MetaFilter posts tagged with newspaper

Slow lede - get to the news faster

Saxon Kane — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:26:20 -0800

When the Toronto Star announced that they were outsourcing in-house editing jobs, the union wasn't too happy. Neither was this disgruntled editor.

How To Save Media

reenum — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:56:09 -0800

How To Save Media Jason Ponti from Technology Review offers some suggestions as to how traditional print publishers might save themselves from becoming irrelevant.

Eric Schmidt on journalism and the future of newspapers

reenum — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:20:05 -0800

Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a talk at the Newspaper Association of America convention on April 9, 2009 in San Diego. He speaks about how Google and newspapers might co-exist in the future. Here is a transcript of Schmidt's April talk. Schmidt also spoke at length with Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land recently about Google's responsibility to newspapers.

The future of the news business

reenum — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:48:00 -0800

The newspaper industry is facing challenges, and what might be done to ramify the situation Newspapers have been an institution for over a hundred years, but are now under threat of being undermined by the Internet and other sources. This article gives a decent background of the current crisis faced by the industry and how the industry might respond to the threats the printed paper faces.

Magazines as Fabric

ocherdraco — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:07:05 -0800

Artist/Designer Ilisha Helfman makes clothes for her custom made paper dolls every week from the cover of the New York Times Magazine.

Japan's Media Environment

armage — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:21:13 -0800

Japan -- Media Environment Open; State Looms Large (August 2009, PDF) A detailed, 67-page overview and analysis of Japan's traditional and new media environment published by the Open Source Center, an office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Can the New York Times and Washington Post survive on a pay-wall business model if they do it together?

dyslexictraveler — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:35:24 -0800

In a new essay entitled Build the Wall, David Simon (who was a Baltimore Sun reporter before he produced The Wire) argues that if the larger newspaper industry is to survive, The New York Times and Washington Post must start charging readers for access to their websites (preferably done as a single action in concert with each other) — John Gruber, Dave Winer, and the folks at Gawker disagree, and Steven Berlin Johnson argues that while the future for newspapers might be quite bleak, the future for journalism and high quality analysis is actually quite bright. Meanwhile, the Times is currently doing market research to see if it's readers would be willing to pay $5 a month for online access, and the Associated Press announced it's intent to build a new news DRM system that will enable users to “consume, mash up and share AP content based on rights”.

Meet the new type

msalt — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:38:42 -0800

A new type of newspaper for a new type of world One story from it previously. About us: "The Faster Times is a collective of great journalists who have come together to try something new. As we launch this July, we will have more than a hundred correspondents in over 20 countries. We have someone on the ground in Kenya and someone else reporting from Lebanon. Our arts section will cover not just film and books, but also theater and dance and photography. We will launch with seven writers on books alone. These writers are not “citizen journalists” but among the most accomplished and recognized names in their respective fields."

writers as journalists

dhruva — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:55:47 -0800

When authors and poets write the news "It was on an average Wednesday that a very serious Israeli newspaper conducted a very wild experiment. For one day, Haaretz (scroll down and select June 10th) editor-in-chief Dov Alfon sent most of his staff reporters home and sent 31 of Israel’s finest authors and poets to cover the day’s news. Read articles on integration at the giraffe enclosure, love in the cancer ward, mosaics in Tel Aviv, addicts at the Jerusalem rehab centre, and a visit to the grave of a holy man, among others. [via]

"Hey. Whatever you just said was really stupid."

The Whelk — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:15:14 -0800

Following in the fine tradition of The Nietzsche Family Circus (previously), Pearls Before Swine, And the Dysfunctional Family Circus, comes Scott Meets Family Circus ( via and self-salvaged from metachat)

Before there was Photoshop

starman — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:45:06 -0800

The New York Evening Graphic was published by Bernarr Macfadden, body builder, health crusader, and prolific author (Strong Eyes [1901], How Success is Won [1904], and Brain Energy [1906] to name a few of his hundred titles). After his failed "Physical Culture City" and before the ethical breach of using Photoshop for news your photographer couldn't gain access or wanted an early jump on, Macfadden began The New York Evening Graphic in 1924. Perhaps the paper's most well-known composograph was of Kip and Alice Rhinelander's divorce trial, which helped earn the paper the nickname, "The Porno Graphic." Future variety TV host Ed Sullivan even had an "I'm above writing about divorces and gossip" Broadway column in the paper, in which he avoided divorces and gossip for about two days. And by the way, next time you jump in that icy pond, you can thank Macfadden.

"I notice the 'wank' has remained fairly constant."

Artw — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:18:04 -0800

"The editor's guidelines are as follows: First, remember the reader, and respect demands that we should not casually use words that are likely to offend. Second, use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes. Third, the stronger the swearword, the harder we ought to think about using it.Finally, never use asterisks, which are just a cop-out." - Swearing in The Guardian: A chart

Death of another Newspaper

djgh — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:15:21 -0800

The Guardian is moving entirely to Twitter. "Sceptics have expressed concerns that 140 characters may be insufficient to capture the full breadth of meaningful human activity, but social media experts say the spread of Twitter encourages brevity, and that it ought to be possible to convey the gist of any message in a tweet."

An Insider's View

netbros — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:54:54 -0800

"The newsroom collectively screamed—via a chain of famous quotes with not too subtle undertones that staffers e-mailed out to the all-staff list. We designated a dog as the employee of the month." An Insider's View: The Strange Final Days Of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There's a loss of dignity when you lose your job. Those who stayed at the online PI faced a different indignity. And what to do with thousands of newspaper racks. At the recently concluded SXSW, Steven Berlin Johnson gave a speech about Old Growth Media and the Future of News. There is also a video of his talk.

1,000 Songs Your Must Hear

rongorongo — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:07:55 -0800

Those of Love(+), those of Sex(+), those of Hearbreak(+), those of People and Places (+), those of Politics and Protest (+). The Guardian's journalists purloin you with "1,000 Songs You Must Hear". The plus links lead to people's outraged suggestions of those that are missing from each category. Perfect for when 10, 100, 500 or 3,000 are just the wrong numbers.

1978 Called -- It Wants its Newspaper Back

VicNebulous — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:47:55 -0800

The Philadelphia Inquirer's final frazzled days...

The Elders of Zion call it quits

445supermag — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 17:07:31 -0800

"The Elders of Zion, the venerable and shadowy Jewish organization that controls the international banking industry, news media and Hollywood, has announced that it is disbanding so that members can retire to Florida and live out their golden years on the golf course." From the Backward, a Purim spoof from The Jewish Daily Forward.

Final Edition

yiftach — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:49:50 -0800

Newspaper says goodbye via Vimeo. The Rocky Mountain News published its final edition today, after 149 years, 311 days in circulation.

"Journalists' children deserve to be fed" -- a plan to save the NYT

nance — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:24:34 -0800

Steve Brill has a crazy idea that just might work. Would you pay a modest annual fee (about the cost of a magazine subscription) to read the New York Times online, if it means the survival of the world's greatest news~~paper~~, er, news-gathering organization? It's an interesting idea.

Sunday Paper Pledge Drive?

Miko — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:30:22 -0800

Can nonprofit news models save journalism? The advertising-supported, for-profit institutional model of journalism (skip this ad) is on the wane. Except for a few large and successful outlets, investment in comprehensive reporting has suffered from a shrinking bottom line, even as the hoped-for development of citizen journalism has been generally underwhelming. But some see a solution taking shape in not-for-profit, independent, citizen-supported online news organizations that would employ skilled professional journalists. Pointing to the encouraging recent growth of NPR and PBS as news outlets, many industry thinkers are starting to agree that "The only way to save journalism is to develop a new model that finds profit in truth, vigilance, and social responsibility." Editors are beginning to experiment with models like that of Paul Stieger's ProPublica (a sort of reporting clearinghouse), Geoff Dougherty's ChiTown Daily News, The NYC Center for an Urban Future's City Limits, and Scott Lewis' Voice of San Diego. Great idea - will it work?

Pictures of the Day

kliuless — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:05:11 -0800

The WSJ Photo Journal - The Boston Globe's Big Picture has company. [previously]

Hot sox! This is what I've been yearning for!

zusty — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:05:14 -0800

Barnacle Press : archive of mostly public domain newspaper comics. Loads of good stuff, but some highlights not previously mentioned include (especially) Ella Cinders, an stylishly written flapper-Cinderella update; the less clever but still charming Cinderella Suze; the appallingly cute Diary of Snubs, Our Dog; Foxy Grandpa, about a grandfather who outsmarts prank-happy kids; The Hurry Up New Yorker, a kinetically drawn one-joke strip; The Newlyweds' Baby, about a cartoon-sexually-dimorphic couple with a terrible baby; Doesn't It Seem Strange, sort of a beautifully illustrated 'They'll Do It Every Time' for 1903-4; Bringing Up Father, class comedy with lots of rolling pin violence; the freaky-deaky Terrors of the Tiny Tads. (Main link previously posted a couple of times in 2005, but new stuff has been added since then, and the site's been redesigned.)

O Hangout, My Hangout

Miko — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:21:37 -0800

The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet of Broadway
As the dead in their graves are underfoot hidden
And the living pass over them, recking not of them,
Laugh on laughers! Drink on drinkers!

"Comments on Comments"

Miko — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:58:28 -0800

NPR's On The Media presents a short set of pieces about comments on news websites and the challenges of "digital democracy," with discussion from Ira Glass about responses to a show about teenage runaways, and New Republic editor and critic Lee Siegel, who posted anonymously to respond insultingly to comments on his own blog. And a Roanoke newspaper editor discusses how one paper sees the integration of comments into online news sites and whether it's a valuable reader service. The This American Life show that sparked the show's decision to disable commenting on their website.

Exiled

muggsy1079 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:52:26 -0800

The Exile is back. Iconoclastic Moscow-based web-rag The Exile, having recently been shut down by the Russian authorities for its often less-than-complimentary views on all things to do with the motherland, is back, having relocated to Panama. A victory for the spirit of Gonzo.