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17 Nov 2009 10:36

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Tech: YouTube connects citizen journalism with real news organizations

  • News organizations can ask for citizen reporting; nonprofits can call-out for support videos around social campaigns; businesses can ask users to submit promotional videos about your brand. With YouTube Direct, the opportunities to connect directly with the YouTube community are endless.
  • The announcement on YouTube Direct • Describing how the service can be used for citizen media in conjunction with the mainstream media. This is cool. If it makes AP a little less stogy and stuck in its ways, it’s a smart idea. • source

16 Nov 2009 20:53

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U.S.: Washington Blade dead: Gay-advocacy journalism suffers a huge blow

For 40 years, the Washington Blade was one of the strongest beacons for gay rights. Today it, and a bunch of other papers, abruptly closed. A damn shame. source

16 Nov 2009 10:05

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Biz: Will News Corp. really bite the Google hand that feeds it traffic?

  • 17% of News Corp.’s visitors came from Google last month source

15 Nov 2009 11:07

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Biz: Bloomberg has a ton of journalists under its belt already

  • 2,200 journalists work for Bloomberg, which was founded by NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg source

15 Nov 2009 11:04

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Biz: In a position of strength, Bloomberg grabs for the brass ring

  • We need a broader audience. The history of this company is you do the counterintuitive, countercyclical thing. It’s part of our DNA.
  • Bloomberg president Daniel L. Doctoroff • On his company’s desire to expand into a more general-interest news source. The company is in a good spot to do so. Largely built on business and financial data rather than newspaper subscriptions, it just bought troubled magazine BusinessWeek for the bargain-basement price of $5 million and has a ton of money to throw around. You know, just like founder Michael Bloomberg did when he spent millions of dollars on his recent mayoral campaign even though he didn’t need to. • source

12 Nov 2009 11:09

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10 Nov 2009 20:57

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Biz, Tech: Google to News Corp.: Come on, we dare you to block us

  • Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.
  • A statement from Google • Describing its stance on the whole Rupert Murdoch thing we posted about yesterday. That sounds like a dare to us. Will News Corp. match Google’s dare with a double dare? Will Murdoch then pull out a double dog dare, or will he go straight to the triple dog dare? We don’t know, but we’re glued to our seats in excitement. • source
 

09 Nov 2009 09:35

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U.S.: Good grades for good reporting? Prosecutors attack journalism program

  • Why are we talking about our grades when we should be talking about whether there’s an innocent man in prison?
  • Evan Benn • A former student of Northwestern journalism professor David Protess. Protess’ investigative journalism class is under investigation in the case of a 1978 killing of a security guard in Illinois. Why’s that? His class tends to uncover leads in cases such as this one (where they have evidence to prove they have the wrong man), and the prosecutor’s suggesting that students do it not for the reporting or the investigation, but for better grades. Deplorable action by the prosecution. (FYI: This is an AP story we linked; we don’t like to do this, but felt the subject matter was too good and vital to not run.) • source

28 Oct 2009 10:23

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Biz: Everyone sucks in newspapers except the Wall Street Journal

The Awl recently put together a graph showing how crappy the newspaper industry was doing. It wasn’t pretty. Not at all. source

14 Oct 2009 10:38

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Tech: Digg vs. the human hand: Why the world needs an editor

Digg as a newspaper

This image, while funny, nails what (to us) is wrong with Digg. It's not that there isn't a place for funny/bizarre content or the chance to be goofy, but when it's all you've got, it seems a little threadbare. And it's not even their fault. It's how democracy works sometimes.
  • Editors vs thumbs In a lot of ways, sites like Digg can replace rooms full of journalists and editors with a single yes/no thumb system. It works on the idea of visceral impact, much like TV news does. But when visceral impact is all you got, it stops becoming what you need to know and turns into what you want to know.
  • Editors vs thumbs In a lot of ways, sites like Digg can replace rooms full of journalists and editors with a single yes/no thumb system. It works on the idea of visceral impact, much like TV news does. But when visceral impact is all you got, it stops becoming what you need to know and turns into what you want to know.
  • Eating veggies Sometimes, the stories that aren’t very sexy are the most important. Newspapers spend hours debating these stories daily. But those stories can get overlooked in the hunt for a sexy headline. Editors have struggled with this very issue for years. Does it even come up for people clicking on thumbs?
  • Editors vs thumbs In a lot of ways, sites like Digg can replace rooms full of journalists and editors with a single yes/no thumb system. It works on the idea of visceral impact, much like TV news does. But when visceral impact is all you got, it stops becoming what you need to know and turns into what you want to know.
  • Eating veggies Sometimes, the stories that aren’t very sexy are the most important. Newspapers spend hours debating these stories daily. But those stories can get overlooked in the hunt for a sexy headline. Editors have struggled with this very issue for years. Does it even come up for people clicking on thumbs?
  • It’s not all bad We don’t want to disparage link journalism, because it can work. We’re big fans of Y! Combinator’s Hacker News, for example, because it has this strong mix of audience, community and focus. The Windy Citizen does a great job applying it to a local market. We want to see more of this.