Actual computer code can be scary stuff. I’ve met too many veteran journalists who flinch and recoil when faced with even the smallest amount of computer code. “I’m not a programmer,” they shriek. “I can’t do this.” How about today’s college students? Surely these youngsters who grew up with MySpace and Facebook, are much more […]
Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurial journalism’ Category
Mark Briggs 
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January 27th, 2009
What’s your video SEO strategy?
The people running news web sites have been working on enhanced strategies for video and SEO for a few years now. But what about “video SEO”? That is the focus of a new white paper published by ReelSEO, a consulting company operating in this space. New Business Models for New Realities: The Newspaper Industry’s Video SEO Opportunity is […]
January 26th, 2009
New federal data a playground for journalists
The federal government’s new web site at USASpending.gov will be a playground for journalists. Why? Because it was developed with a user-friendly customer-facing interface, but mostly because of the access to its data that is available through the API it offers. (More at On the Media). The API will allow web developers at news organizations or independent […]
January 21st, 2009
Gaming the news
Online news editors began using games to create more engaging and interactive presentations shortly after they began publishing news online in the 1990s. But the concept hasn’t really taken off yet, despite some early successes. Back in 2001, the newspaper I worked for received a grant from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism to develop […]
January 20th, 2009
Can a news organization un-news the news enough to survive?
That is the question put forth recently by a Seattle-based political blog … Not only are newspapers dying, the type of “news” they purvey — uninterpreted, blandly regurgitated, pre-spun information supplied and shaped by a stakeholder with the intent of policy manipulation — has lost its relevance as well. Just look where the growth in news […]
January 16th, 2009
Basic training for journalism entrepreneurs
January 14th, 2009
Journalism will be better than it was before
College journalists: take heart in these trying times. Transformation and evolution are messy, emotional processes. When they produce advancement for society and business, they are seen as healthy and worthwhile, but not necessarily to those on the front lines. Because the digital transformation started 15 years ago for news companies and the web, those […]
January 1st, 2009
My goals for 2009
I prefer goals to resolutions. Here’s what I’m aiming for in 2009 … 1. Write a good book. CQ Press is kind enough to support the author in me for another version of Journalism 2.0, this time for the college textbook market. The trick, of course, is writing a practical manual that will help aspiring […]
December 11th, 2008
Can newspapers compete with hyperlocal blogs?
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 […]
December 5th, 2008
Where did that $2 billion go?
Now that it’s been reported that newspapers lost $2 billion in revenue in one quarter, the obvious question is: where did it go? As a colleague of mine noted recently, some switched to online, a portion got switched to cable now that it’s easy to advertise there, but most of it went away completely because […]
