Archive for July, 2007
Technology is the key to journalism
The No. 1 thing newspapers have botched in the last 15 years is technology. They have been slow to adapt, slow to embrace and slow to realize they are making themselves obsolete. Many newspapers continue to act like they exist in the pre-Web days, and journalists opening long for the past. Why? The Web will [...]
Hyperlocal will make money
With the closure of Backfence, people are beginning to doubt the viability of hyperlocal sites as anything beyond a hobby for a few dedicated people. That hasn’t stopped mega-dailies from getting into the market. The Chicago Tribune launched TribLocal earlier this year, and The Washington Post will be launching LoudounExtra this month. LoudounExtra is a [...]
Today’s thoughts 7-8-07
Atlanta Journal Constitution rethinks everything A lot mega-dailies have been shedding staff in recent years — The New York Times, Dallas Morning News, the AJC and many more. But it at least sounds like the AJC is doing more than just cutting staff. They are rethinking their whole approach to news. I don’t have a [...]
Today’s thoughts 7-7-07
Farewell Backfence The hyper-local community journalism site is now defunct. It will be missed, but the lessons learned from the project can help all journalists. It showed that journalism that is more local — and not the trend towards more national as most main-stream media outlets had been doing — resonates with readers. The problem [...]
Harnessing the power of social networking
A tricky question for media companies will be how to best harness the power of social networking. Some companies like USA Today have built in social networking straight to their sites. I think all journalism companies should embrace social networking, especially local sites. USA Today may be a poor candidate for social networking because it [...]
Do newspapers need to be innovators?
I know what you’re thinking, “of course they do!” But do they? There is a difference between taking risks and truly innovating by making new technologies and features. If technology companies like Facebook, Flickr, Technorati and Google show us the way, do newspapers really need to think of the next big thing, or do they [...]
Today’s thoughts 7-4-07
Where are the standards? If there is one thing that really bothers me about a lot of Web sites (not just journalism ones) is the lack of standards — as in standards-compliant code. As much as I like what The Washington Post does, I really don’t understand its over reliance on Flash, especially for navigational [...]
Today’s thoughts 7-3-07
Gannett and its 24-hour “Information Centers” this year to less-than-stellar results. Part of it is just poor thinking, which I’ll tackle in a minute. Editor and Publisher profiled the “Information Center” at the Daily Record in North Jersey. The center was launched this year, and already has begun back tracking. The editor profiled in the [...]
Staffing a modern newsroom
If I were in charge of my paper (or yours) this is how I would staff it. Don’t worry, this will never happen. At 22-years old, I have about as much say as the cleaning staff. I am going to stay out of staffing for editors and publishers and just concentrate on building a quality [...]
CNN.com relaunch review
CNN.com launched a new version of its site, and at first glance it doesn’t seem like anything earth shattering. It looks similar to the old design. Some like it more, some like it less and few really care one way or the other (I have no real preference over the looks of either, as they [...]