PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsrooms - "You would go into these hearings and there would be more PR people representing these big players than there were reporters, sometimes by a factor of two or three" ..it's getting tougher to know when a storyline originates with a self-interested party producing its own story.
posted by thisisdrew
on Jul 12, 2011 -
43 comments
Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically,
what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jan 6, 2009 -
62 comments
"A smart story often does contain new facts," Bennett explains. "But just as often it takes facts that are lying in plain sight and synthesizes them, or arranges them in a way — sometimes in a narrative — that really exposes some new meaning on an important subject. And I think that's a conceptual scoop." (via
ATC)
posted by photoslob
on Jun 20, 2007 -
14 comments
The ten things most likely to be on The Daily Express front page. This UK newspaper has gained something of a reputation of late because of their apparently monosyllabic attitude to the news and what'll appear as their front page story -- today with everything that's going in the middle east they ran with yet another story about Princess Diana. Here, Martin Belam analyzes the leaders for the past three months and examines the patterns.
posted by feelinglistless
on Apr 4, 2007 -
31 comments
Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider has been fired. After a 2003
incident in which the North Carolina Press Association stripped him of his awards for three pictures (before and after can be seen
here) the Observer has fired Schneider over the alteration of
this image. The question remains among photojournalists: is it
unethical to alter a photo in such a way that it more closely resembles what the eye saw and the camera is unable to capture, or is this a deceptive practice that damages the public's trust?
posted by TheGoldenOne
on Jul 28, 2006 -
78 comments
The End of News? From the New York Review of Books.
Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, discusses the decline of the mainstream media and the ideal of objectivity:
Accuracy in Media (1969), the
Center for Media and Public Affairs (1985), the abolition of the
Fairness Doctrine (1987),
Rush Limbaugh (1988),
Fox News (1996),
weblogs,
cost-cutting at newspapers. Of course, the newspaper business has always been a difficult one, as Walter Lippmann noted in his book
Public Opinion (1921): [more inside]
posted by russilwvong
on Nov 14, 2005 -
43 comments
Edinburgh's Scotsman newspaper has launched a digital archive covering all editions from 1817-1950.
There are several stories with an
American slant which may be something that interests you. There is coverage on such things as the hanging of the notorious bodysnatchers
Burke and Hare.
Unfortunately, after viewing the free archives it is a paysite, but I still think it's worth a look as there is easily a couple of hours of interesting reading on the free articles that are included.
The set-up and look of this site is brilliant as well.
posted by ClanvidHorse
on Jun 4, 2005 -
9 comments
Pages of the Past The Toronto Star has digitized each of its issues from 1892-2001. And they're searchable. And they're online. Unfortunately, access starts at about a buck an hour—but 1945 is free!
posted by DrJohnEvans
on Jul 30, 2004 -
7 comments
Open Source Local Journalism. "A small California newspaper [
The Northwest Voice] has undertaken a first-of-its-kind experiment in participatory journalism in which nearly all the content published in a regularly updated online edition and a weekly print edition is submitted by community members." Is the editor of your local newspaper aware of this?
posted by Blue Stone
on Jul 22, 2004 -
7 comments
"The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere "stick" in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis."
From an
interview with Nikolai Tesla in 1937 about the now near future...
posted by Aleph Yin
on Nov 29, 2003 -
12 comments
U.S. Army Used Media Cover in Iraq for Own Ends which sounds like a big old bowl of yellow journalism but isn't really, at least I don't think so. It was more to refute the Iraqi Minister of Lies talking about the whooping the Iraqi war machine was delivering to the coalition forces.
The main issue that the reporters had was that they were only getting the one side of the story and not the Iraqi perspective.
But it raises some questions about the supposed objectivity of the media. Is this a proper use of them? To help achieve military goals? Or to try to avoid more unnecessary deaths?
posted by fenriq
on Sep 8, 2003 -
15 comments
Are bloggers the heir apparent of the independent weekly? Welch: For all the history made by newspapers between 1960 and 2000, the profession was also busy contracting, standardizing, and homogenizing. Most cities now have their monopolist daily, their alt weekly or two, their business journal. Journalism is done a certain way, by a certain kind of people. Bloggers are basically oblivious to such traditions, so reading the best of them is like receiving a bracing slap in the face. It's a reminder that America is far more diverse and iconoclastic than its newsrooms.
posted by skallas
on Sep 6, 2003 -
4 comments
Paper of Record provides a hi-res, searchable(!), archive of historical newspapers, generated from microfilm collections. Looks like one for Cory at
Wrote['nother couple of similar links there]. Kind of new and largely Canadian at the moment, but worth watching, and subscriptions are cheap. Remember, those are Canadian dollars.
posted by Su
on Aug 30, 2002 -
3 comments
British papers seem to be the only place we can find out what goes on in the US these days. Probably has to do with the liberal media, wouldn't you say?
posted by nofundy
on Jun 18, 2002 -
36 comments
Notice something missing from today's Washington Post? In a creative protest of management's latest contract offer, Post union members withhold bylines from news stories and columns in the
June 5 edition. Most articles are written "By A Washington Post Staff Writer" and pictures are taken "By A Washington Post Staff Photographer." What other unique forms of labor protest have you seen where the union gets its point across without striking or compromising the quality of the product?
posted by PrinceValium
on Jun 5, 2002 -
18 comments
A print journalist admits her fear of blogs "What the blog threatens to do is dislodge the traditional news media's corner on the "scoop" market. With their unorthodox reporting strategies and lightning-fast publishing schedules, blogs are making it clear that you don't need to have some big, fancy newspaper job to break stories. In fact, you don't even need to write stories; you can just throw a couple of sentences up on your site with some telling links. And you can quote that naked boy in your bed who knows how to hack protocols. Whatever."
posted by ezfowler
on Mar 1, 2002 -
23 comments
Ask the ombudsman. Are newspapers revealing too much information? too little? A news ombudsman receives and investigates complaints from newspaper readers or listeners or viewers of radio and television stations about accuracy, fairness, balance and good taste in news coverage. He or she recommends appropriate remedies or responses to correct or clarify news reports.
Michael Getler: Internal Critic with Big Audience: how the Washington Post's Ombudsman does his job.
An ombudsman is someone who handles complaints and attempts to find mutually satisfactory solutions. Ombudsmen can be found in government, corporations, hospitals, universities and other institutions. The first ombudsman was appointed in 1809 in Sweden to handle citizens' complaints about the government. It is pronounced "om-BUDS-man" and is Scandinavian in origin.
posted by Carol Anne
on Oct 30, 2001 -
2 comments
There's now an
electronic version of The New York Times for people who like to read the paper version of The New York Times on their computer. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Is this really necessary? Who would use such a service, much less pay 65¢ an issue for it?
posted by mrbula
on Oct 23, 2001 -
40 comments
The Examiner spells it out. As a newspaper page designer (for a much smaller, tamer paper), I wonder what you all think of the San Francisco Examiner's semi-profane but heartfelt front-page headline. On one hand, it's editorializing, but on the other, it expresses what an awful lot of people are thinking. I think I like it, but I also know it'd never get printed in a lot of papers, including my own.
posted by diddlegnome
on Sep 13, 2001 -
23 comments
