Mediabytes

Quick highlights about the changing news media, by Jeff Sonderman. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-10534079-1']); _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'none']); _gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=219456238073766"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

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Nobody 'goes online' any more: the internet is becoming an ambient background thing-that’s-always-there, rather than a mass communications medium that people consciously think of themselves as paying attention to.

Felix Salmon, Content economics, part 1: advertising

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If you are not asking yourself every couple of years how to once more scare yourself to death, then you are living something of the coward’s life. Ain’t no room for cowards in journalism at this moment in time.

Joe Sexton

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I think people become more informed citizens when they understand the processes of journalism, not just the products of journalism. By following me, they get to see the processes in action – and hopefully they get something from the experience.

Andy Carvin, in Tweeting the news: Andy Carvin test-pilots Twitter journalism

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A publication’s app should be designed and built with purpose and consideration. The Magazine works because I based decisions not on what everyone else was doing, but on what would be best for this magazine. Every publication has its own unique needs, audience, economics, and style, so their apps should reflect that. In the past, publications had a harder time differentiating themselves. Magazines and newspapers all needed to be the same sizes and shapes, working the same ways with the same business models and the same limitations. Today, we can all tailor our publications to our needs much more closely. “Tablet-native” publishing shouldn’t mean any particular multimedia features or structures. True tablet-native publishing should mean using the freedom of modern platforms to break out of the idea that publications need to follow a universal mold. They’re all just software now, and a unified platform would only limit the possibilities. Simply cloning a few successful formulas would be a tragic waste of this potential.

Marco Arment, My master plan for revolutionizing the future of publishing and saving tablet-native journalism

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On October 3, CNN.com will also debut new clip-and-share video editing features. With DVR-like controls, clip-and-share makes everyone a CNN editor. Users can quickly fast-forward and rewind to the perfect start and end points to create powerful video clips, straight from the live feed.

CNN Digital Offers Interactive Live TV Broadcast for Presidential Debates – CNN Press Room

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News startups large and small—MAPLight, Smoking Gun, Homicide Watch, ProPublica—are all experimenting with new sources of informational value—amateurs, crowds, databases—and with new possibilities for producing news in partnerships and consortia. These organizations all punch above their weight, given their staff costs. In the same way the Industrial Revolution made an hour of a weaver’s time far more valuable, by increasing the cloth he could produce, an hour of a journalist’s time can similarly become more valuable, provided that journalist knows how to work with their readers, or to explore newly available data, and provided her institution supports that kind of work.

Clay Shirky, Failing geometry : CJR

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In 2012, the definition of journalist must include bringing more people to my journalism. It’s not enough to say ‘I report well, I write well’ … bringing more people to your journalism is part of who you are.

Raju Narisetti, WSJ digital chief, on ‘the promiscuity of our audiences’

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Media is the way to build the brand; data is the way to build the revenue.

Rafat Ali, explaining the approach to building his new startup

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The future for developers? It looks like, ultimately, it's not building apps to read Twitter, it's building apps into Twitter.

Matt Buchanan, The Future Of Twitter Is Nothing You've Seen Before

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In the digital era, one of the greatest challenges is that AP is fundamentally a business-to-business operation, yet we need to find ways to connect to individual readers, viewers and listeners of our content to remain relevant and competitive. We’ve made some great strides, including the newly reimagined AP Mobile app and our considerable social media presence — we recently crossed a million followers on Twitter, and when big news happens, we frequently lead the entire news universe in retweets on the breaking tweet. Mobile and social are now at the heart of the AP newsgathering process, and they look to stay there for a long time — at least until it’s time to adapt to the next big thing.

AP Social Media Editor Eric Carvin on Twitter Policies and More | Ebyline Blog

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Print is becoming a specialty. A novelty. A vanity. It’s things that end in -ty mostly. [laughs] It doesn’t make a lot of sense, given planetary resources, given inefficiencies, to force the maintenance of a physical distribution model for most book reading. As an author who has gone through the process…it is painfully delayed in so many ways. I was in London just yesterday and stopped by Waterstone’s book store in Trafalgar Square. “Do you have my book?” “No we’re out, but Picadilly has it.” You don’t go to Amazon and hear, “Oh port 80 can’t distribute the book right now, come back to Amazon next week.” We’re beyond scarcity, and that is a known fact of the new world.

Baratunde Thurston, in an interview with Findings

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The most-visited news websites among Americans in May, according to Nielsen.

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I'm helping teach this along with some fantastic Poynter faculty next month. Today is the last day for early-bird pricing.

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The Twitter bird (did you know his name is Larry?) is getting a makeover and a haircut. (via WSJ)

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Lost revenue isn’t the only change befalling what we used to call the news industry. It’s not even the most significant change. To adapt to the current ecosystem, the Post (like all papers) will have to alter the way it works, not just the way it makes money.

Clay Shirky, in WaPo must transform to survive : CJR

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I’ve come to realize that journalists don’t like change. It’s threatening to them. Their first instinct is to scoff at new ways, then find fault if the ideas begin to take hold in the marketplace. Eventually, they come around.The angst begins again with the next new thing, never mind that the previous new thing is what saved their profession.

Lewis DVorkin, Inside Forbes: In Journalism, What's New Is Actually Old...

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How a newspaper announces (in print) that it is cutting print editions. Via How Times-Picayune, Alabama newspaper changes played on their front pages)