Jeff Jarvis has posted an "utter bullshit" spreadsheet (for discussion only, not to be taken literally) outlining how a newsroom might reorganize to save money and focus on its strengths. One of the notable line items was reducing the number of copy editors (subs, for you Brits) from 15 to three. "Make writers edit," he declared.
Every time I'm asked to speak about citizen journalism, I have to spend part of my time explaining why I don't like the term, how "citizens" aren't trying to be "journalists," and how the emerging process may be so different from tradition that most journalists won't even recognize it.
So I like this comment from Stowe Boyd:
It's quite possible that we're about to see some more newspapers die.
I know what it's like. In my career I've been present for the deaths of several newspapers.
One was the Metro-East Journal in East St. Louis, Ill., the paper where my dad worked when I was a kid. Its sibling in Champaign-Urbana, a competitor of the paper where I worked at the time, also closed. People lost their jobs. Communities lost a voice.
I feel better now. Thank you, Jessica DaSilva. You've restored at least some of my faith in the future.
I had a bad day yesterday: a series of depressing interactions with a few people who reminded me just how narrow-minded, corrosively negative, self-destructive and ultimately hypocritical some newspaper journalists can be.
It didn't help that I'd just had a tooth pulled. By the end of the day I was pretty well soured on the newspaper business.
But today I read this on your blog:
From Variety comes this report that "the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season." I'd love to know how much of that is due to a shift to Internet browsing, including video of course, and how much of it is a result of the networks driving us away with a barrage of painfully mislabeled "talent" contests mixed with out-of-control commercial clutter.
Well, this is a surprise: Dan Pacheco has just announced he's going to build Printcasting on the Drupal framework. Dan's done great work creating bespoke systems for the Bakersfield Californian. Switching to Drupal is a big step, but one that could help bring more participation in the project and better satisfaction of the Knight foundation's open-source objectives.
Mayhill Fowler, the non-journalist who has broken at least two major campaign stories this season by simply not playing the usual game by the usual rules, reflects on an interview with an Al-Jazeera reporter:
It's been a horrible week at quite a few newspapers. At one point I found myself staring at my Twitter updates as if it were a train wreck in progress. Mark Potts has a good summary and this comment:
The whiners complaining about Zell's relatively minor changes in Tribune papers are missing the point that the entire industry is in freefall and needs to change radically.
The net is all abuzz today about this angry memo from Bill Gates to a list of Microsoft bigwigs back in 2003. It's a classic: Gates tries to buy some Microsoft software, has a terrible user experience, and lets people know exactly what he thinks.
Funny, but here's a challenge. Assign yourself any random task on your newspaper's website, like trying to sell a car or give away a dog or maybe just find the forums. Take notes. And then write a Gates memo. Bet you can do it, with feeling.
