Clik here to view.
Lessons journalists can learn from Rupert Murdoch’s failure
Another week, another ruckus over paywalls. That link will take you to Steve Buttry’s angle on the issue, but he links to the rest. Suffice to say I don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone to base an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Editors: Help your journalists get off the hamster wheel
John Robinson, former editor of the News and Record in Greensboro, N.C., writes in part 2 of his look back on his former job, from the perspective he has gained a year out of the job (part 1 here), the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Editors: HOW to help your journalists get off the hamster wheel
I wrote a couple weeks ago that my response to a question about how to fit in all the new things journalists are told to do now was that if you want to start something, you have to stop something. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My Festivus airing of journalism grievances
I got a lot of problems with you people. Too many to list, actually, so some of the big ones: Pack journalism. Washington, D.C., remains ground zero when making the case for too many people chasing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My Christmas Eve counting of journalism blessings
Sometimes it’s easy to feel down about journalism. It’s a little too easy. Yes, the collapse of advertising and the rapid pace of technological change are problems, but there is a lot in journalism...
View ArticleClik here to view.
There is no easy fix for news
Continuing on the topic of changing what local news reporters do (I provided some links in this post a couple weeks ago), John Robinson proposes a kind of New Year’s resolution for editors: If editors...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Business realities journalists should know
Mike Fourcher, a publisher of hyperlocal news sites in Chicago, has written up the things he learned from the experience. It’s instructive, and I particularly recommend that other journalists read it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I’m making a bet that good writing draws readers
If you had told me I’d be back editing the Lenoir News-Topic 25 years after I left, I would have laughed. It’s not the direction I saw my career going. But Warren Buffett intervened, and in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Living more in a place, less in a time
Nieman Media Lab’s article about media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s book “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now” struck me because ever since my move less than three months ago to become editor of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What if Warren Buffett is telling the truth?
I was exasperated the other day at the latest entry in the “No, come on, what is Warren Buffet really up to?” genre of columns. There are two things these things seem to have in common: One, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Too early to call it a success
Lord knows I want the Orange County Register’s print-centric business model to be successful. It is the model of simplicity: Beef up the content + charge for content = Profit! But an article at The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The journalism world is holding out for a hero
When we were children and encountered a problem, we went to our parents, and they fixed it. Parents can fix anything. As we get older we take on more of our own problems, maybe asking advice. Well into...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Meanwhile, here at Woolworth’s …
The news coming out of a series of meetings that the new owner of the Washington Post, Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos, had with the paper’s employees this week sounded both encouraging and discouraging...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Enough boasts, just give us some facts
Ken Doctor lists 10 ways the news industry will judge 2014. I agree with the list, but I’m focused on just one: “New strategies will be tested. We’re bound to get some sense of how the major strategies...
View ArticleClik here to view.
All I want for Christmas …
Santa may be coming on Tuesday night with a sleigh loaded down with toys, but he’s leaving with enough cookies and milk to choke the U.S. Army, if the letters to Santa printed in my newspaper’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The audience for local news might be small
Journalism school and 26 years working as a reporter and editor have prepared me for almost anything likely to come through the newsroom, but it still galls me that people are more likely to cancel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New hope that news audiences have more value
Reading about attracting news audiences and revenue for online news sites has often been depressing. Even for someone who believes in the need for meeting the audience where it is and adapting to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Standards matter, and I do care
A rose is a rose is a rose. But a rose is not a daisy or an iris or a pansy. More is not less, and over is not under. At least not yet. The Associated Press hasn’t changed its mind on how journalists...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Don’t give up on news innovation
If innovation is all about learning how to fail, the news business is innovating its butt off. This morning brought the news that Digital First Media, which has been making the industry’s biggest,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Facebook’s too much in my face as it is
News item: “Facebook is rolling out a new tool that allows its users to track their friends in real time. “Flipping on the feature in the Facebook mobile app lets you share your general or specific...
View Article
