January 2010
2 posts
Comments are messy, but so is life -- editors...
I’m engaged in (what I thought was an old) discussion at work about the value of reader comments on news stories. Others’ concerns are the nastiness of some commenters, and the (flawed) logic that we wouldn’t print it in the newspaper, so why let people say it on our website?
In my research to explain this, I’ve looked at a lot of essays and blog posts. I think Jeff Jarvis...
Google CEO Schmidt hints at "very powerful display...
From an article in the Telegraph:
(Google CEO Eric) Schmidt … to him the revenue model the newspaper industry will have to use comes after a pretty simple, and essentially binary, decision.
“The simplest model to think about is that your readers are eventually going to consume the majority of your products in online devices. The fact of the matter is that is what the reader is choosing.
“The...
December 2009
2 posts
Reporter bias contaminates paywall coverage
There is a subtle but deeply wrong bias woven into much of the newspaper reports and columns about budding efforts to charge users for access to online news.
More often than not, the writers state as historical fact that newspapers made a “fatal miscalculation” in not charging for news long ago — and thus it’s difficult now because readers are “accustomed” to free news. (Those phrases are from...
Improving news with user-directed assignment desks
Journalism is about asking and answering questions. So for journalism the “metaquestion” — the question underlying all other questions — is, what questions shall we ask?
Until now, that metaquestion was answered by an analog process. It leveraged no network or algorithm. It basically consisted of editors speculating what they think the public should know, and reporters...
November 2009
1 post
The Washington Post bureaus closure is addition by...
Your reaction to the Washington Post’s announced closure of three bureaus (in New York, Chicago and L.A.) probably depends on whether you see news as a print person or online person.
Print-oriented people see a withdrawal, a loss. In his story today on , Howard Kurtz notes:
What is lost, however, is the knowledge and experience of reporters who come to understand the local issues,...