Tag Archives: new media

So you're 17 and want to be a journalist? Do it — you'll love it.

You’re 17 years old. For some reason you’ve decided you want to go to college to learn how to be a journalist. My hat’s off to you — first, for wanting to go to college, and second, for wanting to answer what I still consider to be a calling to public service. Journalists find out […]

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Writing for ‘new media’? The old still serves the new

As profs consider changing the names of their schools of journalism and (mass, strategic, public, etc.) communication, they are hurriedly reshaping writing curricula to reflect changes in the media of information delivery and, more importantly, prospective students’ attitudes that journalism is a dying profession. The instruction of writing in the Age of New Media is […]

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Time for journalism schools to unpack the tension between objectivity, subjectivity

Q: What’s the most effective way to piss off a journalist? A: Lie to her. Result: Moral outrage on her part – followed by determined, disciplined digging into why the lie and who benefits from it. And outrage, being an emotion, often leads to subjective judgments. Finding lies and telling people about them are what […]

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Tracking independent political spending harder since Citizens United

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — striking down bans on independent spending by unions, corporations, and individuals — continues to ripple through American politics, especially at the state level. A new blog — The Money Tale — at the National Institute on Money in State Politics makes this abundantly clear. Writes researcher Anne Bauer: […]

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Hedge funds, sensing profit opportunities, buying distressed newspapers

And now, newspapers’ newest problem: The vultures have descended. Newspapers continue to lose money and advertising – the New York Times Co. reported print ads would decline 5 percent in the third quarter across all its media. But investors are actually buying newspaper properties, often through bankruptcy sales. What gives? Are they vultures just picking […]

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Why science journalism is suffering

There are a number of problems with science journalism today, and they tend to feed on each other. Decades ago, when the newspaper industry had advertising-driven profit margins in the 10-25% range, newspaper companies were bought by conglomerates that wanted those sky-high profits. Advertising revenues have since plummeted largely as a result of web advertising, […]

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Amusing ourselves to death, circa 2010

This is the future – people, translated as data. – Bryce, Network 23 The future has always interested me, even when it scares me to death. I wrote a doctoral dissertation that spent a good deal of time examining our culture’s ideologies of technology and development, for instance (and built some discussion of William Gibson […]

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The Money-Mad Move to Mobile™: It will cost us dearly

Got an iPad? iPhone? Blackberry? Any mobile device? Content, formerly known as news, is coming to you at lightspeed. McPaper wants to lead the way — or at least catch up to others. The migration of content from print to online is hardly news. Neither is the intent of content conglomerates, formerly known as newspaper […]

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Facebook sues Teachbook for trademark infringement

File this one under WTF?! According to a CNNMoney article, Facebook is suing Teachbook for “a slew of crimes including federal trademark dilution, trademark infringement and unfair competition.” And this isn’t the first time that Facebook, presently the second most visited website in the world according to Alexa, has sued a startup for trademark infringement […]

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For a political rookie, a devolution to abhor and avoid

A young Afghan war veteran, whose family has lived in my district for eight generations, wishes to be my next representative in Congress. He would succeed the imploded former Rep. Eric Massa, whom I supported, and who taught me the bittersweet consequences of commingling voter naїvete with false hope, as did candidate-turned-President Obama. This young […]

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Forget Spitzer's errant penis: Think more about CNN's blunders

You remember this tableau, don’t you? It’s Monday, March 10, 2008, and the governor of New York state is standing in front of reporters and beside his stoic wife. In a CNN.com story, Eliot Spitzer, the reporter wrote, “confess[ed] to an undisclosed personal indiscretion, saying he had acted ‘in a way that violates my obligations […]

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The new news: lean, multiplatform, creative? Is less now more?

Editor & Publisher reported this today: The San Diego Union-Tribune laid off more than 30 staffers on Thursday in what Editor Jeff Light called in an editor’s note an effort to build “a lean, creative, multi-platform team that can lead the industry.” [emphasis added] E&P reports that this is the U-T’s seventh round of staff […]

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Bloggers will be 'reimagined' in the future of news. We'll be rich!

So, you’re a blogger. You gettin’ paid for what you write? Nada? Thought so. Me, too. Nada. But don’t worry: Corporate types who run content businesses have big plans for us. They’re gonna make us stars of online local news. Here’s an example: In the latest edition of American Journalism Review, writer Karen Carmichael outlines […]

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If objectivity is dead, then replace it with subjectivity done well

Be objective. That’s the credo my newsroom presented to me, the young cub, four decades ago. But it did not require much time for me to realize that objectivity was merely an ideal, a sales pitch that proclaimed “we are professional and unbiased; thus believe us.” As the Grey Lady claims, it does its job […]

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Climate scientists still besieged

S&R interviewed Martin Vermeer, first author of a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper on sea level rise, about how much context the published CRU emails contained. In addition to answering questions about the emails’ context, Vermeer pointed out that some of the context “bears the mark of a scientific community under […]

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We need better news stories, but how will we get them?

The media-reform activist organization, Free Press, has set up a press-bashing site called mediaFail, offering minimal instruction about what constitutes a bad news story versus a good news story. Thus we must assume those all-knowing Internet media critics who nominate bad news stories at mediaFail have a disciplined, instructive sense of what’s good and what’s […]

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