“This is the first of two reports from the International Symposium on Online Journalism. To get a more extensive look what was said at this weekend’s symposium, go to the the Online Journalism Symposium Blog at or look for tweets from the symposium at #isoj”
“Amid the news industry’s crisis and the attendant fingerpointing over the causes, there is seemingly endless discussion these days of the pros and cons of things like micropayments, pay walls, aggregators, Google and the like. “ Mark Potts reviews the debate over a sustainable business model for journalism online.
Former RCMP spokesman Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre told a public inquiry he did “absolutely not” intentionally give the media inaccurate information following Robert Dziekanski’s death…
Asked a forum organized by rabble.ca, “What’s wrong with our newspapers?” Answers from Peter C. Newman, Linda McQuaig and Wayne MacPhail included, respectively, “boring,” “corporate ownership,” and “anti-union intentions.” “The bad news about the news,” a report of the event by rabble.ca columnist Duncan Cameron, concludes with a call for community ownership.
In the United States, reports the Wall Street Journal, more people now blog for a living than program computers, fight fires or tend bar; there are now nearly as many bloggers as there are lawyers. And “s bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined,” notes the WSJ. Excerpts: Less and…
The New York Times Company reported a first-quarter loss of $74.5 million on Tuesday, compared with a loss of $335,000 in the period a year ago, as it joined the roster of newspaper companies recording the steepest advertising declines in generations, reported the newspaper. Gah.
U.S. newspapers hacked 5,900 jobs from their newsrooms last year, the largest round of print journalism job reductions since the American Society of News Editors started counting in 1978. The cuts, representing 11.3 per cent of the workforce, left about 46,700 journalists still working in U.S. newsrooms, down from a peak of 56,900 in 1990.
Local television stations provided more hours of weekday news last year despite cutting staff and reducing salaries, according to a study released at the annual Radio-Television News Directors Association convention. Member stations reduced staff levels by about 1,200 people (4.3 per cent) while average salaries declined by 13.3 per cent for reporters, 11.5 per cent for news anchors, 9.1 per cent for…
“Why is PM Harper letting a pro-Israel think tank organize a press conference for him?” Twitters Canadianmags. The tweet links to David Akin’s blog post about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conference call, from Jamaica, “organized by the Washington-based advocacy group The Israel Project … which decided which reporters to invite in on the call.” Most…
Slate‘s Jack Shafer thinks America’s Pulitzer Prizes — announced today — are mere “industry peacockery.” Shafer says Joseph Pulitzer was “one of the inventors of yellow journalism,” and today’s prizes are too narrow: “Even the Academy Awards are more ecumenical than the Pulitzers, honoring foreign films, short subjects, technical achievement, animated features, and even the…