Links for today | Links para hoje

• The internet now second only to television as a news source, EatSleepPublish

Pew Research Center

I bet most of that “online” news is really the work of existing newspapers (newsbrands) who operate online. That’s actually good news. It means that collectively, newspapers are MORE popular than television as a source for news.

As I’ve already said, it’s time to monetize it.

• Is ad-supported journalism viable in a pay-for-performance age?, Ethan Zuckerman

While a great deal of what I write here is underinformed speculation, this piece is unusually speculative and underinformed. It’s possible that I’m flat out wrong about the idea I’m developing here. I’m putting it forward with the hopes that folks will react with examples and data that help prove or disprove this theory. Being told that I’m unambigiously wrong with good data demonstrating my error would be very helpful. Simply being told I’m wrong – less helpful.

• The Journalism Bubble, Lisa Williams

You’ve heard about the housing bubble. And the dot-com bubble. I’m here to tell you about The Journalism Bubble.

Anybody who’s paying attention to the state of journalism in the US is aware of the financial crisis facing the news industry. And there’s wide agreement on the cause of the crisis: advertising revenue for print and broadcast is declining, and advertising revenue for internet offerings is not rising fast enough to make up the difference.

That’s true.

It’s also a completely inadequate explanation for the waves of layoffs, bankruptcies, and outright closures of news organizations.

There is a journalism bubble. And the bubble has burst.

• Outsourcing the News, Newspaper Death Watch

Tribune Co. and the New York Daily News* are looking at closing their foreign bureaus and outsourcing international coverage, The Wall Street Journal says. The beneficiaries would be the Washington Post and a Boston-based startup called GlobalPost. Under the arrangement being discussed by Tribune Co. and the Washington Post, Tribune would contract with the Post for international stories to be delivered to its portfolio of newspapers and would close dozens of foreign offices, saving the bankrupt company millions each year. There’s no word on how much of that coverage would be unique to Tribune, but that’s presumably an issue in the talks. The two companies have long had an alliance via a joint news service.

• Solutions to newsroom troubles, Advancing the Story, via Atrium

Adopt new technologies and workflows to make news production more efficient. Many traditional news organizations have redundant production processes for their traditional (print or broadcast) product and the Web. These must be consolidated.

Distribute professionally created content through as many channels as possible. Stories must go out in print, on the air, online, via mobile technology — and yes, on the Kindle or another “iTunes for news.” When appropriate, news organizations could share the cost of content creation with other news organizations. The Miami Herald and Poynter’s St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, for instance, already collaborate to pay for coverage of the Florida state capital.

• Is ‘on-demand’ journalism the future?, Editor’s Weblog

Williams highlighted the need to find a way to “make journalism happen where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and then redeploy elsewhere when things change.”  Poynter writer Amy Gahran elaborated on the idea of a “cadre of general assignment reporters, ready to work on whatever needed doing.” It is essentially a development of the idea of stringers and freelancers, but she believes it could be an interesting complement to traditional news outlets, and takes it a step further, envisaging a situation where various kinds of organisations, not just news, could purchase reporting capacity.

• Newspaper objectivity combats Internet hysteria, Editor’s Weblog

If newspapers were to die, Pratt believes that we would lose all objectivity – on the Internet, he says ‘it seems that reality can be created and spun’.  ‘Hysterical’ predictions about print’s imminent demise to him signal the exact reason that we need it to stay, to present facts as facts and for the ‘check and balance that news organisations strive to provide’.

• Style guide and tips for online sub-editors, Journalism.co.uk

This page is intended to be a collaborative style guide for online sub-editors, including useful tips.

• Experimentation (Not Stagnation) Should Flourish at J-Schools, MediaShift

Some journalism academics may be even more scared of new technology and more resistant to change than the worst print “dinosaurs” working in media today. But Web 2.0 has made getting online so simple that there are no more excuses for being disconnected. While some reporters see journalism education as a potential refuge from the rapid pace of change in the 21st century digital newsroom, journalism schools should in fact be among the first places to adapt to new technology if they’re to train the journalists of tomorrow and remain relevant today.

I have been working to integrate blogs and other social media into my teaching, but traditional academia’s inherent resistance to educational experimentation — as well as fears around defamation litigation, autonomous student publication, and public relations fallout — can make embracing the journalism of the digital age even more difficult in the classroom than in the newsroom.

• Point and shoot will dominate but you still need a quality strategy: New Year convictions, Andy Dickinson

Fit for purpose

Put all those things together and the only viable strategy for getting video in your newsroom now is point-and-shoot. It’s responsive, cheap and easy to implement and the kind of video produced – short clip content, illustrative video and vignettes of action – is best suited to the embedded style we see on news sites.

That doesn’t mean I’m ditching the idea that a quality video strategy has lost.  It isn’t a betamax Vs. VHS type thing. Those that invested in the training and development of that strategy will always get good results from it.  Those who just bought lots of kit and left the newsroom to it will have already put the camera in a cupboard.

• Congresso: CDS «high tech», Portugal Diário

News article about the live coverage of a political congress using Twitter, by Parlamento Global’s journalists.

Artigo que fala da cobertura do congresso do CDS, através do Twitter pelos jornalistas do Parlamento Global.

As novas tecnologias tomaram conta da política e a Internet tornou-se um veículo para transmitir mensagens e não só. O 23º congresso do CDS, nas Caldas da Rainha, foi um bom exemplo disso. Além de ser transmitido ao minuto através do site Parlamento Global, foram vários os presentes que partilharam com os seus «seguidores» no twitter tudo o que estava a acontecer.

Twitter & Cover It Live