The State of Journalism

New York Magazine asked 100 residents walking down the street in SoHo where they got their news from, as part of their poll on whether information and entertainment should be free. The results were somewhat surprising: 26 answered online newspapers, while one more person answered in favor of their physical equivalent (see, traditional journalism isn't entirely dead yet!).

Of course, that doesn't take into account the 5 people who said "online blogs/aggregators," which we find a surprisingly low number. Then again, this is SoHo: At least half the people still employed in the area work in couture retail, and probably retain their subscriptions to fashion mags.

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The Columbia Journalism Review, the bi-monthly publication of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism program, is offering sanctuary for laid-off media folk that have been hit hard during this economic downturn. The paper will be offering the first ever "Encore" fellowship for journalists willing to work for CJR for nine months. Which kind of just sounds like a job, but who are we to turn our noses away at one of those?

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CNN launched a new $1.99 iPhone app today.

That, in itself, might be some pretty interesting news, what with a cable news channel charging for an application that is similar to what other news organizations are giving out for free. The idea raises questions about the future of paid content: Is there an audience for this? Will people buy it? Who will launch the next paid app?

But beyond that, this announcement has been clouded by other journalistic questions, namely the use of embargoes and their necessity. Our sister blog PRNewser reports that Reuters reporter Robert MacMillan was upset by the fact that a rival reporter at Associated Press member paper The OC Register broke an embargo that would have kept CNN's announcement under wraps until midnight.

"PS, we were going to hold this until midnight because it was embargoed," MacMillan wrote. "That embargo has been broken, so bombs away."

Should CNN have embargoed this news? As news of the embargo break hit Twitter last night, Silicon Alley Insider editor Dan Frommer noted how unremarkable this sort of announcement had become. "'Company X has an iPhone app' is the new 'Company X has a website,' he said.

All Things Digital columnist Peter Kafka agreed, advising his fellow reporters to stop accepting embargoes for iPhone apps.

Do you think he's right? There are thousands of apps with new ones, paid and unpaid, announced by media companies every day. Just yesterday, the AP launched one of its own, charging $28.99 for access to its 2009 Stylebook. And today, another release arrived in our inbox announcing the second iPhone app created by Rodale's Women's Health magazine, a free app called "Your Slim-Down Shopping List."

Some of these apps are innovative ways to possibly create new revenue streams for struggling companies, but is every little announcement newsworthy? Or better yet, embargo-worthy? What do you think?

PRNewser: Reuters Reporter Upset As AP Breaks CNN iPhone App Embargo

Today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced eight new initiatives under his MediaNYC 2020 program, designed to promote innovation in the media industry and draw talented media companies and employees to New York in the hopes of strengthening the dying industry that was once at the core of the city's success.

"New York City is the media capital of the world, but -- with the industry undergoing profound changes -- it's incumbent on us to take steps now to capitalize on growth opportunities and ensure we remain an industry leader," Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg's administration said the initiatives will create around 8,000 jobs in the sector and support its growth for the next 10 years. Currently, the media industry employs 300,000 New Yorkers, or nearly 10 percent of the city's private workforce, accounting for $30 billion in annual revenue. However, although the city is chock full of huge traditional media companies like The New York Times Co., Conde Nast, Hearst and Time Inc., to name a few, now almost half of those employed by media companies currently work for small to mid-sized outfits with less than 500 employees.

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Blogger, prolific Tweeter and NYU professor Jay Rosen spoke with German new media author Ulrike Reinhard recently about new media and its role in journalism today.

Rosen said he and his fellow professors are still figuring out how new media and social media fits into their J-school curriculum, but he said acknowledging its role in the future of the field is imperative. "Everybody who pays attention in events of journalism knows that the world of the press is undergoing a dramatic transformation," he said. "It's not just that journalism is moving to the Web...really the entire architecture of the press is falling apart. So we have to teach about this as a matter of survival."

In addition to teaching the "rise of the Web," Rosen said he also teaches blogging and social media skills -- although he finds that the faculty sometimes has as much to learn as the students. Students, he said, come into NYU with knowledge of the Web as casual users, but are not prepared to use it professionally.

"Anybody who uses the web for their livelihood has to understand it as a system very well," he said. "They understand the Web as an environment and they are able to communicate expertly on it."

Rosen's full interview with Reinhard after the jump

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In the most recent Atlantic contributing editor Michael Hirschorn tackles why The Economist is thriving while newsweeklies like Time and Newsweek decline. It's a hot topic for discussion recently -- and even came up during the Columbia J-school business journalism panel we attended earlier this week.

Hirschorn's take: "The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read."

Hirschorn also makes the same "niche is king" argument that we have heard time and time again:

"Repositioning your brand today is so much harder than it was in the old days, especially when you're destined to be seen as a copycat product. In the digital age, razor-sharp clarity and definition are the keys to success. Knowing what and who you are, and conveying that idea to an audience, is the only way to break through to readers ADD'ed out on an infinitude of choices. General-interest is out; niche is in. The irony, as restaurateurs and club-owners and sneaker companies and Facebook and Martha Stewart know -- and as The Economist demonstrates, week in and week out -- is that niche is sometimes the smartest way to take over the world."

In a video interview with TheAtlantic.com's editorial director Bob Cohn, Hirschorn said the trends that have led to the downfall of the newsweekly were a long time coming. "All the trends that you're seeing now have been under way for 25 years," he said. "What's different now is that the economic crisis is calling the question much more quickly."

After the jump, the video of Hirschorn and Cohn's talk

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Last night's panel (from left to right): Ackman, Starkman, Madrick and Morgenson

Last night, we headed up town to Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism for a panel discussing the future of business journalism.

The panel, which was called "Now What? Business Journalism After the Meltdown," featured New York Times assistant business and financial editor Gretchen Morgenson, investor Bill Ackman, Jeff Madrick, editor of Challenge Magazine, and Dean Starkman, managing editor of The Audit, The Columbia Journalism Review's online critique of financial journalism. Starkman also wrote the CJR cover story critiquing the business press before and after the credit crisis and housing meltdown.

Moderator Bill Grueskin, the dean of academic affairs at Columbia J-School, opened the discussion by asking the panel how they thought the business press had fared in its coverage of the recent economic crisis and what lessons they had learned.

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Today, we are staking out Wired magazine's Disruptive By Design business conference. Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson (left) opened the day with a discussion about his upcoming book: "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," and of course, he eventually started to talk about how the media has been affected by the rise of the Internet.

The Internet allows content to be published for little to no cost to the content provider, so the information can be provided for free. But what newspapers and magazines have failed to do so far is effectively monetize content provided online.

In his talk this morning, Anderson suggested that instead of looking at content as free versus paid, we should consider it as "freemium." Following the model of The Wall Street Journal, newspapers can provide their exclusive stories and most popular content for free, while niche content can be placed behind a pay wall.

"People are more willing to pay for niche content because they realize how specialized it is," Anderson said. Following this model, newspapers can hope to draw in readers who are not willing to pay for content and then convert some of them into paying consumers.

We caught up with Anderson to ask him if he saw his own magazine possibly taking on this model and what he sees as the future of newspapers and magazines.

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Over the weekend, tempers flared over CNN's coverage -- or lack thereof -- of the Iranian election and subsequent protests. Frustrated viewers took to Twitter to voice their concern over CNN's oversight or lack of interest in the foreign controversy, creating the hashtag #cnnfail, which was a trending topic until yesterday. (It's no longer trending this morning, although #IranElection, Tehran and Mousavi are.)

Yesterday, our colleagues at WebNewser caught up with #cnnfail, noting that NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen had asked Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, who also hosts CNN show "Reliable Sources," to include #cnnfail in his column today.

Although Kurtz discussed the legitimacy of Twitter and whether journalists are "going overboard" with it on his show yesterday and in his column today, he completely ignored the protests taking place on the social network against the news network where he works. On Kurtz's show, CNN's Rick Sanchez mentioned that Twitter had helped him to more effectively cover happenings in Iran -- a perfect opening for them to discuss #cnnfail.

"Last night, when...I started Twittering about what was going on in Iran, I learned as much about the situation in Iran as I would have watching frankly my network, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post combined," Sanchez said.

Kurtz's thoughts on the issue would have been much more timely if he had discussed #cnnfail and how Twitter had become a media watchdog in this instance. Instead, in his column he talked about celebrity Twitters, and quoted actress Mariel Hemingway. Did he write his column weeks ago and never look at it again? We think he missed the boat on this one.

What do you think? How do you feel about the coverage of Iran by the news networks? Do you think Kurtz should have discussed #cnnfail?

Watch the Twitter segment from "Reliable Sources" after the jump

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We interrupt coverage of Mediabistro Circus to bring you news of another media panel going on at New York University today as part of New York's Internet Week.

I Want Media hosted a panel earlier today featuring former Star magazine editor Bonnie Fuller, Gawker chief Nick Denton, The Wall Street Journal's deputy managing editor Alan Murray (left), Craigslist.org founder Craig Newmark and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

The discussion, which was supposed to center around the future of the media industry, centered mostly on Twitter. The panelists agreed that they rely on the microblogging site for a lot of their news aggregation.

"I get all of my Wall Street Journal stories from you," Denton told Murray.

But is Twitter the future of media? Read on to find out what the panelists said.

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