CNN reports that the Zimbabwean government is demanding that foreign journalists pay a combined annual licence fee of $36,000 to practice journalism in its country. This appears to be supported by a story in the Zimbabwe Times. Full story…
Chris Morrison contemplates what would be left behind in the wake should the mighty New York Times fall.
“Most people, including internet journalists, agree that print is the last bastion of the educated essay and the investigative article, he writes.”
Jenny Cromie tells journalists to rethink their ‘deadly freelance assumptions’ in the current economic climate.
“I believe that you have to challenge your own assumptions about your business and the way you’re operating it in order to survive this economic climate. And then once you identify what those are, you can develop self-defensive strategies to move forward and ensure that your business stays afloat,” she writes.
A news release that claims job cuts by Canadian media owners could lead to ‘our news becoming nothing more than rewritten press releases’.
“The decisions taken this fall will lead to more centralization of news in Canada, fewer opportunities for Canadians to learn from different voices and will threaten the very existence of quality local and investigative reporting,” says Canadian Association of Journalists president Mary Agnes Welch.
The CAJ fears “journalism in Canada is reaching a tipping point where the decline in the quality of news content will lead to an industry death spiral of less content, smaller audiences, and yet more cuts”.
An interesting article by Jack Shafer pointing out that some newspaper publishers, at least, tried to anticipate the coming digital storm with their own early attempts at new media innovations.
Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development steps offers tax breaks and training funds to ailing newspaper publishers, setting a worrying precedent for the independence of the ‘free press’.
Musician David Byrne makes an intelligent analysis of the current state of the news industry, comparing it to what happened to the music industry in the 1980s.
“What will happen when most of the country has nothing but entertainment, gossip and sports as sources of information? It’s a country ripe for takeover, if you ask me… Blogs and Internet news sites can’t fill the gap, as they don’t have the resources to sustain a team of reporters working and digging into a story — sometimes for months before anything sees the light of day.”
Where would the print ad dollars go when a newspaper stops publishing? Publish2’s Scott Karp looks at whether enough of the print advertising revenue could migrate to an online version.
Rory Brown, former managing director of the interactive marketing division of Incisive Media, shares his thought about the future of business-to-business publishing. “Yes, big media is clearly struggling – and not just because of the economy – but because, in the main, their whole corporate structure is set up for a very different era,” he says.
James Surowiecki posits his analysis of the current newspaper industry crisis. Regarding the Tribune Co., he says that ‘although Zell was making excuses for his own mismanagement, the perfect storm is real enough, and it is threatening to destroy newspapers as we know them’.