Reflections on a newspaper’s online transition
AtlanticWire blogger Jared Keller summarizes recent online articles about the present and future of newspapers…
Seattle PI Heralds the Dawn of the Blogpaper | The Atlantic Wire.
- An E-Model For Journalism , Los Angeles Times
- How Blogs Are Becoming Like Newspapers , Gawker
- New, Old, Niche, Mass, It’s All Media , Adpulp
Also see the “More on Journalism’s Future” tab at the bottom of the page.
Teach news terrifically? Enter competition by May 21
Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century is a teaching ideas competition sponsored by the Newspaper Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
The deadline for e-mailed entries: 11:59 p.m. EDT, May 21, 2010.
Here’s the “call” for entries, courtesy of Susan Keith at Rutgers, Newspaper Division teaching standards co-chair : Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century
Excerpt:
Do you have an idea for improving the teaching of newswriting, reporting or editing? If so, enter it in the AEJMC Newspaper Division’s teaching competition, Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century, for the chance to earn recognition and a cash prize.
TNT21 was founded in 2009 to publicly acknowledge good ideas for foundational journalism courses from:
— Full-time faculty members
— Adjunct professors
— Graduate-student instructorsA prize of $100 will be awarded for the best teaching idea from each group. This year, the deadline has been moved to 11:59 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time May 21 to allow professors to enter ideas they used in courses during spring 2010.
Or, if you know terrific teaching when you see it, go to Susan’s page for information about becoming a judge in the competition.
NYTimes featured in Apple iPad launch
Apple's iPad displaying a New York Times front page
Here’s Apple’s iPad. The format looks familiar… See the video below.
Endgadget live blog of Apple iPad announcement.
NYTimes live blog of the event
Martin Nisenholtz of the Times told the Apple iPad launch-event audience that the newspaper’s developers wanted to offer “the best of print and best of digital, all rolled up into one.”
The iPad with the Times front page bears a striking resemblance to “TheTablet” pictured in Knight-Ridder veteran Roger Fidler’s book Mediamorphosis, published in 1997, on page 238.
On page 239, he wrote, “The idea that people will be leisurely reading documents on portable tablets by the year 2010 may seem unrealistic given the present state of computer and display technologies, but it is no more fantastic than was the 1980 vision of people routiinely using mobile cell phones…
A quick search just found this post by Juan Antonio Giner Roger Fidler and his vision of a newspaper tablet, complete with a link to this 1994 video showing that TheTablet mock-up. Here’s more from the Reynolds Journalism Instititute’s tablet-watch and the Society of News Design.
SeeClickFix as a fix for newspapers?
Tale of three newspapers:
The New York Times reports that The Journal Inquirer in Connecticut is using SeeClickFix.com, a Web service that allows citizens to post “something needs to be done about this…” alerts to other citizens, the media and officials:
Newspapers See the Appeal of a Local Web Gadget, SeeClickFix.
The story mentions that The Journal Inquirer began participating in SeeClickFix, but “did not receive responses until an article about the site ran in The Hartford Courant.”
There was no irony flag on the Times paragraph, but as a Courant alumnus, I recall the Rockville/Manchester J-I as Courant competition — a scrappy suburban daily covering cities north and east of Hartford.
Curious, I checked: That original Courant SeeClickFix story was about SeeClickFix as a New Haven-born startup, mentioning its use by publications outside the Courant’s main home-delivery areas. The May item is behind the 30-day paywall for archive searches at Courant.com, but a Google site search of courant.com found it in the paper’s mobile edition.
I also found Courant reader comments mentioning SeeClickFix, such as this one about a Manchester restaurant, and this letter to the editor about bicycle commuting. But the Courant itself doesn’t appear to be using the service.
However, my search also found a blog item today by a Courant reporter linking to the most recent Times story. Its heading was “The future of journalism,” so who knows…
Meanwhile, SeeClickFix’s own blog has items about the JournalInquirer’s involvement (at a $38 a month investment), as well as a working link to the Courant’s original coverage.
Related links:
Calls for papers: Newspapers, new media & election ’08
How did newspapers, their online counterparts and other “legacy media” cover — and use — Facebook and other interactive tools in the 2088 presidential campaign?
That’s one of the questions posed in a call for papers issued by Tom Johnson of Texas Tech, editor of a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on social media and the 2008 election.
Texas Tech also plans a mid-April conference on New Media Theory, which may be of interest to Newspaper Division members, Johnson said. Both the conference and the journal special issue have submission deadlines in January.
The save-journalism and save-newspapers debate
The ‘save journalism’ and ‘save newspapers’ debate
Is this a ‘dying industry’ or not?
by Bob Stepno… A Summer 2009 collection of news and blog pieces on the “future of news” and “newspaper bailout” debates and related issues… Originally posted in Bob’s old AEJMC Newspaper Division blog.
[Fall 2009 revisions to this July list will be highlighted in green next to the original item, such as the note from Jeff Jarvis below, or they can be added as comments.]
Don’t let the title fool you… There’s inspiration and a hint of optimism in Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2009 commencement address at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism: Welcome to a dying industry, journalism grads
Next, from Jane Singer, in an AEJMC discussion of the future of journalism & mass communication: one blue-sky scenario of how the not-too-distant future might look for our graduates. (Updated link & info: Since my original post, Jane’s essay has won an AEJMC prize.)
Save the separation of press and state, by David Carr, NY Times
In Congress, no love lost for newspapers, Dana Milbank column in Washington Post
Laws That Could Save Journalism by Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown in The Washington Post
“A Newspaper Bailout” by Adam Ross in the Post back in February, describing President Nicholas Sarkozy’s plan to aid the French press.
They Pay for Cable, Music and Extra Bags. How about News? by Richard Perez-Pena and Tim Arango, NYTimes.
Sen. John Kerry’s opening remarks as chairman of Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet’s hearing on “The Future of Journalism.” Also from hearing, Arianna Huffington‘s testimony.
Video and transcripts from the “Free Press Summit” sponsored by the Knight Foundation.
Duke University’s non-profit media conference, including Penelope Muse Abernathy’s paper, “A Nonprofit Model for The New York Times?” — which inspired this follow-up in the New Yorker. And more about the conference at The Nonprofit Road.
“Life after newspapers,” by Michael Kinsley.
“The American Press on Suicide Watch,” by Frank Rich.
“State of the News Media 2009” C-Span interview with Tom Rosentiel, an annual report of the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism
“Do newspapers matter?” from the NYTimes economix blog, citing a Princeton study of the impact of the closing of The Cincinnati Post.
The newspaper crisis discussed at Princeton event, from NewJerseyNewsroom.com, a site founded when a bunch of journalists got together at a public library and decided to “create a news site — unlike any other — to address the growing journalism void.”
“Clinging to a dead business model for dear life” and “The Biggest Threat to Newspapers is Newspapers” by Daily Kos
Scott Rosenberg, “How charging for articles could hobble the future of journalism.”
“First, stop the lawyers,” by Jeff Jarvis, Buzz Machine.
“What Crisis?” — A September update from Jeff and the the New Business Models for News Project, funded by the Knight Foundation:
I now say that there isn’t a crisis. That’s not what I used to say. Indeed, one of my mistakes in this debate has been accepting the assumption that there was one and allowing the debate to start there: “How are you going to save journalism from the scourge of your damned internet?”
Instead, the discussion should start here: “Look at all the new opportunities there are to gather and share news in new ways, to expand and improve it, to change journalism’s relationship with its public and make it collaborative, to find new efficiencies and lower costs and thus to return to profitability and sustainability.”
(Back to the earlier list…)
Two big ones, saved for the end:
From “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” by Clay Shirky
special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as
researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship
or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will
rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these
models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now
losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection
of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.”
From The Elite Newspaper of the Future by Philip Meyer, last fall in American Journalism Review.
The now-emeritus UNC professor suggests it’s o.k. for newspapers to give up on “selling everything to everybody.” Instead, he says they should focus on being trusted, responsible sources of evidence-based public affairs news and analysis, aimed at what the sociologists call “opinion leaders” — what Phil calls “well-educated news junkies.”
hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in
a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant
updating and reader interaction on the Web.”
