When local newspapers aren't local

The badly flawed Shorenstein report arguing that local newspapers are the most seriously threatened by the Internet already has been properly shredded by Jeff Jarvis, but there's another angle that strikes me: sloppy use of the word "local."

I believe that "local" is a powerful asset, not a liability, and that the Shorenstein report has tripped over a lack of precision in the use of that word.

Pulling your data out of Facebook

As Facebook slowly opens up, it's becoming possible to pull your own data for your own purposes. Dave Winer mentioned one way, so today, in just a minute, I added a block containing my Facebook status updates to my website pages (see the column on the left). I'm not entirely thrilled with the way it displays, so I may write my own module. At the moment it's just stock Drupal RSS aggregator functionality.

Tampering with Wikipedia

The other night I gave a speech at the John Siegenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University in which I urged the new-media workshop students to look something up on Wikipedia, which is, of course, infallible. That drew a good laugh. Siegenthaler, unfortunately, wasn't appearing until later in the week, so I couldn't tease directly.

Why Henry Blodget is wrong about newspaper business models

Henry Blodget, who made and lost a fortune hyping the dotcom bubble, is back, and he's published a back-of-the-envelope analysis that purports to explain why newspapers are screwed: readers are migrating to the Internet, and Internet advertising can't deliver enough revenue to pay for newsgathering expenses.

Blodget's argument has more holes than a wheel of Emmenthaler. Here are just a few of them.

The death of paid content?

Are we seeing the death of the paid content model?

There is chatter everywhere -- mostly speculative and unsourced -- about the Wall Street Journal potentially flipping WSJ.com to a free model, a possibility that Rupert Murdoch was described as calling "a wash" financially.

There is a report in the New York Post that TimesSelect is headed for the door. (Didn't they report the same thing a couple of weeks ago?)

Some answers for Bill Densmore and Chris Peck

Bill Densmore and Chris Peck have posed three interesting questions to people who have signed up for the Aug 7-8 "Journalism That Matters" seminar in Washington, and to members of a Facebook group. Here are my answers:

1) How does a community support journalism at a time when traditional newspaper-generated revenue is drying up?

I'm less concerned about journalism at the community level right now than I am about journalism at the national/global level.