Resources
Better News — Strategies and case studies to help transform newsrooms. Fueled by the American Press Institute and the Knight Temple Lenfest News Initiative. Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The Loss of Local News – Report from Pew Trusts – 2020.
Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2019, a Creative Commons book
Reflections
Journalism must survive says Bill Moyers. May 26, 2015.
The fading newspaper, Bloomberg, May 2015.
The future of news — Bill Keller and Glenn Greenwald, New York Times, Oct. 28, 2013.
Last call – Clay Shirkey, August 2014.
Now That Publishing And Circulation Are Free, What Can Media Companies Do To Create Scarcity? Benjy Boxer, Forbes magazine, Jan. 21, 2014 (mentions Revolutions in Communication).
Interview with President Barack Obama includes reflections on the demise of newspapers. “Those old times aren’t coming back,” he said. July 2013.
The 1960s redesign: Newspaper editors were glacially slow to change how they did things, largely because for 50 years their newspapers had faced little competition in reporting day-to-day events — and had enjoyed healthy profits. News people came to see the way they did things as the right way, as good journalism. They came to believe that the news process, an irrational one in many ways, was the reason for their success. (Michael O’Donell)
New media meltdown at New Century — Business Week, 1998
Will newspaper values ever recover? — Newsosaur blog.
Rehire The Journalists! Audiences Want More Science
Barbie can be a multimedia journalist
How the newspaper industry tried to invent the Web but failed. – Jack Shafer – Slate Magazine, 2009.
Stverak, Jason. “The pros and pros of ‘Citizen Journalism,’ ” Online Journalism Review, March 12, 2010.
Gene Weingarten: How ‘branding’ is ruining journalism
Chris Hedges: The Death of Journalism, June 27, 2011.
Why Are We Still Consuming News Like It’s 1899? By Ben Huh, May 2011, founder of I Can Has Cheeseburger.
Jack Lessenberry, How to kill the news, Sept. 7, 2011. “Reporters should crowdsource, tweet, shoot, SMS, live chat and — oh, yeah — report the news.”
The greatest challenge in the history of media, Digital Deliverance, 2010.
Bulletins from the future: The internet has turned the news industry upside down, making it more participatory, social, diverse and partisan—as it used to be before the arrival of the mass media, says Tom Standage. Economist, July 7, 2011.
Before Watergate could be Googled. Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2012.
Warren Buffett is buying up newspapers for a song.
Tabloids are collapsing in the UK. NY Times June 4, 2012.
Film on dying newspapers under production. Politico, June 5, 2012.
Sarah Palin is wrong – Citizen journalists can’t replace real journalists. Leonard Pitts, June 24, 2012.
One reason the news media is collapsing in Australia, New Zealand and Canada is increasing ownership by partisan zealots.
Will investors follow Rupert Murdoch to the newspaper rack? Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2012. (Doubtful).
Journalism can’t survive on symbolic capital alone (such as) grand talk about democracy and the Fourth Estate, says Burt Herman. “If things that are not journalism (can) entertain, inform and facilitate agency better than things that are, don’t bet on journalism to thrive.” Herman’s blog came up in a Storify thread: Is journalism being replaced?
The news isn’t free, Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, Aug. 11, 2013.
Newspapers have become the bullied school kid of American journalism says Leonard Pitts Jr. in this Aug. 10 2013 column.
The “secret sauce” for sustainable journalism? Haven’t found it yet. INN, Sept.25, 2013.
Ebay founder Peter Omidyar is starting up a news organization. Washington Post, Oct. 17, 2013. Interview with Pierre Omidyar of eBay, on investments in the News, New York Times, Oct. 20, 2013.
Daily newspaper circulation trends. Romanesko.
Decline of local media is totally terrible. Washington Post, May 27, 2015.
The book business dug its own grave. USA Today June 2 2014; What is the future of the news industry asks USA Today in this July 8, 2014 article.
Can newspapers make it on their own? USA Today Aug 7, 2014. Spin-offs of more profitable divisions raise troubling questions.
De-newspaperization of America, Will Bunch, July 31, 2013, Philadelphia Inquirer.
Is the magazine business doomed to shrink? Adweek, April 2011
The end of the news business in Appalachian Kentucky means that “the growing economic inequality between rural and urban in Kentucky will be matched by a social and political distance,” says Bill Bishop in this Daily Yonder blog post.
Kevin Ferris of the Philadelphia Inquirer says in a Feb. 2012 tribute to VCU journalism prof Bill Turpin … “No matter how talented the writers and photographers, the editors and page designers, the advertising and production staffs, they couldn’t put those talents to use if your newspaper wasn’t making money.Thirty years later, the money isn’t being made. And changing economic realities require that newspapers adapt or die… “
Print advertising lower now than in 1950. Slate magazine, 2014.
Maybe the internet isnt killing the newspaper after all, ChicagoMag, Oct. 2014.
Its not the internet says Chicago Prof, June 13, 2014, Guardian.
Goodbye to the age of newspapers, hello to a new era of corruption. New Republic, March 4, 2009.
Who killed the newspaper – Economist, 2006 — A very early article predicting the demise of the newspaper.
Who’s to blame? The Nation, August, 2014.
Decline of newspapers is the decline of democracy, Propublica head says.
Content used to be king – but now it’s the joker. by Amy Westervelt, M Magazine, June 3, 2014.