With the current revolution in technology and journalism, many journalism pundits are blindly advocating non-technical journalists learn programming and web development skills. Programming, as opposed to coding HTML or CSS, takes a considerable time commitment to learn and may or may not come natural to the average journalist.
via Should journalists learn programming skills?: A Flowchart – 10,000 Words.
Yes, journalists should learn how to program. No, not every journalist should learn it right now — just those who want to stay in the industry for another ten years. More seriously, programming skills and knowledge enable us traditional journalists to tell better and more engaging stories.
via MediaShift . Why Journalists Should Learn Computer Programming | PBS.
Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like him comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up.
For a long time, newspapers assumed that as their print advertising declined, it would be intersected by a surging line of online advertising revenue. But that revenue is no longer growing at many newspaper sites, so if the lines cross, it will be because the print revenue is saying hello on its way to the basement.
via The Media Equation – Will Someone Please Invent iTunes for News? – NYTimes.com.
Steve Jobs raised the hopes of media executives everywhere — including, no doubt, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who made some opening remarks before the Apple founder took the stage — by saying he believes people will pay for other forms of media, just as they have been paying for movies and music. This is the closest Jobs has come to endorsing the “iTunes for news” model that many newspaper and magazine publishers have dreamed about. The Apple CEO said:
via Steve Jobs Is Wrong: The iTunes Model Won’t Help Media — Apple News, Tips and Reviews.
NYTimes.com has done a great job of moving beyond the static infographics found in newspapers. 10 favorites below…comment if you know of good ones I’ve missed. Also, for further reading/viewing, see…
Principles of Journalism | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).
PRINCIPLES OF JOURNALISM
In 1997, an organization then administered by PEJ, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, began a national conversation among citizens and news people to identify and clarify the principles that underlie journalism. After four years of research, including 20 public forums around the country, a reading of journalism history, a national survey of journalists, and more, the group released a Statement of Shared Purpose that identified nine principles. These became the basis for The Elements of Journalism, the book by PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel and CCJ Chairman and PEJ Senior Counselor Bill Kovach. Here are those principles, as outlined in the original Statement of Shared Purpose.
The first among them is that the purpose of journalism is to provide people with the information they need to be free and self-governing.
To fulfill this task:
- Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
- Its first loyalty is to citizens.
- Its essence is a discipline of verification.
- Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
- It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
- It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
- It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
- It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
- Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.
These especially troubled, historically uninventive media companies (such as the New York Times, ironically) must find their own paths to profit. Rather than feeling jaded by disinterested brands and dwindling ad dollars,
As the internet destroys the local advertising monopoly previously enjoyed by newspapers, newspaper people are talking about radically altering their current digital business models. One idea getting a lot of attention is that that iTunes Music Store points to a generalizable model for selling digital content.
via Why iTunes is not a workable model for the newspaper business « Clay Shirky.
The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several.
