Save the Media

I have new duty to add to journalists’ jobs: Imagine how readers will use the information news organizations disseminate. In the past, it was enough to gather the information, accurately explain it, and make some sort of sense of the news for readers. Now, journalists need to imagine what is is like to be the [...]

Dear neglected blog readers, I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you. But I do have some tidbits that are worth a read: Q and A with Steve Buttry: Brian Cubbison features an interview with Buttry on his blog this week that’s truly worth a read. (Full disclosure, Brian is a friend and former colleague; Buttry is a “virtual” [...]

Today’s post is second in my new occasional series, “What the heck do you do on Twitter.” Today’s post comes from one of my news writing students, Danielle Alvarez, a 21-year-old magazine and modern foreign language major at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. (Don’t worry — she’s getting extra credit for doing [...]

A friend, Glenn Coin, has asked me to guest lecture about the ethics of social media for his Utica College journalism class, so I figured I’d blog my lesson plan to save time — and spread the message. I thought the ethics of social media is a timely topic, given the debate over social media [...]

So you’re a journalist who has just been laid off — or fear you might be. Your reporting and writing skills are top-notch, but you’re not too sure of yourself when it comes to video, blogging or social media. You know you ought to get some training. But you’re not even sure what you need [...]

Some short-takes of interesting stuff from around the blogosphere: Then & Now: Scooping the News has started a useful series. Each week the site is evaluating five newspapers with circulations of more than 100,000 on how much their Web sites have innovated since five years ago. I think it’s an important exercise because as the [...]

Time for some short-takes, thoughtful ideas from across the blogosphere: Media companies of the future: Chris Brogan, a new media marketing consultant, came up with his idea of what the next media company would look like, starting from scratch. I like his ideas, especially: Everything is modular and linkable. Everything is fluid. Meaning, if I want [...]

First,  a personal note. Sorry, I haven’t been blogging for a while. I’ve been quite ill, with a suspected case of swine flu. (I say “suspected” because at least in my community, doctors are only giving the “swine flu” test to hospitalized patients, which, thankfully, I was not.) I am starting to feel better now. I [...]

I’ve written before about how I believe newspapers need to change their thinking to solve the problems plaguing our industry. They need to change their thinking so they can innovate. But to get there, I believe there are two fundamental changes in newspapers’ organizational thinking that are essential. Abandon the factory mentality. Encourage leadership, not management. Abandon the factory mentality. [...]

Well, now that I’ve discussed The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Co.’s  rules for social media to death, it’s time to take a peek at other newspapers’ policies. (Hats off to Steve Buttry for a post that alerted me to The New York Times’ and The Washington Post’s policies.) The New York Times: The New York [...]