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16 May 2011 10:18

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Culture: Comeback of the day: The New York World’s digital makeover

  • Joseph Pulitzer’s baby gets a digital makeover: The New York World, a newspaper that initially published from 1860 to 1931, is an important historical paper. And now, thanks to Columbia University, it’s making a comeback in the form of a digital news project. How so? We’ll let the university explain: “New York World will serve both as a site, where citizens can learn more about how services are allotted and tax dollars are spent, and as a news service, providing stories, data and other information to local news providers.” So in other words, kinda like an East Coast version of the Bay Area News Project. Neat.  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 00:38

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Culture: The Drudge Report: Still a juggernaut, 13 years after Lewinsky

  • I covered the Clinton White House in 1997 and 1998 and I would never have conceived that he would be an important player in the landscape 12 years later. He does one thing and he does it particularly well. The power of it comes from the community of people that read it: operatives, bookers, reporters, producers and politicians.
  • Politico co-founder John F. Harris • Expressing his disbelief that Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report is a juggernaut that reportedly drives a solid 7 percent of the overall news traffic online — far more than headline-grabbing social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit. Why’s that? Simple. “[He’s] the best wire editor on the planet,” says The Atlantic Wire’s editor, Gabriel Snyder. “He can look into a huge stream of news, find the hot story and put an irresistible headline on it.” Even considering his conservative bent, his stone-age design and his low-key demeanor, the main reason Drudge is a success? He doesn’t change what works. Even if he runs what’s pretty much the Craigslist of journalism. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 May 2011 11:06

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Culture: Public television icon Jim Lehrer’s leaving his anchor post

The guy’s been the anchor or co-anchor of a program like “Newshour” for 36 years. He’ll still remain on the show, but will mostly stay behind-the-scenes. Big ups, man. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 May 2011 21:50

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Biz: More thoughts on Newseum, front pages and copyright

  • Newseum provides a great service to the internet at large, and journalism in particular. We’ve used their Today’s Front Pages feature many times in the past to inform people about the day’s news, comment on what’s happening, and to inspire people to look a little bit deeper at the stories that inspire and inform us. Like all journalism should. Newseum runs one of the best parts of the entire internet — having every front page in the world at your fingertips is something most people couldn’t even imagine even 20 years ago. As a journalist, it’s something I bought into as well, and I’ve been an active participant over the years. And with the current situation (which involves the organization watermarking pages and enforcing copyright), I feel that I can’t just ignore it and let this issue get swept under the rug. Some thoughts and suggestions to deal with this:
  • On “best practices” Newseum’s talk of not stealing other people’s content online being a “best practice” is totally missing the point of the Internet. Are they using the same Internet we are? Hint: It’s not “stealing,” it’s sharing. Blocking sharing cuts off the hose. By cutting off the hose, you lose influence and focus. You know what needs our attention more than ever? The printed page. Losing that would be a mortal blow to a medium getting less respect than ever.
  • An alternate history To take this in a different direction, Newseum’s stance on this issue ignores a completely different story of the Internet — the growth of open-source content, the expansion of licenses beyond mere copyright, the story of folk heroes like Richard Stallman — all storylines that would not exist if everyone listened to the best practices put forth by the Newseum. Copyright is great and all, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Not on this issue.
  • A request for newspapers We have a solution to this mess that we hope that newspapers at large heed: Consider making your front pages available in a Creative Commons format — one that nips this problem in the bud for good. (This license would be a great choice, because it would make sure that nobody, not even Newseum, could change the content.) Freely-available front pages don’t take away from bottom lines. They add to them. Think about that.
  • » Ultimately, to be clear: Newspapers are taking a bit of a beating as an information source these days. As we switch over to the Web for more and more of our daily lives and our tastes change, projects like the Newseum become more important reminders of where we came from and why these things remain important. We write this because we love what Newseum does, but also because we need MORE things like Frontpages, not fewer.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

05 May 2011 10:41

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Politics: Journalists dropped everything after Osama bin Laden’s death

  • Where were you when you found out Osama bin Laden died? If you were anything like us, you were sitting in a bar in Virginia Beach, having your birthday weekend abruptly ended by a historic news story, reblogging and retweeting stuff on your phone and taking grainy photos of the bar’s TV screen when something notable happened. (We have the photos to prove it.) Maybe you might’ve been watching “The King’s Speech” on pay-per-view and had to pause it in the middle. Or perhaps you were getting off a plane when your phone started buzzing with all sorts of crazy crap. Or about to get on one — to Afghanistan — when you suddenly had to jump off and cover a major story at home. Or maybe you were sitting in bed, reading a book about Bob Dylan. Or maybe you were actively ignoring the news, only to have your daughter call you to point out that all hell was breaking loose. All of these scenarios happened to journalists. All of them stopped what they were doing and got directly to work. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 May 2011 23:27

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Biz: Newspaper pulse check: Why one paper’s circulation skyrocketed

  • The newspaper is doing OK right now. Not great, just OK. In the past six months, that gray newsprint behemoth did OK, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, with the top two papers gaining some ground and most of the top five staying roughly in the same order. However, the way that the group analyzed the data changed this time around — deciding, instead of focusing just on paid circulation, to emphasize “average circulation,” which includes separate editions under the umbrella of a certain brand. The numbers caused one paper to rocket into the top five and one to fall out. See if you can guess by the numbers below:
  • 2.1 million daily circulation for the top-ranked Wall Street Journal
  • 1.8 million average daily circulation for the still-second-place USA Today
  • 916,911 average daily circulation for the freshly-paywalled New York Times
  • 605k average daily circulation for the Los Angeles Times
  • 577k average daily circulation for the San Jose Mercury News
  • 550k average daily circulation for the Washington Post source
  • » A few things of note: If you guessed that the San Jose Mercury News benefited greatly from the change in data, you’re correct — MediaNews treats each newspaper on this page as an “edition” of the Mercury News (which seems a little number-inflating). Other notes: This data covers the daily circulation for the past six months — a period which only includes a tiny bit of the New York Times’ post-paywall circulation (so come back in six months to see if it was a success). But e-editions are doing quite well, especially for the Wall Street Journal and Detroit Free Press. One last thing: The numbers only cover paid newspapers, not free ones. (photo by Brent D. Payne)
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Apr 2011 12:18

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Politics: Is the White House Correspondents’ Dinner out of control?

  • The correspondents’ association dinner was a minor annoyance for years, when it was a ‘nerd prom’ for journalists and a few minor celebrities. But, as with so much else in this town, the event has spun out of control. Now, awash in lobbyist and corporate money, it is another display of Washington’s excesses.
  • The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank • Arguing that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — an event once noted for its low-key approach and minor celebrity host — now has dozens of parties around the event, is flooded with money from lobbyist types, and has numerous celebrities looking to hob-nob with both politicians and the media. While Milbank doesn’t criticize its peers for the individual parties or any small aspect of the whole, he says that “the cumulative effect is icky. With the proliferation of A-list parties and the infusion of corporate and lobbyist cash, Washington journalists give Americans the impression we have shed our professional detachment and are aspiring to be like the celebrities and power players we cover.” And he’s right. That’s dangerous. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

21 Apr 2011 10:24

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World: Tim Hetherington: Libyan government sorry “someone died”

  • We do not kill anyone that does not fight us. We need to check the circumstances in which [these] journalists died. And it’s war of course. People die from our side, from their side, people get caught in the middle. We need to check the circumstances. But of course we are very sad that someone died.
  • Libyan spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim • Expressing remorse for the deaths of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in the broadest of terms. They’re sad that “someone died.” If that was the case, why are people dying? Not just journalists. Citizens. This is the same guy who tried to blame the victim in that terrible rape case a few weeks ago. For some reason, we’re not buying his broad apology. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Apr 2011 21:10

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U.S.: On the FAA, air traffic controllers and sudden media attention

  • Over the last few weeks we have seen examples of unprofessional conduct on the part of a few individuals that have rightly caused the traveling public to question our ability to ensure their safety. This conduct must stop immediately.
  • FAA chief administrator Randy Babbitt • Expressing anger and outrage over the reports that a number of their air-traffic controllers have been caught sleeping. The situation is the key reason why the FAA Air Traffic Organization’s leader, Hank Krakowski, no longer has a job. To us, to be completely honest, sleeping air traffic controllers are the new sharks. The fact of the matter is, air traffic controllers probably slept through a lot of incidents like these before the media started paying attention. Now that they are, it’s imperative to change things. But we bet that things are only changing because the media suddenly cares. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Apr 2011 12:10

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World: News of the World hacks their way into journalism scandal history

  • You know, bad journalism is bad journalism. But occasionally, someone manages to open up a new tier of bad journalism, one that not even Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass could even imagine. Such is the case of News of the World, Rupert Murdoch’s downmarket British tabloid, best-known in the States for revealing that Michael Phelps likes doing bong hits at college parties. The paper just admitted, after days of denials, that it is responsible for a scheme wher a bunch of its reporters hacked the mobile phones of many potential sources — including members of the Royal Family, actresses, politicians and sports stars. The scandal has already cost a member of David Cameron’s staff his job, and now News of the World is finally admitting their reporters screwed up. Stephen Glass looks professional in comparison. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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