Archive for May, 2008
Record month for the JI with some surprises
May was the best month yet for The Journalism Iconoclast. Overall my site (my blog and personal site are tracked together) received 8,668 page views and 6,264 visitors. Twitter is now the No. 3 traffic source to my blog with 15.1% of my visitors coming from there. California was again the top state coming to [...]
Pushing the needle forward
Rob Curley said at the E&P Interactive Media Conference that he tries to only work on projects that “move the needle.” If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards, because your competitors are always trying to outdo you. With the Web, everyone is a competitor. Pushing the needle forward means not asking “what have we [...]
What exactly is a computer-assisted reporter?
Does this imply that most reporters are not assisted by computers in their reporting? That might explain why some reporters are kicking and screaming to stay in the 20th century. Maybe we need a better term for journalists who analyze and use data to report and help others report. Just a thought
Look Ma, it’s me!
Innovation in College Media has an interview with me up right now if you want to find out more about what and how I think. I will leave you with a small preview of the interview. This sums up what I think well: And if you want to make journalism better — truly foment change [...]
It’s time to update the summer reading list
Last June I made one of my most popular posts ever (and one of my first): my Summer reading list. Basically, the idea was to compile a list of things to read and do to help journalists and journalism students become better prepared for new media journalism. I support the “peace-out method” of suggesting that [...]
Outlook/Exchange vs. GMAIL
Will Sullivan, myself and others have argued that newsrooms should consider switching to GMAIL because of its interface, search capabilities, advanced filtering and tagging and other features. Honestly, I am much more productive with my GMAIL and Google Apps e-mail (used with @patthorntonfiles.com addresses) than I am with my work e-mail at Stripes that runs [...]
Can newspapers keep their smart young people?
It’s an important, tough-to-answer question. I’ve said before that many of the top journalism students never go into journalism. Instead, they choose more lucrative fields that have more stable futures. I can’t blame them — that’s probably the smart decision. Still, many very smart people go into journalism. Are newspapers capable of keeping them, especially [...]
Should Web employees not subscribe to the print edition?
Marc Matteo proposed the radical idea on a comment earlier today: In the same vein that there are requirements w/in newsrooms to subscribe to the paper, I’d like to see the “online desk” staffers barred from taking the print edition. Why? Because it clouds online news judgement. When online staffers are still happily existing in [...]
News organizations need to rethink staff resources in order to promote innovation
It’s a simple question: What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation? And it’s a simple answer: News organizations should stop pretending like it’s the pre-Internet days. Most news organizations are still legacy-first. Newspapers still care more about the print edition than the Web edition. Beats are still centered [...]
Rethinking Facebook as a more standard social network
As Facebook has evolved from a college-only network into a broader social network, so have my uses for it and my views on it. Traditionally, I used Facebook to connect with some of my closest college and high school friends. We’d exchange inappropriate wall posts, send news over direct messages, post photos of each other [...]