Transformation Tracker

Lee Rainie, the Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, used this slideshow at the Boomer Business Summit in Chicago to present recent Pew Internet findings about how Baby Boomers use the Internet.

Our journalism students need to sell
their personal brands
McGuire on Media, Mar. 10, 2010

Tim McGuire argues that "in hard media times as big media brands get pounded from pillar to post...your personal brand becomes even more important than corporate brands." He starts off by looking back at an earlier blog entry where he "talked about telling students to sell themselves by building their own personal brand." He also "advised students to become experts in the thing they have a passion for and then market that expertise with a blog, with Twitter and with a responsible Facebook page."

Do Marketers Still Need News Brands?
Advertising Age, Mar. 11, 2010

Ken Doctor: Let's take a quick, one-question quiz together.
Marketers need news brands:
A. less than before
B. about the same
C. more than before
First, bonus points to anyone who answered D: "Who the heck knows?"

What makes a nonprofit news org legit? Three other questions to separate journalism from advocacy
Nieman Journalism Lab, Mar. 11, 2010

Laura McGann: "Last week, Jim Barnett raised a question about nonprofit journalism: What makes it legit?....He lists various IRS and accounting standards, a number of vague measures of professionalism, and what I’d consider an unfair standard, whether an organization is credentialed by federal or state government....This is one place where Barnett and I disagree."

Washington Post gauging readers' willingness on paid content, both on new iPhone app and on the website
Nieman Journalism Lab, Mar. 4, 2010

Laura McGann: "The Washington Post caused a bit of a stir yesterday when it announced a $1.99-a-year iPhone app. The choice was interesting both because it offered time-limited access to content and because of the low price point -- at a time when other newspaper execs are apparently debating prices more than 100 times greater. As our friend Mac Slocum put it: '$1.99 for 12 months of Washington Post content -- is that *too* reasonable?'"

Explaining The Local: East Village, NYU's Collaboration with the New York Times
PressThink, Feb. 23, 2010

Jay Rosen describes the new collaboration between The New York Times and NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. It will be called The Local: East Village, and it will appear on nytimes.com. The site will be edited and produced at NYU and serve the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. (Related press release from The New York Times)

Earnings season: Newspapers finish 14th straight
revenue-losing quarter; some intel from Wall Street filings
Nieman Journalism Lab, Feb. 11, 2010

Martin Langeveld: "When revenue is still seriously down, but profits are up, is that good news? The U.S newspaper companies that have reported fourth quarter 2009 results so far would have you believe it is. But based on their reports, it’s clear the industry as a whole is still in deep trouble, with no strong indication that better days are ahead."

Waldman: No FCC Bailouts in Store for Media
Senior advisor is responsible for report
on state and fate of industry in midst of change
Broadcasting & Cable, Feb. 8, 2010

John Eggerton: "Steven Waldman, senior advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, believes that, theoretically speaking, there is no harm in the decline and fall of broadcast outlets and newspapers, so long as there is something immediately set to replace their useful function of delivering news and civic information."

How Demand Media Is Infiltrating Major Media Publishers
Business Insider, Feb. 8, 2010

Gillian Reagan: "For the past few years, Demand Media has been focusing on powering their own portfolio of sites, like Livestrong.com and eHow.com....Now, Demand Media's next major goal is to supplement publishers' sites with their original content...."

NPR's Ron Schiller:
"A concrete and hopeful message" can raise funds
Nieman Journalism Lab, Feb. 1, 2010

Jim Barnett: "Ron Schiller, the new senior vice president for development at National Public Radio, doesn't subscribe to the notion that the nation's news media are in a state of crisis. Is the landscape changing? Absolutely. But this is no time to wallow in doom and gloom, according to Schiller."