Oct 7, 2008
Holovaty to jazz up Google? (He says no.)
According to Valleywag, journo-tech whiz Adrian Holovaty of Everyblock.org and all-around likable oracle may be headed to Google, presumably to do some non-evil journalistic data stuff.
Google wants to buy Holovaty’s startup, we hear. Holovaty says that he’s had no conversations with Google, but did have lunch with a friend at Google’s campus last week, which he stresses was “a social matter.” The effort to buy his venture — there’s no “deal,” Holovaty tells us — has hit some kind of unusual hitch. It’s not clear what the holdup is.
This bears watching.
Edit to add: In the comments, Adrian points again to the Valleywag article where he “sets the record straight.” He says he was on the Google campus for a social visit. Valleywag quotes him, then goes on to talk about some “hitch” in the deal that Holovaty says doesn’t exist.
I’m going to err on the side of trusting Holovaty and call the Valleywag piece out for the unsourced bit of wishful thinking that it appears to be, until I see something more concrete.
(Original Holovaty photo by J.D. Lasica here)
Oct 7, 2008
The Daily Beast: Not perfect, but at least it knows it’s on the web
Tina Brown’s new venture launched yesterday, making this an impossibly late-to-the-party comment in today’s feverish blog cycle, but I really like this about The Daily Beast:
It links. The Beast links, prominently.
That such a thing is noteworthy here at the tail end of 2008 is a sad commentary, but I’m going to be glass-half-full guy and celebrate it.
Oct 3, 2008
Gazing into NAA’s 2009 crystal ball and seeing very different things
As he is wont to do, Alan Mutter, The Newsosaur, just rained on what little parade the Newspaper Association of America has to offer right now: A projection of revenue falloff of “only” 5.5% for 2008.
Mutter presents a credible anecdotal argument that any such projections are made of air, given the current swoon of the U.S. economy.
Fortunately, he didn’t take a peek back at the NAA’s 2008 projections, made back in December 2008. If he did, he’d be in an even worse mood:
Newspaper Association of America Business Analyst Jim Conaghan expects advertising revenue to decline only 1.2 percent in 2008, compared to 7 percent this year. That is to say that online revenue growth, which he predicts at 22 percent, will not quite cover continued losses of revenue from classifieds.
2008 Prediction: 1.2% down
2008 Actual: 11.5% down
2009 Prediction: 5.5% down
2009 Actual: Stay tuned, and buckle up
I’m still bullish on newspaper companies figuring out ways to grow the business in 2009, but the last place I’d look for reliable predictive data is the NAA.
Oct 3, 2008
Reports of Citizen Journalism’s demise are, I hope, premature as well
The knock against Citizen Journalism all along has been this:
- It’s created by untrained professionals amateurs
- It has no inherent credibility, until proven
- It is not edited
We just had a whopper to, unfortunately, add credence to all three, with CNN’s iReport site carrying a report that Steve Jobs had been hospitalized after a massive heart attack. Apple’s stock took a brief dive once the report was posted.
But I’m going to be a contrarian here and say the greater blame goes to CNN.
If you are CNN, the most widely-known news brand in the world, and you create a system that allows anyone to post anything as news, you must anticipate that eventually, you’ll get pranks. And worse.
Given that certainty, to not monitor such reports is nothing but a dereliction of journalistic duty.
There is much that Citizen Journalism can do to help to further the cause of all journalism, but CNN’s “set it and forget it” approach will only serve to harm the cause.
It will be interesting to see how CNN reacts to this.
(Edited to fix a bit of sloppy writing in the ordered-list above. Thanks @ShawnKing on Twitter for pointing out what happens when unedited copy is rushed to publcation!)
:-/
Oct 3, 2008
Greenslade: Don’t blame newsrooms for the decline in readership
The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade often can be counted on for an interesting and accurate take on the state of journalism.
Just not today.
Today, in a stunning and sweeping mea non culpa, Greenslade, a journalism professor and former reporter and editor, looks at the shrinking audience for newspapers and echoes The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi in a clear and ringing voice: “Don’t blame us!”
There cannot be any doubt that journalists themselves – the reporters, sub-editors, photographers, feature writers, columnists, page designers – cannot be held responsible for either the financial woes of the industry nor for the public turning its back on the “products” that contain their work.
In case that’s not clear enough, here it is more succinctly, in his own words: “It isn’t our fault.”
Greenslade correctly points out many of the other factors that come into play – including the general economic turmoil, bad management and changing media-consumption habits – but for him to say that the content itself has no part – no part at all – in the decline strikes me as ludicrous, and a marker for how deluded some still are.
Any other business with declining market share since The Eisenhower Administration would at least consider that the product might be part of the problem.
Otherwise, you’re just blaming your audience for being too stupid to appreciate all you’ve done for them.
UPDATE: Steve Yelvington, as usual, has a thoughtful and reasoned take on this topic:
The deck is stacked against the newspaper, but newsrooms are not powerless victims in the grip of some irreversible cosmic force. There is still high demand for effective local mass advertising solutions. Newspapers can be that solution — in fact, they could be the last mass medium standing.
But you can’t do it with a 20 percent market penetration, and that’s what you’ll have if you continue producing a 1968 newspaper in 2008.
Oct 2, 2008
This “news” on NBC site is nothing but a cheap trick
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I saw this on nbc.com:
…and I can’t help thinking that the ad on the right – made up to look like a news update, right down to the “updated 8 min. ago,” is horribly wrong. Is NBC so hard up for money that it’ll allow its site to carry deceptive ads dressed up as fake news?
(Edit to add: ten minutes later and I can’t get the ad to show up again, so maybe it just slipped through the cracks and someone at NBC killed it. That position seems to be filled with a lot of remnant advertising.)
Oct 2, 2008
The check is not in the mail
You know the old saying:
When you owe the bank $1,000 – and can’t pay – you have a problem.
When you owe the bank $486 million – and can’t pay – the bank has a problem.
This week, The Star Tribune told its lenders that they have a problem.
Me, elsewhere