About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
“ebook” is shorthand for at least 3 different file formats: PDF (you’re likely familiar with this one), it’s been around for 10+ years and almost all devices and browsers can render a PDF. Publishers have a great deal of presentation control in a PDF but PDF renderers on mobile devices aren’t very sophisticated – making …
Continue reading “Intro to eBooks for Journalists and News Publishers”
Dave Winer asks “…how long before the money jumps the gap and Twitter buys a struggling news organization.” If we say Facebook needs to buy Sony for the entertainment capture, promotion, and distribution synergies. Then who’s a likely acquisition target for Twitter? How about a small and medium market newspaper company like Media General? Makes …
Continue reading ““How long before Twitter carries exclusive content.””
“The newspaper’s value is in explaining a story in detail, rather than the bare headline, and putting it in a context. It’s also in choosing what to report and write about. By only including what they believe is important and worth knowing about, they make it manageable for readers to comprehend the totality of a …
“For the readers, old habits are not the same as current loyalty. For the advertisers, previous convenience does not translate into planned commitment. For the papers, historical longevity does not imply future resilience.” – Clay Shirky
“By selling access to potentially market-moving stories — some of which would theoretically also have a public-policy element or some other broader social value to them — the NYT would be sacrificing (in some sense at least) its commitment to readers and public journalism in return for subscription revenue from stock traders.” – Matthew Ingram, …
The following brought great joy, optimism, and purpose to my morning: “Journalism itself is becoming obsolete….I happen to think journalism was a response to publishing being expensive. It cost a lot of money to push bits around the net before there was a net. They had to have huge capital-intensive printing plants, fleets of trucks …
This morning, staring at the messed up stack of folded broadsheets, I felt bold and broached the subject. “Honey, I’d like to rethink our subscription to the Sunday paper.” After an expectedly tense moment, she replies. “What’s the problem with me perusing a few weekly ads maybe reading the comics. It’s not an extravagant expense.” …
As if I didn’t have enough reasons to grumble at the STrib – a reporter doesn’t credit their sources. Coincidentally, on a story covering questionable ethics. “Come on, Jackie. You called me about this on Thursday afternoon. We discussed the story, I pointed you to sources where you could find more info, including the email …
Continue reading “RE: Blogger Sees Red Over StarTribune’s Lack of Citation”
Reading the Strib’s Business section yesterday, I was reminded of Sesame Street’s “One of these things is not like the other” sketch. Here’s the story, can you guess which one doesn’t belong? “Grounds for worry: Trouble’s brewing in the economy, if the news from the nation’s biggest coffee chains is any indication. No. 2 player …
Continue reading “Strib: Off-Topic, Uncredited, Fear-fanning, Ads”
Every couple of years, the idea of delivering a frozen PDF instead of a living, breathing website hits my radar 1. This is the first time it hit’s this close to home. “Presumably, you’ll now be able to pay a premium to have a format that less searchable, doesn’t get corrected or updated the same …