Writers and Editors

Organizations, sites, and resources for journalists
· Links to sites and resources for journalists and news junkies
· Links to journalism organizations
· Books on the craft of journalism
· Books on the journalistic essay
· Will journalism survive? In what form?
· On the media
· Journalism publications
· Journalism schools, degrees, and training

---

You will find various specialized types of writing and journalism (automotive, trucking, snowsports, animal, etc.) under Specialty writing. A number of organizations will be found under Local and regional organizations.

Barry Diller: ‘The Internet is a miracle … Newsweek is an evolutionary process’ (L.A.Lorek, Poynter Online, 3-14-11). “We are in the very early period of a great revolution,” he said. “Once you can push a button and publish to the world you can go over the top and around all of these systems.” Diller's advice to entrepreneurs: “only get enough money to get it started, give away as little as possible, keep your head down, do not listen or talk to anybody, when it gets out there. Listen to your audience, unless it makes no sense, early audiences don’t always get you,” Diller said. “Keep going on your path. It will either work out gloriously or it will be another failure.”

Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee interviewed (about Watergate, about journalism--excellent interview for Academy of Achievement). See the Academy of Achievement website for more fascinating interviews, in the arts and other fields.

Can We Tape? A Practical Guide to Taping Phone Calls and In-Person Conversations in the 50 States and D.C. (with a state-by-state guide). (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Fall 2008)

Document Cloud, created by journalists from ProPublica and The New York Times as an online repository of source documents. From an interesting story in the newsletter of the Association of Health Care Journalists: "Explore how the Las Vegas Sun used DocumentCloud to present hospital inspection reports, and the violations they contained, to its readers": an interactive graphic created by combining Document Cloud with Flash "to make the reports searchable and more meaningful to the public"

The Editors (BBC News' blog on dilemmas and issues BBC faces, welcoming comments)

Editors Only: The Newsletter of Editorial Achievement (discussing the changing nature of content delivery), sister pub to STRAT: The Newsletter of Print and Online Magazine Publishing Strategy

Embargo on press releases, rationale for (PLoS). Breaking an embargo is a journalistic no-no, with good reason.

5 Ways to Get People to Contribute Good Content for Your Site. Mallary Jean Tenore (Poynter Online, 11-11-10) gives advice on getting good user-generated content (crowdsourcing, or community editorial): "Master the 'fine art of the prompt'; understand what motivates contributors (and that "your content providers are not necessarily your content consumers") and reward them.

From Silent Mode to Heated Mode: Reconstructing the Magazine Future… the Popular Science Way. Samir Husni's interview with Mark Jannot; includes “six basic principles that underlie the Mag+ digital platform.” Sidebar: Me and My iPad, in Mr.Magazine blog

How to Conduct Compassionate Interviews at the Scene of a Tragedy & Dealing with Our Own Responses to What We See and Hear: A Guide for Journalists by Russell Friedman and John W. James (The Grief Recovery Institute Educational Foundation--a 28-page PDF file well worth downloading).

Huffington Post's no-pay policy (an experiment in milking journalists, disguised as "citizen journalism" -- a/​k/​a "free")
• Why should writers work for no pay? Contributors to the Huffington Post have begun to chafe at the no-pay policy. They could take a lesson from stand-up comedians who faced a similar insult in the 1970s. (Michael Walker, OpEd, Los Angeles Times, 4-1-11)
• AOL (loves) HuffPo. The loser? Journalism. "...it's already clear that the merger will push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy," writes Tim Rutten(L.A.Times, 2-9-11), commenting "on the ultimate impact of AOL's $315-million acquisition of the Huffington Post on the new-media landscape."
• National Writers Union & Newspaper Guild End Huffington Post Boycott (Jason Boog, GalleyCat, 10-21-11)
• HuffPost boycott ends as company, Guild talks continue (The Newspaper Guild 10-20-11)
• Newspaper Guild Calls for Unpaid Huffington Post Writers To Strike (Jason Boog, Galley Cat 3-17-10)
• Why I Left the Huffington Post (Mayhill Fowler, blog, 9-23-10)
• HuffPo’s “Citizen Journalism” Under Fire (Rachelle Matherne, SixEstate Communications 2-15-11)

Investigative Reporting Resources (Padraic Cassidy's great links for investigative journalism--a tutorial on the Web). Some of the sites linked to:
• Breaking and Entering: How to dissect an organization (Eric Nalder, Seattle Times)
• Five Easy Pieces: The S.E.C. Starter Kit and other tips for checking out companies
• How to Conduct a Historical Investigation
• Spreadsheets 101 tutorial on Excel by Ted Sherman and Padraic Cassidy
Much more is there. Check it out, and thanks, PC!

---

Journalism publications
• American Journalism Review (AJR)
• Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)
• Editor & Publisher (E&P), which may discontinue publishing
• The IRE Journal
• News Watch, which publishes a Diversity Style Guide
• Online Journalism Review (OJR), focusing on the future of digital journalism
• Quill Magazine (SPJ)
• Uplink

---

Journalism schools, degrees, and training
• Journalismtraining.org (SPJ for the Council of National Journalism Organizations)
• Best Schools for Journalism (Jeremy Porter, poll results, Journalistics, 7-6-09)
• The Definitive Guide to Online Journalism Degrees & a Career as an Internet Journalist (Molly Canfield)
• The Best Online Journalism Degrees (Molly Canfield)
• News University (Poynter's online courses, inexpensive and often free, with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation)
• How to Become a Journalist (College Boards)
• You Just Graduated From Journalism School. What Were You Thinking? (Michael P. Ventura, The Village Voice 7-28-09). J-School students try to stay upbeat about their future and their industry

LGBT Aging Issues Network (LAIN) and Resources Clearinghouse (brings together professionals interested in the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals ages 50-plus)

Link journalism, Google's power on the Web, and the backlash against URL shortening. Start with Nicholas Carr's Rough Cuts piece, Google in the Middle, about how, as a news aggregator, Google capitalizes on the fragmented oversupply of news and the current structure of the news business. Go to Scott Karp's pieces, on Publishing 2.0: How Google Stole Control Over Content Distribution By Stealing Links ("Google isn't stealing content from newspapers and other media companies. It's stealing their control over distribution" 4-10-09) and Mainstream News Organizations Entering the Web’s Link Economy Will Shift the Balance of Power and Wealth (10-16-08). As Karp points out in his April piece, the backlash against URL shorteners (see Joshua Schacter's blog on url shortenders) and site framing (see Joshua Topolsky on Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar) "is all about who controls the links, and which links Google is going to read and credit." We'll no doubt be seeing more stories like this one by Nicholas Kolakowski, on Publish: AP, Google Deny Conflict, But Bloggers May Be in Sights.
Later, more stories came: Scott Karp on How Networked Link Journalism Can Give Journalists Collectively The Power Of Google And Digg, Mindy McAdams on Link journalism: Credibility and authority), Jack Lail in Link journalist , Josh Catone,ReadWriteWeb asking Link Journalism: Is Linking to News a form of journalism?, and Catone refers to the Public Editor piece in the NY Times, by Clark Hoyt: What That McCain Article Didn’t Say .
Sue Russell referred us to this excellent related batch of stories.

Media and Disability:
• Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media by Beth A. Haller (see Haller's links to disability resources)
• Mediadis&dat (news and information about people with disabilities and disability issues)

Media Beat
On the media: a few places to check out news about media:
• Behind the News: CJR on the media (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Center for Media and Democracy (PR Watch.org), countering PR propaganda, informing citizen activism, promoting media literacy, sponsoring open-content media). See also Source Watch (citizens and journalists looking for documented information about the corporations, industries, and people trying to influence public policy and public opinion)
• Nieman Watchdog (questions the press should ask)
• On the Media (NPR's invaluable weekly show)
• Poynter Online (Romenesko, Scanlan, Clark and others)
•The Press Box (Jack Shafer's column at Slate; here's the archive and The three tides of JS's Daily News Cycle)
• Press Think (Jay Rosen's blog: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine)
•The Public Editor's Journal (Arthur S. Brisbane is current "readers' representative" for the NY Times)
•Regret the Error: Mistakes Happen (Craig Silverman reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications, and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media), with a special category for fabrication.
• Spin Cycle (Howard Kurtz's blog for The Daily Beast); formerly he wrote Media Notes (Washington Post)
• MediaGazer (today's media news headlines
• David Carr: The News Diet Of A Media Omnivore (Fresh Air interview on NPR). Carr writes a column on media issues for the Monday Business section of the NY Times.
• Page One: Inside The New York Times (documentary about the New York Times newsroom, and the "inner workings of the Media Desk." Addresses the question: what will happen if the fast-moving future of media leaves behind the fact-based, original reporting that helps to define our society? Available on Netflix Streaming.)
[Back to Top]

Media Myth Alert. Joseph Campbell's blog sums up myths reported in his book Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism. Tom Ashbrook interviews Campbell about the myths on NPR's radio program On the Point: When the Media Got It Wrong.

Mediashift: Your Guide to the Digital Revolution (PBS), hosted by Mark Glaser. Check out such pieces as
• Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age by Alfred Hermida, 7-9-10
• WikiLeaks, iPhone Incidents Show that U.S. Needs Shield Law by by Clothilde Le Coz,7-1-10
• 5Across: Beyond Content Farms by Mark Glaser, 7-27-10. "Content farms or mills churn out massive amounts of content tailored to Google searches. But the approach to churning out that content varies from how-to articles (Demand Media), vertical topics (High Gear Media), hyper-local (Patch.com) and sports (Bleacher Report, SB Nation). And at some sites, writers get paid a small amount, while at others they toil for free."
• Writers Explain What It's Like Toiling on the Content Farm by Corbin Hiar 7-21-10
• 5 Digital PR Lessons from BP's Oil Spill Response by Ian Capstick 7-12-10.
• How to Teach Social Media in Journalism Schools (by Alfred Hermida, 8-30-10)

More journalists and fiction writers are shifting to writing videogames (Stephany Nunneley, vg247, 11-19-10)

News Feature v. Narrative: What’s the Difference? (Rebecca Allen, Nieman Storyboard, 1-9-06). Excellent explanation and examples.

Newswise Theme Wires Calendar. Professional journalists can sign up to receive Newswise news alerts, access to embargoed news, and contact info for expert sources. There is a Daily Wire, a Science Wire, a Medical Wire, a Life Wire, and a Business Wire.

Process Journalism. Instead of the finished story as posted in a print newspaper in, say, 1980, fully researched and reported and fact-checked and final, stories on the Web are being reported as they are investigated. Here are some pieces online about process journalism (which seems to be different from link journalism but I'm not sure how):
•Product v. Process Journalism: The Myth of Perfection v. Beta Culture (Jeff Jarvis, guesting on The Huffington Post)
•The Imperatives of the Link Economy (Jeff Jarvis, The Buzz Machine), who compares the content economy and the link economy. "Links are a key to efficiency. In other words: Do what you do best and link to the rest." And: "The market needs help finding the good stuff; that curation is a business opportunity."
•Get the Tech Scuttlebutt! (It Might Even Be True.)(Damon Darlin, Ping, NY Times)
•The Morality and Effectiveness of Process Journalism (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch)
•Bloggers Defend 'Beta' Journalism (Nicole Ferraro, Internet Evolution).

State of the News Media 2011. The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that people are spending more time with news than ever before, but are increasingly doing so online. Of all the traditional media, the audience for AM/​FM radio has remained most stable. Interesting report.

Tangled Web. Victor Navasky and Evan Lerner report on a Columbia Journalism Review Survey, which finds that magazines are allowing their Web sites to erode journalistic standards. See also the full CJR report: Magazines and Their Web Sites (click on opening page to get text).

Top 30 Job Sites for Careers in Broadcast Journalism (Molly Canfield, Journalism Journeyman 6-14-11)

A Vanishing Journalistic Divide (David Carr, NY Times, 10-10-10). "Open up Gawker, CNN, NPR and The Wall Street Journal on an iPad and tell me without looking at the name which is a blog, a television brand, a radio network, a newspaper. They all have text, links, video and pictures. The new frame around content is changing how people see and interact with the picture in the middle." Carr goes on to point out what traditional journalism does that the others don't and why we should be glad it still exists.

Video Journalism
Citizen Tube
Pulitzer Center: Tips for Video Journalists (part of YouTube Reporters' Center) "The golden rule in video journalism is that you never have enough B roll."
Using Google Maps in your online coverage (IJNet)

[Go Top]

---

Journalism organizations
• American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors (AASFE)
• American Copy Editors Society (ACES)
• American Jewish Press Association
• American Press Institute (API), training and professional development
• American Society of Business Publications Editors (ASBPE)
• American Society of Journalists & Authors (ASJA), professional association of freelance/​independent journalists and nonfiction book writers, who share info about markets, writing rates, contracts, editors, agents, etc. Members have access to samples of successful query letters and book proposals, among other resources. Non-members may attend the annual conference (Saturday), which is preceded by a more advanced day for members only (Friday), and followed by longer, more targeted workshops for everyone, on Sunday .
• American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), the editorial part of Magazine Publishers of America(MPA)
• American Society of News Editors (ASNE)
• Asian American Journalists Organization (AAJA)
• Associated Collegiate Press (ACP), for U.S. college student media
• Associated Press Managing Editors(APME)
• Associated Press Photo Managers (APPM(
• Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM)
• Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)
• Association for Women Journalists (AWJ-Chicago)
• Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors (Capitolbeat)
• Association of Alternative News Weeklies (AAN)
• Association of Food Journalists (AFJ)
• Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), helpful for anyone reporting on health and medical news and issues, staff or freelance
• Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) (UK)
• Broadcast Education Association (BEA)
• Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication (ASJMC)
• California Chicano News Media Association (CCNMA), Latino Journalists of California
• Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ)
• Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families
• Center for Citizen Media (encouraging grassroots media, especially citizen journalism)
• Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), investigative reporting on the Web

• College Media Advisers (CMA)
• Criminal Justice Journalists
• CyberJournalists.Net (Online News Association, with tips, news, commentary re online and citizen journalism and digital storytelling)
• Design & Artists Copyright Society (DACS, UK)
• Displaced Journalists (a community where displaced journalists find common ground and "begin to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get on with our lives and livelihoods")
• Editorial Photographers (EP)
• Education Writers Association (EWA)
• Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), supporting investigative reporting projects around the world
• Gen Beat Online(. Generations Beat Online (GBO), the e-newsletter of the Journalists Network on Generations for writers/​producers covering issues in aging and retirement
• Independent Press Association (IPA)
• Independent Press Institute (IPI), aiming to strengthen community voices and empower the media that serve them, New York Community Media Alliance.
• Inland Press Association (IPA)
• International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) (excellent resources)
• International Journalists' Network (IJNet)
• International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE)
• Inter American Press Association (IAPA)
• International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF)
• Jazz Journalists Association (Jazzhouse)
• Journalism & Women Association (JAWS)
• Journalism Education Association (JEA), scholastic journalism and media education
• JournalismTraining.org (managed by SPJ for the Council of National Journalism Organizations)
• Kid Magazine Writers (about writing for children and teen magazines--includes guidelines for many publications)
• Los Angeles Press Club
• Media Bloggers Association (MBA)
• Military Reporters and Editors (MRE)
• National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ)
• National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ)
• National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE), for journalists covering real estate and home and urban design
• National Association of Science Writers (NASW)
• National Center on Disability and Journalism (NCDJ) (provides info and resources for all journalists, including style guidance--e.g., when is it appropriate to use the terms "handicapped" or "disabled"?)

• National Center for Business Journalism (BusinessJournalism.org, at Arizona State University)
• National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW)
• National Federation of Press Women (NFPW)
• National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), IRE's arm for training and a database library
• National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA)
• National Newspaper Association (NNA), community newspapers
• National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), The Black Press of America, a federation of black-owned U.S. newspapers
• National Press Club, a private club for journalists and communications professionals,“The Place Where News Happens" (mostly through luncheon speeches)
• National Press Association (NPA) (We make journalists better)
• National Press Photographers Association (NPPA)
• National Writers Union (NWU) (United Auto Workers Local 1981)
• National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA)
• National Society of Newspaper Columnists (Columnists.com)
• National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA), for high school journalists
• National Union of Journalists (NUJ), UK and Ireland
• Native American Journalists Association (NAJA)
• Network of Hispanic Communicators
• New American Media (NAM) (national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations, providing Ethnic Media in the News, Collaborative Reporting and many other resources).
• NewAssignment.net (testing open-source reporting)
• New England Newspaper and Press Association (NEN&PA)
• The Newspaper Guild (Communications Workers of America) and The Guild Reporter
• New York Association of Black Journalists (NYABJ)
• New York Financial Writers Association (NYFWA)
• North American Agricultural Journalists (NAAJ)
• Online News Association (ONA)
• Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO)
• Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA), an international, professional association of outdoor communicators, outdoor companies and outdoor industry service providers
• Pen & Pencil Club (in Philadelphia--oldest continuously operating press club in America)

• Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
• PJNet (Public Journalism Network, an information clearinghouse for public, citizen, representative journalism)
• The Poynter Institute
• Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC), formerly Periodical Writers Association of Canada
• Project for Excellence in Journalism (Pew Center's Journalism.org)
• ProPublica (journalism in the public interest -- a nonprofit investigative journalism organization)
• Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI)
• Quill and Scroll (International Honorary Society for High School Journalists)
• Reclaim the Media (grassroots organizing for social change through media justice--expanding communication rights of ordinary citizens)
• Religion Newswriters Association (RNA)
• The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
• RTDNA, Radio Television Digital News Association (formerly Radio-Television News Directors Association)
• Reporters Without Borders (for press freedom)
• Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
• Society for News Design (SND), for editors, designers, graphic artists, publishers and other media professionals
• Society of American Business Editors & Writers, Inc. (SABEW)
• Society of American Travel Writers (SATW)
• Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ)
• Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Sigma Delta Chi
• Society of Professional Obituary Writers (writing about the dead for a living)
• South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA)
• Southern Newspaper Publishers Association (SNPA)
• Special Libraries Association, News Division
• Suburban Newspapers of America (SNA)
• UNITY,Journalists of Color
• U.S. Basketball Writers Association
• Washington Center for Politics & Journalism
• Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism (Knight Digital Media Center)
• White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA)
• Wired Journalists,(home of collaborative journalism, a Publish2 network)
• World Press Institute (WPI)
• Writers Guild of America (WGA)
• Youth Media Organizations (local and national youth-led media organizations identified by youth researchers at The Freechild Project -- including Appalachian Media Institute (AMI), HarlemLIVE, and Teen Voices).

[Go Top]
BOOKS ON THE CRAFT OF JOURNALISM

• The Beholder's Eye: A Collection of America's Finest Personal Journalism, ed. by Walt Harrington (first-person stories in which the narrators shaped what they saw and reported, were touched or changed by the experiences they reported, and who borrowed storytelling techniques from fiction (scene, action, description, dialogue, character, and plot).

• The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, by William E. Blundell (saying that reporting and writing are part of the same process, equally important)

• The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism, ed. Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda

• Creative Interviewing: The Writer's Guide to Gathering Information by Asking Questions, by Ken Metzler (required reading for info-gathering interviews)

• The Elements of Story: Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing, by Francis Flaherty

• Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, ed. Walt Harrington (the how-to's of human interest reporting)

• Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing by Mark Briggs, author of Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive

• Literary Journalism, ed. Norman Sims and Mark Kramer (includes essays by John McPhee, Susan Orlean, Tracy Kidder, Ted Conover, Richard Preston, Joseph Mitchell, Calvin Trillin, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, David Quammen, Brent Staples, Joseph Nocera, Mark Singer, and Walt Harrington)

• Literary Nonfiction: Learning by Example, ed. Patsy Sims (with selections by includes selections by Madeleine Blais, Tim Cahill, James Conaway, Joan Didion, David Finkel, Jon Franklin, Tom Hallman, Jr., Walt Harrington, Tracy Kidder, Jane Kramer, John McPhee, Michael Paterniti, Mike Sager, Susan Sheehan, and Tom Wolfe)

• The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft,Robert S. Boynton (excellent and new, from broad picture down to how they organize their notes, what color pens they use, and other nuts and bolts details)

• Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound edited by John Biewen\

• Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production by Jonathan Kern

• Story Building: Narrative Techniques for News and Feature Writers, by Ndaeyo Uko

• Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, ed. Mark Kramer, Wendy Call
[Go Top]

---

Tom Brokaw's Five Picks
Five books that Tom Brokaw says provide a "peerless portrait of journalism's high aims and low comedy":

1. The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse (Random House, 1973)

2. All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Simon & Schuster, 1974)

3. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (Little, Brown, 1938)

4. Murrow by Ann M. Sperber (Freundlich, 1986)

5. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (Viking, 1985).

The Journalistic Essay

Jack Hart, when he taught the journalistic essay at The Oregonian, found these books useful:

· Phillip Lopate, ed. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present (Lopate's introduction especially)

· Robert Vare, ed. The American Idea: The Best of The Atlantic Monthly

· Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan, eds. The Best American Essays of the Century.

---

[Go Top]

---

Will journalism survive? In what form?

What are some alternatives, as the advertising-pays-for-print-journalism model stops working? Am providing links here to some of the many debates and articles circulating on this topic.

• All Hands On Deck: 4 Editors on the SF Chronicle Implosion (the Daily Anchor Editorial Team)

• An extremely expensive cover story — with a new way of footing the bill Zachary M. Seward, Nieman Journalism Lab. Sherri Fink's 13,000-word story about the New Orleans hospital where patients were euthanized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a New York Times Magazine cover story that is simultaneously available on ProPublica's site, may be "the most expensive single piece of print journalism in years." The new economics of journalism. Investigative journalism is labor-and-brain-intensive! Mother Jones on the same story: Cost of the NYT Magazine NOLA Story Broken Down (Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones 8-28-09)

• Brill's secret plan to save the New York Times and journalism itself (Stephen Brill, Romenesko, 11-08)

• Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried (Richard MacManus, NYTimes, 12-13-09)

• Craig Newmark: I Didn't Kill Newspapers, it's an "urban legend" and David Carr Agrees (Beet.TV)

David Simon's Testimony at the Future of Journalism Hearing (David Simon, Real Clear Politics, 5-9-09). Simon says, among other things, "...high-end journalism - that which acquires essential information about our government and society in the first place -- is a profession; it requires daily, full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out until the best of them know everything with which a given institution is contending. For a relatively brief period in American history - no more than the last fifty years or so - a lot of smart and talented people were paid a living wage and benefits to challenge the unrestrained authority of our institutions and to hold those institutions to task. Modem newspaper reporting was the hardest and in some ways most gratifying job I ever had. I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes American institutions as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs pursuing the task without compensation, training or for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care to whom it is they are lying or from whom they are withholding information." But it is not the internet that is killing newspapers, says Simon. "...my industry butchered itself and we did so at the behest of Wall Street and the same unfettered, free-market logic that has proved so disastrous for so many American industries. And the original sin of American newspapering lies, indeed, in going to Wall Street in the first place....In Baltimore at least, and I imagine in every other American city served by newspaper-chain journalism, those ambitions were not betrayed by the internet. We had trashed them on our own, years before. Incredibly, we did it for naked, short-term profits and a handful of trinkets to hang on the office wall. And now, having made ourselves less essential, less comprehensive and less able to offer a product that people might purchase online, we pretend to an undeserved martyrdom at the hands of new technology."

• The Deal from Hell: A Cautionary Tale Every Publisher Should Read (Peter Cook, Publishing Perspectives, 7-5-11). Guest book review of The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers by James O'Shea

• The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition) by Ian Shapira (Washington Post, Outlook, 8-2-09), with follow-up discussion on Tuesday, August 4: Outlook: How Gawker Ripped Off My Story and Why It's Destroying Journalism

• Disrupted: The Internet and the Press Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky discuss what's happening in journalism after its disruption by technology, conversations sponsored by NYU Journalism/​Primary Sources)

• 8 Industries That Will Sit Out a Recovery. (Rick Newman, US News & World Report). Moody's rates media as one of the industries that won't be climbing back up any time soon. "... Media. It's hard to imagine what else could go wrong for traditional print and broadcast media companies. Even without a recession, newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio broadcasters have been losing their audience to the Internet. At the same time, a crushing downturn in the retail, automotive, and financial industries has led to double-digit cuts in advertising, the biggest source of revenue for many media companies. And there's no historic election, accompanied by millions in political advertising, slated anytime soon to help pick up the slack, as there was in 2008. Many newspapers are in such bad shape that investors have virtually no interest in buying them, at any price, according to Moody's. Magazines are doing so poorly that McGraw-Hill is struggling to find a buyer for BusinessWeek, one of the most venerable titles on the market."

• The End of Hand Crafted Content (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, 12-13-09)

• End Times:Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism? (Michael Hirschorn, The Atlantic, January-February 2009) and End Times: A Response from the Times

• Enter Austin Post: New online venture seeks to create a 'conversational democracy' (Kevin Brass, Austin Chronicle, 7-10-09, on how "citizen journalism" may be an aggregation of "sloppy bloggers" in a system offering exposure for personal agendas instead of payment for professional journalism).

• Five questions publishers need to ask before charging for content, or Pitfalls of the pay wall. "Before they jump into charging for content, news organizations must bypass the 'quality journalism' argument and answer these five questions instead," writes Michele McLellan, and you can read about those five questions on the Knight Digital Media Center website.

Among columnists she thanks for blogging about paid content, which helped her understand the issues: Steve Yelvington (Fatal Assumptions), Steve Outing (Attributor: Will it be used for good or evil?) and Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine The Golden Link, on whether to charge for linking to content. (I don't know if those are the specific blogs she was grateful for, but they are interesting, and take you to those bloggers' sites.)

• Gerry Marzorati on the future of long-form narrative

• Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Q&A at Newspaper Association of America convention, on advertising, micropayments, and subscriptions (Julie Moos, Poynter Online, and you can listen to the speech)

• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations and BoingBoing on Clay Shirky's masterpiece (with links to more Clay Shirky pieces)


• How to Save Your Newspaper (Walter Isaacson, Time) and The bell tolls for Time, too (Alan Jacobson, Brass Tacks)

• The Intelligence Briefing model of media (Conover on Media, a front-row seat at the final bonfire, 9-23-05)

• Lesson from WisconsinWatch: Nonprofit Journalism Isn't Free (Robert Gutsche Jr., Poynter Online, 8-11-09)

• Let’s Invent an iTunes for News (David Carr, NY Times, argues for a pay-for-news-by-item business model to save newspapers)

• Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy by Alex Jones. "[S]ignificance may not be governed by the clock. The most valuable element in journalism is often enough not an episode that occurred today, yesterday or, horrors, the day before. It’s the creation of a new awareness provided by either months of investigation or relentlessly regular coverage," writes Harold Evans in The Daily Show, his review in the NY Times of this book, which Howard Gardener calls an "authoritative account of why journalism is vital, how it has lost its bearings," and what can be done to reinvigorate this foundation of a democratic society.

• Monetize Online (Brass Tacks)

• The newspaper business isn't dying, it's evolving (Kirk LaPointe, Vancouver Sun, 5-1-09)

• Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (Clay Shirky)

• The Newspaper Suicide Pact (Xark 6-3-09, on "paid content")

• Over 60, and Proud to Join the Digerati (James R. Gaines, Preoccupations, NY Times 11-28-09)

**• The Price of Truth (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones, Sept/​Oct 2009). "The old model, where journalism was heavily subsidized by advertising, is over. The recession has made the divorce faster and more acrimonious, but the knives were already out. And online advertising is turning out to be a harsh mistress....Sure, information wants to be free. Alas, it's not....Reporting takes money." A concise summary of the issues.

• Priced to Sell: Is free the future? Malcolm Gladwell's review in the New Yorker of
Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. See also $0.00, Virginia Postrel's review of the book in the NYTBook Review.

• The Printed Blog ("Publisher Rethinks the Daily" by Claire Cain Miller, NY Times)

• Spackman of Times Online, UK, speaks of interweaving journalism and search optimization, counsels against becoming a "traffic tart" (Martin Stabe, Press Gazette, UK)

• StreetVibes: Advocating Justice, Building Community (Gregory Flannery on a newspaper with a sense of purpose)

• Talk Radio Gets Angrier as Its Revenues Drop (FrumForum on radio hosts who believe that anger is their only path to survival)

• TimeSelect Content Freed (Holly M. Sanders, New York Post)

• True/​Slant: Angling for News Sponsors Howard Kurtz, Media Notes, Washington Post 6-8-09)

• True/​Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism (Walt Mossberg,WSJ, Personal Technology, 4-8-09)

• United, Newspapers May Stand (David Carr, The Media Equation, NY Times 3-8-09)

• Urgent Deadline for Newspapers: Find a New Business Plan before You Vanish (Knowledge@​Wharton Strategic Management Research Article - Requires free membership)

• End Times:Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism? (Michael Hirschorn, The Atlantic, January-February 2009) and End Times: A Response from the Times

• U.S. bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers (Reuters, 3-4-09, on allowing newspapers to become nonprofits)

• Web Sites That Dig for News Rise as Watchdogs (Richard Pιrez-Peρa, NYTimes, 11-17-09, onVoiceofSanDiego.org

• Storyful, a startup that started filtering videoclips about the turmoil in Egypt, is partnering with YouTube's CitizenTube, YouTube’s news and politics channel, in an experiment in teamwork to "curate" the news knowledgeably. Read Storyful Now: Egypt in Revolt (Nieman Journalism Lab, 2-4-11)

• Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004 Tom Windsor, Nieman Journalism Lab, 2-10-09

• Why Obama should stiff-arm "save the newspapers" legislation Jack Shafer, Slate, on Saving Newspapers From Their Saviours, 9-21-09)

• Why iTunes is not a workable model for the newspaper business (Clay Shirky)

• Why Small Payments Won’t Save Publishers (Clay Shirky)

• Why the End of Newspapers Is Not the End of News (Larry Kramer, The Daily Beast)

• You Can't Sell News By the Slice (Michael Kinsley, NY Times opinion page, 2-9-09)

---

[Go Top]

Is Free the Future?
"At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress about negotiations he’d just had with the online retailer Amazon. The idea was to license his newspaper’s content to the Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader. 'They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue,' Moroney testified. 'I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device.' The idea was that if a Kindle subscription to the Dallas Morning News cost ten dollars a month, seven dollars of that belonged to Amazon, the provider of the gadget on which the news was read, and just three dollars belonged to the newspaper, the provider of an expensive and ever-changing variety of editorial content. The people at Amazon valued the newspaper’s contribution so little, in fact, that they felt they ought then to be able to license it to anyone else they wanted. Another witness at the hearing, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said that she thought the Kindle could provide a business model to save the beleaguered newspaper industry. Moroney disagreed. 'I get thirty per cent and they get the right to license my content to any portable device—not just ones made by Amazon?' He was incredulous. 'That, to me, is not a model.; "
~ by Malcolm Gladwell, Priced to Sell: "Is Free the Future?" in the New Yorker

---

[Go Top]