Social media drives quality journalism? Or is it quality journalism drives social media?

Some really interesting ideas in a new mashable.com study that concludes that social media drives quality journalism. There are several reasons, especially that we use quality journalism to show that we are serious people (at least in our social media). Fascinating.

Social media to the rescue

An overheard comment this morning:

Man: The Journal Sentinel really buried the story about about questionable voting totals in Waukesha County (97 percent in one election; Australia, where voting is mandatory, only gets 95 percent). It's on a blog.

Woman: Social media is all over it.

That would alarm me if I were running the Journal Sentinel.

The ever-shrinking Newsweek

Newsweek has only six ads (plus a promotional one for its owner) in the current edition. It's the only newsweekly to have lost advertising in the first quarter of this year. The magazine has made so many mistakes over the years that it'd take too long to list them. They may well be fatal.

Social media plays growing role in disburbances

Social media is playing an increasing role in domestic disturbances here as well as overseas. But, of course, there's a lot more discord overseas so that's where to look to gauge its impact.

The BBC offers a story today not only gauging social media's impact, but offering some times on how it's being used. Not at all what we expected.

NY Times paywall cuts into visits

Going behind the paywall has cost the New York Times up to 15 percent of its online viewers, according to Paid Content.

The Times expected a drop, but that it would be minimal since viewers would get their first 20 articles free. But the study -- of the first 12 days' experience -- showed that page visits were off 5 to 15 percent.

Add greed to media management stupidity

I've felt for quite a while that a big part of media money problems stems from management stupidity. It wasn't the rank and file that sat back as their viewer/reader base dwindled. It wasn't the copyeditors and reporters who first put news online free. It wasn't the office secretaries who cut the size and quality of news products to the bone.

But it was the rank and file, the copyeditors and reporters and office secretaries who were laid off by the thousands, watched their pay drop and futures mortgaged.

Now comes word that Gannett is facing all staff to take unpaid furlough weeks this year -- but executive bonuses make up for their unpaid furlough weeks. Add greed to stupidity. Gannett, of course, is not alone. How much was that retention bonus Journal Communications paid its CEO a couple of years ago after watching its stock lose 75% of its value?

Strike that tweet!

Showing that even unions (that most despised word in our governor's vocabulary) can adapt to new media, Eric Sass is reporting today that the News Media Guild is urging Associated Press reporters to stop tweeting or posting on Facebook in protest of lack of progress in getting a new contract.

They can keep up social contact, but not use new media to promote their AP stories. It's an interesting concept, and one that bears watching.

New v. Old Media battle continues. Great fun

Whooo boy! I think we're really into one of those great media feuds with both sides hardening their positions and no end in sight. It's the seemingly-neverending new media versus old media debate but the battlelines are growing sharper.

Today's version comes from John McQuaid writing in the Huffington Post. He sums up the flap started by Jeff Bercovici writing about the Internet reports of the Quran burning, and he extends the discussion into the whole role of aggragators -- like Huffington Post.

What may be more fun, even is somewhat less enlightening, is a listing in New York magazine's online site of the Twitter battle between Bercovici and two other writers he's attacked: Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen. (Note: profanity used here.)

Frankly, Bercovici's central premise attributing the report to a student without direction was wrong. The student posted at the request of an old media news agency on that agency with, presumably, editing. But the point about crowdsourcing and ethical considerations is worth making. Anybody can start a blog or a website. It can operate without any ethical consideration at all. This has always been true in old media (go to a bookstore and look at the "current affairs" section or watch Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann or the Sunday morning political shows for totally unsupported, outrageous if not fully false claims), but the Internet allows faster and wider consumption of that drek, so the current discussion is worth following.

When journalism kills

How do we reconcile ethics and journalism 2.0?

Writing in Forbes, Jeff Bercovici discussed how a story filed by a student ended up basically costing more than 30 people their lives. The story recounted the burning of a Quran by an insensitive pastor in Florida.

Bercovici's report prompted some excellent comments (very nice to read thoughtful comments instead of the stupidity associated with most of those showing up in Wisconsin newspapers about the political problems) as he talked about how the story was ignored by "legacy newspapers" before being run by a foreign news agency. It's the story of how the traditional ethics and checks and balances seem lost in this era of "empowered citizen bloggers and crowdsourced reporting."

Sometimes progress hurts -- and journalism can kill.

USA Today may pay bonuses for page views

USA Today reportedly will pay staffers bonuses for page views. It was bound to happen.

Newsroom employees rose last year, but minority numbers fell

Newsroom employees rose last year (only a tiny amount), halting a three-year decline, according to the American Society of News Editors. But minority staffers continued to lose numbers. "The number of professional journalists rose from an estimated 41,500 in 2009 to 41,600 in 2010," the group reported. Minority journalists declined from 5,500 to 5,300.

OK, it's not banner-headline great news, but it is important good news, except for the minority numbers. Those who want newspaper jobs can find them (I'm seeing that with MU journalism grads), but they have to hunt. In good news for minority journalism students, ASNE reported "Minorities represented 19 percent of the journalists hired for their first full-time newsroom job, up from 16 percent last year."

Ad Age looks at changes in AOL content

The future in journalism remains as murky as ever with changes continuing. Advertising Age takes a look at changes in freelancing opportunities at AOL with Arianna Huffington taking change and making big changes. That future might be less murky with a better-written story, but you get the idea of what's happening from this piece.

Ad Age says when everything is done: "The result will be content from two different classes of contributors: full-time employees and unpaid bloggers, in addition to the content AOL regularly aggregates from other sources, such as traditional newspapers."

Sounds a lot like the Huffington Post.