The State of Journalism

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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We really don't do this often -- oh, screw it: I'm not even using that blog convention of the royal 'we' for this one. It's me, managing editor Rebecca Fox, speaking on behalf of my mediabistro.com editorial colleagues in a rare fit of first-person. I'm here to tell you something I hope, for the sake of the larger media world, will stop sounding shocking someday soon...

We here in mb editorial talk to our advertising team All.The.Time. We trust them, we rely upon them, we like them. Do they dictate what we do and don't cover? No way. Do we stay abreast of what they're working on, as it pertains to the content we work so hard to produce, day in and day out? Abso-freakin'-lutely. And that relationship makes what each of our teams is trying to accomplish run better.

They tell us about novel campaigns and initiatives they're working on, we apprise them of new and interesting things we're doing, and in doing so, we roundly reject the notion of 'never the twain shall meet' that we're seeing so much of this week, courtesy of the still-sputtering controversy over Gawker Media's partnership with HBO that begat 'BloodCopy,' the recent Gawker blog acquisition that wasn't. Best of all, mb salespeople come to us of their own accord to ensure nothing they're planning or have executed, sponsorship- or sales-wise, scans as even remotely questionable or corrosive to the journalistic credibility that is central to what we do.

We believe that being in constant communication with those charged with selling our content makes our business better. Not just from a sales standpoint, but more importantly: it shores up the integrity we know we can continue to proudly associate with our content. Simply put: We know they're not messing with what we do in a way that makes us feel icky. Furthermore, we think edit folk who say they don't interact with their sales teams are either full of it, or not doing the smartest thing with their business in this new (as in 'novel,' not necessarily 'online' -- though the two obviously converge) media world in which we all now reside.

Old-line church-and-state boundaries between advertising and editorial are undergoing a transformation. Here's why that's not such a bad thing what's best for the media business...

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Maurice Jarre died on March 28. Hours after hearing of the French composer's passing, Shane Fitzgerald -- a sociology major at Dublin University who is taking a class about the spread of information on the Internet -- added the following quote to Jarre's Wikipedia page, attributing to the deceased man.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

In a result that is both shocking and not surprising at all, outlets across the globe, including The Guardian, picked up the quote and used it in obituaries honoring Jarre.

At least one paper learned a lesson it should have already known. "The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," the Guardian's Siobhain Butterworth wrote in a note explaining the mistake.

Its been a big week in fake news. First, there were rumors that The Onion was planning cut its print edition, which were quickly refuted, although the satiric pub did eventually admit that they were shutting down print operations in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

That blow to the fake news industry was counteracted by NBC's announcement that it was planning to place half-hour "Weekend Update" shows on its fall schedule, a trick they pulled off last year by positioning it as extra election coverage. The show will be anchored by "Saturday Night Live" head writer Seth Meyers and will fill out the network's Thursday night line-up, NBC said.

In further celebration of fake news, AdAge.com has a Q&A with Onion president and CEO Steve Hannah, who reveals that the paper's digital side is now bringing in more than half of the company's revenue.

"Digital is becoming a bigger chunk of our revenue than print," Hannah said. "Print is still very strong for us. Digital, it's not much more than half, but it's more than half."

Hannah also said he is looking to move the popular Onion News Network to television. With the success of fake news on TV, its possible we could see an ONN on prime time up against "Weekend Update" some time soon.

According to a new study from the Freedom House, freedom of the press declined in every region during 2008. Press freedom has fallen for seven straight years, but the survey said that 2008 was the first time it fell across the board.

"The journalism profession today is up against the ropes and fighting to stay alive, as pressures from governments, other powerful actors and the global economic crisis take an enormous toll," executive director Jennifer Windsor said in a statement.

If you want to be a blogger, the Committee to Protect Journalists recommends avoiding the following countries: Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan, and Egypt.

Brooklyn, however, is okay.