Daniel Klotz: 11 Problems You Can Solve in 2009: Part II - Journalism
bydanielvictor
· 1 year ago
I think we're going to see an explosion of entrepreneurial journalism in 2009. The Knight News Challenge was overwhelmed with applications. My favorite to come out of last year's challenge was Spot.us, which is a fascinating concept, even if I'm skeptical that it'll work on a large scale.
But I do think you're going to see more and more journalists leave news organizations to try to start up a new model on their own. I don't think we'll see it in central Pennsylvania just yet, but you're right: Since newspapers have taken their sweet time, the future business model is there for the taking. No journalism experience necessary.
JeffRumm
· 1 year ago
TypePad is offering an interesting solution to the closing newspapers and it looks like they are getting a great response. The downside is journalists are still relying on advertisers, and it takes time to build up a readership. I would like to see regional journalists band together and create a central website to aggregate their feeds in one location. Something similar to All Top which would send readers out to each writers blog. This could give them the power of sharing readers and centralizing the ad revenue and in many ways shield them from angering advertisers.
Kae Wagner
· 1 year ago
Daniel, this is an interesting time for all of journalism. From shrinking staffs at local newspapers to the same decrease in reporters at the national level. Have you noticed that news coverage now is about opinion and expertise compared to when I studied journalism, where we were taught to be unbiased, objective, get all of the facts and stay neutral. Certainly if the local papers face their demise, the entrepreneurial spirit of America will find alternate ways to share the news. It's human nature to want to be in the know and we're already finding ways to facilitate that through blogs and other technology. I'm just wondering how all of this affects the First Amendment. Kae
kevin weaver
· 1 year ago
News today of the Journal Register plans to shutter nine weeklies points to an interesting observation: Weeklies that die are generally operated by large media groups; family weeklies are doing just fine, even growing. Small weeklies can kill it if they are lean and mean. Reason being: the dailies are cutting back and axing suburban and small town coverage. So small weeklies covering school boards, athletics and city councils, cops, etc., are seeing increased circulation. The dailies are fading for obvious reasons: timeliness, ad competition, overhead costs. One other point about dailies: they are losing faith in their own product, and that is a fundamental problem.
All Comments
But I do think you're going to see more and more journalists leave news organizations to try to start up a new model on their own. I don't think we'll see it in central Pennsylvania just yet, but you're right: Since newspapers have taken their sweet time, the future business model is there for the taking. No journalism experience necessary.
I would like to see regional journalists band together and create a central website to aggregate their feeds in one location. Something similar to All Top which would send readers out to each writers blog. This could give them the power of sharing readers and centralizing the ad revenue and in many ways shield them from angering advertisers.
Small weeklies can kill it if they are lean and mean. Reason being: the dailies are cutting back and axing suburban and small town coverage. So small weeklies covering school boards, athletics and city councils, cops, etc., are seeing increased circulation. The dailies are fading for obvious reasons: timeliness, ad competition, overhead costs.
One other point about dailies: they are losing faith in their own product, and that is a fundamental problem.