Reading Wired.com’s 6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now, I wondered what the list would look like if tailored to journalism. As the Wired article admits, some great technologies that are critical today have been around longer, but rose to prominence in ’08. All are important for Journalism 2.0, some more than others. [...]
LostRemote pointed me to Diane Mermigas’ excellent Pragmatic Media Predictions for 2009. It’s a sobering depressing forecast for the year ahead, with dire predictions like ”TV and newspaper properties will collapse under the weight of an advertising recession and legacy costs” and “a disaster for local media, which could easily see more than half their ad revenue [...]
But they need to move faster. Still, the findings of a recent Bivings Group report analyzing the web sites from the top 100 U.S. newspapers (by ABC ranking) are encouraging. Among the highlights: • 58% of newspaper sites now accept some form of user generated content, although it’s mostly just photos. Only 15 percent accept [...]
How do you know you’re a hopeless case of online geekery? When you get your wife a domain name and set up a WordPress blog for her and call it a Christmas present. But wait, there’s more. I also gave my son and daughter domain names so they can have cool email addresses. And I [...]
I hope you have a great Christmas and enjoy the holiday weeks ahead. It’s a great time to look back on memorable events of the past year and look forward to opportunities in 2009. For me, 2008 will be remembered as the year I turned the page and set out on my own, leaving my [...]
I know it’s the holiday season and people are tired, broke, weather-weary and ready for a vacation. But I don’t know how to explain the collection of wacky ideas and decisions that surfaced yesterday. • In Twin Falls, Idaho a newly appointed Idaho lawmaker and former newspaper publisher “may introduce a bill in the 2009 [...]
Previously I wondered where did that $2 billion go? Given the state of the overall economy it’s a lock that we will be asking that question following each of the next 2-4 quarters, too. And the $2 billion figure (that newspapers lost last quarter) will probably grow larger. Some cry out for new business models [...]
With the Detroit shock playing out on Twitter and various blogs, one question I haven’t seen is whether college journalism programs should still concentrate on print journalism. And further, should there still be a college newspaper? Since cutting the delivery days for a metro newspaper is a cost-reducing move that many other newspapers will likely [...]
In a gathering called The Pitch last night in Seattle, 30 new media types kicked around the following question: Can an established newspaper provide better hyperlocal coverage than a well-managed neighborhood blog? The collective answer at the end of the night was, yes, it’s possible for an established newspaper to provide better hyperlocal coverage than [...]
I asked the Latin American journalists who I’m working with on a distance-learning course whether journalists should be allowed to write with opinion on their blogs, even if the blog is hosted by their employing news organization. More than three dozen responded and almost all said yes. It’s a matter of testing long-held conventions that [...]
Mark Briggs 
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