NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen says that many of the cultural barriers to doing “networked journalism” have been lowered, and he is trying to help media outlets develop smart tools and ways of making use of crowdsourcing. Read more »
As more sites focus on longform content, Fast Company disclosed some statistics on how its longer pieces have been doing — but the data shows that the real secret isn’t length but ongoing engagement with readers. Read more »
Research from McKinsey seems to suggest that print-based media still commands a large proportion of time spent by consumers of news — but that is just part of the larger picture media companies have to understand. Read more »
We are used to thinking of a “mass media” market made up of large newspapers and TV networks as the normal state of affairs in media, but what if that was just a historical anomaly? Read more »
Twitter says it doesn’t have any interest in hiring reporters or performing other journalistic functions — but regardless of whether it does so, it is still a powerful media entity and one that grows stronger by the day. Read more »
There are plenty of reasons for pessimism about the state of the media and journalism, including repeated layoffs, bankruptcies and so on. But there are also many reasons to be optimistic about the current environment. Read more »
LinkedIn has been making some significant moves towards becoming a media entity focused on business news, and the launch of new magazine-style channels of content is just the latest example of this. Read more »
Startup founder Chad Whitacre caused a fuss recently when he suggested that a reporter do an “open interview” that would be available to everyone — but why is that approach seen as such a threat by some media outlets? Read more »
When the NPR show Planet Money wanted to put together a project about the economic life-cycle of a T-shirt, Kickstarter seemed like the natural approach — and it showed how much crowdfunding has in common with public media. Read more »
The new weekend editor at Gawker’s auto-focused Jalopnik blog got hired because he was a knowledgeable commenter on the site, an example of how the feedback loop between writers and readers can pay off for blogs. Read more »
There is a conventional wisdom in the media industry that micropayments for online content don’t work, but Greg Golebiewski of Znak It says that this isn’t true, and that media companies need to experiment with the model. Read more »
It may seem like a sideshow, or a service that can only bring noise and chaos to the news, but RapGenius and its approach towards annotation shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand just yet. Read more »
A trade group says that newspapers like the New York Times have seen large increases in circulation, but that’s partly because they are allowed to count their readers multiple times. The industry needs to do better. Read more »
One thing that emerged from our media conference was that there is no single solution when it comes to the future of content, or the monetization of media — and that is probably a good thing. Read more »
While much of the attention during and after the Boston bombings focused on how one Reddit thread got things wrong, there were other important parts of the community that were doing good — and even doing something approaching journalism. Read more »
Twitter’s love affair with television seems to know no bounds — two recent deals with BBC America and Comedy Central will bring video clips inside users’ streams, and more such deals appear to be in the works. Read more »
While both Twitter and Reddit have come under fire for distributing incorrect information about the Boston bombings, mainstream outlets have done so as well. In a real-time news environment, having more sources is ultimately better. Read more »
At our paidContent Live conference in New York, we heard about the disruption in publishing, journalism and advertising from speakers such as Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian, Jon Steinberg of BuzzFeed and blogger Andrew Sullivan. Read more »
The U.S. newspaper industry has lost more than $40 billion in ad revenue in the past decade — over half of that in the last four years alone — and Google’s ad revenues are now more than twice what the industry pulls in. Read more »
Paywalls can bring in extra revenue for newspapers and other traditional media outlets, and they can help keep existing readers from leaving — but how do they help bring in new readers? And what happens if they don’t? Read more »
There’s been plenty of focus on how publishers are catering to advertisers by producing “native” advertising, including sponsored content — but a much bigger trend is brands and advertisers that are becoming publishers themselves. Read more »
Digital First Media chief executive officer John Paton says that paywalls aren’t the answer for newspapers, and that print is eventually going to go away — which is why the company needs to take more risks. Read more »
BuzzFeed has become the poster child for what some call sponsored content or “native advertising,” but despite the skills of founder Jonah Peretti, the secret to making ads go viral is not quite as simple as it appears to be. Read more »
Newspapers have been a blend of the serious and the entertaining for decades — why is it so surprising that a site like BuzzFeed could broaden its appeal into more serious topics as well as funny cat photos? Read more »
I may disagree with them about the benefits of a hard paywall, or the wisdom of cutting 90 percent of the newspaper’s blogs, but at least the owners of the Orange County Register are putting their money where their mouths are. Read more »
It’s a risky bet, but the new owners of the Orange County Register — two entrepreneurs with no background in traditional media — are pouring money and resources into the newspaper, and not just online but in print as well. Read more »
Founder Henry Blodget tells New Yorker magazine that Business Insider’s audience is larger than many established financial news outlets, but the company also lost $3 million in 2012 or almost a quarter of its revenues. Read more »
The Daily Mail, the world’s sixth largest news site, says it is not only growing digital revenue faster than most other papers, but has engagement levels that put it above Yahoo and even YouTube. Read more »
Flipboard’s new curation tools for creating custom magazines may appeal to individual users, but they will likely also appeal to advertisers and other brands — and therein lies the potential for real media disruption. Read more »
Flipboard has become a leading player in the digital news-consumption field, and now it wants to hand the same filtering and curation tools employed by its editors over to users of the app, to create their own magazines. Read more at GigaOM »
Although some might expect a 17-year-old startup founder to take his windfall from a Yahoo acquisition and run, Summly CEO Nick D’Aloisio says he wants to stick around and help Yahoo figure out how mobile content works. Read more at GigaOM »
In buying Summly, a mobile news-consumption app created by teenaged entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio, Yahoo gets to inject some much-needed fresh thinking about mobile content, and also shows it is serious about change. Read more at GigaOM »
Eliot Higgins, an unemployed British blogger with no military background, has become a crucial source of information about illegal weapons being used in Syria for both human-rights organizations and traditional journalists. Read more »
Some of the larger traditional brands in journalism will probably wind up prospering in the new digital era, and some hyper-local ones will as well — but what happens to the players in the middle? Their future remains uncertain. Read more »
The Pew Center’s latest report on the state of the media shows the financial woes affecting the traditional news business continue, and this is having an effect on consumers — but there are a few bright spots as well. Read more »
A lot of die-hard RSS users are upset that Google has decided to kill off its Google Reader service, but for me Twitter and other platforms based on social news are far superior to any RSS reader and have been for some time. Read more at GigaOM »
Devices like Google Glass are going to change the way that we consume the news and other information — how will media companies have to change the way they think about the news and how it is constructed? Read more »
If LinkedIn were to buy the Pulse news-recommendation app — something a number of reports say could be in the works — it would give the corporate social network a powerful way of filtering content for its users. Read more »
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the social network is trying to create “the best personalized newspaper” with its news feed. But we all know what has happened to newspapers — can Facebook somehow avoid suffering the same fate? Read more »
Freelance writer Nate Thayer touched off a debate this week about media outlets wanting to publish content for free — but the reality is that the economics of content have changed forever, and the supply of free content is almost infinite. Read more »
