The Financial Times carries an interview with Tina Brown a year after the former Vanity Fair editor launched website The Daily Beast.
Brown discusses site stats, the challenges of online journalism, expansion plans and encouraging her writers to go into print – in books rather than magazines.
Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism has a history of running innovative journalism training courses.
The school previously launched a masters programme for programmers looking to pick up journalism skills – producing some great graduates.
Now the institution has created a masters in journalism-programming for working journalists with at least seven years experience:
“The Medill School of Journalism seeks experienced media professionals who want to create or run a media enterprise; learn more about marketing, corporate communications or public relations; build their own personal brand as entrepreneurs; or continue working as journalists or media professionals but with expanded skills and a comprehensive view of the field,” reads the course description on the JournalismNext website.
It’s a nine-month full-time course, so those journalists would have to take time out from work – but the skills on offer could be a powerful combination for professionals with such a bank of experience already.
Hailed as a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Rocky Mountain News, the Rocky Mountain Independent, the second venture launched by former News journalists, will no longer produce original content as of today.
Subscribers to the site were told that the website’s owners could no longer support producing new content with their current revenues.
Its previous incarnation – InDenver Times, which fell short of subscription level targets after two months of life – will continue to run as a local news aggregation service with some contributed content.
The Washington Post and Bloomberg are to launch a new global news service next January offering 120 stories (plus photos and graphics) from the Post and agency.
The wire content will be available to subscribers to Bloomberg’s Professional service.
The move follows the Post’s announcement earlier this week that it would end its long-standing news wire service with the LA Times.
The Times is reportedly looking at Tablet computers as a way to boost readership.
The small portable computers with touchscreen technology could offer a new way of delivering newspaper content – and a new potential revenue stream, thestreet.com reports.
The Huffington Post has launched its third local site, as expected, for Denver, Colorado.
An introduction from Ethan Axelrod, HuffPo’s Denver editor, explains the thinking behind launch in Denver and not another US city – namely the political importance of the state and Denver’s position as a destination for young professionals and businesses, he says.
The site is also planning launches of new technology, sport (end of October) and books (October 5) verticals – a move examined by the New York Observer:
“The advantage to adding verticals ad infinitum to general-interest websites is simple: they make it easy for web designers to mimic that familiar feeling of pulling out the business pages or flipping to the top sports story in traditional print newspapers. Drilling down on one topic at a time and carefully tailoring content by subject makes it easier for visitors to read what they want to and for advertisers to reach a specific, targeted audience,” the Observer reports.
Being able to roll-out new sections and topic pages quickly may suggest a landgrab approach towards attracting users.
As usability expert Jakob Nielsen tells the Observer, these sections allow sites to ‘scoop up’ users with specific interests and perhaps attract them to other parts of the site. To do this however, the content these sections offer must be more than just a filtering of the broader site.
Public belief in the accuracy of news stories has fallen two its lowest level in more than 20 years, a new survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press suggests.
Of those Americans surveyed (around 1,506 in July this year), 29 per cent said news organisations ‘generally get the facts straight’; 63 per cent said news stories are often inaccurate.
The independence of news organisations and their ability to concede mistakes were also rated at an all-time low, according to the study, which also looks at local news coverage and the public’s reaction to the closure of news outlets.
The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) has appointed not one, but two web editors to its board – the first time web editors have been represented on the group’s executive in its almost 100-year history (picked up via Editor & Publisher).
John Harris, editor-in-chief of Politico, and Anthony Moor, deputy managing editor/interactive of Dallas Morning News, will take up the positions.
The appointments were made ‘to reach out to news executives beyond the group’s print newspaper roots‘, an ASNE announcement said.
The addition of web editors to the association’s board is one of many recent changes by the ASNE towards a more digital outlook. In April this year the body changed ‘Newspaper’ for ‘News’ in its name.
A round-up of reports that a local Florida newspaper is planning to charge candidates in a local mayoral election for coverage.
An email from the publication’s editor Tom Oosterhoudt to two of the candidates explained that others had had their campaigns covered, because they had already purchased advertising with the title, Conch Color.
“As far as candidate forums and debates, we’ll cover those when we can, but if candidates want their campaign covered, they have to pay to play,” Oosterhoudt told fellow Florida news site, Keynews.com.
In July the Washington Post was heavily criticised for offering paid-for access to exclusive ‘salons’ with officials from Barack Obama’s administration. The paper later dropped the plans.
The Wall Street Journal has created an interactive map of the US to track events and readership figures for the US’ top 50 newspapers (by circulation).
The map shows staff reductions, sales of titles and moves to online-only editions and covers the period from 2006 onwards.