Digital Journalism

A bit of advice for new bloggers, written by Vincent J. Maher, lecturer in new media studies, Rhodes Univ., S. Africa: A blog entry is a stub for conversation. Think about the perspectives of your audience. Write tight headlines that encourage interest. Make points or lists and make then scan-friendly. Link to the context. Quote …

An entirely new economic model for the media and entertainment industries is emerging, observes Chris Anderson in his 2004 Wired magazine article, “The Long Tail.” Most of us, Anderson states, want more than just the #1 movie at the box office, the #1 song on the Billboard chart and the #1 book on the New …

The Online News Association (ONA) is conducting a survey on digital media use by journalists. If you are a working journalist and you have have 5 minutes, this might be worth taking and passing along. Here’s the link: http://journalist.org/2006conference/archives/000575.php

When I was asked to speak to an assembly of Hartford Courant summer interns recently about online journalism, I started my presentation with a question: “Show of hands: How many of you subscribe to a daily newspaper?” Not one hand went up. A second or two passed before a young woman spoke up. “I read …

“Society rightly distrusts the modeling done by a single mind,” observed J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor in their 1968 essay, “The Computer as a Communication Device.”  “Society demands consensus, agreement, at least majority.” Licklider and Taylor’s decades-old statement applies today to the general distrust the modern American public seems to have of the news media. Traditional news gathering organizations have historically portrayed …

More evidence how the web is changing the news business. In an article today from the BBC: Free weekly newspapers have been around for years, but the launch of London’s third free daily on Monday is further evidence that the public seems less inclined to pay for their news fix. Most 18- to 35-year-olds expect …