-old Denver paper should no buyer be found within the month. The Wall Street Journal reported that Detroit's two newspapers would stop home delivery on certain weekdays. (Their websites would update seven days a week.) Rumors continue to swirl that the Miami Herald is next up on the block. The financial trouble throughout the industry is leading many to consider a future without newspapers. Or, at least, without newspapers as we now know them. LA Observed's T.J. Sullivan asked "Ever wonder what the world would have been like if Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein hadn't uncovered Watergate? I fear we'll learn the answer in the next couple decades." With all due respect to T.J., I fear that we already know the answer. Because we've been living in that world for the past 10 years already, a time when traditional journalists failed to uncover emerging scandals and to warn the public about abuses of power at the highest levels of government and industry. Allow me to suggest that the U.S. news industry's collective failure to accurately portray the world over the past decade has done as much, if not more, to drive readers to the Internet than any inherent attractiveness of t
- Eyetracking research shows how younger readers view news websitesDecember 10 2008
- By Nora Paul and Laura Ruel: In January 2008 a group of interactive producers from news websites gathered at the University of Minnesota for the first Eyetracking Research Consortium, part of the Digital Story Effects Lab project run by Nora Paul and Laura Ruel. Following is the first in a series of articles about findings from the studies conducted for the Consortium members.
- A new Web application that (might) help pay for the newsDecember 9 2008
- By David Westphal: Assume for the moment that the chemistry which made newspapers a business success for hundreds of years no longer works. Assume that billions of dollars in revenue vanish from newspapers because advertisers discover that they have better, targeted options on the Internet. (Given this weeks bankruptcy filing by the nations second-biggest newspaper company, Tribune Co., these assumptions shouldnt be much of a stretch.) What, then, happens to the content that was part of that chemistry? What happens to the news and information weve always thought was an integral portion of keeping our democracy humming? About four dozen people interested in this question were offered a possible answer last week at the University of Missouri: You build an entirely new kind of chemistry, a Web concoction so compelling that people are willing to pay a few bucks a month for it, and part of that money will be used to pay for news content.
- The top gifts for online journalists, 2008 editionDecember 5 2008
- By Robert Niles: Last year, OJR presented its list of top gifts for online journalists, and today we continue the tradition with this year's list. In recognition of the current economy, we've kept all the items on this year's list under $200, so we won't be talking about the laptops, digital cameras, video equipment and other goodies that many of use want, but that would break a bank account faster than being bought by Sam Zell. Feel free to e-mail this list to your friends and loved ones (or print it out for the Luddites), if you're the type of person who never can come up with a list on your own.
- Things to be thankful for: Creative insubordinationNovember 26 2008
- By Robert Niles: What kind of journalist can start his or her own news website? The simple answer is "anyone," of course. Fire up Blogger, and you are there. But which journalists will be able to build a site that grows into financial success and stability, one that secures an enduring source of funding, whether it be advertising or non-profit support? That class of individuals, alas, is much smaller. Some colleagues and I were talking yesterday about how to identify potential journalist entrepreneurs. The last folks on that list, I said, would be the "team players" whom corporate managers love to put in charge of important new projects. Whoops.