Save the Media

Tweet I’ve spent the last 19 summers working at newspapers, so I know how lonely a newsroom can feel during the dog days of August. It often seems like half the staff in on vacation. News tends to slow, unless you count the spike in crime as the mercury and humidity climbs. This summer likely was [...]

Tweet Peter Osnos proposes in Columbia Journalism Review that Google meter the news, helping to determine what percentage of payments should go to the  creator of the content. He suggests this as a way to both help newspapers monetize on the Web and level the playing field, so the newspaper that produces a story that [...]

Tweet Sometimes to look forward you need to look back, way back. Consider this:  Both recording information by writing and the telephone — two experiences ubiquitous today were once cause for a bit of alarm. Sound familiar? Just as some news organizations today bemoan the Internet and its ability to offer content for free and [...]

Tweet A few short-takes of interesting finds around the blogosphere. Hope you find them useful. Be authentic: Sure, news organizations try to be authoritative, reliable and popular. But Ryan Sholin, director of news innovation at Publish2, writes at Invisible Inkling that authenticity is vital as news organizations try to engage their community in the social [...]

Tweet In my last post, I compared the current troubles in the newspapers business to the decline in ice harvesting. Today, my metaphor is sewing machines. Newspapers can learn a lot from them. I got the idea for the sewing machine metaphor from business blogger and Squidoo-founder Seth Godin . He blogged recently about the Singer [...]

Tweet It almost seems you can’t read a journo blog these days without finding a metaphor or simile about the state of the news business. The news business has been compared to lemmings, railroads and, of course, the horse and buggy.  (Read Nick Bergus’ post on the topic for an entertaining list of many such metaphorical comparisons.) People, including [...]

Tweet Generally, this blog is about tips and strategies and theories on how to save and transform journalism. Today, I’ll be departing a bit from that to share some big news. I’m unemployed. No. I didn’t get laid off as so many of my fellow journalists have in the past year. Thankfully, I was able [...]