Mini, Midi, Maxi

Posted on September 24, 2008 by jestevens

Hey ho…with the debut of the GPhone yesterday, we’ve just cranked our way to the top of the first hill of the Web’s mini (and most powerful) platform rollercoaster. Now, hang on! It’s going to be a wild and wonderful ride. As many have mentioned before (and I’ll find those links in the link pile soon), the Webcentric world’s platforms seem to be sorting into three types: mini (mobile), midi (laptop), and maxi (wall screens). [For the retro crowd: kind of like skirts in the 60s and 70s.]

All you jurnos out there who are contemplating a startup news/info/community network: figure out how the network’s content will work on all of these platforms, especially the mini and midi. From the get-go.

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Journalists w/o Journalism?

Posted on September 19, 2008 by jestevens

Oh so sad. An upcoming free half-day seminar – Journalists without Newsrooms — on Sept. 24 at the National Press Club could be titled “Journalists without Journalism.” Less than half of the panelists offer advice on how to continue doing journalism. The rest include tips on how to switch to the film business, public relations, newsletters, association work and, yo ho!, private investigations.

Paper Cuts keeps tabs on vanishing jobs

Paper Cuts keeps tabs on vanishing jobs

Holy moly. If that’s all we can come up with, journalism’s sunk. Where are the workshops and seminars that offer an entrepreneurial roadmap for the 10,764+ jurnos who’ve lost their jobs so far this year? Can’t anyone just look at the proliferation of niche news/info networks popping up in the Medium That’s Taking Over the World to see that plenty of opportunity exists for journalists…and journalism?

This year, I’m fortunate to be doing a fellowship at U. Missouri’s new  Reynolds Journalism Institute to help figure out how to ease the transition for jurnos by developing free or very-low-cost community-centric news/info templates. But that’s just one tiny part of what needs to be done. More on that soon.

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Mizzou confab — Newspaper Next 2.0

Posted on September 13, 2008 by jestevens

Steve Buttry, editor of The Gazette and the GazetteOnline, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Here’s info about Buttry on the UM J-school site. This is one of many presentations at UM J-school centennial this week. But I’m adding this late…it occurred on Thursday, Sept. 11) “How many people are using Newspaper Next?” he asked. One or two raised their hands. “How many people have heard about Newspaper Next?” he asked. Just a few hands went up in an auditorium in which almost every seat is filled. Buttry says: “We gotta do a better job getting the word out about Newspaper Next.” [ReJurno: Ya think? Isn't this billed as the newspaper industry's big push to save newspapers, to embrace disruptive technology?]1`

Most hadn't heard of Newspaper Next

Most hadn't heard of Newspaper Next

Buttry said that newspapers used to be the place for the entire community. They served the community’s needs. But newspapers are not the best vehicle anymore. So, the American Press Institute developed Newspaper Next, which includes the concept of looking at a community’s megajobs, that is, the jobs that people and businesses need to do in community. Buttry says that newspapers should ask: What are the jobs our products are doing for business and consumers? And he repeated what many are this week, and have been for the last few years: We’re no longer newspaper companies. Instead of defining ourselves by our technology, we need to ask what is it we do for this community? We need to become the local information and connection utility. Great journalism alone can’t sell a newspaper.

(more…)

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Mizzou confab — New models of journalism

Posted on September 11, 2008 by jestevens

Alum and students packed Neff Auditorium to hear some highly respected traditional jurnos who’ve made the leap into the Webcentric world with sites such as ProPublica, MinnPost, the St. Louis Beacon, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Good on ‘em. Good on ‘em. But they’re not going to make it if they keep

Jurnos, alums and jurnos-to-be SRO

Jurnos, alums and jurnos-to-be SRO

on with a we-talk, you-listen approach. Or a great-journalism-is-all-you-need approach. Or a linear, text-centric newspaper/magazine content approach. (A shining light: the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s multimedia story — Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.) Or a been-there-done-that approach to covering their beats (i.e., no context or continuity). And where are the links, the resources, the backgrounders, the databases, the solution-oriented approaches to providing USEFUL information for their communities? I’m crossing my fingers that they’ll move in those directions FAST FAST FAST. We’ll be a lot better off if good, solid journalism survives. And these folks have soooo much good experience and understanding to contribute to Webcentric journalism. But their sites show that they don’t yet understand the medium. Here’s what they said:

Jon Sawyer from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, developed an interesting (more…)

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