• Is there a flaw in the proposed federal shield law? This scathing rebuttal to an overwhelming support of a Federal Shield Law has definitely caused me some pause. For every organization that needs a shield law to protect sources that deserve it, others can exploit it to push through a salacious story that isn’t true. A much-needed “other side” to the discussion.
• Reflections of a Newsosaur posits: How long can print newspapers last? Alan Mutter takes a look at the Pew study of newspaper reader demographics to extrapolate just how long the print readership might last. He says the population of print newspaper readers will drop by nearly a third within 15 years and probably be less than half the size it is today by the time 2040 rolls around. Aside from that, how long can newspapers afford to print for that shrinking audience? (He touches on that in part 2, which is linked.)
• Former journalist Charles Pelton says media outlets are not properly leveraging their talented experts on staff into moneymaking opportunities for fear of ethical impropriety. I agree that his ideas, if handled properly, would not create issues and could create new revenue streams. His analysis is missing a very critical element: He obviously hasn’t worked at a media outlet in the age of mass layoffs. Many papers, in particular, have gotten rid of their on-staff experts and whoever is still left behind are so over worked already they could never take on this extra workload. Let’s mail this back ten years, eh?
• Michelle McLellan at the Knight Digital Media Center is compiling a listing of online-only local news sites, from the corporate hyperlocal networks to independent local sites and blogs. She’s missing quite a few places, but watch this space to see what else pops up.

Surviving

• The Austin Statesman’s social media editor shares advice on creating fast, easy niche products from existing content. What’s your interest area? Your beat, your section or your newspaper doesn’t have to be the end-all, be-all for what interest your readers – but you can be the trusted aggregator for niche news if you want to be.
• The OJR’s Robert Niles always has great tips for the reporter looking to build a life outside a newsroom. Here he talks about building a better online presence by shifting your focus from writing stories to creating assets.  This means serving as your own archive and brand manager, building a source base and connecting with readers outside your day-to-day reporting.

Cool Stuff

• A lot of sites (Cincinnati.Com included) have been running with the idea of expanding data coverage on local crime, but the Knight News Challenge entry named Homicide Watch D.C. has a great idea to do more than that by  putting a focus on the victims instead of jut the crime. While such a database would be meaningful tot he community and become a valuable news resource, I think it would be tough to keep up in the long run.
• Ethnic media’s four-step model for the news industry’s future - Ethnic press has a lot of evolutionary tendencies that could be taken to heart by more general interest new providers – honestly, what they suggest here should have been done all along.

End of year/2010 Stuff

• An online journalist’s 10 resolutions for 2010 - A lot of good advice here for online journalists, beat writers and web developers alike.
• Ten things every journalist should know in 2010 – Great tips for the skills and basic understandings of the business journalists should learn or consider in 2010.
• The Gawker Decade: How Gawker Media Defined The 2000s – A thoughtful look at Gawker’s success and how it has changed journalism – mostly for the worse. Gawker and its properties have forced media to evolve, which is great, but at what cost to the overall business?

The Twitter

• Why Twitter Will Endure – David Carr explains the inherent usefulness of Twitter – and how because of its utility, he believes it will outlast its competitors once the novelty wears off.
• The Use of Twitter by America’s Newspapers – A detailed analysis with lots of data on how newspapers use Twitter. While I’m still unclear as to how they determine a paper’s overall rank (does it evaluate all the paper’s accounts?), it is interesting to see which paper’s interact the most, as opposed to blasting out updates all of the time.

• Prior to its demise, Editor & Publisher had written about allegedly “new tools” the newspaper in Knoxville uses to police website comments. First of all, I find it alarming that anyone, particularly a publication supposedly in the know about our industry, would find this community management approach new or innovative. I say the system Knoxville has employed is a bare minimum for every site with comments. (For the record, my paper has had a nearly identical system for two years – and it isn’t even close to ideal.)
• To their credit, E&P also talked to working journalists trying out Google Wave in the newsroom. Also features quotes from a familiar source (shameless plug!). I’d link to E&P directly, but they have a paywall that makes their news useless on the internet. I guess even a paywall on your site can’t save your business model, huh?
• Econsultancy has created a helful look at search engine optimization for jounos. SEO is a strange and complicated business, but it’s worth knowing the basics if you want to get your content read by more than just your regular visitors. Everyone says the future (or, really, the present) lies in the power of search – so it’s good to know.

Social Media

• Despite what some curmudgeonly types say, social media is definitely not just for kids. Recent demo studies say senior citizens are making huge inroads into social networks like Facebook and YouTube. I’m hearing all of the time how we need to keep hold of our senior readers by focusing more efforts into print, but maybe we as an industry just aren’t giving them enough credit in regards to the Internet.

• Speaking of social media in the newsroom, Mashable thoughtfully put together The Journalist’s Guide to Maximizing Personal Social Media ROI. If you ever wondered why there’s a push to get into social media or what exactly you can get out of it, it’s worth a read. They have really good ideas for building a social media routine and establishing priorities for reporters and other news managers using social media in reporting/branding/aggregation.
• If you aren’t very familiar with the mobile social network Foursquare, here’s something of a guide to get started. Foursquare has a lot of potential for journalists, mobile reporters in particular. I hope to write about this a bit more soon.

Saving Journalism

• Robert Niles asks: What should the government do to help journalism? Niles really goes out on a limb to suggest that the government can help journalism not by funding it directly, but by changing the health care system and raising taxes on the wealthy. Sound crazy? Well, I don’t see your solutions anywhere.
• In case you’ve been living under a technology rock, Apple’s making a tablet next year. Everyone’s been expecting it – and it very well could be the turning point in this particular realm of technology started by the likes of the Kindle and iPhone. For once, the journalism would would be wise to capitalize on what could be the beginnings of a new technology shift and we ready with tablet reader friendly news. No guarantees it’ll work out for Apple or for our industry, but it’s worth a shot.

News Corp’s Murdoch says he’ll hide his content from Google very soon. I’ll believe it when I see it. And if he does do it, how long will it take for regret to set in?

Pay Models

Alan Mutter points to the indicators and recent comments from newspaper execs that all point to a continuation of free news online at most outlets. A few places are going freemium, most notably the Star Tribune, who is mimicking the success of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with a premium sports service. The discussion in the comments is good too.

More on “freemium” content at the SF Chronicle and BusinessWeek.

Social Media

STATS: Has Twitter Flatlined Just Short of Mainstream? – For a long time, Twitter was gorwing exponentially, as was Facebook. But then Twitter evened out and Facebook just kept going. What happened?

Facebook Ads Now Let You Target Friends of Your Fans – Want to advertise to the friends of the people who are already fans of your company on Facebook? Now you can, thanks to the “friends of connections” targeting feature that was just rolled out by the social networking site.

How Twitter is Changing the Face of Media – Nothing new here, but it is a nice little overview of how far the news industry has come in using Twitter. Mashable also has a shoutout for social media’s effects on local news.
Mashable has 5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases for those who still aren’t sure what to do with those invites.

Speaking of Wave experiments, RedEye has ventured onto Wave. As much as I applaud experimentation with news technology, I really have to question RedEye on this approach. It’s like advertising that you’re having a party, but only a few of your readers will actually be able to go. They seem to forget Wave’s still in preview mode and not everyone has an invite.

• Taking the plunge and starting your own blog or news website? OJR has a great checklist to help you get off on the right foot. Whether you’re a college student or a mid-career journalist looking to get your name out there in a new way, this should really help you figure out your plan. And, if you use Wordpress to host your blog or site (I recommend it), here’s a friendly DIY guide to Wordpress troubleshooting from our friends at the OJB.

• If you’re looking for a new online storytelling or crowd-sourcing technique, try using a lifestream or eventstream to tell a story in a narrative form using tools like Tumblr or Posterous. Using a stream, you can combine blog posts, tweets, images and other sorts of updates around a subject from several different people to flow into a single “stream” in chronological order. It’s sort of like a Friendfeed that tells a story. Try it out.

• Or if you want to get really experimental, try the “mapped” writing model for online news. This technique isn’t so much a narrative as a “choose your own adventure”  for long-form news. It involves an overall summary (or nut graf, if you will) followed by a series of “threads” that don’t need to be read in a particular order. I learned about this model back in online journalism class back in j-school – and I never thought it would come into use. Whaddya know.

• Data fiends, multimedia producers and Flash fanatics can get great ideas for unique and innovative maps from 10,000 Words. Data visualization is a big deal for online media, buy now the key is making those maps simpler, prettier and fun. (Note: The images on the post are blown out, but it’s a solid list of examples). If you’re just a wannabe data fiend, the blog also has tips for finding and visualizing data. Very cool.

• User-generated content doesn’t have to mean “amateur” content. The Knight Digital Media Center offers up some great tips for training citizen journalists that could make submitted news a valuable information asset for your site (and it helps the community too). Remember, not everyone had to sit through several credit hours’ worth of copy editing class – so just be patient.

• Reporters, in particular, should consider expanding their social media brand by setting up a YouTube account. Those cats at Old Media, New Tricks have great how-to advice for branding yourself on YouTube. Yes, it can be more than just funny cat videos.

• Take it from me, it’s tough to manage comments on your blog or news site, let alone learning to love them and use them to your advantage. I think a lot of the opinion in this piece is a bit pie-in-the-sky (because I’ve been there), but they offer good tips, nonetheless, for understanding online communities and managing commenters.

• If you haven’t been using Twitter lists yet, here’s Mashable’s primer on what they are and how they work.

• This is more for organizations rather than individuals, but Social Media Today has tips for making employees into effective Social Media Ambassadors. Hint: It goes beyond just getting everyone on Twitter and calling it a day.

Geanne Rosenberg, writing for the Nieman Lab, jumps into the Federal Shield conversation, asserting that student journalists should also get the protections of their professional counterparts. If you read this blog, you know I’m a big proponent for citizen journalists, bloggers and other “non-professionals” to get this protection, so kudos to her for recognizing the rights of students as well.

The Nieman Lab has an overview of a longer paper from Marion Fremont-Smith at Harvard law about the non-profit model for funding news. There are a lot of questions out there as to whether or not tax law might need to be changed to allow for a current for-profit news org to become non-profit. Fremont-Smith’s paper argues there should be no new guidelines or legislation needed to make this happen.

A very interesting case is going on right now where TV personality Glenn Beck is essentially trying to use domain name laws to out an online critic (and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere). While it goes against the reason behind the law, it certainly is a creative way to circumvent other media law to take down those who oppose your point of view.

Who’s charging for content – or not

For those keeping score….

• Talking Points Memo: Exploring a membership model, but not an all-encompassing pay wall.
• Newsday – Creating a subscribers-only pay wall – and Steve Outing thinks they’re nuts & suggests a micropayment model.
• Dallas Morning News – DMN is betting on readers being willing to pay more to have a better newspaper – not online yet, but in print.
• Speaking of “premium content” that is “worth paying for”, Outing started a great discussion about what content readers might be willing to buy.
• And now for something completely different. Check out the new site for the non-profit Texas Tribune if you haven’t already. It’s lovely – simple, clean, easy-to-read. And everyone’s really hopeful this is a news experiment that will succeed.

Crazy ideas worth hearing

Robert Niles has a provocative idea – evaluate whether or not your site really needs to be in Google News, Crazy? Maybe, but check it out. There’s some potentially mind-blowing food for thought about why news sites and blogs may not want to be involved with Google News – and it isn’t about that silly  “freeloading” nonsense. He argues that search engine page views aren’t “quality” views and they might be leading to more spam.

Or, if you really hate Google and you’re Rupert Murdoch, you’ll insist the search engine is stealing your stuff against your will. Google finally had enough of the News Corp. owner, saying that if he really doesn’t want Google indexing his sites, he can be removed. Of course, this blogger thinks Murdoch knew that already.

Newspaper-sponsored blog networks! Catch the wave! While it certainly isn’t the first such blog network (ahem), the Guardian is hiring bloggers to cover local news.

And seriously, it’s been said before and said again, this time by Paid Content: When is someone going to buy Breaking News Online ? They’re the best there is at breaking news online – and yet, they are still independent.

And a word or two about the Twitter

Social Media Today has a great bit of coverage about Twitter lately i just had to share.

For one, there’s a much-needed reality check on Twitter’s trending topics from the folks at Social Media Today, more importantly, do those topics really reflect what people are actually talking about or what is really going on in the world?

They also take a refreshing look at Twitter lists from the “quality over quantity” perspective. In other words, it isn’t a popularity contest to get listed a lot, especially wen there are a lot of lists.

And get ready to take down your “English only” Twitter search filter. Soon enough, we’ll be able to translate tweets with no problem.

It’s a combination of the features associated with a Wiki, email, message board and chat room with options to add interactive features like maps, polls, videos and images. So what does that mean for journalists? Potentially a lot.

Depending on how Google Wave develops before it formally rolls out to the public, it could become a solution to many technology problems facing newsrooms (and tons of other businesses) today. It has the potential to become an invaluable tool for internal and external communication and collaboration.

But right now, that is just potential. I’m not going to be tell you there are no downsides – there are plenty.

1. Right now, Wave isn’t public. You have to have been invited to experience it as it is still in “preview” mode.

2. So far, Wave has a high learning curve. When you finally get in, it isn’t immediately obvious what it is used for, what the buttons do or how to even get started. And even though instructional videos and manuals exist, not many people are willing to jump through that many hopes just to use a new web program.

3. In preview, at least, Wave is buggy as all get out. The much-ballyhooed “playback” feature rarely works. It is incredibly slow to load and navigate. Because every character you type is public in a Wave, it seems to slow everything way down. For instance, I just watched a sentence I typed go in character by character, over a two-minute time span (yikes).

4. It isn’t easy to teach. If you, like me, have taught very basic web applications to reluctant  digital immigrants with upsetting results, you dread the idea of teaching this to your newsroom. I have nightmares just thinking about it.

But all of these cons I noted are about Google Wave right now. They’re still working on it – and I have high hopes it’s going to improve dramatically before it goes fully public. If it doesn’t, it’s going to be chalked up as a failed experiment and forgotten.

I have a lot of ideas I’ve either dreamed up or found on the Interwebs about ways journalists can use Google Wave I’ll be posting soon. For now, here are some resources you might find helpful if you’re trying to figure out what Google Wave is.

• Instructions and demos: You could watch the 80-minute demo from the Google guys, or, watch this Cliff Notes version.

• Terminology: Wondering what the heck a wavelet is? Check out this great glossary of Google Wave terms to get in the know.

• Breakdown: Blogger Daniel Tenner takes a critical look at exactly what Google Wave is meant to do, though it can do a lot more (in time). The Austin American-Statesman’s tech writer has a great explainer of Google Wave on his blog as well.

• The manual: The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a wonderful, simple guide to the tool. If you don’t get all the ins and outs of the Wave (who does?) and you don’t want to sit through the whole video explainer, try this. Check out the Meet Google Wave section for some great suggested uses.

• More: Where else would you got to learn more about Wave’s potential than Mashable? Scan over their coverage for good ideas.

And, if you’d like an invite to Google Wave and don’t have one, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

• Google Fast Flip may not be great for media – Google’s roll-out of Fast Flip and improvements to Checkout aimed at a micropayment model for newspapers sound like great ideas for an industry lacking them – but the SF Gate takes a critical look (and rightly so).
• Inside Word: For Media Companies, The ‘Package’ Is More Important Than The Contents – If news sites were to package their news in innovative and eye-catching ways that make it more appealing to readers, maybe they wouldn’t go looking for content elsewhere.
• Nieman Reports on Social Media and Journalism – The Nieman crew has turned out a great report examining the use of social media in journalism (and vice versa) and what it can mean for the future.
• Howard Owens shows how journalists can become successful news entrepreneurs – Owens gives out so much knowledge of what one can expect at a journalism start-up. As big media companies layoff more journalists, they might look to his model to get themselves back in the field.
• Video: Rafat @ USC Annenberg On Entrepreneurial Journalism – Rafat Ali, publisher and editor of paidContent and ContentNext Media, talks about entrepreneurial journalism in a discussion at USC Annenberg.
• What news websites are missing: useful, real-time municipal traffic and transit reports – Newspapers can compete with TV and radio on traffic news. These days, you don’t need a helicopter to get real-time traffic data – the key is making it easy for the average user.
• Ten reasons why you should unfollow me – It seems like a good policy for everyone on Twitter to have a mission statement in this vein. If you are doing a mixed professional and personal account, say so.

(Right-click and download it if you want – just don’t steal it, man)

Bibliography

Here’s a big list of links to where I got the information included in the presentation. When I have time, I’ll come back and make this look a lot prettier.

ProPublica’s story on Memorial Hospital in New Orleans

American Prospect’s column on government-subsized news

MinOnline’s top paid models worth watching

Steve Outing’s thoughts on micropayments

Chat featuring Steve Outing and others discussing business models

Jeff Jarvis talks about online memberships vs subscriptions

Online Journalism Blog looks at the ad-supported model

Pew report on the drop in classified ads

A look at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “freemium” site

American Journalism Review’s praise for pay walls

Neiman Lab looks at how paying for news is a new thing

Michael Kinsley’s column on how he believes asking readers to pay will not work

The always awesome Paid Content has an excellent analysis by Nic Brisbourne on his version of the future of news. At it’s core – it isn’t anything you haven’t heard before: Better quality writing, investigative journalism and in-depth analysis are a commodity we in the professional news world have going for us, even as news itself is an abundance.

He suggests we should leverage this to reinforce our place in the market – and do so with less cost and without charging for access to the news. He notes the examples of TechCrunch, Pitchfork and Huffington Post leveraging their trusted brands into things they can charge for – and doing so with a low enough overhead to make it with decent online ad rates. It isn’t earth-shattering – but it is at least the most plausible plan I’ve ever heard.

On the flip side – there’s the privately-funded investigative model of journalism that’s still wearing it’s fledgling feathers – but it’s really rocking out. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out  ”Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices” in the NY Times Magazine. The long-form investigative narrative is the sort of journalism we all wish we were doing – and it wasn’t done by the New York Times, for once. The work on this piece was funded by a grant through ProPublica – who worked with the NY Times to get it into print. Could agreements like this be a part of the future for in-depth reporting? If work like this is what comes out of it, I’m sold.

News on News

• Ok, I get it, so maybe you want a more technology-oriented solution? How’s about an iPhone App that Automatically Picks the News You’ll Like ?An RSS reader that builds a custom news network for you based on your reading habits? That sounds like something we should be working with. Even if the reader doesn’t “pick us” to be in an individual’s mix, something like this makes news accessible to those who don’t have the time to find new news sources. Maybe that new source can be you?
• Every online news source has either considered or tried free classifieds, with varying levels of success (mostly bad). Boing Boing asserts that Newspapers can’t make themselves as simple as craigslist – a well-deserved slam on the classified pages of most newspaper sites. There’s a reason why Craigslist works and we may have missed the point in trying (pathetically) to duplicate their effort.
• Did you know The Guardian is the most bookmarked newspaper on delicious? I don’t really know what that says about them, but they must have a lot of news their readers find to be useful – or else they wouldn’t be bookmarking it. Check it out.
• First it was the bloggers, now it’s the tweeters getting into the press boxes. One twittering fan has gotten courtside press credentials at St. John’s – the first of his kind (and probably not the last).

Social Media News

• Breaking News: Social Media Is for Narcissists! To some people (i.e. my parents), it may seem like a no-brainer that my generation (Y, Why?) is full of narcissists in regards to social media. What is interesting is the surveyed groups of (much younger) Gen-Yers understanding that that might not be such a bad thing to really sell yourself in such a competitive world – not only in business, but in life.
• In related news, all that news about teens not being into Twitter may not be right. It isn’t so much that the proportion of teens on Twitter are low, but that the majority of social media users are older simply because the social web is growing up. Twitter – unlike many of the others – actually started with an older group and they’ve had a longer time to adopt it.
• Pat Thornton writes on Poynter about different newspapers’ approach to Twitter use – and how there doesn’t seem to be one right answer for getting a good ROI out of it. Automated accounts sometimes work, personal accounts sometimes don’t – so perhaps variety is the answer? (At Cincinnati.Com, we have both)
• As you know, not everyone is sold on social media’s value – not even all of those marketers and brands out there. As much as some old-school companies might be fighting, the stats say Social Media Resistance Is Fading Fast and adoption rates are soaring.

Cool Tips!!

• If you’re the sort of journo is is doing (or desperately trying) multimedia and online work in several software suites, you might find this collection of software cheat sheets from 10,000 Words helpful. It outlines helpful hints for all sorts of video, audio and web programs.
• And while most of these little hints apply to marketing and advertising types,it might be good to know these Eight Twitter Habits That May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-Followed so you don’t look like a tool on the Internets.