I decided to take a little break from the usual type of blogging on this site and share with you my idea for a profitable journalism site. I had to come up with this project idea for my Journalism 24/7 class, but the more I worked on it I realized that this idea could possibly be do-able. Basically the idea would be a subscription based site that provided in-depth and original news coverage of Nassau and Suffolk County on Long Island. This is a market that no one has really tapped into yet and I am sure that there are people that would be willing to pay for coverage of their counties. One may believe that Newsday has sufficiently covered this market, but the truth is that they haven’t. The majority of stories are from the police blotter and AP content. Nassau and Suffolk County tend to be overshadowed by New York City and Queens.

My site would focus on the community and also feature a social networking aspect. Those that sign up for a membership to the site will be able to create a profile, upload a picture, and converse with other residents on message boards.  The message boards will be a place where people can comment on local news stories or debate on certain topics. Local businesses will be the focus of advertisements and businesses that donate to the site will be thanked publicly. Social events such as rummage sales, street fairs, and business openings will be advertised as well. There will be in-depth coverage of the schools and sports teams, which will keep the children and parents interested in the site. Schools doing certain projects will be featured and local sports teams and players will be featured as well.

Citizen journalism will play a small part on my site, but it will be heavily edited and monitored. Citizens that wish to write stories will have their article and picture featured on the site, but articles will be ranked in accordance to timeliness and importance. For example, a woman’s article about her favorite kind of cat will be ranked lower than someone writing a story that comments on current politics.

Since taking on both counties would be a difficult job, I would probably start off in one county and focus on building up the site’s following. The staff would most likely be comprised of freelance and part-time journalists and also staff to manage the website. My start up money would relay mostly on donations from residents and businesses and also loans. It would be a labor of love and require a lot of promotion, but I think that if this is done right I could have a good and profitable idea on my hands.

Now don’t go and steal it on me

via roberts ravings

Time Warner Cable and AT&T had proposed legislation that would protect cable and phone company monopolies , but would also crush North Carolina’s towns and city’s efforts to build their own local broadband networks. Activists had believed they had originally succeeded in slowing down the process of the bill, but the companies had a final trick up their sleeve. Early yesterday morning, Time Warner Cable and AT&T had quietly pushed to have the committee meeting to dicuss the bill moved up to 8:00 in the morning. Luckily sites like Twitter and blogs had caught wind of the move and rallied up the troops. North Carolina’s residents managed to flood their legislatures with calls and complaints, but the real impact was made when people began showing up at the statehouse. The result ended up being that the bill was tabled, but many are saying that while they would have preferred the bill had been killed entirely, it is enough for now.

I’m a little relived that social networking sites such as Twitter are becoming such a useful tool in getting the word out. Trying to push that meeting up so quietly was a sneaky move and makes me lose respect for this company even more.

Steve Brill via Slate.com

Steve Brill, founder of American Lawyer and Court TV, has partnered up with Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery Jr. to create a solution to the revenue issue in the journalism business model. Their new company, Journalism Online, will attempt to bring publishers together and make pay barriers around the content. Journalism Online will require micro-payments for individual articles or day passes for a flat fee. Publications that sign up with the company will receive monthly and annual passes. The idea is to secure all the content behind the pay walls with the hopes that readers will be willing to pay.

The idea seems good, but still there are skeptics. Jack Shafer at Slate brings up a good point; you can copyright an article, but you can’t copyright the news.

What’s to prevent such Web enterprises as the Huffington Post, Nick Denton’s Gawker enterprise, or some startup (Shafer and Manjoo?) from purchasing the most expensive all-tiers pass from Journalism Online and rewriting or otherwise encapsulating the best and most noteworthy walled-in articles in real time—and then selling ads against it? This is essentially what Henry R. Luce and Britton Hadden started doing in 1923 as they rewrote newspapers on a weekly basis for Time magazine. It is what the Week continues to do today.

Shafer argues that due to legal restrictions such as the fair-use provisions of the Copyright Act, people would be able to steal from the paid content of Journalism Online. By re-writing the stories and making them sound original, they would be considered fair game.

Shafer goes on to say:

Publishers might try to beat back the news distillers by invoking the “hot news doctrine” devised by the Supreme Court in 1918 to prevent William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service from rewriting and reselling the contents of the Associated Press. The decision essentially bestowed upon content creators a special set of property rights, subject to a lawsuit if:

i) a plaintiff generates or gathers information at a cost;
ii) the information is time-sensitive;
iii) a defendant’s use of the information constitutes free riding on the plaintiff’s efforts;
iv) the defendant is in direct competition with a product or service offered by the plaintiffs;
v) the ability of other parties to free-ride on the efforts of the plaintiff or others would so reduce the incentive to produce the product or service that its existence or quality would be substantially threatened.

Shafer brings up some good points, so it may be a while before Journalism Online manages to make this kind of plan work out. Some may worry that people can simply copy and paste articles from the paid content, but there are HTML codes that can prevent text from being highlighted. Perhaps that, along with other methods will help Journalism Online launch successfully.  Brill also has to get his team together to examine all the legal restrictions and freedoms in journalism before they can create something that works.

]]> http://mdooling247.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/journalism-online-will-it-work/feed/ 0 mdooling Steve Brill http://mdooling247.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/time-warner-cable-folds-under-pressure/ http://mdooling247.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/time-warner-cable-folds-under-pressure/#comments Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:47:33 +0000 mdooling http://mdooling247.wordpress.com/?p=43 ]]>

via blogs.NYU.edu

According to Tim Karr at Save The Internet, Time Warner Cable has backed down from its plan to create excessive fees for those that use the Internet for more than just basic email and surfing.

The plan would have people paying as much as $150 a month for full Internet access. Time Warner’s reasoning behind this excessive pricing is that it will discourage people from watching pirated videos on-line and will prevent inevitable Internet brownouts.

I agree with the public backlash that Time Warner has received. After years of being able to use the Internet without any fees or penalties (aside from Internet providers), charging large amounts of money for full access seems ridiculous. This is a plan that won’t work out, because people don’t stand idly by when negative change is occurring.

via justicefortheworld.org

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller appeared to think so. According to Tim Grieve’s report on Politico, Keller spoke at the opening of a new building for The Stanford Daily on Thursday and touched on the topic of the future of newspapers. He predicted that the New York Times will be “left standing after the deluge.” His reasoning for this prediction seemed to be based on the loyalty of New York Times’ readers, who have apparently been offering to donate money to keep the paper alive. After a little joke about how he doubted that GM was getting similar offers, Keller said, “Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.”

Wait, what?

I had to read that part over twice before it sunk into my head. While I would like to see the NYT make it out of these rough times alive, I would never compare it to or rank it with the importance of saving Darfur.

Keller then responded to Politico in an email attempting to explain his remark:

“I think it’s pretty obviously a reflection of my mild astonishment at the earnest fervor with which some people have suddenly embraced the cause of saving newspapers,” Keller wrote. “That’s matched only by my mild astonishment at the silly literal-mindedness with which some people read my occasional public comments.”

Perhaps it is a remark that shouldn’t be taken literally, but it was also just a poor choice of words in the first place on his part. To me, human suffering and the suffering of a publication are two completely different things. They should never be compared, because it is obvious that the importance human life trumps the stability of a newspaper.

Saeed Ahmed from CNN wrote a humorous piece on this year’s pranks and hoaxes done by reputable news sources in celebration of April Fool’s Day. While there were several interesting stories, such as The Taipei Times paper in Taiwan reporting that two recently donated panda bears turned out to be brown forest bears dyed black and white, my personal favorite had to do with Twitter:

The Guardian in London ran a story Wednesday announcing that, after 188 years as a print publication, it will become the first newspaper to deliver news exclusively via Twitter.

Twitter, a micro-blogging site, allows users to post updates that are 140 characters long. In keeping with the limitation, the newspaper said it had undertaken a mammoth project to retool the newspaper’s entire archive.

For example, Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 flight from New York to Paris, France, was condensed to: “OMG first successful transatlantic air flight wow, pretty cool! Boring day otherwise … sigh.”

I giggle each time I read that last sentence.

The Internet is a pool filled with pranksters, but it is typically unusual to see reporters with a sense of humor. It’s refreshing to see that even during the difficult times in the business they can set aside the work and have a little fun.

A little off topic, but gaming journalists were also having fun combining a fictional company with the current economic times. Matt Addison from Gamespot news wrote an article about Umbrella Corporation requesting a bailout from the government:

WASHINGTON, D.C.–Executives from the Umbrella Corporation today asked the US government for nearly $100 billion in aid money. They said that without such funding, the world’s largest pharmaceutical bioterrorism researcher could go bankrupt as early as June. It would be the company’s second bankruptcy, having restructured several years ago after running a gauntlet of lawsuits and criminal investigations.

“This isn’t just about keeping the Umbrella family together, or making sure our 10,000 employees have paychecks to put food on the table,” Umbrella founder Ozwell E. Spencer said in an impassioned speech to the US Senate earlier today. “It’s about hope. It’s about mom, baseball, and apple pie. It’s about keeping the United States at the forefront of exciting fields such as pharmaceutically mind-controlled supersoldiers.”

I would like to take this moment to explain that the Umbrella Corporation is featured in the Resident Evil series of video games. It is the pharmaceutical company that always is doing secret “research and development” that usually ends up in a zombie catastrophe. It’s my favorite game, so I found the article extremely amusing.

Other pranks were noted, such as all the featured videos on Youtube being upside down, but these were my personal favorites of this year.

1. I will get paid to learn new things. With every article I write, I am exploring something I didn’t previously know, meeting people I wouldn’t have met otherwise and encountering circumstances I would have never known existed. Sure, the pay isn’t great but at least my life won’t be boring.

2. Because it’s up to us. We all know journalism is undergoing some monumental changes as it embraces the online world more and more. However, the future of journalism and where it’s going is largely going to be left up to us — college journalism students. Think of how major that responsibility is. Think of how inspiring that is. It’s up to us to help make journalism web savvy in way that our elders can’t even imagine.

3. You’ll have the opportunity to learn what makes us human more than any other profession. You’ll be there in some of the most important moments of people’s lives. Weddings, funerals, births, etc. You will be interviewing people on some of the best and worst days of their lives and will learn things about how people live and think in ways others can only imagine.

4. Because who doesn’t like to hold people accountable? If you’re doing your job right, you’ll be there to help investigate and stand up for the little guy. Corruption downtown? You’re on top of it. Politician not following through on promises? You’re calling him out on it.

5. You will get to meet some trying awesome, influential people. OK, this one is a little self-serving but let’s face it, you WILL get to meet a few of the people you see on TV or read about in the news and that being said you get to ask them all the things everybody else is wondering.

6. You’ll know some things before everyone else. OK, this one is ALSO self-serving, but you will hear of things before they become part of the public record.

7. It’s only just begun. I don’t prescribe to the theory that journalism is dead or dying (self-preservation, maybe?). It’s changing form and the opportunity exists for it to be better than ever.

Kostic’s site is worth a glance if you are interested in following another student’s journey into the world of Journalism. She describes her site as “The Future of Journalism according to a member of the Facebook Generation.”

via twitter.com

I created a Twitter account the other day out of sheer curiosity. I’d heard all about it’s major role during the Mumbai attacks and how users in India used it to spread the news as it broke. “Tweets” would go out containing microblogs of eyewitness accounts as the event unfolded, alerting the world to the situation and allowing loved ones to quickly contact each other to let them know they were safe.

I can see how it can be useful during events like this, but other than that I am unimpressed. Perhaps it is because I only have five “followers” and am not tapping into the true potential of the site, or maybe it is because it appears to be nothing more than a glorified Facebook status. With only space for 140 characters, each “tweet” has to be to the point and doesn’t leave much room for detail. Anyone can have one and post just about anything; whether it is what they are doing at the moment, events they have heard about, or in my friend’s cases, nonsense. These factors are the reason I have a problem with people using terms like “Twitter Journalism.”

Rory O’Connor titled his article with that term, after interviewing the co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, about the site’s rising role in journalism. Stone explained they started realizing Twitter’s capability for breaking news after reports of ground shaking in during some tremors California came out nine minutes before the first Associated Press alert. “So we knew early on that a shared event such as an earthquake would lead people to look at Twitter for news almost without thinking,” Stone said.

That quote bothered me as I began thinking back on journalistic standards and editing. These “tweets” that people send out are not fact-checked and certainly are not looked over by an editor first. It is raw information in it’s purest form and, while it could be a useful tool in reporting, it should not be considered journalism itself. People should not be looking to Twitter for news without thinking.

Stone then goes on to boast how the majority of news outlets, such as the New York Times, have realized this capability and joined the site. I went over to the NY Times Twitter account to see exactly how they were using this tool, only to find each “tweet” was an extremely brief headline and a link to a story.  My impression was that it was an unorganized collection of stories and that I would rather visit the NY Times site instead.

While some may believe that Twitter is a new form of journalism, I disagree. I believe that it can be a great addition to the world of reporting and is a good way to send out quick alerts that could lead to real news stories.

Journalistic aspects aside, I find Twitter to be quite amusing and find myself mindlessly updating as I please, but none of it is newsworthy.

And now for a semi-related cartoon comedy video about Twitter!

Graphic from Newsday.com

I’m not quite sure this is specifically the kind of post that I should be making on this blog, but it’s an experience I found slightly interesting and pertinent to the current state of the decline of print news.

My room phone in the dorm rang, a rare occasion, and on the other end was a fast talking representative of Newsday with a persistent, but kind voice. She rattled off at record speed the reasons why I should be subscribing to Newsday and listed the current deals. The flurry of words caught me a little off guard and all I managed to stammer back in return was that I was already subscribed to the New York Times. She happily replied that she wasn’t asking for me to switch, but to merely try the introductory special of the seven day subscription at $3.25 per week for the next 15 weeks. After that time period is up the rate would increase to $5.00 per week.

Being the kind of person that hates to say no, but not having the funds to shell out money for a paper I could get for free from my building’s lobby, I politely declined. She tried a bit more, but eventually gave up (to my relief). She did not know that I was an aspiring journalist myself and was aware of the current plight, but to tell her would simply waste her time and not help Newsday make money.

The conversation got me thinking about Newsday’s attempts to increase their amount of subscribers. I had never before received solicitation phone calls on my dorm room phone, perhaps I had just been lucky, but maybe Newsday is pulling out all the stops to save themselves. I recall that practically every time I visit the Smith Haven Mall there is a man in a Newsday booth harassing every passerby with offers of low subscription rates and a $100 gift card of some sort. I decided to go online and look at the current deals Newsday was offering and was presented with many different options with almost each offer punctuated with an emphatic exclamation point.

Graphic from Newsday.com

Click the image above to see the current subscription deals.

Thinking about Newsday’s attempts to make money and increase readership lead me on a google rampage as I attempted to learn more about their efforts. The result of my searching led me to a Yahoo! news article stating that Cablevision Systems Corp plans to begin charging online readers of Newsday, “a move that would make it one of the first large U.S. papers to reverse a trend toward free Web readership.”

Read the rest of “Newsday to charge for website, online cable service” here.

I didn’t agree with Newsday’s phone solicitation and their pushy way of trying to get their promotions to work, but this is something that could actually work out for them. Journalists have been desperately trying to figure out how to make money off of the Internet ever since Newspaper’s ad revenues were ruined and something like this could be the first step in the right direction.

Ratatouille Picture Via rootsrain.com

“Live like rats, I’ll tell the kids, and in time there’ll be some cheese. What makes matters so difficult for now is that the public—despite the papers’ increasing breast-beating—has trouble accepting the idea that news could be in danger. It’s like believing in global warming when it’s ten below zero. There’s so much news—and noise masquerading as news—that people think the problem isn’t guaranteeing the flow of news but getting away from it once in a while. There must be half a dozen all-news cable channels. The Internet is relentless. Bloggers begin the slicing and dicing the minute a story breaks. Supply so far exceeds demand the mystery is why anyone would pay a penny for “news.” When a newspaper comes along once a day, its readers welcome it as an oasis of calm and recapitulation. As we can see from the latest version of the Tribune, designers think today’s newspapers must shimmer with the excitement of a Yahoo home page; but it’s their function of consolidation and reflection that makes them, to many of us, still worth the quarters we pay. The Internet pelts us with news; a good newspaper arranges it in our heads.”

Read the rest of “Anticipate The Cheese” here.