News tops local searches, survey finds

And if we need more evidence that news sells, a new survey by Google shows that news sites top local searches. News sells.

The Atlantic makes its mark online

An interesting take on the Atlantic demonstrates how concentrating on content can save media operations. Mashable Business demonstrates how going digital can lead to profits for a magazine operation.

It turned things around by hiring good people, and making their work available to all on the Internet.

A big part of the success goes to the Atlantic Wire, on which staffers " synthesize and analyze the takes from the U.S.’s leading commentators in rapid, pithy blog posts," with links to the original. It's a lot like the Utne Reader in its early days when I read it so that I would know what other magazines to read (and what to skip). The Atlantic Wire is mostly opinion, but that's OK. Opinion is what drives the Net. After all, opinion is just more content.

'Tis the season for more stupidity

I know, I know. 'Tis the season to be jolly and merry, but the continuing stupidity of media managers staggers me. Newspaper jobs took a steep decline last year with the bulk of them in newsrooms. The Newsosaur blog has come nice thoughts on what's been happening (and be sure to read the comments for more).

To those struggling managers who sigh and say, "Well, things are bad so we had to cut somewhere," I reply: It's all about content and how stupid are you to cut content when we know there is a direct line between content and readers/viewers and profits?

Last night I was talking about something similar with a friend. I'm fortunate enough to live in a city -- Milwaukee -- where the newspaper does good work. On what it can. Its problem is that it has cut back so much that it can't cover most news. Its three Pulitzers in four years and innumerable other great investigative pieces don't make up for the fact its not even covering the basics -- like the revolution going on in our state after state government was take over by a fringe. My friend's comment? "That's why Patch is handing them their lunch." And Patch is doing it with people who were pushed out of the Journal Sentinel. Am I getting more news from Patch than from the Journal Sentinel? No. But I am getting more news from the variety of Internet locations, including some very sharp blogs.

Meanwhile the Journal Sentinel continued its layoffs. And they included secretaries and photographers -- but not CEOs or vice presidents. They don't produce content.

Journal Sentinel paywall coming soon

Early word from inside the company says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will join the growing number of newspapers with paywalls in January, perhaps as soon as the first week of the year.

Word is that home subscription charges will rise, but will offer free access to all the newspaper's online sites (except, perhaps, Packer Plus, it's wildly successful section devoted to all-Packers, all-the-time). Non-subscribers will presumably get a few free stories, but will need to pay for more than a token number. At the New York Times, the cutoff is 20; the Chicago Sun-Times cutoff is a charge after 20 free page views.

3 trends that changed the 'journalism landscape'

I find myself once again touting a post on the Nieman Journalism Lab site. Today, Ken Doctor talks about three trends that he said "profoundly changed the journalism landscape this year."

He's correct in singling out the tablet, the dawn of digital circulation and "social curation" (which Doctor defines as " social intelligence, gleaned from mountains of data . . . becoming a required part of the companies’ product development and consumer experience" with Facebook as its leader).

It's an interesting take on the future, which is more and more becoming the present.

Here's a product I won't use

Here's an announcement of a product that I don't intend to use. The Associated Press says it has a tool that will automatically correct your writing for AP style.

I don't intend to use it for the same reason I don't use Microsoft Word's automatic spelling and grammar checking software -- it's often inaccurate. Yes, I run everything (including posts on this blog) through the software. That's especially important since I think editing on computers is much less accurate than editing on paper. But looking back at some past posts proves my point: some have spelling and grammar errors even though the software checked them. If I use the wrong form of "its" or "to, too, two"), the computer doesn't blink.

Automatic checks for AP style will catch many of the mistakes, but it'll miss many others and give writers a false sense of security -- just as does spellcheck.

America marked by news deserts

Layoffs and shutdowns and other corporate decisions are leading to news deserts in America, according to Tom Stites at the Nieman Journalism Lab. What's a news desert? It's an area where news isn't being well-covered because of a lack of media.

Stites' observations are right on, and they reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a senior editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which has won three Pulitzer prizes in the last four years. He was talking about all the news around Wisconsin that the newspaper just can't cover. "We don't have the reporters," he said.

Thankfully, we don't have a news desert here. But it's close.

'People are reading more,' says Amazon books editor

As I talk with young journalists, I am often asked about their future since "everyone knows that journalism is dead because people are using the Internet instead of reading," to quote a sophomore in a recent conversation.

Frankly, I think journalism's never been healthier not only because the Internet has opened up so many new forms journalism can take (yes, I'm envious that we didn't have the digital tools when I was reporting), but because the Internet spurs reading, and reading means there is a need for writers. Ergo, journalists.

A Reuters story about the world of books begins with the accurate description: "people are reading more than ever." Sure, the story is mainly about ebooks, but Chris Schluep, senior books editor at Amazon, talks about how the digital universe sparks reading in general as well as breakthroughs in publishing. And when have you ever heard as much about reading and media as you hear these days? Sure, some is bad news (American corporations still don't get it and advertising is moving to cheaper sites), but the Internet has sparked an awareness of reading that we've never had. It's only going to get better.

Virginia Tech shooting coverage relies on Twitter

Once again, unfortunately, Virginia Tech's newspaper, the Collegiate Times, became the destination for a news-hungry America seeking to learn about a campus shooting. But this time, its coverage was quicker and more complete using a Twitter account. Yes, Twitter has limitations. But the coverage of yesterday's shootings showed how it can effectively deliver breaking news.

Al Jazeera plans bureau in Chicago

Great news: A major news organization is expanding and plans to open a new news bureau in Chicago. The not-so-great news is that it is Al Jazeera English. As American media companies pull back, foreign ones like the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera are expanding.

Actually, it is good news all around. Al Jazeera English has long been one of the world's better news sites. Its coverage was invaluable during the Arab Spring revolutions earlier this year. I got in the habit of checking it daily when we got so heavily involved in the Iraq war, finding al Jazeera's coverage a breath of fresh air since American news media was so heavily compromised in its war coverage -- a coverage that's almost nonexistent today. If you want to know what's going on in Iraq, unfortunately, you need to look overseas for coverage.

John Hendren, former White House correspondent for ABC, said in an al Jazeera release saying he'll be in charge of the bureau that Chicago reporting will give viewers a "deeper picture of movements and sentiments in the U.S." Now maybe we could get our own networks to look at "movements and sentiments," instead of yet another story about a political candidate whose star is a) rising or b) plummeting.

New report both scary and optimistic on Internet media

A new report has mixed findings for those engaged in Internet media. According to the fifth annual KPMG survey, online users are "happy to share their personal data with organizations they trust and if they get something in return, but are increasingly concerned about privacy and losing control of that data."

Tudor Aw, technology head for KMPG Europe, said that brands had to be very explicit about what they were doing with a consumer’s data. “Consumers are waking up to the idea that their data has value.”

I'm happy to share some data -- my location to the Google Maps app on my iPhone, for example -- but I wouldn't describe myself as "happy" to share most personal data, and I'm adamantly opposed to sharing most of it.

But even more chilling for the future of online media is another of Aw's observations, a growing concern about privacy, "Every year that concern worsens. This year it has gone right up to the 90% level." I have two nieces in their early 20s who just announced they were giving up Facebook over privacy concerns. That should be scaring the heck out of social media platforms, and it certainly alarms those of us who see the Internet as a net plus for media.

Is the future for magazines written in digital?

David Carr, the New York Time's media writer, says, in effect, that it's time for us print-nostalgia-laden old media fans to accept the fact that the future is digital.

Pointing to the fact that massive magazine empire Time, Inc. will now be run by digital advertising executive Laura Lang, Carr said "It’s a bracing moment for the print romantics among us. Time Inc., the home of Olympian brands like Time, People and Fortune, will be run by an executive who would not know a print run from a can of green beans."

Lang's words have indicated that she favors the digital direct-benefit approach, which runs counter to the strategies long used in the magazine field.

She may well succeed, and Carr may well be correct that her move presages a total shift in the magazine field. But we've seen an awful lot of successful executives in one field taking over media company and totally botching the job (remember Sam Zell and the Chicago Tribune or any number of manufacturing or financial companies done under by bad managers following the flawed Harvard Business School model of "it's all just about shifting numbers.").