July 2009 Archives

• The Nichepaper Manifesto - an articulate and well argued guide to how niche publishing might looks going forwards. 
• Media as a Hobby is not Sustainable As a Business - you can always rely on Alan to beat the ideas of idealists soundly with the hammer of reality. (Boy, was that a Friday afternoon metaphor)
• Some Thoughts on Local News - Some ruminations from long-time south east London blogger 853 on how hyper-local (ie geographic hyper-niche) journalism might look. 
• Reed New Boy Smith Makes a Big Splash - Some hints here as to what we're focusing on within RBI. 
• Comments Add Value to Newspaper Websites - I've long been ambivalent about adding comments to traditional journalism, but Patrick makes some compelling arguments around how they can really be made to work.
  

Google isn't a tech company, it just gives the appearance of being one (as I've said many times before, it's really in the business of ad sales, like any publisher - it doesn't sell technology).

I have one of those long, ranty blog posts building in me right now.

Most of what obsesses the media is remarkably juvenile, and as the media's fortunes have waned, they have becoming annoyingly shrill in trying to reassert their role in society. Watchdogs? Defenders of democracy? I wish. Mostly of the media operate as little more than professional gossips and hypocritical scolds.

Likewise, iTunes sells a lot of music that you can get for free on the internet, so they're not really selling the music, they're selling the service of getting the music without having to muck about with P2P software and unsure quality.

Legal news reporter, Estates Gazette three years, blogging since May, Twittering since June.

How social media is changing the way I work?

Work output for magazine has decreased as social media consumption has risen - perhaps change when honeymoon period ends.

At opposite ends of the spectrum of human experience, two of the most memorable moments were entering the world of lego dioramas and reading the tweet from @RSylvester that a nasty piece of work in Wichita had been found guilty of murdering his 18-month old daughter.

Remember, the media is not the message.

Hi! I'm Rebecca Froley, deputy web editor of ComputerWeekly.com, and the first of Adam's guest posters this week... Finally... Sorry for posting so late in the day!

How do you learn? It's a question I've been asking myself since last week's lunchtime 'BrainFood' discussion session here at RBI, which touched on the question of how we should be reskilling ourselves, and skilling up new trainees, to meet the needs of our B2B publishing business for the (probably mostly online) future. Especially given cuts to budgets are limiting the amount of traditional training that's available, so 'research, deliver and attend new courses' probably isn't a practical answer...

The BrainFood format, certainly, is one option - for those outside the company, this is a monthly in-house seminar-style group where we get together for an hour to look at a video or some other stimulus to get us thinking and talking about the future of publishing and communications, in a more wide-ranging - and democratic - manner than a traditional corporate training session. For me, this is exactly how I like to learn - through sharing a starting point with others that provides the opportunity for everyone to springboard off into some creative thinking and exploration of their own - and with a bit of a lateral approach.

The video in question this last week was Jeff Jarvis' introduction to journalist training at CUNY (part 1 and part 2 are both on YouTube), and it's worth a watch if you've not seen it already, as it includes a useful list of the kinds of skills (round about 6:42 of part 2 or pictured here), and levels of skill (about 6:20), that Jarvis thinks today's journalists need to acquire.

Sadly, I'm a little too far away to attend CUNY myself to find out exactly how they deliver that essential training (although I'm sure there'll be plenty more of use on their YouTube channel once I get chance to trawl through it). But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe, I'm thinking, we can create our own reading / viewing / exploring list that covers all these basics, right here, right now...

To kick it off, here's my list of stuff that's helped me think about information architecture and the way the web works as a medium, or 'web structure - familiarity' and 'web pages - spec' as Jarvis puts it, during my 10+ years in onscreen/online publishing. Given I prefer the lateral approach, the first couple of suggestions, are, I hope, a little bit offbeat and off-the-job, but might still inspire you as they have me. And with any luck, some of you will share your own suggestions for these and other online journalism essential skills too!

News organisations with specialist skills and knowledge have the opportunity to thrive. The mediocre middle is much more at risk.

Barber said building online platforms that could charge readers on an article-by-article or subscription basis was one of the key challenges facing news organisations.

However, we have known for years that readers will pay for niche services, such as Fantasy Football or crosswords. So what services, what products, what scarce goods can we provide to our regulars, our loyal readers, our community? I'm certain that the answer to our problems lies in the answer to that question.

Hi Adam,

You will be pleased to hear that I am receiving my first back-hander for blogging. As I posted a link to a review about a new book called "[Redacted]", which grew out of a blog about the fictional life of a [redacted], the author has promised me my very own copy if I promise to do my own review for the blog.

I am v pleased.

I could be being terribly naive here, but isn't that called a "review copy" and standard practice? My colleague is going to have to work harder than that before I consider them corrupt. :)

(And yes, Tim, I am aware that I owe you a review of that camping guidebook)

• The Importance of Active Community Management – Proved With Real Data « Social Media Musings by Tom Humbarger
  Some stats to back up the need for active hosts in any online community
  (tags: community communities)
• Is It Journalism or 'Gerbalism'?
  A depressing deconstruction of how too much newspaper publishing as become mediocre and homogenous.
  (tags: journalism newspapers publishing)

Martin Belam, talking about news beyond chronology

From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to liveblogging, there's a tyranny of chronology. Events happen over time with consequences. 

You children, if set homework to study climate change, they'll go to Google and end up on Wikipedia, not any of our news sites. Why does Wikipedia do better? It's not tied to the tyranny of chronology.

Yet, we do put packages together around great stuff. 

Our atom is the story. A national newspaper will have loads of articles about foreign policy, and Cuba and Obama. And you have loads of travelogues, 

"obama foreign policy cuba Venezuela" - produces a search page of articles.

We can do better - break stories down to paragraphs and sentences and then tag them as what they are.

You waste your shot by blaming it on The Mainstream Media instead. When I get to the end of your heroic screed I'm tempted to click the "Comment On This Post" button and ask you to explain what role, precisely, the Kansas City Star played in this hypocrisy and how they benefitted.
"Oh, all those Mainstream Media organizations behave the same way," you counter. Ah. Is that why you won't rent an apartment to one?
Again I say: it's a meaningless term. Look at the state of publishing today. Does this look like an industry that's good at working together on any kind of a common agenda?

One thing is that knowledge is suffering over there. See, here, it is easy to find old blogs. Just go to Google and search. What would you like me to find? Chinese Earthquake? Google has it.
Now, quick, find the first 20 tweets or FriendFeed items about the Chinese Earthquake. It's impossible. I'm an advanced searcher and I can't find them, even using the cool Twitter Search engine.

In the last six months, we've seen uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump 1700%; just since last Friday, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day.