March 2012
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“Like a lot of New York institutions that have gone, it’s sad in a way. I...”
– Capital’s Tom McGeveran on the departure of Sue Simmons and loss of another New York institution.
Tom writes exclusive missives for the Capital newsletter—you can sign up here—which I always find myself reading despite my best efforts to ignore all newsletters.
January 2012
1 post
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Live Bait: A Lesson From the Annals of Peter...
This story about Tyler Rush takes place on Aug. 5, 2003. It was originally published sometime in May 2009 as part of a special Peter Kaplan farewell edition of the New York Observer. After reading it, Tyler sent me this drawing of an eel. It’s been prominently displayed in my living room ever since.
Back when I was Jake Bloom and just an intern at an Observer still headquartered at the...
November 2011
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October 2011
1 post
September 2011
3 posts
“For Mr. Dobbs the risk paid off. The Atavist’s retail partners (Amazon, Barnes...”
– Observer on the business models of Atavist, Byliner and the magazines who are starting to pay attention.
Potential with a capital P.
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News Consumption Tilts Toward Niche Sites -... →
2105:
Like newspapers, portals like AOL and Yahoo are confronting the cold fact that there is less general interest in general interest news.
Warning: mentions AOL v TechCrunch v Arrington, if that kind of thing makes you apopleptic. (@jimray)
Not actually true. There is arguably more interest in general interest news, but the Internet has served up exponentially more general interest news...
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August 2011
5 posts
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“@jaketbrooks That’s absurd! Of course we want @dailydot content shared...”
– Owen Wilson, founding editor of The Daily Dot, tweets his response to my post.
Touché.
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Daily Dot interested in covering Reddit, Digg,...
The Daily Dot, a digital “newspaper” that will cover social media communities—think Reddit, Digg, 4Chan—like metro beats, is a great idea. It’s easy to see where the traffic will come from: Not only will the locals clamor to see their names “in print,” but the outsiders, intimidated yet intrigued by sites like 4Chan, will stop by to gawk at the exotic products of...
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The new Nieman Journalism Lab is confident you...
Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab launched a redesign today, again demonstrating their wisdom regarding the interwebs. Everyone knows the last Monday in August is National Soft Launch Day. (Oh, I just made that up? Doesn’t matter. Nobody is reading this, just like nobody will notice that the Twitter bar at the top of NJL’s homepage is one pixel off. It will be fixed by the time...
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“We can’t think of anything more fun than being part of the wave of places...”
– Josh Benson, co-founder of Capital New York and ever the optimist.
Love it. Bit of a coming out party today for Capital New York, one of our favorite clients, if we had favorites. We don’t. That would be unprofessional.
July 2011
14 posts
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“For touring, my Kindle is just about the greatest thing I own. I have a few...”
– Moby lays out his media diet. Read the rest at The Atlantic Wire. (via theatlantic)
I never thought I would have anything in common with Moby (despite being made of stars), but I, too, was a philosophy major. And I, too, sometimes feel like I have forgotten everything. When I need a refresher,...
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“Nobody thinks the staff at [The Daily] is doing any phone-hacking. They haven’t...”
– The Observer’s Kat Stoeffel gleefully takes the piss out of Murdoch’s iPad baby.
Her kicker is equally vicious: “What The Daily does offer, one imagines, is some insight into the mind of Rupert Murdoch. He is the only person we know who reads it every day.”
What Stoeffel...
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Andy Rutledge's nytimes.com designs are pretty,... →
Why does Andy Rutledge have to make it so hard to like his designs? His suggestions for the Times are elegant, but they are a little misguided. Websites need to be more readable and usable and to a degree, Rutledge presents some elegant solutions to those problems. But he goes too far in making his point. Here are some mistaken assumptions about the news industry:
1) The news industry has...
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“Great story. Maybe you all will start a trend of media people reporting on what...”
– Flyover State, first commenter on New York Magazine’s 21 New Media Innovators list.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
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“While most museums of GIFs pay homage to their shlocky, tacky ubiquity in the...”
– Anil Dash gives animated GIFs his seal of approval through an historical treatise on the maligned artform.
What’s truly remarkable about Dash’s essay is that it only includes one example of an established online editorial product using animated gifs. (If you’re curious, it was...
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“We’re used to our peers and mentors privileging legacy media — be it broadcast...”
– College Students Miss the Journalistic Potential of Social Media
Other potential headlines for this piece by Devin Harner:
“College Students Don’t Know How to Report” “College Students Don’t Know How to Publish Online” “College Students Not Good at Journalism”...
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Following the link trail to Jakob Nielsen
Over the weekend, this pops up in my dashboard:
Infoneer-pulse:
People Read Web Pages in an F-Shaped Pattern
According to a study by Jakob Nielsen, when we read a page, our eye automatically traces the text in an F-shape. The first paragraph is the one read in its entirety, as we trace the first long line of the ‘F.’ The next paragraph doesn’t fare as well, getting only half that much...
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“I wouldn’t want to work somewhere where I didn’t believe in the product itself....”
– David Cho on leaving The Awl and joining forces with Bill Simmons at Grantland.
My opinion: Better late than never for the ESPN “startup.” Grantland’s design could have used Cho’s input. I’ve never seen a site do such a good job at underselling its content.
June 2011
2 posts
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May 2011
8 posts
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“When you move away from the ad-adjacency model, however, things get a lot more...”
– Felix Salmon, after reading Columbia Journalism Review’s 143-page report, “The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism.”
Salmon is right. For too long, editorial enterprises online have been dominated by an outmoded business model that has stunted the...
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There's no good way to have a conversation on...
rickwebb:
I almost exclusively read on my laptop using readability. While still not laid out, and still a “template,” it makes reading online SO much more pleasant. Once you start you can’t go back.
It is an interesting point, though. We have always laid out the pages of our magazines and newspapers using templates as a guide - customizing almost everything. Why don’t we do more of that...
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“Unlike print and broadcast companies, we don’t have a “core business” cash cow...”
– Henry (via pegobry)
Another reblog simply for emphasis. Here’s the full quote:
Online journalism was (and is) the only thing we do. For us, the web is not a side business—something we’re doing because we feel like we have to or because we’re worried that our traditional business may die....
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“There’s a lot that doesn’t edify me. I love tabloid and celebrity stuff as much...”
– New York Magazine editor-in-chief Adam Moss lays out his media diet. Read more at The Atlantic Wire. (via theatlantic)
THIS. Reblogged simply for emphasis.
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Has the meta news cycle already run its course on...
Nothing in my experience suggest that a major news story must be accompanied by some equally major turning point in the creation and dissemination of news. But such is the race to go meta that it even rivals the race to break news. Witness: A post Monday morning that throws water on all of the people clamoring to crown Twitter and social media as the new kings of all things news. It had been less...
April 2011
19 posts
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An introduction to Orbital Content →
To quote the author, Cameron Koczon:
Bookmarklet apps like Instapaper, Svpply, and Readability are pointing us toward a future in which content is no longer entrenched in websites, but floats in orbit around users. This transformation of our relationship with content will force us to rethink existing reputation, distribution, and monetization models—and all for the better.
Koczon does a...
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What did Condé Nast learn from the Web?
Somehow I missed this Ad Age story on Friday about Condé Nast slowing down its rollout of iPad apps. With 8 already launched, the higher-ups don’t feel as if the medium is mature enough to handle the kind of scale that advertisers are looking for. Simply put: The apps aren’t making enough money (if any at all).
This sounds like an entirely sensible idea. They’ve made 8 of...
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The way we live now
There have, of course, been winners, digital pure plays unencumbered by the expenses of legacy publishers. They’ve succeeded by attracting large audiences while keeping editorial costs low, often by rereporting or commenting on the journalism produced at great cost by newspapers and other “old media” companies—“aggregating,” in the parlance of the trade....
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Huffington Post uses bloggers as human shields... →
Just wanted to write that headline.
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“The current rules in place to win at having a New York internet publishing...”
– MONEY, CASH, HO’S by David Cho: The Awl is now two years old.
Yes, haters gonna hate. “Phony jerks,” as Cho calls them, who specialize in self-promotion are the unfortunate byproduct of any startup heavy industry. When raising money and getting attention are pivotal to success,...
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Is a donation really about "impact"? Questioning...
Felix Salmon really knows how to rain on someone’s parade. On the day ProPublica wins its second Pulitzer in as many years, he tells readers to ignore editor Paul Steigler’s appeal for donations. Why? Because online donations are so paltry at the investigative site that they don’t even amount to 2 months of Steigler’s $585,117 salary. So if you’re looking to donate,...
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“I actually thought that newspapers have a lot more life in them than they get...”
– Michael Klingensmith, the new publisher of the Star Tribune by way of Time Inc., in a profile by David Carr.
Right? Thanks, Michael Klingensmith. The more articles I read like this, the more I think newspapers are just transitioning from big business to good business. And I have to wonder how much...
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“I just think we have to have a basic faith that quality will win out in the end.”
– RollingStone’s Managing Editor Will Dana re long-form journalism.
I want to believe!
[via Cutline]
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“Until you do justice here, your life is going to be a living hell.”
– Jonathan Tasini to Arianna Huffington after filing a $105M class action lawsuit against her site on behalf of its legion of unpaid bloggers.
Blog item:
The case raises significant unsettled questions about the rights of writers in the digital age …
Does it? Really? It’s a little...
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“America’s history is a history of that kind of productive destruction, whether...”
– Newark Mayor Cory Booker via Capital’s Gillian Reagan.
How often do you hear a politician talk like that?
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“It’s true that The Daily qualifies as a form of experimentation, yes, but it...”
– Khoi Vinh (via marco)
Am I the only one who read this as a very tacit condemnation of the Times? Read this again:
The Daily is a near perfect realization of exactly the idea that occurs to print editors every single time they get their hands on digital media for the first time, regardless of what...