STL Social Media Guy: Web comment on newspaper site loses man his job

A ‘vulgar’ comment from a man on the St Louis-Post’s Dispatch website, STLtoday.com, resulted in him resigning from his job.

Kurt Greenbaum, online news director and director of social media at the paper, explains how he twice deleted the comment.

“[I then] noticed in the WordPress e-mail that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included,” explains Greenbaum.

“About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.”

Full post at this link…

But as the site Awful Marketing asks, is this a violation of trust or a newspaper’s privacy policy?

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Mediaweek: Current TV cuts 80 staff across global offices

Current TV, the cable channel backed by former US vice president Al Gore, is to cut 80 full-time positions as part of a restructuring.

Jobs will be lost in Current’s Los Angeles, San Francisco and London offices. But Current says the cuts are not down to cost-cutting, but part of a ‘reallocation of resources’ and change to its programming, including more long-form programmes and bought-in content.

Full story at this link…

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mediabistro.com: HuffPo asks bloggers to write local for LA edition

Mediabistro carries a memo from the Huffington Post calling on its blogging contributors to ‘think local’ as it prepares to launch a local edition for Los Angeles.

The site has already expanded to cover Chicago and Denver, but, as mediabistro points out, the memo states: “‘As always, there are no deadlines or quotas.’ Or money”

Full post at this link…

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Mediabistro: New Gawker.TV powered by interns; hopes site will sell ads

Mediabistro.com reports on the launch of a new spin-off site for Gawker – a video website, Gawker.TV, manned by around 16 interns working under a video editor.

Videos are a big traffic driver for Gawker and founder Nick Denton has admitted that selling ads will be easier on a site with a less specific focus, according to Mediabistro.

Full post at this link…

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‘Twenty tweetable truths about magazines’

MagCulture has shared the below animation from the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), which has produced a list of twenty ‘tweetable truths’ about magazines.

Agree or disagree?

magCulture.com / editorial design.

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Chicago Tribune: US Tribune papers to shun AP content for a week

The Chicago Tribune and Tribune Co.’s other US newspaper titles will run a week-long experiment starting from next Monday by using as little Associated Press (AP) content as possible.

The trial is part of review into costs and follows the Tribune’s warning to the agency last year that it might drop the service.

Full story at this link…

Last year a group of newspapers in Ohio forged an alliance (the Ohio News Organisation or OHNO) to share their top stories in a move against AP copy.

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#Outlook2010: Lauren Rich Fine on media’s future – ‘Is there too much news?’

Last week Journalism.co.uk attended the INMA and Online Publishers Association (OPA) Europe’s annual conference Outlook 2010 – the event focused on innovation, transformation and making money for media businesses. Follow our coverage at this link.

Former ContentNext research director and media analyst Lauren Rich Fine opened her conference presentation with a potentially ‘heretical’ question: “Is it possible that there’s too much news?”

Fine’s overview of the state of the media industry (focusing on the US market) and her ideas for a more collaborative, cooperative future can be listened to in full below:

Here are some key quotes:

On content:

• “I would suggest to you that there might be too much content, that we need to see rampant consolidation, that it’s not just going to be in the newspaper industry (…) it has to be everywhere.”

On the newspaper industry:

• “The newspaper industry has been very bad at being optimistic about its future, the newspaper industry has been really bad at marketing itself (and TV and radio are even more off-base).”

On advertising:

• “Classified advertising is permanently exiting newspapers – and it should, it works better online.”
• “If classified advertising continues to fall by the wayside this could be an industry operating with no margin.”

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Columbia Journalism School report proposes tax changes to boost US journalism

Foundations, universities and other third-party organisations must play an increasing role in maintaining public affairs news coverage in the US – as part of their commitment to ‘a continuous public good’, a new report into the future of US journalism has suggested.

The US-focused study looks at the future of ‘accountability journalism’, in particular in an age of declining fortunes for newspapers, who traditionally carried out this role.

The Columbia Journalism School report, written by former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr and j-school professor Michael Schudson, makes proposals for changes to US tax codes, including recognising news orgs committed to reporting on public affairs as non-profit entities, entitling them to tax-deductible donations.

Collaboration – between journalists, foundations and other stakeholders – will be increasingly important for producing news in the public interest, the report suggests – many such partnerships are already being formed, it observed.

“The report does not envision newspapers disappearing, but it also does not regard restoring newspaper staffs to their former size as possible. It looks forward to a new, mostly digital, era of news production, in which newspapers will continue to have a leading role, but as part of a much larger cast of featured players,” explained Columbia Journalism School dean Nicholas Lemann in a statement.

“It may not be essential to save or promote any particular news medium, including printed newspapers. What is paramount is preserving independent, original, credible reporting, whether or not it is popular or profitable, and regardless of the medium in which it appears,” add Downie and Schudson in the report.

An increasing number of online journalism initiatives suggested to the report authors that a mixture of for-profit, low-profit and non-profit news sources could be developed to support public affairs journalism.

An edited version of the report is available on the Columbia Journalism School website, while reaction and some criticisms can be found on the Columbia Journalism Review site.

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DailyFinance: US local TV stations to take on obituaries from local press

A local TV station in the US has spotted a gap in the market following cutbacks at local newspapers in its area – WNEM-TV in Michigan is offering two-minute, on-air and online (on ObitMichigan.com) obituaries for $100.

The station has aired more than 700 since it started doing so in August. According to its general sales manager, Jeff Guilbert, the new revenue stream could become the station’s largest on-air client within two years.

Full story at this link…

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Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2009 released

Blog search engine Technorati started publication of its annual State of the Blogosphere report yesterday – a survey of 2,828 bloggers in the US.

Section 1, ‘Who are the Bloggers?’, provides some new figures on who runs blogs, including the following from the respondents:

• 40 per cent have graduate degrees;
• One in four has an annual income of $100,000+;
• Two-thirds are male.

The report will be published in five sections – one on each working day this week.

This year the study also looked at monetisation, Twitter and microblogging and bloggers’ impact on US and world events.

Full introduction at this link…

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