news on the news

There is plenty of evidence for gloom: the newspaper industry is the fastest-shrinking of them all, and the online ad shares of newspapers have sunk to an all-time low. Hopefully, two studies released this week will help lower your blood pressure; auspicious statistics are a rare commodity these days.

As I’ve written about before, studying journalism may not be such a bad idea. A new study from Georgetown University showed that it’s certainly no worse than studying social science, arts, architecture or law and public policy. Recent graduates with journalism degrees had a 7.7 percent unemployment rate (lower than the aforementioned areas of study), with architecture faring the worst at 13.9 percent. Like any other industry, the unemployment rate in journalism decreased with experience and the attainment of a graduate degree. On average, recent grads can expect $32,000, which increases to $58,000 with experience, and $66,000 after graduate studies. The fields with the lowest unemployment rates were health and education, both at 5.4 percent. Read more

Most news organizations seem to use streams on a one-off basis. We livestream video or tweets from events, storify breaking news coverage, or create hubs/landing pages for stories related to a single topic or series. But what if the news pages were more like your Twitter stream, always on and always updated? Only better — you don’t have to leave Twitter or load another page to read them?

Now, the Wall Street Journal is playing with just that idea. It announced on Twitter this week the launch of a new feature: Market Pulse.

This always-on stream updates constantly with the latest business and market news. What’s awesome about this — because really, they update Twitter frequently too — is from the Pulse page you can click on the story and read it as you would see it on their homepage (so some content is still subscriber only for full access). When the story opens, you can see the graphics, watch the video, read the full piece… all without leaving the stream. Then close it up and move on down to the next headline that grabs your eye.

Neimen Journalism Lab talked to the editor behind it, Raju Narisetti, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network, who said:

“Markets is kind of an ongoing story all day, especially when the U.S. markets are open, and there’s an audience that follows it fairly religiously all the time. Rather than having to go to an article or a video in different, discrete places, this allows them to kind of have one place.”

Not every newspaper has the resources to do this. Nor does every news beat need or lend themselves to this kind of always updated coverage the way Wall Street markets do. But this is one of those rare things where I’m hitting my head, wondering how this idea is not already standard for news sites? Yes, many sites will self-refresh after a few minutes, but this one does it just in the stream, so you don’t lose your place, and without any weird clunkiness from reloading everything. (In fact, I was impressed at smoothly the entire thing operated. I didn’t hit any hiccups or slow downs. Everything I clicked worked, and worked intuitively. So kudos to the WSJ team.) It’s like the ultimate sticky news site — readers don’t need to leave your site or this feed at all to stay abreast of the news, as long as there’s always something more coming down the stream to read.

In the digital age, journalists are required to don different hats; from multimedia to social media, there is an increasing amount of tools available for telling the story and sharing it. Still, it may not be enough. Research shows that Americans’ distrust of the media is at record highs, and even though social media has made it easier and faster for information to spread, it can be difficult to sort out truth from the deluge of rumors, facts, and everything in between.

At the Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting over the weekend, Eric Newton spoke about how focusing on the story just isn’t enough anymore. Newton, who is the senior adviser to the president of the Knight Foundation, recounted how he asked 800 investigative reporters and editors if their work had significant social impact. Of course, all of them thought that it did. But asked if they thought the average American understood investigative journalism, only one hand went up. Most of them thought that it was not a journalist’s job to educate people about the importance of journalism. Read more

In case you missed the news, being a reporter is the fifth worst job of 2012, according to a CareerCast.com survey.

That’s right. Being a taxi driver, a maid, a dishwasher, or a janitor all ranked higher than being a newspaper reporter. (Here’s the full list, as published on The Wall Street Journal website.)

Now, over on The New York Times‘ Media Decoder blog, David Carr is fighting back. Well, sort of. He’s at least giving reporters a chance to voice their opinion.  Read more

With the increase of bite-size portions of information, it’s no surprise that startups are trying to figure out the best model for long-form journalism on the web. Like the Kickstarter project Matter, U.K. startup PostDesk is looking to provide quality long-form content and discussion online. Unlike Matter, which charges readers 99 cents per article, articles on PostDesk are free thanks to launch partners and sponsors for different sections.

PostDesk bills itself as a place for “independent long form content such as in-depth news, reviews, investigative journalism, analysis, critique and controversial opinion pieces.” The site is community oriented and seeks to provide an online space not only for reading but for conversation on the issues it covers: tech, gaming, business, culture and politics. Content is produced in-house, but also includes submitted content through links. According to BetaKit, it will pay its contributors through a revenue-sharing model. Read more