Feb. 24, 2012
10:19 am
Can SEO-heavy aggregation eventually lead to in-depth journalism?
“Sometimes I think we want a one-size-fits-all, linear solution to the tumult in the news business when the the real ‘answer,’ such that it is, is that you have to walk before you can run, and that your transition for success SHOULD, and indeed must, have a lot of pivots in it, as most good entrepreneurial thinkers know.
“It reminds me of teaching beginning news reporting. … Somehow, learning to write the most basic, simple story launches you into a space in which you can then start doing some more interesting things as a reporter and a writer. Sometimes you have to learn a certain skill – how to be smart on the web – before you can start creatively melding that skill with some of your higher values of investigative journalism.”
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Carrie Brown-Smith, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Memphis
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Steve Myers
Feb. 14, 2012
10:22 am
Associated Press | Meltwater
Six weeks after the AP and other investors
launched a licensing organization to collect fees from aggregators, the AP has
filed a lawsuit against
Meltwater News, which bills itself as "more than a traditional media monitoring service." AP CEO Curley calls it a "parasitic distribution service" that is undercutting AP's business by providing its content to Meltwater clients without paying for it.
The AP says Meltwater is taking its customers — not the newspapers and broadcasters you normally think of as AP clients, and not the average guy scanning Google News at lunch, but those like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. According to the lawsuit:
The U.S. government is one of AP's largest customers, and AP's subscriber roster includes nearly 100 government agencies — federal, state, local and foreign — including the U.S. Senate, the U.S. State Department, the New York City Police Department, and various foreign embassies. These government subscribers often do not publish the stories themselves, but monitor the news wire to stay apprised of timely, accurate news reports as they develop. ...
AP has lost, and continues to lose, customers to Meltwater over the past several years. For example, the Department of Homeland Security terminated its contract with AP, choosing instead to receive AP content through Meltwater.
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Jeff Sonderman
Jan. 31, 2012
5:10 pm
The essential role of an aggregator is to make choices for readers, usually about which topics, sources or issues are worth paying attention to. A new aggregation and reading app launching Wednesday for the iPad holds a different standard — … Read more
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Steve Myers
Dec. 12, 2011
4:14 pm
This Week in Tech
A lot of people ask Gabe Rivera why Techmeme doesn't link to their stories, he tells Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane. "A lot of it is just bad writers who haven't come to terms with their being bad," he says. He used to ignore such complaints; now "I actually enjoy some of the complaining." Rivera recently explained
what gets a story linked on Techmeme and what doesn't. How to get linked: Break a big story. How to be ignored: "Write enigmatic headlines."
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Mallary Jean Tenore
Dec. 6, 2011
6:41 am
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Julie Moos
Nov. 28, 2011
7:55 am
Here's what you may have missed Thanksgiving week:
- Editor & Publisher announced their EPPY award finalists; winners will be announced Wednesday. (E&P)
- NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent a letter to officers reminding them that journalists must be allowed to do their jobs; the note follows reports of police interference during Occupy Wall Street coverage. (AP)
- Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy was detained and assaulted for 12 hours in Cairo. Documentarian Jehane Noujaim was also detained. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 17 journalists were assaulted in Egypt in the last 10 days. (CNN, The New York Times, CPJ)
- New York Times newsman Tom Wicker died Friday. Wicker was known, among other things, for his front-page coverage of JFK's assassination. He was remembered as "solid" and "hot-tempered." Washington Post senior vice president Christopher Ma also died last week, as did copy editor Charles Stough. (New York Times, Washington Post, Charles Apple)
- "There really is nothing sacred in media circles right now," journalism professor Dan Reimold told the AP about the Poynter-Romenesko flap. Josh Benton concluded that Romenesko readers exploded because "the totality of the user experience brings in issues of design, of code, of fair use, of promotion — it’s a lot more complicated than merely whether a box gets checked on a feature checklist." (Yahoo, Nieman Journalism Lab)
- AAJA's Minnesota chapter met with WCCO about its reporting on a Chinatown market that it said sold dogs instead of duck. "We applaud WCCO for responding to AAJA's concerns and look forward to strengthening a trusted, long term partnership between our two organizations," AAJA said in a statement released last week. (Mediabistro, AAJA)
- HuffPost asked journalists what they're thankful for. Founder Arianna Huffington said she was thankful “the supercommittee isn't responsible for determining our editorial budget." Chuck Todd said, “I'm thankful the Republican candidates have decided NOT to debate this weekend. I just hope that when I'm sitting around my Turkey Day table, I don't cut someone off and tell my wife she has 30 seconds to respond and pass the cranberry sauce." (The Huffington Post)
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Steve Myers
Nov. 14, 2011
8:49 am
The New York Times
David Carr sizes up the post-print vision of the newspaper business held by John Paton, who's now running MediaNews as well as Journal Register Co. "In Mr. Paton’s version of newspapering, a third of the news will be expensive local content produced by professional journalists, a third will come from readers and community input, and a third will be aggregated." Paton also shares some financial figures for Journal Register: Revenue dropped 2 percent last year, about a third of the industry average, and during his tenure digital revenue has grown by more than five times. ||
Related: Jim Brady says centralized production of national, international news key to Journal Register’s future
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The Poynter Institute
Nov. 11, 2011
4:02 pm
Given that Poynter is a school, with a faculty, it’s probably no surprise to anyone that we don’t agree on the severity of Jim Romenesko’s attribution transgressions. And nobody’s telling us to keep quiet either. To that end, we bring … Read more
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Steve Myers
Nov. 4, 2011
12:29 pm
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Jim Romenesko
Sep. 19, 2011
12:44 pm
Romenesko+ Letters
After reading Friday's
Steve Hendrix-Bradford Noble email exchange, MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan wrote to Romenesko+ about the Daily Mail and Gawker picking up his story on a laid-off lawyer who's now a stripper. "The Daily Mail copied it, we’ll say, extensively," he writes. "Gawker did much the same." Sullivan adds: "It’s all the worse because the story was 100% anonymous to protect the woman from future repercussions. In my case, the DM simply
added a photo of a random stripper, which I thought was particularly tasteless."
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