The reports of the death of blogs have been greatly exaggerated
“When I first read Nick Denton’s apologetic for moving away from the blog format for his Gawker empire, I thought I’d misread the whole thing… …Denton is a smart fellow, but I think he’s made a decision that will ultimately cost him, for in turning his whole online bloggy magazine consortium into one, giant traditional media display, he’s assumed the role of disrupted instead of disruptor… Most of the reasons Denton cites [for his redesign] relate not to news but to what the company feels is editorially important to display to everybody. It assumes that people come to their site once a day and need immediate guidance as to what’s important or what should be seen or viewed, as if they need and want such guidance. This is the same process traditional media has followed forever in crafting a finished product out of the stream that is news. The New York Times commented that this is the same thing the newspaper industry discovered over a century ago.”— Terry Heaton, Why Nick Denton is wrong, ThePoMoBlog
This quote leaves out the most important assumption Terry Heaton is making, which is this:
And what have readers done to this model? They’ve rejected it, but Nick thinks this is the way to go.
Is this true? When readers move from print to web, they’re rejecting hierarchy? That seems like a narrow argument. Perhaps it is one aspect of the shift, but it in no way reflects all successful news models on the web. Hierarchy is a critical part of news site design. Ignoring the fact that maybe Denton was being a little hyperbolic with his headline—since the reverse chronology still plays a vital role in the site’s design—the new design of Gawker is doing what every successful news site has done over the last decade: It is trying to find the right balance between hierarchy and the reverse chron.
The radical design shift is more a commentary on the maturation of Gawker than on web design and news dissemination at large. As a business model, I’m most intrigued by this notion of selling time slots versus selling pageviews. And I think the reader has the most to gain here. Denton is arguing for better content and a better reading experience. And this is what surprises me the most about the detractors. Are they really in favor of the opposite? Do they really believe a strict blogging format delivers the pinnacle of reading experience? I don’t.
(Source: futurejournalismproject)
Salon’s CEO Richard Gingras.
The 15-year-old website is open to merging with another media company or to being bought outright, WSJ is reporting.
Salon is bleeding red ink and Slate is stagnating, but does this prove Gingras’ point? Is it, as the lede suggests, “an acknowledgment of the perilous economics of running a free-standing online news organization”? Or is it simply an acknowledgment that something went wrong with Salon and Slate? I’m leaning toward the latter, but am truly curious.
Why the product manager shall inherit the earth
This speaks to the fact that digital newsrooms need to reorganize themselves. Too often each department is siloed—editorial, development and design. Each exist as separate fiefdoms that try to limit direct interaction. A project manager is a nexus, a person that connects all of these departments, a person that can and should be encouraging easy collaboration, which is vital to an ever evolving news operation.
Via newsrewired:
Interesting thoughts of Nic Newman, former world editor of the BBC News website
For me the future of many media companies depends on their ability to build digital media products that consumers love and want to come back to again and again.
In an ultra-competitive world, only those products and services that are easy to use and provide a compelling experience will be successful.
Increasingly these products are more complex to put together and require a mix of technical, editorial, design and marketing skills - and all of that needs to be orchestrated and co-ordinated with the needs of the audience in mind.
That’s why product managers are going to be increasingly important figures in the media industry.When we interviewed Salon.com CEO Richard Gingres he said very much the same thing. He’s also introduced product managers to the newsroom.
(Source: ukaop.org.uk)
Is the belief in the viability of paywalls an article of faith or reason?
The trouble with this great house of cards I’ve stuck together with anecdote, chewing gum, and speculation, is that when you step back and look at it, it just appears too complicated.
How many can relate? Deep down, if you believe in the future of paywalls, how much it is based purely on faith, believing in the virtue of the solution—to quote Devin, “The way I see it, the future may be free, but somebody still has to pay for it”—rather than its practicality?
The best part of an article recommended by Future Journalism Project, “Exploring News Games,” is the author Ian Bogost fighting back in the comments.
(Source: futurejournalismproject)
Poynter Online - Romenesko (via interestingsnippets)
A lot of newspaper companies say this and truly mean it. I believe Poynter is one of them, but how many others are there?
To piggyback on my Friday posts about the death the of the news article (here and here), here’s an introduction to another wonderful CMS tool called Storify. It allows the user to create a story out of curated social media. It’s a lot like ScribbleLive in that the content is creates is an assemblage of a lot of different types of media from a lot of different types of sources. What seems to separate the two is that ScribbleLive appears to be more reporter-friendly (there are so many different ways to input your content), while Storify is more of an editor’s tool. Imagine if they joined forces!
