Archive for April, 2008
The Web owes us nothing
Just because a company and an industry thrived off of legacy media, doesn’t mean the Web owes them anything. The Web doesn’t owe us money. It doesn’t owe us market share. And we can’t force consumers to not enjoy the Web and want to get products and services over it. That’s not how things work. [...]
Today’s Thought: We need to build cool shit
Rob Curley has had an unofficial mission statement at the newspapers he has worked at: Build cool shit. That’s the only way we are going to turn around the journalism industry. With that in mind, here is some cool Web journalism shit to check out: Lawrence Journal-World – Anything this paper and its parent company [...]
Rewriting (rethinking) written content on the Web
The inverted pyramid might still have a place in journalism, but it doesn’t make sense as the dominant writing style on the Web. In fact, the beauty of the Web is that each story can have a different writing style. And story lengths are no longer dictated by arbitrary space constraints in print publications. The [...]
I can’t wait for the future of print newspapers
I don’t believe print is dead. Far from it. I just believe, however, that most print products are trying to compete with online products. The fundamental problem with most print products is that they are trying to do it all (especially breaking news), instead of concentrating on what they do best — analysis pieces and [...]
Old-guard media rules don’t work on the Web
People shouldn’t have to read the print edition to get the best, most in-depth coverage. In fact, logic would dictate that a newspaper’s Web site would have more coverage due to the limitless nature of its medium and its ability to display so many different kinds of news and content. That’s what logic would tell [...]
Politico edits story after readers complain about faulty math
The Politico wrote a story today originally stating that Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by 10 points, but has since downgraded that number to 9. Why you might ask? Because of reader backlash. Numerous commenters on the story noted that Clinton did not win by 10 points. She has in fact won by a [...]
“Journalists” are bad at math
Many journalists and pundents are proclaiming that Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by 10 points (AKA “double digits”). Maybe they have some new way of doing math that I am not aware of, but Hillary received 54.6 of the vote, while Obama received 45.4. And for those of us who attended grade school, 54.6 [...]
Five interview mistakes that can easily be avoided
Sometimes you can be your own worst enemy when interviewing for job, even if you are otherwise qualified. Yoni Greenbaum made a post about “How not to get that journalism-related job.” All of the mistakes he lists can easily be avoided by just being a savvy job seeker. And if you’re a college student who [...]
How will the average U.S. newspaper turn itself around?
Many journalism bloggers, industry commentators and people who read my blog work for big publications, and they often do not hear or see some of the ridiculous things their smaller brethren are doing. The average daily newspaper in the U.S. has a weekday circulation around 36,500. Newspapers like that are a world away from The [...]
Journalism needs an entrepreneurial spirit
Angryjournalist.com started off as a small side project of sorts for Kiyoshi Martinez. Even that might be a little generous. The site is just a WordPress Blog with a theme installed, and Martinez already had server space. All of this could be set up within in a few hours. Martinez thought there would be a [...]