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Jeff Beckham › Comments
Texas Tribune eliminates general manager position; job carried a reported $115k salary http://www.bizjournals.com/austin...
So Even Smith has turned his editorial eye toward the Web? Interesting
- stefan smagula
from IM
Yes - this summer he left Texas Monthly for this new venture (http://www.texastribune.org). They've been doing a fantastic job and it's been fascinating to watch. Here's this summer's story about the startup: http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
- Jeff Beckham
Some prep notes for items we may want to discuss on Rebooting the News #24; suggestions welcome of course.
ReadWriteWeb: WordPress Just Made Millions of Blogs Real-Time With RSSCloud http://jr.ly/jh8k
- Jay Rosen
@thegarbagegirl set out yesterday to report on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch http://jr.ly/jceg
- Jay Rosen
BrianStelter, one of the most web aware reporters at the New York Times... "My blog post about 'GMA' http://bit.ly/djbpT is the 1st draft of a bigger story. So please comment, annotate it, ask questions, poke holes!" We're already using the new system.
- Jay Rosen
The backstory button and syndicated explainers... The need for them is clear: when 55% of all coverage of health care reform has been about the political fight. Plus we know TAL is doing a show on it.
- Jay Rosen
Oooh! I like the term, "backstory button" very well. Jay, you are a champion coiner of terms.
- Amyloo
The German Internet Manifesto http://www.internet-manifesto.org/ which proves that rebooting the news is an international phenomenon
- Jay Rosen
We discussed all these items except for the Stelter one.
- Jay Rosen
I'm a url shortening geek too, and I enjoyed the discussion on this episode :-)
- Brian Hendrickson
Peter Clark over at his Online Journalism Blog shows that Gawker is offering a personalized news experience. This looks similar to a personalized/custom lineup of news that Dave once proposed on scripting.com, but I can't find it right now. I'd be interested to hear what Dave thinks of this latest development. http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2009...
- Jeff Beckham
We don't say "Emailer James Fallows," even though he uses email. Eventually, it will be the same with the term "blogger." http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbow...
paul baker, Dave Martin, Alberto Saavedra and 2 other people liked this
As usual, Jay is sitting under "the plam at the edge of the (collective) mind".
- frankiecarl
from email
In the same way, we won't say "Armstrong tweeted". Just "said" or "wrote".
- Jeff Beckham
I agree with that, Jeff.
- Jay Rosen
Matt Yglesias picks up on this http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archive... That seems about right. One thing you see even within the smaller universe of the “netroots” is that at each annual Yearly Kos / Netroots Nation convention there’s larger and larger amounts of divergence between what people are doing. Some of the folks who are newer to the game don’t...
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- Jay Rosen
All I hear about is how cool SXSW is. So I went ahead and proposed a panel on Community Funded Reporting: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas...
Antonella, anna sauce and Jeff Beckham liked this
Sounds great, David. Along those same lines, I've proposed one on citizen journalism and one on the economics of freelance writing: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas... and http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas...
- Jeff Beckham
good morning, campers! $100 for Tom Tom iPhone app??! Good luck selling that!
Jeff Beckham and Alan Ashley liked this
That was my "good news, bad news" story from yesterday. Good news, there's a Tom Tom app for the iPhone; bad news, it's $100!
- Jeff Beckham
I think the $100 price is much better than paying $12 a month. My question is whether or not Tom Tom will also charge for map updates? If I did not already have GPS Nav in my car I would probably buy this.
- Donald Forth
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed???? WTF? - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Steven Perez, Mrsth, Joe Dawson and 71 other people liked this
Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.
- Thomas Hawk
from Bookmarklet
No.
- Yolanda
anyone think this is true?
- Thomas Hawk
wah!? The timing would be interesting for me because I just had a big "discussion" with a friend last week about how I won't join Facebook because it's not open like FriendFeed.
- Ben Reierson
What.
- joey
please GOD No!!!!
- Edgar Rodríguez
What?!?!
- Kevin Whalen
hrm.
- michael sean wright
Crazy.
- Eric Florenzano
Noo... please... don't let this be true!
- Hector
To publish this and it not be true would be bad.
- Kevin Whalen
I wonder if this means that photos of nursing women won't be allowed on FriendFeed anymore.
- Thomas Hawk
Acquiring them as their R&D lab?
- mikepk
any guesses on the price? Anything less than $100 million would mean that they sold it for too little.
- Thomas Hawk
Boom! Direct shot to Twitter.
- Jeff Beckham
Holy Fucking Cow. I don't want this.
- Zio Bonino
Assuming it's true.... why would it happen?
- Ryan - @magicofpi
I thought Google was going to acquire FF
- Francine Hardaway
Not giving hits to the Techcrunch asshole, will wait for a responsible media outlet to cover
- Gabriel
Well considering FriendFeed had investment rounds aroung $5m (If I remember correctly) a 20x return would put it around 100m, so that would be a good guess.
- mikepk
WTF!
- Carlos Ayala
If it's not true TechCrunch is not going to look good here.
- Thomas Hawk
don't know if this is good or bad. i hate using facebook.
- Dusty Edenfield
Screw You Arrington!! LOL
- Edgar Rodríguez
If true this can't be good (at least not for FF users).
- Brian Sullivan
daaaaamn
- Tsega Dinka
So what does this really mean?
- Michelle
I hope this is not true and Arrington dives in his own shit. (though it's kinda suspect that the friendfeeders haven't commented yet).
- Zio Bonino
well if this is true, it'll be time to move on. i'll be able to concentrate on some of my projects, thats for sure.
- Carlos Ayala
Oh god, please, no!
- James Myatt
Arrington is definitely not the most trustworthy person in the world, but we'll see
- Lawrence Oluyede
No!
- Niki Costantini
i trully hope not :-((
- Del_
Well, so they bought they R&D department. Was about time.
- Lars Trieloff
:(
- ӊooқ
please keep the platforms separate. wow!
- Stuart Miniman
Curious why so many think this would be such a bad thing?
- Tsega Dinka
Not liking the sound of this so far... Hopefully it won't turn out like the Yahoo - Flickr marriage!
- Jeff P. Henderson
Yahoo Flickr wasn't bad IMO
- LANjackal
This is horrible news.... I can't believe they'd do this
- Matthew DeVries
Maybe I don't know enough about FF, but what is everyone so bummed about?
- Katie Wynne
I think some think that it's a bad idea Tsega because FF represents a *vastly* superior content platform than Facebook and some might be concerned that Facebook would end up killing FF as we know it and trying to assimilate us all into their inferior product.
- Thomas Hawk
You nailed it, Thomas.
- Zio Bonino
there was no "long run" to save FF from financially. It's Founders are loaded. They had the luxury of ample financial backing to run it for a long, long time. It will be interesting to see their reasoning on why they did this if in fact it is true.
- Thomas Hawk
For me, FF and FB have two separate purposes: FB is for communicating with my IRL friends and FF is for consuming and sharing content with everyone else, but then I've been on FB since it was select universities only, so maybe I have an outdated opinion of what FB is. They need to keep both products.
- James Myatt
OMG this is terrible :(
- Ale♫nastrorosa
Also, FB is blocked at work, but FF isn't.
- James Myatt
+1 James
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Thomas: I see where you're coming from. To me though, if anything, this will make facebook a better product over all and hopefully FF will remain what it is with more FB integration.
- Tsega Dinka
once upon a time it was "don't be evil"..
- Cristian Conti
Seriously, Is this true? OMG this would be the worst thing ever!!! This is a joke RIGHT??!!
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
chances are FF will be nuked. There's not much in it for Facebook to run two separate networks. The wording that Bret chose to use on the blog pretty much paints that case in my opinion. FF is worth so much more for it's potential than for it's users and I think Facebook wouldn't care if they lost 100% of the current users if they get unfettered access to implement the best tech ideas into their current product.
- Thomas Hawk
Jannifer, I wish it were. But it is true. You can read Brett's post here: http://ff.im/6pFNz
- Dilip Dand
crazy crazy stuff.
- Zac Bowling
yeah, the phrase "for the time being" is a scary one.
- Ryan - @magicofpi
As in, "Friendfeed will continue to operate for the time being."
- Ryan - @magicofpi
The team will probably be locked into a 2 year employment with Facebook while their equity fully vests and then will end up jumping ship. This acquisition will likely make Facebook a little bit better, but we probably lose FF in the process which is too bad.
- Thomas Hawk
I was kinda hopin FriendFeed would open source some of their sauce but I guess now that's even less of a probability.
- matthew john ernisse
I don't have a good feeling about this. :-( Why have two services with so many overlaps. FF will be integrated into FB in the long term.
- Kol Tregaskes
Why is the worse company the ones in charge, that is where I'm just freakin baffled. Friendfeed is a better freakin product.....
- Matthew DeVries
gee, i step away from my desk for an hour and all heck breaks loose
- Imabug
you'd better delete any content (photos for instance) you posted in your feed that you don't want FB to own when they get their claws in.
- Joe Silence is silent
Matthew: FB had the $$$.
- Joe Silence is silent
When I look at how I used FB and how I use FF (which I am still new to) FBs purchase would actually suck in my world. I only use FB to keep up with my fam and friends and I don't do that very well because I loathe the interface. FF is fresh for a newer user like me. Adds a lot of value in terms of the knowledge sharing that goes on here. To think that this service would get sucked up by...
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- Michelle
Agree with many of the comments on here. I'm concerned Facebook will basically just take all of FriendFeed's great properties and fold it in the large kingdom that is Facebook. A great service, FriendFeed may just become FB's Twitter. (Funny, too, that we're mourning the potential demise of FriendFeed on FriendFeed. Kind of like the newspaper biz writing 1000s of articles about its own demise in its papers.
- Keith Trivitt
But all my extended family is on FaceBook! Where do I hide now?
- Ted Gilchrist
Keith - well, now we know what happens when Facebook gets jealous...
- Ryan - @magicofpi
Doc Searls Weblog · Are newspapers a larval stage? - http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc...
Jeff Beckham and Bora Zivkovic liked this
I thought Doc's post was a terrific complement to Umair Haque's The Nichepaper Manifesto - http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque...
- Jeff Beckham
@willhampton Exactly. Without Levy and Smith at the top of the masthead, it'll be interesting to see how Texas Monthly evolves.
Interesting, good? or just interesting? Pretty signifcant names missing from the masthead.
- Rex Hammock
I'd say interesting good. No doubt they lose a lot of identity with those two gone, but they've got a lot of great folks over there and this could be an opportunity to evolve.
- Jeff Beckham
Is there anything that data can't do? NYT: Seeking a Way to Predict Baseball Injuries (http://www.nytimes.com/2009...)
"The ability to predict how players’ bodies will fare is a holy grail. With an actuarial approach, Conte seems to have a head start in the pursuit. He is trying to give teams a competitive advantage with a formula to help them avoid players who spend their days in the training room and not on the field."
- Jeff Beckham
I don't have an iPhone nor Blackberry, what are the best Twitter clients for each?
Ubertwitter for Blackberry. Love it!
- Lorenzo Strambi
I use UberTwitter for the BB and TweetDeck and Twittelator on the iPhone
- Steven Ehrlich
So, what phone do you have?
- Nitin Nanivadekar
TwitterBerry for BlackBerry is great! Tweetie is good as well... just started to use TweetDeck... much better
- dave
Tweetdeck for iPhone
- Jeff Beckham
Twitterfon and Tweetdeck for Iphone , on the BB side UBertwitter
- johnpiercy
Twitterberry for the Blackberry. Tweed is great for the Pre.
- Nation Hahn
Tweetdeck for the iPhone and I have heard great things about tweetgenius for the BB. On S60 Gravity is a killer app ...
- Jonathan Greene
from iPhone
I've used both and feel that Ubertwitter is a more full-featured client than Twitterberry for BBs. It's UI is cleaner and it's the more robust of the two. TweetGenius is a client developed by BGR's team. It's supposed to be very pretty but I've heard complaints that it's slow.
- Bryan Zirkel
didn't you forget anything? I use twitdroid on Android ;)
- Markingegno - Donato
http://mashable.com/2009... <-- TweetDeck for iPhone will be FREE: smart move!
Thomas Power, Martin Bryant, Tammi and 8 other people liked this
Looking forward to this application
- joebrooks
I'm surprised by "free" I was thinkin 99 cents because millions would still pay 99 cents if the app is awesome.
- Adam Jackson
love to know how they are going to make money... I don't buy the theme idea
- Paul Kinlan
they plan on making money by investments - same with twitter.
- joebrooks
hopefully it'll be less of a mobile phone memory hog than the desktop version.
- George Dearing
do investors not want a return.... the difference with twitter is that they are becoming an indispensable, whilst a client app isn't... I always try to do the analogy: Twitter is to SMS as Tweetdeck is to a mobile phone... there are thousands of different mobile phones.
- Paul Kinlan
And yet there is a lot of money in mobile phones :)
- Chris Saad
That's great news. I bet they become the top Twitter iPhone app right away.
- Jeff Beckham
Granted there are lots of mobile phones, but the consumer always pays for the phone
- Paul Kinlan
The app looks awesome. The mobile/desktop sync will be fantastic for heavy twitter users.
- Michael Barber
I might even try this. (I hate tweeting on the iPhone!)
- ZuDfunck
This is something I want to talk about on the next Rebooting the News: http://www.danielbachhuber.com/2009... It's a good direction. The post is by a listener to the podcast, by the way. I think newsroom-as-cafe and the cafe-based news organization have possibilities....
keith feighery, metalerik, Josette Torres and 2 other people liked this
There's your inberkeley.com, @davewiner Not another newsblog but a cafe. A cafe-based news organization http://twitter.com/jayrose...
- Jay Rosen
Media companies should open coffee shops http://wemediaguru.com/2008... and New York Times, A Latte With Journalism on the Side http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
- Jay Rosen
David Cohn: Journalism Business Idea - the Newsroom Cafe http://www.digidave.org/2009...
- Jay Rosen
what I would do if I bought a newspaper (2005) http://blackrimglasses.com/archive...
- Jay Rosen
When I read the piece I thought what a great idea. And too bad the Knight award apps are already in, cause that would be exactly the kind of project they should fund as a pilot. Could easily turn into a national chain. I have a feeling this kind of thing was important in the bootstrapping of newspapers orginally??
- Dave Winer
yeah, major arrows back to the origins of modern news and even "public opinion" in the coffee houses of the eighteeenth century.
- Jay Rosen
I think it would be fun and interesting just to imagine inberkeley.com--or any local news site-- as a cafe. Let's give her a going over on Rebooting the News!
- Jay Rosen
Looking forward to the perspective from the wise gurus of journalism and technology :)
- Daniel Bachhuber
Another interesting thing about the old London coffee houses was that commerce was mixed in with the news. Merchants had permanent booths in some of the houses.
- Amyloo
A similar theme runs through Steven Johnson's newest book, The Invention of Air: http://www.amazon.com/Inventi...
- Jeff Beckham
I see a connection between the fishing village metaphor, the coffee shop in that fishing village, and the analog bloggers: http://www.neatorama.com/2009...
- Bora Zivkovic
Techies plan California-style java jolt "Why isn’t there a relaxed place here where people can hang out, plug in and talk tech?..." http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston...
- Jay Rosen
Here's the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages... As Dave says, it could be a chain. Specifically (says me, a former franchise consultant) as a franchise -- centrally controlled for consistency and buying power, but locally owned. Hook the locations together so it's a conferencing network, too.
- Amyloo
Thanks, amy! Interesting. Also interesting to me: when I discussed this a bit on Twitter, old school journalists just immediately assumed I meant taking the kind of newsroom that they know and turning that into a cafe.
- Jay Rosen
Looking at Listening Platforms. Got a favorite?
Here are three that we've looked at for big jobs: Radian6, Visible Technologies, and Collective Intellect.
- Jeff Beckham
Thanks for the reference Jeff.
- Mike Spataro
In Rebooting the News #10 I argue that journalism needs a bug catching culture, like in software http://www.niemanlab.org/2009...
Ken Kennedy, guruvan (Rob Nelson), Susan Beebe and 2 other people liked this
So let's get practical. What does a bug tracker for a newsroom look like?
- Ryan Sholin
Well, to start with you have bug reports, a system for deciding which ones really are bugs (and which are features) and for figuring out whether a given bug has been reported already, then a kind of schedule or spreadsheet for unfixed bugs that tracks progress in correcting them... Compare to http://is.gd/F08k But there can't be a separation between "system" and "attitude," Ryan. The attitude that people who help us catch bugs are helping us do our job is just as important as a working system, isn't it?
- Jay Rosen
Scott Rosenberg (@scottros) submitted a bug reporting and tracking service for the Knight News Challenge last year (http://www.wordyard.com/2008...). His link to the Knight site no longer works, but perhaps Scott can share some details of his idea here.
- Jeff Beckham
Agree that it's not just systems but attitudes that have to change. Media critics are awfully easy for news orgs to dismiss as simply "opponents with a bias" or "scolds" who don't understand the business. To change attitudes and behavior, we need carrots and sticks. Here's something that might help - other news orgs willing to write stories about failure to catch and deal with bugs --...
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- nadezhda
Give me a system designed for the purpose, and I can change attitudes. ;)
- Ryan Sholin
Okay, I can see that working too. I had another idea. Maybe the initial cut has to be, "is this a legitimate bug?" i.e., a flaw in what we reported, or "is this a legitimate complaint?" i.e. an argument with something we reported, but sent to us as a request for correction. Third category: this is spam, a campaign aimed at us. It's likely that the success of the bug catching system is related to the success of the "this person has a legitimate complaint" system. Solving one without the other make sense?
- Jay Rosen
I think there's more to it than the negative feedback of "bug" or "complaint," although those are certainly common reactions to stories published by news organizations. How would you categorize "did you know" and "let me tell you about..." ? Are those bug reports, complaints, pitches, or ? And how would you keep track of which "readers" provided bugs, complaints, pitches, or ?
- Ryan Sholin
Of course there is more to it. But... bugs reports, complaints, suggestions (tips) and spam would cover most cases, but maybe not all. One way you could begin to track the reliability of readers' reports would be to compare their self-categorizations (is this a correction? or a complaint?) with how those reports were ultimately classified when they were looked at. But let me say in advance: there's more to it than this!
- Jay Rosen
Bugs have to be reproduceable - what is the journalistic equivalent there? If you can determine who submits reproduceable bugs you can then determine the reliability of the reporting person, and deal with reporting bias. I would presume that a journalistic equivalent of a bug, is a factual error. So you have to have some means of determining facts /without error/. This seems a difficult...
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- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
So let's assess the current status of this sort of "bug report / feature request" space at news organizations: 1) A comment thread on a story houses some of this, usually in a disorganized, sometimes anonymous manner, where the signal to noise ratio for both the reporter and the reader is low. 2) A direct e-mail link on the reporter's byline, or an e-mail address listed or linked in a...
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- Ryan Sholin
I am pretty sure Scott Rosenberg included some of this in his Knight News Challenge proposal to develop a bug catching system for news. Unfortunately, it is not accessible while the Challenge is still being judged.
- Jay Rosen
I'm looking forward to talking with Scott in a few weeks in Cambridge. In the meantime, we just launched a Collaborative Reporting tool at Publish2 that goes a long way toward creating a system for gathering data from readers in a useful way. Check it out: http://bit.ly/P2CRTools
- Ryan Sholin
Source of inspiration: I.F. Stone. From The Economist: "he founded I.F. Stone’s Weekly, a muck-raking journal describes as the longest essay in single-handed journalism in American history. It came out for 19 years, ran to 3.5m words and hit a peak circulation of 70,000 that included just about everybody who mattered in Washington, DC."...
Well, I guess this will have to come up next 'cast: I am now on the suggested users list for Twitter,
Josette Torres, Jeff Beckham and americanm liked this
See http://twitter.com/harrisj... "Wondering if @davewiner will now question the impartiality of @jayrosen_nyu now that the latter is on Twitter's suggested list."
- Jay Rosen
Jay -- the question is what are you going to do.
- Dave Winer
Re Harris: I wasn't a party to this. What I think obviously is unimportant to anyone but me.
- Dave Winer
Huh? You lost me. What do you mean?
- Jay Rosen
What are you going to do?
- Dave Winer
Do you think it was a result of being included in "The Twitter Approval Matrix" from New York magazine? http://nymag.com/arts...
- Jeff Beckham
Yes, that clarifies. It's gotta be that New York Magazine thing, Jeff. The developers at the New York Times enjoy making fun of me, not just Harris, but including him. They send a lot of hostility out.
- Jay Rosen
Bora asks, "So, what's the line-up of topics for tonight?" Re-booting the News, part seven. Some ideas and links below...Suggestions permitted? But of course!
The Four Minute Men and the difference between "technology" and "cultural form," a distinction I learned from Raymond Williams, a pre-Web thinker who is also a source of inspiration.
- Jay Rosen
We should continue going right at what the re-booted system of news might look like and try to describe parts of it-- as against looking back at curmudgeon complaints, baby-sitting some journalists who don't get it, stupid press tricks and the like.
- Jay Rosen
Jon Postel -- a source of inspiration. via Dave http://tr.im/jKDP
- Jay Rosen
We might find a way of building on our discussion of the Boston mayor's race and how to game out a system for covering it, or any other huge sprawling, ongoing story.
- Jay Rosen
I'm not sure I totally understand these two posts from Dave on Twitter and what it's becoming (a media powerhouse, he says) so I may want to ask him about that. Why there will be many Twitters http://tr.im/jKFj and The Next Killer App is to Twitter as 1-2-3 was to Visicalc http://tr.im/jKFy
- Jay Rosen
There were some posts vehemently disagreeing with Dave about Twitter. I am agnostic, but perhaps Dave can explain what is the core of the disagreement.
- Bora Zivkovic
I think there is more heat than light in the online discussions of the role of Editors. I am myself guilty of bashing editors in my screeds, and I got nicely chastised in this piece: http://quichemoraine.com/2009... Perhaps the role of editors in New Journalism can be a topic this or next week?
- Bora Zivkovic
And perhaps the DC corps' complaints about Obama's lack of transparency - to them: http://scienceblogs.com/clock...
- Bora Zivkovic
“Topic Suggestion: How can the communication form of Twitter help raise awareness of truly important issues? Can 140 characters express the urgency of issues that are real, imminent threats to civilization? --> http://tr.im/jKOa”
- Joseph Palmer
I'd like to see a mention of Umair Haque's post this week about NYTimes and Twitter. Most people seemed to focus on "why NYT should acquire Twitter" and missed his excellent points on distribution, context, capital and experimentation.
- Jeff Beckham
Listening to the latest podcast, guys, enjoying it. Let's start talking about the existing tools that Edison Carter has at hand, today right now, OK?
MaryAnn Chick Whiteside liked this
Live streaming video from a mobile device: qik.com, plus more complicated versions involving a laptop, wireless card, and camera like mogulus.com.
- Ryan Sholin
Twitter as a networked reporting tool: A way to ask readers questions, get answers, run instant polls. (And how would Dave's idea of news organizations having "their own twitters" build on that?)
- Ryan Sholin
More to add here (no one else wants to play?): Publish2 as a quick way to share a stream of relevant and related links and content with readers/viewers.
- Ryan Sholin
I've been thinking about how a site like EveryBlock fits into a new set of tools. Perhaps as a way to access what's new now at a particular location.
- Jeff Beckham
Good idea, Ryan.
- Jay Rosen
Cover it Live to easily publish live updates from events
- Jay Rosen
I'm trying to open up my reporting process (posting notes, drafts, ideas, etc. before publication) but struggling to pick the best applications to make it happen. For now, I've settled on wikispaces, and I'll see how it feels this weekend. But there isn't an optimal tool for creating an online representation of the reporter's notebook or the newsroom. Part of the problem is I'm not sure what exactly I'm imagining. Anyway, I'll report back on how it goes with the wiki.
- Zach Seward
Zach: My version at Friend Feed for a post still in the gathering stage http://tr.im/j9ca Not ideal system, just what I am using now. By the way, EVERY time I have talked to reporters about something like an "open notebook" system (and I mean every time) they have said they wouldn't want competitors to know what they're reporting on. I offer no comment on that reaction, just reporting it.
- Jay Rosen
Umair Haque: How to Save Newspapers (Or, Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter) - http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque...
From a practical standpoint, they can't (not enough money to buy Twitter), but Umair deftly lays out four capabilities that will save newspapers: viral distribution, context, relational capital, and business model experimentation.
- Jeff Beckham
Thanks, Jeff. I 'cast that one.
- Jay Rosen
I enjoyed the read... but I had to disagree mostly. Here's my response: http://bit.ly/10wqXt
- David Muir
You made good points on your post, David. It's too late for the NYT to buy Twitter, of course, but not too late to explore the new ways of distribution and experimentation a micropublishing tool offers.
- Jeff Beckham
How to Save Newspapers (Or, Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter) - http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque...
Four qualities that new news organizations should acquire: viral disribution, context, relational capital, and business model experimentation.
- Jeff Beckham
“John Kerry is an idiot: claims death of newspapers is a threat to democracy. A variant of "too big to fail." http://tr.im/jhZZ” - http://friendfeed.com/e...
To borrow a line from a recent episode of Fresh Air, maybe "too big to fail" also means "too big to exist" (in their current form).
- Jeff Beckham
Here's the podcast. - http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot0...
Daniel Bachhuber, Daniel Langendorf, americanm and 3 other people liked this
Topics...Winer's visit to the Nieman Lab folks; whether we should have sympathy for journalists; the 10 or 11 tech re-boots Dave had had to go through (vs 1.5 for journalists); the radically unequal experience Oprah and her viewers will have on Twitte; Jay's "forced migration for the press tribe" image; how to jump into the new news system without being weighed down by "how is the...
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- Jay Rosen
Best line, in my view, is Dave's, "Journalism's responsibility is to keep its own downfall in perspective."
- Jay Rosen
I'm kinda partial to "he had a huge audience, so they really couldn't f#@# with him." ;) But seriously, this has been a big question in the back of my mind - what happens to journalism without the institutional muscle of big media. But then I remind myself that big media gets slapped around all the time (NYT punting on wiretap story for a year, f.e.), and perhaps a decentralized - but networked - system of smaller players would be harder to intimidate.
- gnarlytrombone
Thanks for giving a detailed description of Max Headroom as I have never seen it before. Seems normal today, but must have been revolutionary vision at the time.
- Bora Zivkovic
Reactions! Blog posts! Like this: http://blog.davidmuir.name/... and Scoble http://tr.im/jeaj and Tim Windsor at Nieman Lab http://www.niemanlab.org/2009...
- Jay Rosen
Dave and Jay: Nice job this week. I just finished listening to the latest. Jay, can you expand a bit on the theme of jumping into the new system of news without being weighed down by "how is Paper X going to make the transition"? I find myself applying the ideas discussed on the podcast to my local paper, but maybe I'm jumping the gun.
- Jeff Beckham
Good work this week. Jay, I'd be interested in hearing a lot more about your assignment database idea. Make that completely transparent and allow community to add ideas to it and take ideas out, and I think you're on to something. More here: http://bit.ly/u9K36
- Daniel Bachhuber
Jeff: What I meant: is a pretty simple point. If we want to start bringing to life a "new system of news," as I called it in the 'cast, one of the first things we should try to do is imagine it working. But we are hampered in that if we keep starting with how to keep the Cleveland Plain Dealer "working" in the unbundled and digital age. In fact saving big metro newspapers is its own problem, which may not even be solvable. We can't allow that to be the only issue or a default starting point.
- Jay Rosen
So I simply recommended other starting points. Max Headroom as prophecy for networked journalism. My description of different pipes, arranged in a different communication pattern, with a different balance of power, different entry points, different mix of participants. Some things different, some things the same: same country, First Amendment, same Cleveland, same problems. If we start with alternative "sources of inspiration," as I called them, then we can look anew at the problems of the Plain Dealer.
- Jay Rosen
Daniel: Thanks for your post. The key to the assignment desk is to start with the ideal, an impossible standard to meet off the bat. "Everything that needs to be covered" if we're going to cover high school football, the mayor's race, development in Mecklenberg Country, really really well. Every "event," every interview. You try to describe that as best you can. Convert that "map" into an assignment desk. Then bring people to the desk to select the assignments they can do.
- Jay Rosen
Daniel and Jeff: That's what I mean by "jumping into" the new system for news. Don't start with replacing a system that was inadequate to begin with. Start with what we would have if we were...uh, perfectly self-informing! That gets you out of Preserving the Plain Car Dealer. Perfect example: can we get ALL the Tuesday night school board meetings? You telling me we can't video them all, and get all of those tapes watched and reported out? Start with the perfect, and back into the pretty good.
- Jay Rosen
Now I see. Thanks, Jay! Can't wait until next week!
- Jeff Beckham
I listened to the 4/12 podcast on the way to work this morning. Good stuff, as usual. I was interested in the discussion about news organizations having trouble bootstrapping and iterating.
Bora Zivkovic liked this
Agree that part of the problem has been the monetary barrier to entry in introducing or changing print products, so they're just not used to doing it. But another part is a sort of arrogance about having to be all-knowing. An authority and power player like the big daily in a city can't be seen as not knowing what to do right out of the box; it would be a sign of weakness to start a beta product and confess that "We don't have this all figured out but we're starting it anyway." The reason this feels true is it's a cousin to the arrogance we already know about from the superior attitude about amateur journalism. It also could be related to Jay's thesis about savviness as the all-important trait for journalists.
- Amyloo
Great speculations. Totally on the right track. We could broaden the cost to try was high to include other kinds of costs: loss of mastery, loss of face, loss of command.
- Jay Rosen
What are some methods for bridging the gap in understanding or trust in today's newsrooms? The folks who have been there a while need to learn to adapt to today's changing environment, but they're also turned off by the quick "you don't get it" attitude of some new media folks.
- Jeff Beckham
Good question. Simplest fix for that is just to do a project together, experienced news people and new media people, and try to make it work. You quickly discover: no one has a complete handle. There's a learning curve for the project that everyone can be on, regardless of how web-centric and new media their starting points are. User feedback comes equally to the savvy and the "I'm still getting comfortable with this" people. Metric are metrics. This is called: pragmatism.
- Jay Rosen
Pragmatism: Dim the lights on the paradigms lost show and try to pull off a successful project. Use the knowledge you need or find the knowledge you lack in order to solve the project''s "little" problems as they arise. Test what you thought was possible by forcing it to meet the threshold of the actually doable.
- Jay Rosen
Jeff, we online types on print-oriented staffs are more reserved about our opinions at work than we are out in the wild. You learn to wait until what makes sense to you starts making sense to everybody else (and it usually does). Also learn to bite your tongue on the told-you-sos.
- Amyloo
Great advice, Jay and Amyloo. I appreciate it!
- Jeff Beckham
★ Obsession Times Voice - http://daringfireball.net/2009...
Mann and Gruber put on a great session at SXSW. If you weren't there, I urge you to listen to this podcast.
- Jeff Beckham
Old Growth Media And The Future Of News - http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2009...
This was the best thing I saw at SXSWi this year. Johnson was fantastic and this essay was the best consolidation of thoughts about the future of news (not necessarily newspapers) that I've read so far.
- Jeff Beckham
The No-Stats All-Star - http://www.nytimes.com/glogin...
From Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, a look at how the Rockets' Shane Battier is one of the rarest commodities in the NBA: an undervalued player.
- Jeff Beckham
SEO At the Enterprise Level–A Major Flop - http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009...
Good overview of some of the challenges facing big companies as they try to tackle the nimble task of SEO
- Jeff Beckham
@ SIIA: Wolff: 'General Print Mags Are Dead'; Best Advice: Stop Letting Google Win - http://www.paidcontent.org/entry...
Wolff is provocative, as always, but his point is accurate: businesses dependent on advertising must find other ways to make money.
- Jeff Beckham
"We are dangerously close to having a government without newspapers" - http://www.poynter.org/column...
Another mention of turning newspapers into nonprofit organizations.
- Jeff Beckham
U.S. News & World Report to launch a digital edition - http://www.poynter.org/column...
This is the wrong way to go. There's no need to replicate the printed format (cover, table of contents) in a digital format. Better to take advantage of what the web offers: go ahead and have a weekly publication, put it online, use links to give context, and still charge for it.
- Jeff Beckham
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