Zombie Journalism

A Massachusetts newspaper is banning anonymous comments by charging for the privilege. This seems like overkill – and it can eliminate important discussion.

Aside from all the fun marketing options, Foursquare can be very valuable for reporters, bloggers and other news organizations. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Find a source with ties to a specific location
When you go to a venue’s page on Foursquare, you can see who has recently checked in there and who is there [...]

When you’ve spent your entire professional career in a newspaper’s newsroom, it’s pretty easily to get your mind blown at a startup. I can attest to that firsthand in my first few days on the job at TBD.
Instead of shoehorning some new media approach into a centuries-old tradition, we’re building something so new, it’s [...]

Poynter had a talk with Jim Brady, president of digital strategy at Allbritton and my future boss, about the as-yet-unnamed metro site I’ll be working on in Washington, D.C. starting next month.
Brady outlines the site’s coverage plan, which is, essentially, a bit of the umbrella (regional news readers care about) and the microscope (community-level news). [...]

For months now, I have been excitedly following the developing news of Allbritton’s local news site. As the parent company of Politico, many online types have hopes this as-yet-unnamed project can revitalize online news – and maybe give the Washington Post a run for their money.
I’m proud to say that as of today, I’m going [...]

I’ve seen a lot of newsroom culture shifts in my admittedly young career, but the online deadline of now seems to be the biggest gap to cross. Many editors and reporters don’t think there even IS competition anymore.

If news websites were to get rid of anonymous comments, we may be eliminating the opinions of some very valuable (and young) readers.

When Reuters released its new social media policy last week, their competition had to be salivating. The wire service stipulates that its reporters are not to use Twitter to break news – and thus are digging their own grave.

I wrote first last week about my employer, The Cincinnati Enquirer, experimenting with a print-only strategy for certain stories to boost Sunday single-copy sales.
Not long afterward, I was in a meeting where we decided on the next course of this ever-evolving experiment – and came up with a conclusion web readers should find a bit [...]

When it comes to weather coverage, sometimes all we need to do is give readers the latest information. We at Cincinnati.Com used Wordpress to get the weather updates out in a simple, quick way during this month’s snow storms.