Essays and Commentary
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Wall St. Journal to Make Web Site Free, Murdoch says
Update: After reports Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation, says he expects to make access to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site free, a top Dow Jones executive told Editor and Publisher the comments were premature.
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Nov 14, 2007 | E-MAIL THIS | PERMALINK | DISCUSS
The future of newspapers - without the paper
Hal Crowther in the Independent Weekly:
It's hard to dispute that the newspaper is doomed in the long run, as an inefficient and wasteful medium that technology can easily improve upon. I've never argued that point, in spite of my personal feelings—certainly not on Sunday mornings as I peel off the two dozen junk sections crammed into my local paper, fill a garbage bag with them and wonder which shady grove of whispering pines was sacrificed to make the wretched things possible. Compared with audio-visual advertising, they're also a primitive, low-yield way to deliver a commercial message.But the key point of understanding is that while the newspaper is expendable, the tradition it represents and the information it supplies are not. The evolution from Gutenberg to Gates may be irreversible, but as new media replace old ones there's no official passing of the torch of responsibility, no automatic transfer of the sacred trust the First Amendment placed upon the free press and its proprietors. In fact the handoff, such as it is, has been fumbled very badly. As newspapers are eviscerated, marginalized and abandoned, they leave a vacuum that nothing and no one is prepared to fill—a crisis on its way to becoming a tragedy. When railroads and riverboats began to go the way of the passenger pigeon, no one was harmed except the workforce and a few big investors who had failed to diversify. If professional journalism vanishes along with the newspapers, this thing we call a constitutional democracy becomes a banana republic.
Oct 25, 2007 | E-MAIL THIS | PERMALINK | DISCUSS
Jump in the river, the water's fine
"News is a river, not a lake. It is active, not static. It's what's happening, not what happened. Or not only what happened," writes blogger Doc Searls in a post about the future of news and of newspapers.
He's inspired by Dave Winer's experiments with remixing the New York Times: nytimesriver.com. So is Slate co-founder Scott Rosenberg, who writes:
"With the Web reshuffling how the most avid users of news get their information, editors' roles are changing — not vanishing, but definitely being challenged."
Oct 23, 2007 | E-MAIL THIS | PERMALINK | DISCUSS
What's your Facebook strategy?
Steve Outing collected a few interesting comments from news pros who have formed an opinion about whether or not to devote some resources to Facebook applications:
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Oct 6, 2007 | E-MAIL THIS | PERMALINK | DISCUSS
Discussion on whether awards overlook new media
Interesting discussion on LinkedIn about, "Do you find that most reporting awards overlook serious investigative reporting done by alternative press and new media journalists and bloggers?"
Sep 26, 2007 | E-MAIL THIS | PERMALINK | DISCUSS
Interview with Associated Content founder
Associated Content solicits and publishes content from its users and pays them, on average, between $3 and $20, plus royalties based on the number of page views the content generates. Here is an Assignment Zero interview with Associated Content founder Luke Beatty, which talks about how he founded the company, its newest developments and where he sees user-generated content going.
Sep 21, 2007 | E-MAIL THIS | PERMALINK | DISCUSS
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