The Christian Science Monitor announced today that it is going to shut down the paper edition in April 2009 and just publish online. With a paper that does fairly pure high quality journalism that might sound like an experiment worth watching. However, a trip to the Monitor’s website might diminish the worth of that experiment. [...]
The Online Journalism Review begins a week-long look at independent, local online start-ups with an interview with the founders of the Voice of San Diego. Its co-executive editors Scott Lewis and Andrew Donohue one day hope to have a $10 million budget and a newsroom of 40.
Other upcoming sites include:MinnPost, ChiTown Daily News, The Batavian, [...]
In a short essay at the Online Journalism Review Geneva Overholser asks: Did journalism’s business model distort journalism’s social mission?
She bases her question on a lecture by Adlai Wertman, a professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Overholser writes:
Confronted with the nation’s inability to resolve the many ills confronting it, Wertman told the Journalism School: [...]
Jeff Goodell, contributing editor at Rolling Stone Magazine and author of Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, isn’t very impressed with the way professional journalists cover the environment, but does think citizen journalism can save the environment. Listen to this five-minute video interview conducted by Leonard Witt at the Society of Environmental [...]
What if — and this is really a big “what if” — what if news organizations put together divisions that worked at producing blockbuster productions that people might actually want to download via iTunes or something similar. What if you had produced a video or audio production that was so popular that 100,000 people downloaded [...]
As you might know, the Harnisch Foundation under the direction of Ruth Ann Harnisch gave us a substantial gift to start the Center for for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University. We are up and running. Keep abreast of what is happening at SustainableJournalism.org 
Leonard Witt is the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University and the chief blogger of PJNet. His academic interests include public and citizen journalism and how to get citizens' voices heard. He has spent most of his professional career as an award-winning journalist.