“Twitter did/did not break news” is the new “bloggers vs journalists” I tweeted today that “Twitter did/did not break news” is the new “bloggers vs journalists” - a tired old trope that gets periodically trotted out.
It was this dreary ReadWriteWeb piece about the origins of news of Whitney Houston’s death that provoked it. Why Bloggers Should Self-Publish. How newspapers are faring: A little local difficulty. Social media: The people formerly known as the audience. THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT Barack Obama would shortly appear on television came late in the evening on May 1st.
“POTUS to address the nation tonight at 10.30pm eastern time,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, communications director at the White House. This caused an explosion of speculation on Twitter. Had Muammar Qaddafi been killed in an air strike? Had Osama bin Laden been tracked down at last? At first these two theories had roughly equal support, measured by the volume of tweets. His message quickly rippled across Twitter. The next day a picture that purported to show bin Laden's bloodied face began to circulate online, but on Twitter it was swiftly exposed as a fake. Surveys in Britain and America suggest that 7-9% of the population use Twitter, compared with almost 50% for Facebook. Thanks to the rise of social media, news is no longer gathered exclusively by reporters and turned into a story but emerges from an ecosystem in which journalists, sources, readers and viewers exchange information. WikiLeaks and other newcomers: Julian Assange and the new wave. Impartiality: The Foxification of news.
The end of mass media: Coming full circle. Why We Need the New News Environment to be Chaotic. The business environment for newspapers continues to be grim.
Pew recently reported that advertising revenue rebounded in 2010 for all forms of media, except newspapers. * This might just be a matter of transitioning from print to digital revenues but for the fact that the market values a print reader far more than a digital one. The more or less official label for this problem is “analog dollars to digital dimes”; because of the enormous difference in assumed value per reader, lost value from print is not made up for by gains in digital readership.
The ‘analog dollars to digital dimes’ problem doesn’t actually seem to be a problem. It seems to be a feature of reality. Digital revenue per head is not replacing lost print revenue and, barring some astonishment in the advertising market, it never will. Seeing this, several people have started looking for ways to exit that market. One proposed response is to radically reform newspapers as both organizations and businesses.
CNN's Washington Bureau Chief On How The Network Grew To Love Twitter. Information’s triumph? Three ways TechCrunch challenges ideas of journalism. Press Office - Richard Sambrook Poliak lecture. Advanced twitter for journos. Heron: “I think my job will probably not exist in five years.” Is the most up-and-coming job in journalism — the social media editor — a permanent position at news outlets, or a transitional role?
Transparency is the new objectivity. Could a free Kindle be the final death knell for print newspapers? It’s easy to imagine that some day, in the not too distant future, paper distribution of news will become obsolete.
It seems that in most concept videos about consumer electronics in the future, a person is featured sitting at a kitchen table, coffee in hand, swiping through the morning’s news on a transparent, flexible display. On the Media: Will computer tablets help save newspapers? Cash registers should be whirring happily this holiday season with sales of Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle Fire and other computer tablets.
If the wave of buyers behave anything like those who went before, they'll be spending a lot of time on their new gadgets following the news. But how best to capture, and profit from, the latest digital phenomenon? Most news companies have placed their bets on building customized tablet applications. Remold your content, produce catchy tablet-specific features and a new generation of readers and advertisers will follow.
Picking the right tool for the journalism job. If you’re not familiar with the monthly Carnival of Journalism, it’s worth knowing about because it plugs you into a conversation amongst other journalists.
The topic for October’s Carnival was about how to choose the digital tools and platforms. Newspapers Becoming Video-Centric as Visitors Learn to Watch. Newspaper ad sales head to new low: $24B. Newspaper advertising sales this year will come in at less than half the record $49.4 billion achieved as recently in 2005, according to an analysis of the year-to-date performance of the industry.
Why We Should Stop Asking Whether Bloggers Are Journalists - Technology. In the rush to defend blogs as a medium of journalism, we ask the wrong questions about what press freedom seeks to protect Last week, a federal judge ruled that Crystal Cox, a blogger in Montana, owed $2.5 million to an Oregon lawyer and his company, Obsidian Finance Group.
The judge ruled that as a blogger not employed by a media organization, Cox was not protected by Oregon's state shield law that gives privilege to journalists from these sorts of lawsuits. In his decision, Judge Marco Hernandez went out of his way to say that Cox does not count as a journalist (later deciding that it didn't matter): First, although defendant is a self-proclaimed "investigative blogger" and defines herself as "media," the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cabletelevision system.
After Crystal Cox Verdict, It's Time to Define Who Is a Journalist. Last month, the Crystal Cox verdict re-energized a debate among journalism’s most passionate and articulate thought leaders and professionals by begging the question: Who is a journalist?
Just about anyone with a laptop or cell phone can use free technology to create quality media and reach audiences larger than any newspaper or television network.