U.S. senators consider options for ailing newspapers
The U.S. government could provide tax breaks for newspapers or allow them to operate as nonprofits to help the struggling business survive, Sen. John Kerry said Wednesday. — Reuters
Newspapers hit hard by dose of bad news
“We’re going to become a 24-hour, local news-gathering media company so we can more effectively gather content and distribute it among our different platforms: print, online and mobile,” [Baltimore Sun] spokeswoman Renee Mutchnik said. — Washington Times Reporters are reporting on how other news organizations are reacting to changes in the field of journalism. It’s…
the fiction circus
Most small publishers only received letters from Google last week asking them to contact their out-of-print authors and let them know that soon their rights will revert to Google unless they “opt out” immediately. This gives small publishers two weeks to track down their writers, many of whom spend at least half the year in…
Google Book Search settlement gives Google a virtual monopoly over literature – Boing Boing
Another thought-provoking link from BoingBoing. Maybe the language is a bit alarmist, but that’s what gets the linkers linking. The Authors Guild — which represents a measly 8000 writers — brought a class action against Google on behalf of all literary copyright holders, even the authors of the millions of “orphan works” whose rightsholders can’t…
Aviary – Terms
“We love you, but signing this agreement doesn’t make us legal partners.” — Aviary EULA That’s from the “summary” column, on the right side of a page that has the equivalent legalese on the other side. It’s an example of a human way to present an end user license agreement (EULA), one of those legal…
Scenes from the recession – The Big Picture
Unused newspaper racks clutter a storage yard in San Francisco, California on Friday, March 13, 2009. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) (Boston.com) I’m not so sure this image really depicts the recession. Rather, it’s a sign that the business model of print journalism has changed irrevocably, due to the internet. The younger generation has not continued the…
Business Meeting — CCCC 09
3500 attendees, successful innovations in on-site childcare and poster-paper sessions. Finances are good, considering the recession. There will be a slow increase in internet technology; 2 years ago there were 3 dedicated “internet rooms,” this year there were 6, and next year there will be 9. I should check the WPA-L archives for explanation of…
Preparing the Obituary
If the newspapers do not survive, then what takes on the crucial social and economic roles they have performed over the past century and more? That is unknowable. Failing some inventive institutional spark, some vital functions might simply go unperformed. The Internet is creating a “tragedy of the commons” situation for news, and no one…
Adobe Shockwave interfereres with my system, blocks my attempts to remove it, and replaces the "No" button with "I grant permission for you to nag me later"
Does Adobe Shockwave fit your definition of malware? I train my kids not to click on random boxes that pop up, and I don’t want any boxes popping up on computers my kids use. So I was very annoyed the other day when I first saw this box — intrusive auto-update window that shows only…
Under Weight of Its Mistakes, Newspaper Industry Staggers
Repeat after me. Newspaper ≠ journalism. Journalism ⊃ newspaper. Why a once-profitable industry suddenly seems as outmoded as America’s automakers is a tale that involves arrogance, mistakes, eroding trust and the rise of a digital world in which newspapers feel compelled to give away their content. “Most of the wounds are self-inflicted,” says Phil Bronstein,…
Amazon Modifies Kindle Text-to-speech Feature – PC World
The new Kindle is still way out of my price range, though of course I’m still craving one. This news took a bit of the edge off of that craving, since I regularly load my MP3 player with the sounds of a computerized voice reading common-domain texts. Amazon.com will let copyright holders opt out of…
American Society of Newspaper Editors cancels 2009 convention
Citing the challenging times faced by its members, The American Society of Newspaper Editors today announced it has canceled its 2009 convention. — ASNE According to the ASNE website, one of the items on the agenda at the conference was a motion to drop the reference to “paper” in the organization’s name, and to expand…
How to Save Your Newspaper
My brother-in-law, who lives in New Jersey, is a Steelers fan. He asked for a keepsake issue of the local paper, so I sent out an e-mail to my colleagues to beg for their used copies. The truth is, I wouldn’t even take a free subscription to the print edition, since it would mean more junk piling…
Time's and Newsweek's Survival Strategy After Recent Cutbacks
A snip from the Washington Post’s brief piece on how high-profile news magazines have changed along with journalism: Many of the recently laid-off staffers, Stengel says, “were people whose jobs really didn’t exist anymore.”
The Day the Newspaper Died
On October 10, 1765, an Annapolis printer changed his newspaper’s title to the Maryland Gazette, Expiring. Its motto: “In uncertain Hopes of a Resurrection to Life again.” Later that month, the printer of the Pennsylvania Journal replaced his newspaper’s masthead with a death’s-head and framed his front page with a thick black border in the…
The New Journalism: Goosing the Gray Lady
This past year has been catastrophic for the New York Times. Advertising dropped off a cliff. The stock sank by 60 percent, and by fall, the paper had been rated a junk investment, announced plans to mortgage its new building, slashed dividends, and, as of last week, was printing ads on the front page. So…
New Media Venture Turns Bloggers Into Print Journalists
As old media races to catch up with the Web and figure out how to successfully monetize print content online, one publication is taking a drastically different approach: web to print. The Printed Blog, a startup founded and funded by former business productivity software entrepreneur Joshua Karp, is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper in…
End Times
Not if, but when. The collapse of daily print journalism will mean many things. For those of us old enough to still care about going out on a Sunday morning for our doorstop edition of The Times, it will mean the end of a certain kind of civilized ritual that has defined most of our…
OLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project announced Wednesday that it plans to downsize half of its staff and reduce the salary of the remaining employees. OLPC will also halt its development of the open source Sugar environment and focus on building its next-generation hardware device. These plans are part of a major restructuring effort…
Digg This, Huffington Post: What’s $200 Million Now Worth?
Now maybe the Huffington Post could be worth more if it further cut its burn rate. For instance, rather than not pay its bloggers, it could charge them — for the privilege of getting to help maintain the jetsetting lifestyle of the Great Arianna, of course. As for some of the people the site does pay, like its tech…