The specious holy-brand claim

On an industry email listserve, someone commented that "the thing that best distinguishes us from the guys trying to start online publications in their basements (besides the really big presses out back and the staff of professional journalists in our newsrooms) is that we have our reader's trust." Here's my response:

That's the official religion of the newsroom. I think it's a dangerous delusion and part of the culture of arrogance that is rotting the foundations of journalism.

Yes, there are people who trust us.

What's a media company these days?

Jane Stevens is showing the Kentucky Derby's website at the Online News Association conference. It pretty much waxed the Louisville newspaper's online coverage, begging the question: Who is the news media these days? The derby site has news, context, community, multimedia, entertainment ... taking advantage of the medium in ways the typical newspaper site, even in 2006, still does not.

Mission not accomplished, but ....

I am not foolish enough to don a flight suit and land on an aircraft carrier under a banner proclaiming "mission accomplished," but I think it's time we recognized that things have changed in the newspaper industry. The events of the last year or so -- the undeniable impact of blogging on civic life, the collapse of Knight-Ridder, the troubles at Tribune, the painful series of layoffs and "redundancies" at U.S. and U.K. newspapers -- have finally pushed just about everyone in a position of power to admit we simply can't continue to party like it's 1999.

Cuban's speech at ONA, ShareSleuth, and community video

Mark Cuban was a keynote speaker yesterday at the Online News Association conference in Washington. There were rumblings in advance of dissatisfaction with that selection because of ethical discomfort with his ShareSleuth.com project with former Post-Dispatch business reporter Chris Carey. There were some questions raised by Jeff Jarvis and Rich Jaroslovsky and I thought Cuban handled them fairly well.