With shrinking staffs and growing demands, reporters and editors for years have been asking, “What can we give up?” It’s a fair question (and one I’ll get to), but we learn far more when we ask: What can we not give up? That answer is simple: Public service journalism. Despite smaller staffs, more frequent deadlines and diminishing […]
Note: The New York legislature today was poised to approve bills that would prohibit disclosure of the names and addresses of gun owners in the state’s registry and allow citizens to avoid disclosure on county-held registries. This story has details. – GM, Jan. 15, 2013 In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, the […]
On the great scale weighing two alternative futures of the newspaper business, Journal Register has had all its weights on one side. Print is dead. Go digital first. And fast. It’s an attractive message. It’s a vision, after all. As the rest of the industry meanders toward a digital future, these folks are racing ahead. For the […]
Vigorous, but not vicious. Interesting, but not sensational. Fearless, but fair. They were core values for The Detroit News — in 1916. Are they appropriate standards for the 21st century? I recently came across a style book, dated the year before The News moved into its present building, that gave a detailed explanation of the […]
While print advertising has seen a precipitous fall (see previous post), perhaps the news of most immediate concern is that online revenue growth slowed to a near standstill in the first quarter of 2012, according to new numbers from the National Newspaper Association. Online ad revenue for newspapers went up just 1% in the first quarter, the fifth straight quarterly slowdown […]
The recent publication of Mary Meeker’s graphic showing how much money advertisers spent on print compared to how little time readers spent there sparked discussion and debate throughout the industry. It’s “the one chart that should scare the hell out of print media,” Poynter.org declared. The implication, countered in part by Derek Thompson of The Atlantic, is that dollars now spent on print may soon […]
Last week’s news that the New Orleans Times-Picayune would reduce print publication to three days a week and reorganize as a digital-first media company was met with hand-wringing, blame and much time spent discussing what we’re losing. Yes, of course. Who isn’t lamenting that it’s come to this? In the meantime, there’s been too little celebration. Why celebrate? […]
