The silly season

Submitted by yelvington on February 24, 2009 - 10:50pm

The silly season is supposed to be in late summer, and here we are in late winter. Yet we are right in the middle of the silly season, judging from the preposterous nonsense being peddled as "solutions" to the "death of newspapers" crisis. Lately I'm seeing ideas that fall into one or more of several simple categories:

Ideas from aging printies who apparently fell asleep in 1994 and just woke up. This includes most of the paid-content and microcharging nonsense, and just about everything written in the last 12 months by a "columnist."

Stop the irrational negativity: Newspapers are not dead

Submitted by yelvington on February 4, 2009 - 1:01pm

I really hate being in a position of defending the newspaper industry. It's much more fun, and in the big picture perhaps more productive, to kick it in the pants. But I have to call bullshit on the "Newspapers Are Dead" meme.

No, they're not. Neither is print. Schadenfreude and gravedancing do not advance a rational conversation about how journalism will work going forward, and irrational negativity will not help us invent the future.

One step closer to MOM

Submitted by yelvington on February 4, 2009 - 7:47am

I've written previously about MOM -- a whiteboard project dreamed up last century at a New Directions for News workshop. MOM stands for "My Own Matrix," a universal personal infobroker that would monitor all the news, tell you what you need to know, keep track of your schedule, recommend activities and even suggest friends. Mom wouldn't be a device, but rather an entity on a network that would interact with you through any number of devices.

Standard templates aren't such a bad idea

Submitted by yelvington on January 9, 2009 - 2:37pm

Earlier today I posted a question on Twitter:

Standard site templates: http://tinyurl.com/a9ytm9 says nay, I say yea. How vote ye?

Responses came quickly:

danjohn1234
danjohn1234 @yelvington a resounding yea from me on templates. Content trumps design always. The content should set a mareket apart, not the design.

gmarkham
gmarkham @yelvington voting yea with some ifs: if totally customizable and if (the big one) under local control/decision-making.

The Internet isn't killing newspapers

Submitted by yelvington on January 7, 2009 - 1:08pm

I know I'm repeating myself, but it bears repeating: The Internet isn't killing newspapers.

The Internet didn't create the conditions that left the Lee Enterprises, the Tribune Company, Journal Register, Gatehouse Media, the Star Tribune and a dozen others hanging off a cliff, dangling from a tree root.

By far and away, it's the economy, the economy, and also the economy, combined with some badly timed financial bets. And the economy is cyclical.

Front page, back page -- what's important is where the money comes from

Submitted by yelvington on January 7, 2009 - 8:27am

So the New York Times is running display advertising on the front page. And there's a great disturbance in the Twittersphere and an upheaval in the Blogosphere. Either this is a crime against the purity of the newspaper, or it's something that should have been done long ago, depending on who's talking.

Ultimately it makes no difference whatsoever.

What's important is: What money is this? Where's it coming from? Is it new revenue, or just another case of moving money from one pocket to another?

Early to the game but late to learn how to play

Submitted by yelvington on January 6, 2009 - 10:29am

Writing for Slate, Jack Schafer describes "How Newspapers Tried to Invent the Web But Failed." You new kids should read it carefully. Then get off my lawn.

Schafer, who reveals he was offered a job at the Washington Post's first online service but "turned the job down because I had no idea what job was being offered to me," concludes that "From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions."