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19 Jun 2009 15:55

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Biz, Politics: Thoughts on the news industry in light of a recent crisis

  • What happened? A group that our site has personal ties with, the Society for News Design, lost its president in an ugly and public way. Other sites have covered it much better than we can and will, but suffice it to say, a professional newspaper organization with a long, storied history and thousands of members will struggle to regain its formidable swagger. And honestly, it sucks.
  • Why is this? Ultimately, SND’s problems are a microcosm for the rest of the news industry. They’ve lost members in the wake of massive news-industry layoffs, and many former members complain that the organization focuses too much on big picture surface details at the loss of its rank and file. News companies do the same thing; they’re laying off their future right now.
  • What happened? A group that our site has personal ties with, the Society for News Design, lost its president in an ugly and public way. Other sites have covered it much better than we can and will, but suffice it to say, a professional newspaper organization with a long, storied history and thousands of members will struggle to regain its formidable swagger. And honestly, it sucks.
  • Why is this? Ultimately, SND’s problems are a microcosm for the rest of the news industry. They’ve lost members in the wake of massive news-industry layoffs, and many former members complain that the organization focuses too much on big picture surface details at the loss of its rank and file. News companies do the same thing; they’re laying off their future right now.
  • What do we change? Ultimately, SND – and the news industry in general – has to function with the Internet instead of around it. Most newspapers are organized around themselves. The Internet doesn’t cluster to walled gardens – it clusters to smart little ideas here and there. Find ways to play inside the new rules. The old rules don’t work. The structure of news needs a redesign.

31 May 2009 12:11

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Politics, Tech: The evolution of the art of writing in the age of blogs

  • Philip Greenspun of MIT argues that, before the Web, you could either write books or mid-sized articles of four to five pages. Publishing was constricted. source
  • When the internet first came about, he argues, it allowed for long articles – 20 to 30 pages – to be easily printed. But short bites didn’t make sense online. source
  • His argument concludes that blogging solved the biggest problem of the media age – now people can easily write short. Well, that’s what we’re doing, anyway. source

23 Apr 2009 21:44

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U.S.: Our two-second analysis of the latest Obama poll

  • think Obama is the greatest thing since bread was sliced and put into bags source
  • think Obama is a pretty awesome guy who knows what he’s doing in D.C. source
  • think Obama isn’t amazing, but they don’t think he sucks at job either source
  • think Obama is lame and wish he wasn’t president because he smells source
  • hate Obama with the raging fire of a thousand burning teabags source

18 Mar 2009 23:13

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Politics: We’re late to the Clay Shirky newspapers bandwagon, but he’s right

  • He’s right, you know Shirky makes this argument that all the stuff that the newspaper industry is doing right now is essentially trying to prop up an unsustainable model ruined by the Internet. Well, yeah. It’s the nature of creative destruction, something I wrote about a couple of months ago. But despite this, the content itself is more popular than ever. We read it because we love it. Even when we bitch and moan about the bias, we secretly love it.
  • Nothing will work Shirky’s main point: Experiment like crazy. Fail. Lose your shirt. Because you might eventually come up with a new type of thread which is a lot better than the one that held together your crappy shirt. I’d like to think that I got his point without having to be told it bluntly. I think a lot of people I know didn’t really get his point until it hit them in the face so hard that they couldn’t stop staring and they felt stung. It’s creative destruction. Don’t fight it.
  • Everything might work My friends are getting laid off, event the ones outside the newspaper industry. Newspapers are getting closed. The media feels like a watchdog that’s running out of sweet, sweet kibble. And it’s not because kibble’s in short supply – it’s because it’s getting dumped into a different bowl and it has a slightly different taste. It’s not going back into the old bowl. And you’re going to starve to death eating stale kibble. source