From the Newsroom

Desperate times call for innovation

04.25.2008
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It’s the same old song, second verse: The old ways of paying for quality journalism are slowly dying and will continue to decline until a new model that works has been created. Though what the best news model looks like is always up for discussion.American Journalism Review’s senior editor, Carl Sessions Stepp, wrote a bulleted list of ways to succeed with the new newspaper. "Maybe it Is Time to Panic," Stepp says.A few highlights: Make it better not worseMake it astonishingly, irresistibly betterMake it easier, not harder, to use and enjoyInvolve everyone from school kids to staff members to senior subscribers in the ultimate group science project of creating the greatest news outlets imaginableHey, he’s singing our song!Nonprofit and noncommercial journalism dovetail nicely with the outline Stepp provides. Like the other leading journalism publications, Columbia Journalism Review and Quill, AJR has long been hunting for solutions to the business-model mess. In 2004 Stepp spent some time at the St.

From the Newsroom

Whither the Sunday Chronicle?

04.24.2008
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In the midst of a year that has seen a truly existential crisis for print journalism, it’s instructive to ask ourselves just what kind of paper product newspapers are selling these days. The photo above is what landed on my front stoop last Sunday. Inside the advertising bag was a free sample of what’s reputed to be some of the most absorbent pulp money can buy … plus the San Francisco Chronicle.Today, front-page advertisements, stick-on come-ons and plastic-wrap billboards are becoming de rigueur for some of our most beloved metro dailies. Those of us aghast at community institutions renamed, for example, "Pac Bell Park" (then, "AT&T Park"), might begin to wonder, can the Sunday PG&E Chronicle be far behind?

News

When the going gets tough … use J-students to report?

04.19.2008
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The Boston Globe is the latest Top 30 newspaper to use alternative methods to gathering news. For the Sunday Globe it was eight journalism graduate students from Northeastern University for a Page One piece "advocating for senior citizens."Neither the content nor the level of reporting is at issue; what is is the experimentation we are seeing from community newspapers to papers with a million-plus circulation like the Globe. The need for a new economic model is becoming more apparent each day, as long-term commitment investigative reporting slowly becomes a thing of the past. Or at the least a thing that needs to be restructured for the future.ProPublica, with $10 million committed a year by a donor, employs 25 invesitgative reporters and its plan details making the reporting available free online.The Massachusetts Institute for the Common Wealth (self-described as a nonpartisan education and research institute) reported that the future may be in college students. MassINC lists the 20 most interesting prospects, including Bay Area news orgs looking into the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, and the fact that only a few, such as the New York Times and Frontline, have their own investigative reporters. 

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Silicon Valley conclave to draw innovators

04.19.2008
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The Public Press will make a prominent showing at the Journalism That Matters conference at the headquarters of Yahoo Inc. at the end of the month. More than 150 high-tech and media pioneers from a range of industries are meeting for a “concept/design mashup” as part of a nationwide conversation — one aimed at making media reform tangible by creating new products and services that support the core social missions of journalism. The event, which organizers are calling NewsTools2008, is scheduled from April 30 to May 2; the final day of the event — the Innovations in Journalism Expo and mini-conference, organized by the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Independent Arts & Media, will take place at the Domain Hotel in Sunnyvale on Saturday, May 3. (Affordably priced tickets to the expo are still available. See below for details.) Both events will host representatives from universities, multimedia startups from across the country, product designers, and journalists from the dominant Bay Area News Group and beyond.

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New journalism business models

04.11.2008
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Media reformers across the country have long complained that the current print media paradigm is in need of an overhaul. The Public Press concept is one effort to make up for inadequacies in the business model that has, until recently, supported robust print journalism. Approaching those new — and as yet unknown — business models has become a growing topic for debate. One illuminating sign was the publication late last month of the annual State of the News Media report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. This year’s report, unlike previous editions, concludes that the crisis currently plaguing journalism "may not strictly be loss of audience.