Archive for July, 2008
Today’s Thought: Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that newspapers suck on the Web
The lack of competitive online and mobile products from newspapers has left a huge opening for startups. And that’s good news for a lot of us. If you’re an entrepreneurial journalist, maybe you should be happy there is very little competition in the online landscape. Yes, I know that there are some companies like the [...]
The long tail and SEO work
On May 8th, I made a post about how a previous post from a year earlier had a resurgence in traffic. I thought that traffic would eventually subside, but I was wrong. In less than 3 months, that post has almost doubled the amount of page views it has: I’ve said it before and I’ll [...]
Get a modern internship at philly.com
Philly.com has several openings for internships that Yoni Greenbaum says aren’t your average internships. You won’t be getting coffee or doing other menial work, but rather doing actual work. And by actual work, I don’t mean just collecting clips to put in a binder, but real, modern Web work. Imagine that! At Philly.com you won’t [...]
A tale from a disgruntled journalist
I received an e-mail today from a reader who had a story to share about being stifled by corporate and management. The good news for journalism is that this person isn’t down on journalism itself, just some journalism companies. Unfortunately, this is not a unique story in today’s journalism world: I’m beginning to liken my [...]
Journalists leaving newspapers because of culture and corporate
More and more talented journalists (often young) are leaving journalism for other industries. Not because they fear being laid off or fired, but because the culture at newspapers (especially newspaper corporations) doesn’t allow for the kind of innovation necessary to save newspapers. Case in point: Braden Nicholson left the Indianapolis Star because corporate knew how [...]
Newspapers need to take responsibility for the quality of conversations
“I’m convinced that newspapers need to rise up and take responsibility not just for the quality of the news, but for the quality of the conversation,” – Monia Guzman. Instead of complaining that comments sections on newspaper Web sites are worthless, newspapers need to start actively cultivating conversations. The Web is about community, and communities [...]
I wouldn’t fire too many copy editors
Bad things can happen: I’m just saying.
If you have the skills, people will call
Yes, it is a tough time for journalism graduates — or anyone looking for a journalism job — but there are jobs available for people with desirable skills. Recent journalism graduate Kyle Hansen just accepted a job at the Las Vegas Sun. More noteworthy, is that in this terrible time for journalism companies and the [...]
Layoffs are not a business model
Timothy Kennedy, the publisher of The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., announced 35-40 layoffs yesterday at the 110,000-circulation newspaper. But that’s not the real lede for me. In the middle of his memo he writes, “More than ever our financial results reflect the broken business model of the past.” I agree with him that the [...]
On missed opportunities
I want to relate a story from two years ago about a missed opportunity at a 25,000-circulation daily newspaper. I was talking with the top editors at this newspaper about my Web experience and some of my thoughts on what newspapers needed to do to make themselves more competitive on the Web. The question of [...]