Media

A year ago, Alan Jacobson, a talented and indefatigably innovative newspaper designer, came up with an idea for a highly targeted, efficient-to-produce and effortlessly viral website that is exactly the sort of thing newspapers need to strengthen their online franchises. After spending many frustrating months trying to interest publishers in his idea, he got...

The news media succumbed to ugly ethnic and religious profiling in their coverage of the shooting last week at Fort Hood. Shame on them. Media executives ought to closely review their coverage of the Fort Hood massacre to develop sufficient organizational discipline to avoid spreading in the future...

While the editors of some notable non-profit news startups pull down hefty six-figure salaries, the founding editor of the Chicago News Cooperative says his pay will be a single digit for the next 12 months: $0. That low, low introductory salary in part is testimony to the dedication of co-op founder...

The resolve to charge for most interactive content is dissolving at some newspapers, potentially thwarting the plans of other publishers who still hope to erect pay walls on their sites. Despite determined statements by several publishers earlier this year that they intended to make consumers pay for the valuable content...

The Harvard conference tasked with finding new business models for journalism had the impossible mission yesterday of trying to solve a problem no one had the language to describe, the tools to measure or the skills to fix. In other words, the conference resembled the primitive study of physics before...

Some 50 of the foremost thinkers about journalism have been invited to Harvard University today to ponder no less a problem than this: “How to Make Money in News: New Business Models for the 21st Century.” The event commences at 9 a.m. and is scheduled to adjourn at...

At a time newspapers ought be striving to earn the confidence of their remaining advertisers, they are reporting not just record low circulation numbers but also the murkiest figures ever. The historic 10.6% drop in circulation reported on Monday would have been trouble enough for the ailing newspaper...

The devastating double-digit drop in daily newspaper circulation in the last six months leaves little doubt that the classic mass media model will not work for newspapers – or perhaps any other medium, either. Publishers who think their businesses are going to live or die according to the number...

Following an average drop of 10.6% in the last six months, daily newspaper circulation has fallen to a pre-World War II low of an estimated 39.1 million, according to an analysis of industry data released today.The first double-digit circulation decline in history means only 12.9% of the U.S. population buys a daily newspaper. The analysis...

At first glance, Newsday appears to be making a bold move by becoming the biggest newspaper to date to start charging for most of its content on the web after giving it away for free for years. But the move isn’t really that brave. The newspaper is hedging its bets by...

Add news embargoes to the growing jumble of detritus in the hellbox of journalism history. In an age of insta-news, embargoes are so meaningless and unenforceable that they aren’t worth the pixels they are printed on. As a consequence, publicity seekers are on notice that they no longer...

For all the drama conveyed yesterday by the vote of no confidence in mainstream journalism rendered by one of the nation’s top journalism schools, the 98-page study issued by Columbia University is perhaps most significant for what it doesn’t say. While cataloguing a host of previously discussed potential fixes for the...