Newspaper observer calls for more startups

A blogger for U.S. News calls for more media startups to aid the ailing newspaper business. As the post says, outsourcing to be a growing part of the business, and it doesn't just mean things like outsourcing to call centers in India, it may well mean more reporters in India.

Frankly, the media world has been overwhelmed by new faces of media already. I fully expect more to come around.  In class, I like to point to the example of Bill Simmons who began his career as a college student in Boston who just wanted to write sports so he created the Boston Sports Guy blog and has parlayed that into a career writing for ESPN as well as writing for shows like the Howie Mandel Show. He totally created his career, and it's a route I expect to see other reporters take. 

Want successful media content? Look at Huffington Post

Sure, it doesn't pay its contributors, and many of its posts aren't close to journalism, but the Huffington Post is clearly a success, and it is featured on editorsweblog.org's report on "Doing more with less." Are there lessons here? Hey, it's making tons of money, so sure there are lessons.

If I were asked (and I've not been), I'd suggest that it draws hits because of the eclectic mix of material. Because the site uses a great variety of contributors, it's content varies greatly. That's opposed to the standard media outlet (including this one) where the content is closely targeted.

The Huffington Post is a good location whether you are interested in celebrities, politics or the media -- just like newspapers and magazines used to be before the consultants took over.

Where's the alarm?

In a perceptive blog entry (read: one that agrees with me), Tim McGuire of Arizona State University looks at the media scene and asks "Why isn't anyone concerned?" That's the $64 question for me.

Sure the journalism industry and onlookers like academics are concerned, but few are focusing on the problems that abandoning traditional journalism poses for democracy. I believe wholeheartedly that an informed public is vital to our way of life, and despair of what will happen when the watchdogs are gone. McGuire suggests the marketplace will quickly fill the void. I agree, at least for areas like sports and entertainment. And we in Milwaukee are already seeing some significant reporting by some bloggers (but almost all of those originally were in traditional journalism).

The ride continues to be wild.

A question about TVs and computers

Are you ready to turn your television into a computer? (Or your computer into a television?)

The electronics industry believes that's where we are today. At last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo unveiled a bunch of television-related gadgets that allow viewers to Web-surf while watching TV. I'm not sure people really want complicated technology that does everything in one box. A confession: I generally watch TV with a laptop connected to the Internet. But when I watch something I'm interested in, I put the laptop aside.

I don't know if Yahoo and others are correct. Business Week seems to be convinced that the time is right for combining all these applications. My only question: Is it simple? My computer is filled with applications I don't generally use because something else is simpler.

Consumer magazine advertising drops

Consumer magazines took an 11.7% hit in advertising in yet another sign of economic weakness.

The doomsayers will point to this as evidence that readers are abandoning old media, presumably heading only to the Internet.

I'd just point to the weak economy, and wonder if Internet ads really deliver customers. I haven't seen persuasive evidence yet.

Chicago Tribune plans tabloid edition

After whining for all this time about the lack of imagination among "old media," I'm seeing signs of life. Today's version is that the Chicago Tribune is planning a tabloid edition for newsstand sales. Once upon a time, no mainstream broadsheet would even think about offering the much-despised tabloid form.

Today, a customer is a customer.

What if the N.Y. Times just quit?

     That's the proposition Michael Hirschorn throws out in The Atlantic in a rambling, full of fact and supposition, challenging essay. Hirschorn at least plays lip service to the real loss, which would be in reporting and, frankly, gatekeeping. The gatekeeping role so hated by both political wings of America is needed more than ever now, I think.  Who knows how accurate that story on Google News is when I don't know anything about the writer or publication?  I'm reading Indian papers now that go on and on about Pakistani lies. Accurate? Propaganda? I don't know. If I had read them for a year, I'd know whether they were independent or just mouthed a line.

      Anyway, the essay is well worth reading just for sparking your thoughts.

What should I be telling students?

What should journalism professors tell students about the future? According to answers from a variety of journalism professors across the country, the answer varies from "find a new profession" to be versatile and take a long view of journalism.
I come down in the latter camp. While the newspaper industry is foundering, media, in my view, has never had better opportunities for excellent work. I cannot imagine how much better my work would have been if I'd had the tools available now, even when I was an editor at the Journal Sentinel, which, in my view, is just now beginning to scratch the surface of melding print and the Internet.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, maybe newspapers won't be so blue

OK, it's really a feature about a newsstand, but this story in the London Independent about a bookseller's antique newspapers, I think, contains some information that today's press barons could use. Looking at newspapers from a highly-competitive era, one is struck by their focus, drive, and initiative. They didn't sit around bemoaning their competition, they outworked it. They didn't cut features and writers, they added them. They didn't alienate readers by running stories that didn't interest them, they honed their offerings. It sounds like a better plan than any I've seen lately.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

      I got an email from a "regular viewer" asking why I haven't been posting more lately, so I guess I'd better at least warn those few of you who aren't family members that it'll be another week or so before I get back to regularly reviewing what's happening in the media world.  I am part of a team conducting a media workshop in Ahmedabad, India, which is taking tons of time (besides, and don't go all jealous on me, I'm blogging on a regular basis  from India at Steve's Excellent Adventures in India).

      Actually, that gives me a chance to touch on one of the themes that has so disrupted the old media world these days. Two incidents with students let me realize the reach of the new media.  One of the students came up to me today to chuckle over an incident I reported yesterday on the other blog. She said she reads it every day, and that I'm capturing India quite well (OK, she's learned the fine art of sucking up; it still indicates the reach of new media). The second was similar. One of the students is a reporter for the Times of India. He was talking about this blog, which he found by researching me through the Internet. He said he found this blog quite useful. Yes, as I look back at the posts, many of them are America-centric, but a good number aren't, and the world isn't sitting still.

      The Indian students are, almost to a person serious about their journalism. Almost all of them talk about working for newspapers, even as I've been involved in setting up an online version of their school's newspaper. The dream is still alive in Ahmedabad.

The future -- and its dilemma

The San Francisco Bay Guardian Online offers its take on journalism's future. Basically, it says there'll be good journalism in the future -- the Huffington Post is cited as an example -- but the problem is finding a business model to pay for it. Frankly, I agree.

A good example of a new media weak spot

         A thoughtful post on a blog about the future of democracy with the decline in newspapers (and it's skeptical about them) offers a window into what I think is one of the problems with the new media. After two screens of thoughtful opinion, we are dumped into the world "citizen journalist" commentators, virtually none of whom address the points made in the essay and virtually all rife with racism (the commentators immediately attacked the press as pro-Democrat, consistently using an especially ugly racist term to describe our next president).

         The point is that the new media needs to grow up if it's going to be treated as an adult. There is some advantage of removing some of the filters employed by the old media that have, in my opinion, all too often limited its scope.  But unfettered comment, unfortunately, has opened the gates to vitriolic, un-thought-out spewing of opinion based on little and with no attempt to support arguments.

      It reminds me far too often of a person I know who often says "Well, I don't know anything about it [it being the subject of the conversation], but I think . . . ."