Thursday, January 24

Digital album sales surge as CDs slowly fade away

In 2012, for the first time in history, digital stores became the primary outlet for buying albums, eclipsing mass merchants that had been the leading sales sector for the previous five years. CDs have been allotted less shelf space at chains, speeding digital's rise. Read more here

Sunday, January 20

FAQ: Don’t have a blog, you won’t get a job?

It’s very hard to convince an employer that you’re passionate about journalism if you’re not already doing it. The analogy I always draw is with the music industry: you won’t get a record contract if you’re not performing and recording already. A person who doesn’t have a blog is basically saying either that they are ignorant of developments in the industry, or that they aren’t that excited about doing journalism, or both.

Read more here

21 Things I Learned Running Hyperlocal News Sites

I’ve linked news and advertising together here because really, they are just two sides of the same coin. News exists to sell ads, and ads exist to be paired with content (you could say direct mail and billboards are an exception). Ultimately this space is dependent on human social interaction, whether it in response to the ads or content or with other people to discuss the ads or content. And there’s the rub: Humans have a limited number of ways they can interact with things, what merely changes are ways to amplify or accelerate how we have social interactions.

And here’s my big thought: I think we humans have to learn how to use these new tools, these new interactions before we go to the next level. For instance, I’m sure something like Google Glass is coming, and one day lots of people will use it. But I’m not sure our human society is ready to take on such an acceleration of interactions.

Read more here

the Digital-Only Paywall Parade

You’ll be hard-pressed to find many daily newspapers in the U.S., Canada, Scandinavia, or Germany that won’t be charging something for digital access by the time 2015 rolls around.

Read more at Newsonomics

The Future of Video Journalism

The use of an Instagram exposure on the cover of Time tells us volumes about not only where the photography business is going, but where the video business is sure to follow. How long will it be before iPhone videos replace the work of video professionals at TV's highest levels? I guess five years. Maybe fewer.

Read more at the Huffington Post