These are some of the things that have caught my attention lately. It’s a more eclectic mix than just the news business, but then so’s life:
- How to live-Tweet an event | New Tricks — “Here are five tricks for getting the most out of your live Tweeting…”
- Gael Greene — Insatiable, and Also Dismissed | NYTimes.com — “Adam Moss, New York’s editor in chief, said Ms. Greene “was laid off — there is no elegant expression for it” because New York could no longer afford four food critics. Adam Platt is the chief weekly reviewer and Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite write the Underground Gourmet column.”
- Family: Shoe thrower hates both US, Iran role | The Associated Press — He didn’t like you either: “He was very boastful, arrogant and always showing off,” said Zanko Ahmed, a Kurdish journalist who attended a journalism training course with al-Zeidi in Lebanon. “He tried to raise topics to show that nobody is as smart as he is.”
- Bernie Madoff and Hamlet’s Ghost | Jeff Matthews — “Harry Markopolos, who years ago worked for a rival firm, researched Mr. Madoff’s stock-options strategy and was convinced the results likely weren’t real.
“Madoff Securities is the world’s largest Ponzi Scheme,” Mr. Markopolos, wrote in a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 1999.”
- The best sentence I read yesterday | Tyler Cowen — “My current view is this: one’s attention is extremely scarce and limited, as are one’s affiliations. Insofar as you have the luxury of thinking “bigger thoughts,” those thoughts should be directed at helping others, not at helping oneself.”
- Newspapers can’t keep distributing content for free on Web | Las Vegas Sun — About the only time I buy newspapers is before boarding planes, when digital sources will be inaccessible. About the only pages I’d paid a dime for while grounded came to me on Nov. 5. Who could pass up the historic “Obama Wins” headlines?
The better question — who in my generation even realizes the role he has played in the murder of news? Silently skimming off Google’s AP content and other major news outlets’ Web sites, where advertising tries in vain to offset the cost of reportage, my generation, and many around us, have failed to recognize the part each of us has played in the death of American journalism.
So I made a decision amid this existential crisis. I will soon be a subscriber to four American newspapers: the Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Chicago Tribune — all publications in major financial distress.
My moral qualms solved, the reality remains — what will it take? How will journalism survive?
- News You Can Lose | The New Yorker — [P]eople don’t use the Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today they don’t have to pay for it. The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.
- UK readership: class, age & sex | Newspaper Innovation — While Metro and the Daily are very similar when social class is concerned, the two are very different when the age profile of their readers is compared: 74% of Metro’s readers is below 45 while only 28% of the Daily Mail readers are in that group. More than three quarters of the Daily Telegraph’s readers are 45 or older