Online Journalism Review

• Here's what newsrooms can learn from the Tiger Woods story

  By Robert Niles: By this point the Tiger Woods story (or, at least, should be) the domain of the celebrity gossip sites, such as TMZ, and the sports gossip sites, such as Sports by Brooks. What? You didn't know that there were sites devoted specifically to sports gossip? Hey, how many' [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 12:07pm EST
  

• American government: It's always subsidized commercial media

  By David Westphal: By Geoffrey Cowan and David Westphal Geoffrey Cowan is university professor at the University of Southern California and dean emeritus of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. David Westphal is a senior fellow at USCÂ’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and former Washington bureau chief for [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 1:44pm EST
  

• How thankful are you for your role in journalism today?

  By Robert Niles: Here's my shout-out to all you fellow journalists, working today instead of hitting the malls, sleeping in or lounging on the couch, like the rest of America today. (Okay, I suppose some of you have been assigned to covering folks at the mall, but still....) Allow me to turn [...]
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  Posted: November 27, 2009, 10:42am EST
  

• Microsoft and News Corp. are pursuing yesterday's solution to today's challenges

  By Robert Niles: News Corp.'s alleged plan to shield its online content from Google's search engine in favor of having it indexed by Microsoft's Bing is a brilliant content business strategy... for the 20th Century. But, today, it illustrates just the latest example of backward-thinking by legacy media executives who've been' [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 1:08am EST
  

• Walt Disney vs. the news industry: How bad management is killing newspapers and their websites

  By Robert Niles: I've attended many journalism conferences over the years, but our industry offers nothing like the event I attended this week. As many of you might know, my primary job these days is running a theme park news website that I founded nearly a decade ago. So this' [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 2:24am EST
  

• Can Bottled Water Save Journalism Online?

  By Brian McDermott: The October 20 survey was depressing and unsurprising news. Approximately 1,820 Brits out of 2,000- that’s 91 percent- told Lightspeed Research that they would never pay for news online. “Online it should be free,” said 19-year-old Shauna O’Brien, an economics major at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 10:44pm EST
  

• Starting your news website: How to get the most promotional value from Twitter

  By Robert Niles: Thank you to everyone who sent along comments about my last piece, Starting your news website: A checklist for students and mid-career beginners. In response to a few comments, today I'm going more in-depth on how to most effectively use a promotional channel for a news website' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 1:22pm EST
  

• No revenue model for news? Labor steps up

  By David Westphal: At the recent Harvard session on new business models for news, I offered an off-the-beaten-path idea to the question of who will pay for the news. One answer, I said, was non-news organizations: NGOs, trade associations, businesses, governments and labor unions. Yes, labor unions. There are indications of [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 7:44pm EST
  

• Time for newspapers choose between the DEC or IBM model

  By Dave Chase: It is painful to watch the steady decline of newspapers. For some, I expect we're about to see the dead cat bounce as the economy turns around. This will only delay the inevitable. The challenge they face at this late date is immense but surmountable. Their near death' [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 1:12pm EST
  

• TwitterTim.es: Personalized news done right?

  By Eric Ulken: I'm not ashamed to admit it: The first time I saw Twitter, I thought, "What's the point?" Maybe you did too, or maybe you're just more perceptive than I am. Even Twitter's founders have said they didn't know exactly what it was when they started working on' [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 11:05pm EST
  

• Starting your news website: A checklist for students and mid-career beginners

  By Robert Niles: My post today is intended for students, mid-career journalists or anyone else thinking about starting an online news site, but without the faintest idea of how to start. Here is your guide and checklist. Now, I'm assuming that you already know how to report and how to write. I'm [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 11:54pm EDT
  

• Does your site really need to be in Google News?

  By Robert Niles: With print newspaper circulations crashing faster than the reality-TV hopes of Balloon Boy's family, you could forgive newsroom managers for chasing every available source of new readers. For many online publishers, affiliated with newspapers or not, the Holy Grail of traffic is inclusion in the Google News [...]
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  Posted: October 28, 2009, 10:23am EDT
  

• Wanted: Less rhetoric, more critical thinking about 'The Reconstruction of American Journalism'

  By Tom Grubisich: The new report "The Reconstruction of American Journalism" by Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson is one more example of what what's wrong with the debate about the future of journalism. The Columbia Journalism School-sponsored report shovels out overviews, conclusions and recommendations by the pound, but with [...]
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  Posted: October 23, 2009, 9:27am EDT
  

• Where does news come from?

  By Nikki Usher: Time after time again, people who want to save newspapers claim that newspapers are the primary source of news. But is their claim actually founded on anything other than self-importance? I love newspapers. I want them to survive, in some form, but it's important to investigate where the [...]
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  Posted: October 20, 2009, 11:19pm EDT
  

• This headline not written for Google

  By Eric Ulken: I'm amused by a discussion on SEO and headline-writing taking place at the Nieman Journalism Lab site and on the Canadian blog MediaStyle. It seems a seminar on SEO for editors at The Globe and Mail offended the Canadian paper's online books editor, who interpreted it as' [...]
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  Posted: October 20, 2009, 7:42pm EDT
  

• Freedom of the press ought to belong to all... not just to approved 'journalists'

  By Robert Niles: Can you do journalism and not be a "journalist"? Do people declared "journalists" get special speech and press rights that other American citizens do not enjoy? Can anyone enjoy the right to free speech and free publication, even if that individual is not a full-time professional reporter? These [...]
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  Posted: October 16, 2009, 2:39pm EDT
  

• Freedom of the press ought to belong to all... not just to approved 'journalists'

  By Robert Niles: Can you do journalism and not be a "journalist"? Do people declared "journalists" get special speech and press rights that other American citizens do not enjoy? Can anyone enjoy the right to free speech and free publication, even if that individual is not a full-time professional reporter? These [...]
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  Posted: October 16, 2009, 2:39pm EDT
  

• Developing an Effective User Experience

  By Cindy Royal: A few months ago, I wrote an article entitled “Making Media Social: News as User Experience”. I talked about the online trend, driven by social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, of users having the growing expectation of participation on the Web. Users want to be able [...]
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  Posted: October 14, 2009, 12:36am EDT
  

• Old Media vs. New Media: Let's call this one off

  By David Westphal: It's been a lot of fun, this long-running sniper's war between Old Media and New Media. We've all enjoyed some hilarious slap-downs, all marveled at the sheer idiocy of the morons on the other side. (Oh, and let's not forget their over-the-top mean-spiritedness.) But all fun things' [...]
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  Posted: October 07, 2009, 1:13pm EDT
  

• USC Annenberg gets a new name - USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism

  By Geneva Overholser: Recognizing the critically important role journalism plays in a democratic society and USC's role as a leading institution for educating and training journalists, the University of Southern California Board of Trustees has voted to change the name of the USC Annenberg School for Communication to the USC [...]
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  Posted: October 07, 2009, 12:52pm EDT
  

• No more whining at year's Online News Association conference

  By Robert Niles: SAN FRANCISCO - If there's a theme to this year's Online Journalism Association conference, it'd be: "No More Whining." Several of us have commented on the lack of the whining from newspaper-dot-com employees, which weighed down past ONA gatherings. Perhaps now, at long last, a tipping point of' [...]
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  Posted: October 02, 2009, 2:20pm EDT
  

• No more whining at 2009's Online News Association conference

  By Robert Niles: SAN FRANCISCO - If there's a theme to this year's Online Journalism Association conference, it'd be: "No More Whining." Several of us have commented on the lack of the whining from newspaper-dot-com employees, which weighed down past ONA gatherings. Perhaps now, at long last, a tipping point of' [...]
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  Posted: October 02, 2009, 2:20pm EDT
  

• Reinventing arts journalism... by starting with a virtual summit

  By Sasha Anawalt: Sasha Anawalt is director of Arts Journalism Programs at USC Annenberg School for Communication and co-director of A National Summit on Arts Journalism. I'm told by people who know such things that I am lousy at the elevator pitch. But the question: "Hey, Sasha, what is this'" [...]
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  Posted: September 29, 2009, 11:42pm EDT
  

• Build your ties to the community to build your news site's revenue

  By Robert Niles: There are two types of advertisers in the world (in my experience, at least): Those who track every placement, counting the clicks and conversions, to determine how much new revenue each placement generated, minus the cost of creating and running the ads. Those who buy an ad because they [...]
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  Posted: September 25, 2009, 9:53am EDT
  

• Research for hire: A revenue model for the news?

  By David Westphal: New business models are coming quickly now, at news organizations big and small. The New York Times is tapping the continuing education market, charging $185 for the chance to sit in a seminar room with Nicholas Kristof, Gail Collins or other Times stars. The tiny Texas Watchdog [...]
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  Posted: September 22, 2009, 4:26pm EDT
  

• Eight things that journalism students should demand from their journalism schools

  By Robert Niles: The new semester is well underway at almost all the nation's journalism schools. Students have received their syllabi, explaining exactly what the school expects from its students during their courses. But what should students expect from their schools? Sure, they're getting classes and instruction, but those alone won't [...]
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  Posted: September 18, 2009, 2:07pm EDT
  

• What news websites are missing: useful, real-time municipal traffic and transit reports

  By Kathlyn Clore: The chipper consultants whom legacy media organizations overpay to update their brands don’t typically deign to tinker with traffic reporting. But from where I sit – clutching the handlebars of my Dutch bicycle – this rather routine news service represents a basket of low-hanging fruit for news brands [...]
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  Posted: September 16, 2009, 10:02am EDT
  

• Can the Web forge a marriage between newspaper investigations and documentary filmmaking?

  By Robert Niles: Two weeks ago, Thomas Maier at Newsday pinged me about a project he and the team at Newsday had just published - an ambitious multimedia investigation into the aftermath of U.S. nuclear testing in the Pacific. I asked Thomas if he'd answer some questions for OJR readers' [...]
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  Posted: September 11, 2009, 10:29am EDT
  

• Can the Web forge a marriage between newspaper investigations and documentary filmmaking?

  By Robert Niles: Two weeks ago, Thomas Maier at Newsday pinged me about a project he and the team at Newsday had just published - an ambitious multimedia investigation into the aftermath of U.S. nuclear testing in the Pacific. I asked Thomas if he'd answer some questions for OJR readers' [...]
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  Posted: September 11, 2009, 10:29am EDT
  

• Howard Owens shows how journalists can become successful news entrepreneurs

  By Robert Niles: Howard Owens was starting online-only news sites back in the dark ages of the Web: 1996. Starting with a "hyperlocal" in San Diego (before that was a buzzword bingo staple), then moving on to several communities devoted to RVs (that's right, the big campers), Howard eventually found [...]
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  Posted: September 09, 2009, 11:34am EDT
  

• Howard Owens shows how journalists can become successful news entrepreneurs

  By Robert Niles: Howard Owens was starting online-only news sites back in the dark ages of the Web: 1996. Starting with a "hyperlocal" in San Diego (before that was a buzzword bingo staple), then moving on to several communities devoted to RVs (that's right, the big campers), Howard eventually found [...]
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  Posted: September 09, 2009, 11:34am EDT
  

• What is the one thing you would change about the news industry?

  By Robert Niles: In my last post, I wrote about problems in the news industry. Today, I'm shifting my focus to solutions. And because, as Dan Gillmor is so fond of saying, our readers are smarter than we are, I threw this question out to folks via my Facebook, Twitter' [...]
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  Posted: September 04, 2009, 3:24pm EDT
  

• Journalism's biggest problems are not online: They're inside

  By Robert Niles: Think the Internet is the biggest threat to the journalism business? Think again. Traditional news organizations are stabbing themselves in the gut, making the decision to flee to online news and information sources an easier one for many readers, viewers and advertisers. Here are just a few of current threats [...]
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  Posted: September 02, 2009, 1:36am EDT
  

• Where are the tribunes of the people in the health-care debate?

  By Tom Grubisich: Every day, the debate over health-care reform grows hotter – but newspapers and their websites are doing little to shape the outcome. This is not just journalistic failure, but also abdication of public responsibility. For all their cost cutting, newspapers still have the editorial resources to take [...]
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  Posted: August 28, 2009, 11:52am EDT
  

• Where are the tribunes of the people in the health-care debate?

  By Tom Grubisich: Every day, the debate over health-care reform grows hotter – but newspapers and their websites are doing little to shape the outcome. This is not just journalistic failure, but also abdication of public responsibility. For all their cost cutting, newspapers still have the editorial resources to take [...]
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  Posted: August 28, 2009, 11:52am EDT
  

• The University of Montana's online Rural News Network sustains community ties as newspapers close

  By Elizabeth Zwerling: DUTTON, MT – When Courtney Lowery flew to Seattle for surgery shortly after her college graduation, her hometown newspaper published a notice so community members knew where to drop off gifts. She awoke following that January 2003 surgery to find a suitcase full of teddy bears, candy [...]
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  Posted: August 25, 2009, 10:57am EDT
  

• LA Times redesign doesnÂ’t quite click

  By Tom Grubisich: The LA Times website used to remind me of an old-fashioned hardware store – things were plopped wherever there seemed to be space. That changed when Meredith Artley took over as editor of the site in early 2007. Under Artley, latimes.com quickly became a leader in design [...]
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  Posted: August 21, 2009, 10:40am EDT
  

• Inspiring journalism students to believe... they 'can do anything!'

  By Cindy Royal: Last week I experienced one of my proudest moments in the classroom. It was the last day of the summer session, and students in my Web design course were busily working in the computer lab on final multimedia projects. The room was filled with the sound of [...]
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  Posted: August 19, 2009, 1:26am EDT
  

• An assignment for journalists and students: Talk with an entrepreneur

  By Robert Niles: Last spring, OJR helped present a boot camp for entrepreneurial journalists at the University of Southern California. We selected and brought about a dozen journalists to USC's Marshall School of Business, where they spent five days learning some of the skills - and the mindset - necessary [...]
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  Posted: August 14, 2009, 11:16am EDT
  

• The Nine-Percenters: A Moroccan micro-blogging mutiny

  By Ted Scheinman and Aaron Wiener: Last Tuesday, after reading an Al Jazeera article on the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, a Moroccan expat named Hisham Twittered the following: It's true; things haven't gone too swimmingly for Moroccan journalists of late. Criticizing Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, they've learned, will [...]
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  Posted: August 11, 2009, 8:27am EDT
  

• Lessons from the revolution, for the revolution

  By Robert Niles: My travels this summer have brought me to Washington, D.C. and Williamsburg, Va., where I've shown my California-dwelling kids some of the scenes of their nation's birth. But while they've been seeing the sights from their U.S. history classes for the first time, I've also enjoyed revisiting' [...]
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  Posted: August 06, 2009, 9:50pm EDT
  

• Newspaper websites offer no cure on health-care reform

  By Tom Grubisich: Helpless to stop their print world from being pulped, newspapers are blowing a golden opportunity to use the Web to recapture relevance and audience. The occasion is a story that impacts every man, woman and child in America – health care and how to universalize quality without [...]
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  Posted: August 05, 2009, 10:05am EDT
  

• Eight tips to keep your mobile website readers happy

  By Robert Niles: The past few weeks have found me on the road quite a bit, as I visit theme parks around the country for my "day job" website. So I've been using my iPhone to keep in touch, via WiFi, AT & T's 3G network or, when I'm really [...]
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  Posted: July 30, 2009, 9:38pm EDT
  

• So... what is the future of citizen journalism and social media?

  By Sandra Ordonez: In 1996 I was a communications student at American University, and had just discovered the Internet. I became an addict overnight. At that time, the public communications students were required to take many of the same classes that journalism students did. However, there was an innate understanding [...]
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  Posted: July 28, 2009, 9:15pm EDT
  

• Can objective journalism endure, after Cronkite?

  By Larry Atkins: Editor's note: Larry's thoughts on Walter Cronkite provide us an opportunity to talk about what journalism is, and might be, in the Internet era. I'll follow Larry's piece with a comment of my own, and I invite you to do the same. As a journalism professor, the' [...]
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  Posted: July 23, 2009, 10:23pm EDT
  

• Staking out newspaper survival in Web analytics

  By Nikki Usher: This is part two in a two-part series on Web analytics and the future of news. [Part one] The news industry is caught in a destabilizing position – each newspaper is going to have to come up with its own unique algorithm to give advertisers a sense of [...]
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  Posted: July 21, 2009, 10:55pm EDT
  

• How early online newspaper production tools led the industry down the wrong path

  By Robert Niles: Wisdom is the ability to see your life and career not simply as a line going forward from wherever point you are, but as an arc that extends from the past into the future. That's why I believe it is important to teach online journalism students about [...]
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  Posted: July 16, 2009, 11:25pm EDT
  

• It's time to retire newspaper circulation data in favor of Web analytics - But which ones?

  By Nikki Usher: This is part one in a two-part series on Web analytics and the future of news Newspaper circulation numbers are taken as report cards for survival. When worse than expected for too long, these numbers forewarn of future layoffs and corporate restructuring – and at the very worst, [...]
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  Posted: July 14, 2009, 10:43pm EDT
  

• Don't dimiss journalism schools just because newspapers are in trouble

  By Larry Atkins: Larry Atkins teaches Journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University. In light of the decline of newspapers, you would think that college students would be staying away from the field of journalism in droves. Thus far, that's not the case. But will university journalism schools change their approach [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 12:51am EDT
  

• Don't dismiss journalism schools just because newspapers are in trouble

  By Larry Atkins: Larry Atkins teaches Journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University. In light of the decline of newspapers, you would think that college students would be staying away from the field of journalism in droves. Thus far, that's not the case. But will university journalism schools change their approach [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 12:51am EDT
  

• Memo to Katharine Weymouth: Put your salon on the Web

  By Tom Grubisich: Former Washington Post staffer and frequent OJR contributor Tom Grubisich checks in with his take on the recent near-scandal at the Post - the paper's attempt to sell access to its reporters and editors through high-priced, off-the-record "salons" at the publisher's home. After Tom makes his points, [...]
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  Posted: July 08, 2009, 10:50am EDT
  

• Newspaper columnists ought to be the perfect bloggers. So why aren't more doing it well?

  By Robert Niles: Newspaper columnists ought to be the perfect bloggers - the best write in a lively voice and forge a strong connection with their readers. Their work build an ongoing conversation with the communities they cover. Frankly, they've been blogging (in print) since long before anyone other than' [...]
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  Posted: July 02, 2009, 6:41pm EDT
  

• A free-lance prototype: multimedia and entrepreneurial

  By David Westphal: The University of Virginia prepared Jason Motlagh very well for his career has a free-lance foreign correspondent. When he applied to take a journalism elective course, he was rejected because he wasn't an English major. When he applied for a job as food columnist at the school paper,' [...]
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  Posted: June 30, 2009, 5:10pm EDT
  

• Michael Jackson's death and its lessons for online journalists covering breaking news

  By Robert Niles: very major breaking news events offers its lessons to the news organizations that covered it. And today's death of singer Michael Jackson should lead newsrooms to reexamine how they handle breaking news in a hyper-competitive, instant-publishing environment. I wrote last week about how news consumers used Twitter to [...]
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  Posted: June 26, 2009, 1:49am EDT
  

• Growing pains, part 2: Can grassroots journalism help underserved communities?

  By Emily Henry: While the newspaper industry struggles to find new definition in an Internet age, the population most at risk of being left behind is low-income communities. Local newspapers are suffering significant losses in the industry, and yet the medium is still heavily relied upon as a source of [...]
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  Posted: June 24, 2009, 11:29am EDT
  

• Life after death: newspapers and the re-invention of paper technology

  By Emily Henry: The threat underlying the transition to a paperless, Internet world is, in itself, ironic. Firstly, the illusive space of the online sphere is being filled with a cacophony of "voices," many of which are echoing the content produced by the traditional media. The Internet speaks in a [...]
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  Posted: June 19, 2009, 1:30pm EDT
  

• Lessons for online journalists from #CNNFail and the Iran uprising

  By Robert Niles: As Iranians took to the streets over the weekend to protest the country's recent election, thousands of users of Twitter were staging a protest of their own: against CNN for not devoting as much attention to the Iranian situation as Twitter users wanted. The hashtag #CNNFail became one [...]
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  Posted: June 17, 2009, 10:54am EDT
  

• How can we better teach journalism students to manage reader-driven content communities?

  By Robert Niles: When I was teaching online journalism, the most difficult aspect of the craft for me to teach was its most unique: online journalism's ability to harness the collective reporting power of its audience. Sure, I could lecture all semester about moderating discussion forums, eliciting thoughtful reader comments, recruiting [...]
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  Posted: June 12, 2009, 12:36pm EDT
  

• How metro newsrooms can recapture their local dominance

  By Tom Grubisich: Proliferating blogs and micro-sites are producing so much local news, hard and soft, that the continuing shrinkage and even death of metro papers will leave no troubling void in metro coverage, Mark Potts concludes in an extensively linked post on his Recovering Journalist blog. Potts comes close [...]
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  Posted: June 10, 2009, 10:18am EDT
  

• Industry chaos provides reporters with an opportunity to rethink standards

  By Robert Niles: The impending collapse of many news organizations is providing thoughtful journalists with an opportunity to reinvent the practice of their craft. What should be newsworthy? What should be the impact of a news story? Working for their old employers, many journalists paid little attention to such questions. [...]
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  Posted: June 05, 2009, 1:21am EDT
  

• Industry chaos provides reporters with an opportunity to rethink standards

  By Robert Niles: The impending collapse of many news organizations is providing thoughtful journalists with an opportunity to reinvent the practice of their craft. What should be newsworthy? What should be the impact of a news story? Working for their old employers, many journalists paid little attention to such questions. [...]
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  Posted: June 05, 2009, 1:21am EDT
  

• Thought Leadership drives local media revenue

  By Dave Chase: In an earlier piece "Local media survival depends on Low Cost Sales Models," I detailed the favorable economics of pursuing a broader base of advertisers if you employed a sales model appropriate to the size of ad budget. McKinsey had done some analysis that echoed the experience [...]
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  Posted: June 03, 2009, 9:50am EDT
  

• Local media survival depends on Low Cost Sales Models

  By Dave Chase: Amidst the doom and gloom of local news media, it's lost on many that there's a sector of local businesses that can provide a 20% lift in revenue. McKinsey did an analysis using a market of 1 million people to determine the revenue increase a newspaper could [...]
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  Posted: May 29, 2009, 12:53pm EDT
  

• Newspapers should become carnival barkers on their Google-linked pages

  By Tom Grubisich: Google CEO Eric Schmidt has tauntingly suggested that newspapers could keep their stories out of the search engine's omnivorous maw by the simple expedient of inserting a line of anti-spidering robot text. But newspapers don't have to commit hara-kiri to keep others from making a free lunch' [...]
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  Posted: May 27, 2009, 1:29am EDT
  

• Journalists must emerge from a culture of failure in order to survive

  By Robert Niles: For a generation, journalists have been steeped in a culture of failure. Even during boom years, newspapers laid off employees, offered buy-outs, froze the hiring off new employees and cut the pay of the ones they kept. When the Internet brought unprecedented competition into the news business, [...]
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  Posted: May 25, 2009, 2:20pm EDT
  

• Top 10 search engine optimization tips for online news start-ups

  By Robert Niles: This week, OJR is helping present the KDMC News Entrepreneur Boot Camp at USC. We've brought 15 aspiring news entrepreneurs to the USC Marshall School of Business, where they are learning the basic of eliciting financial and community support while creating a small news business. They are' [...]
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  Posted: May 20, 2009, 2:01am EDT
  

• How the newspaper industry threw away its lead in online search engines

  By Robert Niles: Last week, I reviewed how a 1995 court decision led the newspaper industry to withdraw from interactivity with its online audience at a crucial moment, crippling the industry's ability to compete with new online rivals. Today, I'd like to take another trip down the memory hole, and show' [...]
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  Posted: May 15, 2009, 3:19pm EDT
  

• Foreign reporting, the entrepreneurial and multimedia way

  By David Westphal: What are the two new qualities that journalists of the future must embody? They must be entrepreneurial and they must be multimedia. These are precisely the qualities that animate the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Almost five years ago now, my wife (Geneva Overholser) and I sat in [...]
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  Posted: May 14, 2009, 6:13pm EDT
  

• Making media social: news as user experience

  By Cindy Royal: I live in Austin, Texas, and teach at Texas State University, a short drive down I-35 in San Marcos. One thing I look forward to every year with great anticipation is the annual South By Southwest conference that happens in mid-March. Many are aware of the gigantic [...]
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  Posted: May 13, 2009, 10:14am EDT
  

• How a 1995 court case kept the newspaper industry from competing online

  By Robert Niles: This week, the United States Senate held a hearing on "The Future of Journalism", prompted by the recent demise of two major U.S. newspapers. I won't rehash the many, many arguments and theories put forth by so many people on this issue, save to note one that' [...]
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  Posted: May 08, 2009, 1:41am EDT
  

• As newspapers die, journalism schools turn online to find new life

  By Elizabeth Zwerling: Sometime in the weeks between the shuttering of the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post Intelligencer newsrooms, it dawned on me that not having a Facebook account (or texting capabilities for that matter) might actually make me less credible as a journalism professor. I realized I needed [...]
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  Posted: May 06, 2009, 10:01am EDT
  

• How are you going to make money? By changing your relationship with your community

  By Steve Buttry: I get the same question again and again as I explain our innovation efforts at Gazette Communications: How are you going to make money doing that? When I explained our plans to separate content from product, people could see that we were moving to an organization built for [...]
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  Posted: May 01, 2009, 10:32am EDT
  

• South Los Angeles community news website offers lessons for all

  By William Celis: A century ago, The New York Times routinely ran short items on its inside pages about church socials, fund-raising efforts by community groups, programs at public schools. These news nuggets defined the robust neighborhoods of Manhattan and the city's four other boroughs. Though eventually lost as the [...]
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  Posted: April 29, 2009, 10:20am EDT
  

• Do we really need large organizations to do good journalism?

  By Robert Niles: Yesterday, USC Annenberg's director Geneva Overholser tweeted: I seek names of 10 most interesting thinkers (not pronouncers) on how we will support journalism in the future: scholars, journalists et al. I don't presume to count myself among the 10 most interesting people in anything, much less thinking, but' [...]
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  Posted: April 24, 2009, 3:46pm EDT
  

• Communities are key in building websites' advertiser support

  By Robert Niles: If a website's editorial mission focuses on building community, as I've argued, so should its advertising sales strategy focus on community as well. Don't fall into the trap of selling potential advertisers nothing more than numbers; don't neglect to sell them on the opportunity to support the' [...]
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  Posted: April 22, 2009, 2:08am EDT
  

• Measuring user engagement: Lessons from BusinessWeek

  By Eric Ulken: Think about the traffic statistics you refer to when you look at Omniture or Google Analytics data for your site. Unique visitors? Pageviews? What do they actually tell you about your audience? The ubiquitous unique visitor metric treats your most passionate and thorough users exactly the same [...]
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  Posted: April 17, 2009, 1:15am EDT
  

• Don't lose your voice online

  By Robert Niles: Author Ralph Keyes this week rightly slammed news organizations for using cultural references in their news stories that leave many readers under the age of 50 in the dark. But do not rush to assume that the solution is to strip articles of metaphors and other references, [...]
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  Posted: April 15, 2009, 10:09am EDT
  

• New grassroots life for investigative reporting?

  By David Westphal: Might investigative journalism be ready to be re-born at the grassroots? Until recently, this question wasn't even asked much. If there was worry about what would happen to watchdog reporting with the decline of newspapers and other legacy media, it was expressed at the national level. It's why' [...]
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  Posted: April 09, 2009, 5:07pm EDT
  

• No one owns the news

  By Robert Niles: Whether you are working in computer programming, or business development, or the arts, creating something new demand a curious mix of hubris and humility. Hubris to believe that you are the one talented and knowledgeable enough to find the new way. And humility to know that you [...]
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  Posted: April 08, 2009, 11:41am EDT
  

• You've got to know what you stand for to survive in journalism online

  By Robert Niles: Established journalists and newsrooms making the transition to online publishing should not do so with the assumption that editorial content provides their strength in a competitive online information market. Often, the editorial content established journalists provide is not what online readers want, or even what they need. That's' [...]
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  Posted: April 03, 2009, 2:54pm EDT
  

• Top 10 business mistakes that newspapers must avoid as they go online-only

  By Dave Chase: I'd like to welcome the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to the world of pureplay, online-only local Internet sites. They have a heckuva a jumpstart with their level of web traffic which any local site would be thrilled to have. Unfortunately, there are many other items that they must put' [...]
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  Posted: April 01, 2009, 10:28am EDT
  

• Seven essential resources to help protect your website from technical attack

  By Robert Niles: Kevin Roderick publishes the widely read and highly acclaimed (among Los Angeles-area journalists, at least) blog LA Observed. But this week, Roderick's been living a Web journalist's nightmare. Earlier this week, many Web browsers started blocking access to his website, following Google's determination that LA Observed included [...]
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  Posted: March 27, 2009, 2:12pm EDT
  

• News businesses must think about content, not just products, to ensure their survival

  By Steve Buttry: I work for a 126-year-old start-up company. Since our founding in 1883, Gazette Communications has revolved around the newspaper that gave the company its name. As time went on, the company added a television station and various other products, but our focus was always on the products, especially [...]
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  Posted: March 25, 2009, 10:32am EDT
  

• Start with the public schools to build a successful local online news start-up

  By Robert Niles: A short while ago I had the pleasure of meeting with some local journalism graduate students, who are working to create an online news site covering the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra. You'll find Alhambra a few miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Despite its proximity to the' [...]
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  Posted: March 20, 2009, 2:50pm EDT
  

• Maybe what your news organization needs is a 'spontaneous bashing together of ideas'

  By Eric Ulken: [Editor's note: The past week roiled the journalism business, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went to online-only, the former Rocky Mountain News staff tried to revive the paper as an independent website and Clay Shirky painted a revolutionary picture for what is happening in the industry. Rather than take' [...]
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  Posted: March 18, 2009, 10:20am EDT
  

• Local news media needs dual business models, not dueling business models

  By Dave Chase: I own and run a hyperlocal site www.sunvalleyonline.com. While we've managed to be one of the few pure-play local Internet media ventures to eke out a profit, the financial returns aren't anything to write home about. This resulted in a minor epiphany when it comes to thinking [...]
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  Posted: March 13, 2009, 12:38pm EDT
  

• Life, online, after the Rocky Mountain News

  By Robert Niles: When Denver's Rocky Mountain News closed last month, hundreds of journalists found themselves looking for work. Some of them, though, aren't waiting for another newsroom to call. They're busy building their own, online. OJR talked this week with Steve Foster, up until last month the Rocky's assistant [...]
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  Posted: March 11, 2009, 10:14am EDT
  

• How the Web can help the Post (and other papers) write a new chapter about the world of books

  By Tom Grubisich: Book lovers mourned, some angrily, the Washington Post's decision to kill off its free-standing Book World, which, until Feb. 22, was part of the paper's Sunday print package. But the good news was the Post's promise that the estimable literary section would stay alive online. "We intend" [...]
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  Posted: March 06, 2009, 12:22pm EST
  

• How the Web can help the WaPo (and other papers) write a new chapter about the world of books

  By Tom Grubisich: Book lovers mourned, some angrily, the Washington Post's decision to kill off its free-standing Book World, which, until Feb. 22, was part of the paper's Sunday print package. But the good news was the Post's promise that the estimable literary section would stay alive online. "We intend" [...]
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  Posted: March 06, 2009, 12:22pm EST
  

• Essential reading for journalists caught in the meltdown

  By Robert Niles: Lost amongst the angst and anger over the bankruptcies running through the news business like a cold through a kindergarten is the wisdom that a few smart voices have offered, and continue to offer, this industry. Not everyone was caught asleep by what has happened over the [...]
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  Posted: March 04, 2009, 10:20am EST
  

• Someone's going to get rich in Denver next week...

  By Robert Niles: ...and then, someone else will get rich later this year in San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Miami and Minneapolis if papers in those cities close, as they are rumored. By now, you've heard that the Rocky Mountain News in Denver is publishing its final edition today. Owner E.W. Scripps' [...]
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  Posted: February 27, 2009, 10:37am EST
  

• Recession? Local news sites are hanging tough

  By David Westphal: Mary Morgan couldn't have picked a more difficult time (the middle of a recession) and place (Michigan and double-digit unemployment) to start a new community Web site. So why is she smiling? It's because Ann Arbor Chronicle is coming up on its six-month anniversary, it's meeting financial targets,' [...]
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  Posted: February 26, 2009, 6:04pm EST
  

• Newspapers' supply-and-demand problem (Why you should quit doing what everyone else is)

  By Eric Ulken: A lot of bits have been spilled over the apparent absence of a viable business model for news on the Web to replace one that no longer works for print. The ad-supported model doesn't seem to work, but clearly neither do pay walls. There's even talk of' [...]
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  Posted: February 25, 2009, 10:21am EST
  

• Journalism is the business of building communities - so newsrooms must hire from within those communities

  By Robert Niles: Can democratic communities survive without a newspaper to provide them the civic information they need? That's the question on many journalists' minds these days? But I think it more enlightening to flip that question, and ask again: Can newspapers survive without the communities they need to sustain them? That,' [...]
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  Posted: February 20, 2009, 12:12pm EST
  

• Skills training is not enough for the digital journalist

  By Nikki Usher: As an academic, I've been given a front row seat to the unraveling of the news industry without having to worry about my job. But if I were a journalist, the first thing I would be thinking about is what kind of skills I might need in' [...]
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  Posted: February 18, 2009, 10:15am EST
  

• The ethical journalist's guide to selling ads on a website: Part three

  By Robert Niles: I hope that over the past two weeks of this series [week one | week two], you've come to see the parallel between advertising sales and news reporting: That is, to be successful, you must do a great deal of reporting before you write anything on paper' [...]
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  Posted: February 13, 2009, 11:54am EST
  

• The New York Times needs an online impresario to help it pay its bills

  By Tom Grubisich: The New York Times should indeed use its website to generate more revenue – but not by charging for any part of its presently all-free daily report. Executive Editor Bill Keller's recent ruminations on the touchy subject of paid content have led to speculation that the dearly [...]
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  Posted: February 11, 2009, 10:14am EST
  

• The ethical journalist's guide to selling ads on a website: Part two

  By Robert Niles: This is part two of a three-part series showing journalists how to sell advertisements on their websites. Last week, I urged you to select other news websites to examine and learn about their ad packages, including what those other publishers are charging for them. I also urged you [...]
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  Posted: February 06, 2009, 3:22pm EST
  

• Taking a ride with carousels

  By Laura Ruel and Nora Paul: Are rotating displays of Web content an effective way to promote news stories? This is the second in a series of articles about findings from the studies conducted for the member of the DiSEL's Eyetracking Research Consortium. One challenge that faces all of us who' [...]
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  Posted: February 04, 2009, 10:19am EST
  

• The ethical journalist's guide to selling ads on a website: Part one

  By Robert Niles: The reaction to my piece two weeks ago illustrates that the idea of a reporter selling ads on his or her website remains a troubling one for many would-be online publishers. So I decided to present a step-by-step guide describing how a journalist can sell ads without [...]
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  Posted: January 30, 2009, 1:17pm EST