Circulation numbers for print publications are generally down, and the monthly audiences at websites such as the gossip blog Gawker are broadly up. But don't write the obituary for long-attention-span journalism quite yet. Go to instapaper.com and download the plug-in for your Web browser. Then install the accompanying Instapaper application to your iPhone, iPad, Kindle, or (soon) Android device. The next time the boss steps away and your midafternoon Web excavation unearths a well researched, brilliantly written article—such as the feature stories in this magazine, if we may be so bold—click "read later" in the browser toolbar. The service acts like a TiVo (TIVO) for words. It will save the story to your e-reader or your tablet so it can be read later. Marco Arment charges $5 for a premium version of the app that lets users store up to 250 articles and share them with other users.
Instapaper, which has more than a million users and is growing rapidly, has competition. The biggest is Read It Later, with more than 3 million users. Longreads, a site that shares recommendations for in-depth articles, has a lively Twitter feed with more than 15,000 followers.
Nate Weiner, the 26-year-old Web designer in San Francisco who created Read It Later, thinks these services hold promise for old-school journalism. Most of his users read saved stories between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. If they're on mobile devices, reading time spikes during the commuting hours and again from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
There may be one snag for traditional publishers. Services such as Instapaper and Read It Later let users view their saved stories in an uncluttered format stripped of the ads and other marginalia of the Web browser. That could cost media companies some advertising revenue.
Read more at Business Week
Monday, March 7
Public media puts millions into investigative work
NPR, PBS and local public broadcast stations around the country are hiring more journalists and pumping millions of dollars into investigative news to make up for what they see as a lack of deep-digging coverage by their for-profit counterparts. Public radio and TV stations have seen the need for reporting that holds government and business accountable increase as newspapers and TV networks cut their staffs and cable television stations have filled their schedules with more opinion journalism.
In the past three years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has invested more than $90 million in federal funds on new journalism initiatives. That includes a $10 million local journalism initiative that is paying for the creation of five regional centers that will help local PBS and NPR stations cover news that affects wider geographic areas. Also, a $6 million grant from the group expanded the PBS investigative series "Frontline" from a seasonal series with a summer break to a year-round program.
Meanwhile, NPR has started an investigative reporting unit supported by philanthropic funds – including $3.2 million donated in the last year.
Read more here.
In the past three years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has invested more than $90 million in federal funds on new journalism initiatives. That includes a $10 million local journalism initiative that is paying for the creation of five regional centers that will help local PBS and NPR stations cover news that affects wider geographic areas. Also, a $6 million grant from the group expanded the PBS investigative series "Frontline" from a seasonal series with a summer break to a year-round program.
Meanwhile, NPR has started an investigative reporting unit supported by philanthropic funds – including $3.2 million donated in the last year.
Read more here.
What's the Difference Between Curation and Journalism?
They're both perfectly valid and useful activities but they perform different roles: curation compiles and collates; journalism adds a layer of narrative, context and analysis.
However, I don't want to get into a semantic debate about definitions, rather to argue that this discussion missed a bigger point: that journalism, be it social media, citizen or mainstream, is changing as a result of social media.
On Friday, 'mainstream' media made a bad mistake when it ran images of fighting in the Libyan town of Zawiyah - Reuters picked up the video from social media, which claimed/believed it was legitimate 'today' footage. Other news organisations then picked up the material and rebroadcast it until they discovered it was from fighting in exactly the same location but from the previous week.
Was that a failure of mainstream media or social media? It was certainly a failure of journalism - and that's the point: the differing strands of journalism and/or media are converging.
'Old media' journalists are being forced to engage with the rumour, gossip, facts and factoids being circulated in places like Twitter and Facebook; to look at them and work out whether they are 'true' or not before running with them.
Read more at the BBC
However, I don't want to get into a semantic debate about definitions, rather to argue that this discussion missed a bigger point: that journalism, be it social media, citizen or mainstream, is changing as a result of social media.
On Friday, 'mainstream' media made a bad mistake when it ran images of fighting in the Libyan town of Zawiyah - Reuters picked up the video from social media, which claimed/believed it was legitimate 'today' footage. Other news organisations then picked up the material and rebroadcast it until they discovered it was from fighting in exactly the same location but from the previous week.
Was that a failure of mainstream media or social media? It was certainly a failure of journalism - and that's the point: the differing strands of journalism and/or media are converging.
'Old media' journalists are being forced to engage with the rumour, gossip, facts and factoids being circulated in places like Twitter and Facebook; to look at them and work out whether they are 'true' or not before running with them.
Read more at the BBC
Using Phones, but Not to Talk or Surf
The average smartphone owner spends 667 minutes a month using apps. That is more time spent with apps than spent talking on a smartphone or using it to browse the Web.
Read more at the New York Times
Read more at the New York Times
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