BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Tag: newspapers

  • Not getting it

    4 comments on Not getting it
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    Ali Rahnema, managing director of the World Association of Newspapers, is pitching the OPA on WAN’s initiative to go after Google News and the aggregators. He acknowledges that some comments he has gotten are positive and some are angry that they are just a dead-tree industry trying to protect themselves. I vote with the latter. They don’t get it. Rahnema asks, could Google News exist if this content were not created by those papers?

    That is so much the wrong question. The real question is: Will news organizations in the future exist if they are not found on Google and company?

    If you want to boycott search and links, then you will die on paper.

    : Rich Karlgaard of Forbes asks the OPA audience whether they agree with Rahnema about Google. Very few raise their hands. He asks who disagrees A vast majority of hands go up. Thank goodness for good sense.

    : Obnoxious blogger that I am, I get up to challenge the protectionist panel and said that with their attitude, I fear for the future of the industry and of journalism because the distribution of today is about being found in search and links and aggregation and if you are not there you are not found.

    Zach Leonard of Timesonline.com said that aggregators are like newsstands and they are a place to be found.

  • Paper envy

    10 comments on Paper envy

    I’m suffering from serious paper envy. I’m in London reading The Guardian (full disclosure: I’m consulting there this week, and write for them), The Times, the Evening Standard, The Observer, The Independent, The Mail, not to mention the Metro, the Daily Express, and, for the fun of it, The Mirror and The Sun. And I’m loving it. They have energy and imagination and lots to read. Their businesses are changing, like papers elsewhere. And they have the advantage of being national. But I hear a lot more whining and gnashing of teeth in America from monopoly papers. Competition is good.

  • Five days a week

    2 comments on Five days a week

    In the U.S., Saturday papers have sucked for years and lately I’ve come to the conclusion that Monday papers suck, too. It’s probably a result of cutbacks: less weekend staff and all that. But I come to London and pick up the Monday Guardian and there’s the beefy Media section (full disclosure: I’m in it) and the equally beefy G2 section, both of which were cooked up the week before: tons to read, even on a Monday. Why can’t American papers do that?

  • Digital deja vu

    11 comments on Digital deja vu

    I just noticed, via the Editors’ Weblog, that the Dallas Morning News is going to insert CD-ROMs into the paper in April.

    I don’t get it: Two old media equal a new medium? When was the last time you stuck a CD-ROM into your computer? Now this has allegedly been working in Europe, though I thought that was often for distribution of music CDs and Murdoch complains that it doesn’t permanently raise circulation:

    It’s like magazines giving away sneakerphones to get you to subscribe…. or newspapers keeping TV listings to keep you subscribing. It’s not about the core product: news, local news. And there is a much better, more dynamic, less expensive, more personal way to delivery digital content: It’s called the internet.

    The last great technological innovation from the Dallas Morning News, let’s remember, was the Cuecat.

  • I smell fear

    9 comments on I smell fear
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    Reading the agenda of the World Newspaper Congress in the Kremlin — the Kremlin! — in June, I sense foreboding. Some of the sessions:

    Should newspapers welcome citizen journalists? … But what are the consequences for quality newspaper journalism? By inviting their public to participate, are newspapers harming their primary function or is citizen journalism a useful means of maintaining relationships with the “free generation?” …

    One of the most pressing dilemmas newspapers face today is how to integrate audio, video and interactivity into their news production. Should print journalists be trained on multiple platforms? Or should newspapers join forces with other media companies to provide multimedia news? …

    Web portals and news agencies: new threats to newspapers? New media mean new competition for newspapers. News aggregators lead readers to other sources and Internet companies produce original content. News agencies directly access the public though their websites, skipping the newspaper middleman. …

    Lessons from the Mohammed cartoon clash… Six panelists will discuss if there are limits for press freedom and how media responsibility can work in a globalized world. …

    Media credibility: should newspapers rewrite editorial guidelines?…

    Not a club of happy campers, I’d say. That’s all from the forum, which seems focused on the newsroom. The congress — which seems focused on the business side — concentrates, more wisely, on innovation. I like the title of this talk by Carolyn McCall, chief exec of Guardian Newspapers (where — full disclosure — I write and will consult): “How Guardian Newspapers Limited changed everything except our values in just 12 months.” And I’d say some new values are fair game, too. And I’d say the editors should be concentrating on innovation as well.