News Media Reform Movement Clearly Underway
I just peeked in at Romenesko and many of today’s headlined items tell me the news media reform movement is fully underway. Here are some examples of Romenesko headliness with parts of his descriptors:
John Harris and Jim VandeHei are leaving the Washington Post for a new politics website… Fishbowl DC: “VandeHei and Harris are starting a new multi-platform company (owned by Allbritton Communications, which also owns the Capitol Leader) anchored on the Web that just does politics (a sort of one-stop shopping for your political news and coverage online).”
Advice from VH1 exec and Inside.com co-founder Michael Hirschorn: “Not only do you allow your reporters to blog; you make them the hubs of their own social networks, the maestros of their own wikis, the masters of their own many-to-many realms.” He suggests the Washington Post create an interactive online universe around Dana Priest’s intelligence reporting. “Turn the site into a clearinghouse for global intelligence information, rumors, conspiracy theories, and so forth …Go even further: incentivize the critics and reporters by allowing them to profit based on the popularity of their sites; make it worth their while to stick around.”
Here are more:
- Potts: Here’s my 10-point prescription for ailing newspapers (RJ)
- Saving newspapers, one fish-doctor story at a time (National Review)
- Newspapers will no longer be a mass media in a few years
Peter M. Zollman. “I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist [about the industry],” he says. “The newspaper business is changing radically, and journalism is changing pretty radically. But there will still be jobs for journalists. I think in five or 10 years, newspapers will still be printed, but they will no longer be a mass media; they will be a most effective targeted medium and they will be the largest of the targeted media.”
The chains’ deal with Yahoo is another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat, write Miguel Helft and Steve Lohr. One exec tells them: “Now the industry has religion about the Internet, based on what has happened to the business in recent years.”
