Newsweek’s Daniel Lyons: ‘Don’t bail out newspapers – let them die and get out of the way’

Daniel Lyons, senior editor and columnist at Newsweek, argues on his Techtonic Shifts blog that US bailout plans for newspapers, such as a proposed ‘Newspaper Revitalisation Act,’ are pointless and stupid:

“All this hysteria has nothing to do with saving the news, or saving jobs. Nor is it about saving democracy, which is what the red-in-the-face newspaper lovers always get themselves huffed about, as if newspapers and democracy were inextricably linked. Democracy existed long before newspapers did, and it will survive without them. And plenty of countries that don’t have democracy do have newspapers. Nor would a bailout help readers. In fact, it would only slow down our shift to the internet, which is a far better medium for delivering information.”

Full post at this link….

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Charles Apple: Newsweek photo-cropping row

Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly is not at all happy with the way Newsweek magazine cropped his photo of former vice-president Dick Cheney at home with his family, Charles Apple notes on his blog. The original photograph shows Cheney leaned over a chopping board, with his family in the background. The cropped version shows the vice-president only, to illustrate quotes that he made about C.I.A. interrogators.

“This incident is another example of why many people don’t believe what they see or read. And America clearly notices these shifts in journalism,” wrote Kennerly in a piece for the New York Times site. Newsweek has defended its use of the photo.

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García Media: Newsweek’s new approach

“With the announcement that Newsweek is planning to rethink itself to appeal to a smaller, more elite, but devoted, audience, two themes emerge that are worth considering,” writes Dr Mario R. Garcia.

Firstly, the editor Jon Meacham’s statement that “If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

Secondly, that editorially, ‘Newsweek’s plan calls for moving in the direction of not just analysis and commentary, but an opinionated, prescriptive or offbeat take on events.’

Full post at this link…

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WashingtonPost.com: ‘The survival strategy’ of newsmags

Howard Kurtz takes a look at magazines Time and Newsweek, and asks ‘do newsmags still matter?’

“The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal,” writes Kurtz.

“It is nothing less than a survival strategy,” he says.

Full story…

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Independent.co.uk: Newsweek’s Stryker McGuire to publish in-depth news magazine

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Little will be keynote speaker at the World Digital Publishing Conference

And while we’re on the theme of digital conferences in Amsterdam, news comes that the Guardian News & Media’s special adviser, Caroline Little, will be the keynote speaker at the annual World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo, to be held October 15-16.

Little was previously behind the Washington Post and Newsweek Interactive’s growth online, as their chief executive officer and publisher. She now advises the Guardian as it expands its online presence in the US.

Other speakers at the conference will include Ilicco Elia, head of mobile Europe for Thomson Reuters, Gary Clarke, director of business development for Amazon Kindle, and Frédéric Sitterlé, new media director for Le Figaro in France.

Organisers say that there are still places available at the conference.

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Multimedia collaborations provide Super Tuesday coverage online

Yesterday was just plain pancake day in the UK, but over the water it was Super Tuesday, as 24 of America’s 50 states voted on which candidates should be put forward for the country’s presidential election in November.

The coverage of the day’s events online saw some innovative multimedia and collaborative efforts from new and existing media outlets:

Mapping

Results + different time zones + different states = a great opportunity for breaking news displayed on mashed-up maps.

Google got in on the action with a map displaying live results and, with the help of Twitter and Twittervision, ‘tweets’ from across the US to give instant reactions from voters.

In another partnership with YouTube, as part of the site’s You Choose ‘08 channel, Google is aggregating videos and clips from news organisations, candidates and users about Super Tuesday and plotting them on a Google map.

Elsewhere the BBC’s results map, which features as part of a broader election section, gives an easily navigable, state-by-state guide to the figures.

New collaboration

Publish2 launched a bookmarking system for newsrooms, bloggers and journalists, to create an aggregation service. Interested parties were asked to register for a free account and create a specific tag they would use – these tagged items can then be turned into a news feed by Publish2 to be repurposed on the tagger’s site.

Here’s an overview of the Networked Newsrooms idea or, to see it in action, visit the Knoxville News Sentinel or the New Jersey News Herald.

Video

Newsweek and The Washington Post teamed up for a five hour live webcast, encouraging viewers to react in a live webchat. Meanwhile The Huffington Post produced handheld footage from a Barack Obama rally in New York in the build-up to Tuesday and a live blog of the actual event.

MTV sent 23 of its ’street team’ of citizen journalists to cover the polls and upload footage from video cameras and mobile phones. The clips are being distributed through MTV Mobile, Think.MTV.com and the Associated Press‘ online video network.

And finally – a slideshow…

…well, it’s much more than that really – De Volkskrant created an all-singing, all-dancing ’slideshow’ with music, text, links, audio analysis and video giving an overview of the candidates, as well as a live results page for Tuesday’s results.

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Guido Fawkes: Ten years ago today Drudge ended the reign of the media gatekeepers

On this day in 1997, Guido says, blogger Matt Drudge posted a story about Newsweek editors spiking a piece about Bill Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky.

“His story ended once and for all the gatekeeper ability, if not the mentality, of the mainstream media elite. He later said: “We are all newsmen now.”

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AOP: Hyper-local sites have to be news driven – Washington Post Interactive chief on the failure of some sites

Hyper-local sites have to be driven by news the chief executive of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive told the AOP conference.

“Some of the hyper-local sites that have failed, in my view, there isn’t any hard data there, there is just people commenting or talking to each other,” Caroline Little told delegates.

“If it’s not structured around something that is changing then it may as well be on Facebook or email or something else. We need to provide something to make it interesting.”

Speaking about the databases and Google Maps mash-ups that drive the Post’s Loudoun hyper-local site, she added:

“Publishing news is important to people locally, even if it’s a crime database, what happened last night on what street, people want to know that.

“We also have local bloggers who live in the community. But I believe without that local news piece, which is fresh and updated constantly, you’re just not going to build habit locally.”

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AOP: What the Washington Post will do next – mobile, Europe and a relaunch in the Spring

Caroline Little, chief executive of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, told the AOP conference, in London today, that the Post would be focusing its attention on developing its mobile offerings as a way of expanding its audience.

“We’re really far behind in mobile compared to Europeans, that’s one area that we are really focusing on right now,” she said.

“Not just on mobile phones but also being able to read stuff on your Blackberry or iPhone, or whatever else. We are really far behind. It’s an area that we are really pushing forward on.”

During a Q&A session she was asked if the Post was looking actively at other markets internationally.

“We are in the UK, we have advertising offices here. But in terms of editorial, we’re not looking at hyper-local content outside of our market.

“You have to do what you know, but we would like to do more in Europe and we have some plans to do that.”

The Post, she added, is planning an entire redesign in the Spring next year.

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