Readings: Massing, nichepapers, “Free” bashing

On Fridays I like to serve up some long-form material on digital media, suitable for weekend reading. As always, journalism on the Web is a hot topic, and particularly Chris Anderson’s snippy interview this week that has even a few online evangelists a bit incredulous. • Good news about news on the Web: At The [...]

What I’m reading: Buyout shock, hobby journalism, Madonna writes and DIY editing

It’s been exactly a year ago today that my whole world changed. I turned in my buyout paperwork to the human resources department at my former newspaper, went to lunch with my sidekick, and for the first time in a very long while was at peace with myself and what was ahead of me. The [...]

Arianna’s ‘who’s your daddy?’ journalists

Just when I was about to praise Arianna Huffington for going out and hiring provocative, experienced journalists (and paying them, too!) for her burgeoning media empire, a blogger bee from Nick Denton’s media empire reveals that she is building a roster of young correspondents who were conceived by the right people. Now part of the [...]

New-look NPR.org a welcome sight for sore eyes

Some recurring eye troubles that in recent weeks have had my optometrist prescribing one medication after another to alleviate inflammation also have prompted me to step away from the computer for longer spells. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been muttering to myself about the decline of newspapers. So much easier to read! Nothing to turn on [...]

Bootstrapping by journalists is an old tale

Karthika Muthukumaraswamy is understandably concerned what the decline of major reporting projects by mainstream news organizations portends for the future, and how this could further discourage young journalists like herself from pursuing them: “While this ‘journalist as entrepreneur’ model is fueling important stories that might not otherwise get covered, it is also dangerously shifting the [...]

Readings: Kindle debacle, eBooks, ‘peep culture’

I don’t own an Amazon Kindle or any other electronic reader, because I prefer to read books and other long-form news and magazine articles offline. So I was really struck by the Big Brother issues raised over disappearing offerings from the Kindle due to a long-anticipated battle over copyright complaints. Now a full torrent of [...]

Would you want to hire this journalist?

What begins as a “note” about his doomed tenure at Entrepreneur magazine evolves into a scorched-earth missive from writer Dennis Romero, who recently was canned in a thinning out of the staff: “The real reason behind my termination was editor-in-chief Amy Cosper’s growing distaste for the presence of a knowing soul. It seemed like every [...]

If we can’t spell their names right . . .

As I was reading through some Tweets over the weekend, ostensibly in tribute to a journalism icon, I was reminded of the techno-Utopian exuberance that journalists no longer need editors in the stodgy old newsroom sense because the public serves as our editors. Well, online news-gatherers, meet a slice of your editing public and tell [...]

Good reads: Eggers, Shirky, old New Journalism

Thought I’d round up some long-form stories I’ve come across in recent weeks that take a few steps back, profile a leading figure or otherwise tackle topics in media and journalism that go beyond the immediacy of a standard blog post. Good for some weekend reading: • Novelist and McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers‘ hopes for [...]

Ten years after, and another anniversary

As I was digging around the archives of economist.com not long ago for something I’ve since forgotten, I came across this haunting warning about the the threat to newspapers posed by the Internet. It was published exactly 10 years ago this week, and like many people in my industry, I was oblivious to all this. This [...]