September 15, 2005
Good Stuff from the Newsreader
Steve Yelvington on local news sites like Austin360Blogs: "These interactive websites offer an opportunity for a newspaper or broadcaster to rebuild civic engagement and social capital."
Jeff Jarvis in the Guardian on Hurricane Katrina's affect on the news: "(Because of) the flooding of presses and the toppling of towers … news was freed from the shackles of media. Now he who controls distribution no longer controls news. And news is no longer shaped by the pipe that carries it." (Via Yelvington.)
John Robinson on the world as community: "… we must be intensely local, but at the same time have a prominent dose of national and word news. We've been talking about how to satisfy these needs, which seem contradictory on their face. They aren't, of course."
Newspaper ad share continues to drop: The U.S. advertising market grew 4.5 percent in the first half of 2005; newspaper ad growth was up only 1.7 percent. Overall newspaper share fell from 17.8 to 17.3 percent. (Via Steve Rubel.)
J-Learning goes live: The J-Lab's new how-to-do community journalism site is up and running. Plenty of how-to, not too much though about journalism. (Via Susan Mernit.)
Jay Rosen on context: What the heck is it? "Which context to add is a debatable decision that cannot be governed by any existing rule set in journalism." (In Rhetorica.)
Environmental journalists on free flow of information (PDF): "Journalists are having an increasingly difficult time using the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to drag information out of the federal government to shed light on Superfund sites, chemical factories, mining accidents and a host of other topics important to citizens." (Via Dan Gillmor.)