What’s it really like to head up a world class news organization? The New York Times’ Bill Keller shares with readers the loneliness of command:
Q. I think a lot of young journalists and editors, myself included, are curious about what a day in the shoes of Bill Keller is like. Can you walk us through a normal work day for The Times’s executive editor?
— Devin Banerjee, Stanford, Calif. Continue reading
Things we won’t miss about declining political coverage c/o John Robinson:
From the front page of the New York Times today:
President Obama’s order freezing the salaries of his senior aides and the pen he used to sign it. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Answering the burning question, how many news photographers does it take to shoot a pen.
I missed this from biz school prof Kevin Dooley back in August, 2008:
[H]ow are political blogs the same or different from MSM? Through Wonkosphere, we have noticed that political blogs are consumed in much the same manner as mainstream media is, which indicates that readers treat political blogs not as separate from, but rather as part of, mainstream media. Wonkosphere traffic is greatest on Monday, and tends to peak before breakfast, lunch and dinner, i.e. when people are cruising on the net to end a portion of their work day. Blogs act as newspapers for most. Continue reading
I’ve been pondering the relationship between journalism and democracy of late, and so too have the academic commenters gathering at the blog of Social Science Research Council boss, Craig Calhoun.
Calhoun asks the question Sam Zell has already answered — What is the future of newspapers? And when social scientists smell blood, they’re mostly rubbing their hands at the prospect of a fresh cadaver to dissect rather than offering sympathy or solutions.
There’s not much in the comments that regular readers won’t be overly familiar with — foundation-funded journalism anyone? But buried within them is Michael Schudson offering his usual top class, analytical two cents: Continue reading
There’s an interesting look at the problems of newspapers online by Robert Ivan at Seeking Alpha, focusing on the New York Times. I don’t know about the assumptions — I’ve seen the cost of the NYT’s newsgathering put at $200m — and I’ve simplified it a little, but here it is:
Despite the highest readership of any newspaper in the United States, the New York Times only generated $330 million in online advertising in 2007. Total operating costs for that same year totaled $2.9 billion.
It is widely reported that total newspaper operating costs would be reduced by 35% if newspapers eliminated their print product [is that assumption really right?]. Using the NYT example … costs could be reduced to $1.9 billion. Continue reading
British writer Nick Davies is an inspiration to a lot of young journalists, and rightly so (you can read more of his writing on social issues here). But now he has moved from covering drugs and criminal justice to report on journalism. And in doing so, he commissioned some research to back up his criticisms and analysis. Continue reading
