6.09.2009

Competing with FREE

Just another blog post discussing the issue of how newspapers are between a diamond and a very hard spot. As are many other "content producers." Found it in the wrath of links found inside this blog post on Time's website about "If the Journalism Business Fails, Who Pays for Journalism?"

There's a reason even MediaStorm has started doing commissioned work for the likes of Starbucks and now Global Governance Program.

6.08.2009

Information wants to be free, still

Found this link via my All Things Digital RSS feed this morning. It coincided with a discussion taking place on Facebook between some journalists I know and used to work with about the broken business model of the newspaper industry.

They were talking about former Rocky Mountain News ME and CEO John Temple's blog post about all the aspects the industry has been going about in a contradictory sense. Saying all the right things about building for the future but in action just holding on to the past.

Then throw on the grease fire this other post is talking about with the broken advertising model and Jeff Jarvis' thought that advertising isn't even needed anymore by the now penny-pinching advertisers.

There's a lot to read over and digest in these three or four posts, but they can all be boiled down to this: Because the monetary models of enormous margins of yore are broken and the recent history of the industry executives saying one thing while doing the opposite, the newspaper industry is a terminal cancer patient receiving huge doses of chemotherapy.

I hate cancer with a dripping passion, but this is the best way I can think of explaining the situation. Let's hope this thing ends sooner, rather than later. What's next will not come about until the institutions of monopolistic media and control –who are at the will of shareholders and double digit margins– have finally succumbed to their own demise. Then we can start talking about where journalism in the digital media age will go and flourish.

6.07.2009

Recounting photographing Tank Man

Twenty years ago a lone man stood motionless in front of a row of tanks in Tiananman Square in China. Here's a audio slideshow with Stuart Franklin recounting his iconic photograph. It's always good to hear from the photog about the background and what was going on as they work an image.

Jenkins is a very very smart guy on media users

If you don't know about how people are using media these days, you might as well make steam engines from the 19th century for the 21st. Learn some media literacy by watching this video.

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia - November 2009 from niko on Vimeo.

An inside look at the sinking of The Rocky

Long story in the Denver trendy mag 5280. Pretty slow start on the read though...