In an age of challenged resources for investigative work, it is no surprise that great interest greets the launch of ProPublica, the non-profit public-interest operation headed by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger.
The service launched this week.
ProPublica's first batch of articles are still some distance away, and the staff of more than a dozen will eventually blossom to a reporting staff of 25.
Meantime, brewing is a smart aggregation of U.S. investigative work and a promise to analyse and track scandals. Its business model is still somewhat of a question, but it launches with Sandler Foundation and other funds.
The Dallas Morning News, smarting from substantial circulation and advertising declines, now plans to launch in August a free, quick-to-read, home-delivered newspaper to non-subscribers called Briefing. A thorough look at the future of e-paper in the latest ComputerWorld. So-called EPD technology is farther along than the public success of Amazon's Kindle might suggest. Colour e-ink, plastrates that emulate paper better, and more flexible and portable technologies should arrive in the years to come. A new IDC report points to the ascension of Web advertising and predicts it will surpass all but direct marketing by 2012 as the medium of choice. It will house about $51.1 billion in spending by then. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, is getting around more and more these days. His latest speech to the Economic Club of Washington indicates a different form of computing is on its way: Cloud computing, with information housed away from your desktop, but portably available. I have to admit I write like a print journalist. I have been able at times to write like a broadcast journalist. But I have not mastered writing like a Web journalist, mainly because I've not seen enough information to guide me on my craft. It's been noted recently that newspaper Web sites are commandeering the local advertising market online. This week our newsroom at The Vancouver Sun made substantial changes to the processes of online and print production. A little-noticed Seattle Times piece this week on Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist raises the possibility of a relationship between the classified giant and the conventional news media. Scott Karp, the prolific and often profound writer for the Publishing 2.0 blog, spends a lot of space making a nevertheless sound point: Design has to work or nothing else will. In his words, if your users fail, your Web site fails. He is critical of sites that require registration without making the case that it is in the user's interests. Whether the user succeeds is everything, he notes. |
I am the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief at Self-Counsel Press, an Adjunct Professor and Executive-in-Residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of British Columbia, and the
Executive Director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen. In 2008 I launched themediamanager.com to chronicle media change, then media ethics, standards and freedom. I was recently the mayoralty candidate in Vancouver for the Non-Partisan Association. I am the former CBC Ombudsman of English Services and have held the senior editorial roles at CTV News, The Hamilton Spectator and Southam News. I was the founding Executive Editor of National Post, Managing Editor of The Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Bureau Chief and General News Editor at The Canadian Press, and host on CBC Newsworld, among other media roles. My social networking includes activity on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. I also write for a for-fun-only music site, rockzombies.us Archives
January 2015
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The Canadian analytics firm Sysomos has published new data on nearly 100 million posts it reviewed and it shows
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