Mathew is a senior writer with GigaOM, where he covers media in all its forms -- social and otherwise -- as well as web culture and related issues. He is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past 15 years writing about business, technology and new media as a reporter, columnist and blogger. Prior to joining GigaOM, he was a blogger and technology writer for the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto, and was also the paper's first online Communities Editor. Mathew is also one of the founders of mesh, Canada's leading web conference. You can find more about him here.
Fans of the social-blogging network might not like the idea much, but a $1-billion acquisition of Tumblr would arguably solve a number of problems for Yahoo — and do the same for Tumblr CEO David Karp. Read more »
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen says that many of the cultural barriers to doing “networked journalism” have been lowered, and he is trying to help media outlets develop smart tools and ways of making use of crowdsourcing. Read more at paidContent »
As more sites focus on longform content, Fast Company disclosed some statistics on how its longer pieces have been doing — but the data shows that the real secret isn’t length but ongoing engagement with readers. Read more at paidContent »
Research from McKinsey seems to suggest that print-based media still commands a large proportion of time spent by consumers of news — but that is just part of the larger picture media companies have to understand. Read more at paidContent »
We are used to thinking of a “mass media” market made up of large newspapers and TV networks as the normal state of affairs in media, but what if that was just a historical anomaly? Read more at paidContent »
Twitter says it doesn’t have any interest in hiring reporters or performing other journalistic functions — but regardless of whether it does so, it is still a powerful media entity and one that grows stronger by the day. Read more at paidContent »
There are plenty of reasons for pessimism about the state of the media and journalism, including repeated layoffs, bankruptcies and so on. But there are also many reasons to be optimistic about the current environment. Read more at paidContent »
News reports out of Israel say Facebook is in talks to acquire traffic-information service Waze for as much as $1 billion, but Google will be making a big mistake if it doesn’t try to top that offer. Read more »
LinkedIn has been making some significant moves towards becoming a media entity focused on business news, and the launch of new magazine-style channels of content is just the latest example of this. Read more at paidContent »
Startup founder Chad Whitacre caused a fuss recently when he suggested that a reporter do an “open interview” that would be available to everyone — but why is that approach seen as such a threat by some media outlets? Read more at paidContent »
When the NPR show Planet Money wanted to put together a project about the economic life-cycle of a T-shirt, Kickstarter seemed like the natural approach — and it showed how much crowdfunding has in common with public media. Read more at paidContent »
The new weekend editor at Gawker’s auto-focused Jalopnik blog got hired because he was a knowledgeable commenter on the site, an example of how the feedback loop between writers and readers can pay off for blogs. Read more at paidContent »
There is a conventional wisdom in the media industry that micropayments for online content don’t work, but Greg Golebiewski of Znak It says that this isn’t true, and that media companies need to experiment with the model. Read more at paidContent »
There’s no question the kind of data collection Google has to do in the background to power its Google Now service can be a little intrusive — perhaps too intrusive for some. But it also makes the results extremely useful. Read more »
Whenever a breaking news event leads to errors on Twitter, critics suggest that the service needs some kind of built in correction or editing mechanism — but adding one would not only be complicated, it would also be unwise. Read more »
It may seem like a sideshow, or a service that can only bring noise and chaos to the news, but RapGenius and its approach towards annotation shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand just yet. Read more at paidContent »
A trade group says that newspapers like the New York Times have seen large increases in circulation, but that’s partly because they are allowed to count their readers multiple times. The industry needs to do better. Read more at paidContent »
One thing that emerged from our media conference was that there is no single solution when it comes to the future of content, or the monetization of media — and that is probably a good thing. Read more at paidContent »
While much of the attention during and after the Boston bombings focused on how one Reddit thread got things wrong, there were other important parts of the community that were doing good — and even doing something approaching journalism. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter’s love affair with television seems to know no bounds — two recent deals with BBC America and Comedy Central will bring video clips inside users’ streams, and more such deals appear to be in the works. Read more at paidContent »
Although many other U.S. newspapers have shrunk, the Philadelphia Inquirer has suffered more than most. Will Steacy, whose father was laid off from the paper in 2011, has put together a photo essay showing its decline. Read more at paidContent »
While both Twitter and Reddit have come under fire for distributing incorrect information about the Boston bombings, mainstream outlets have done so as well. In a real-time news environment, having more sources is ultimately better. Read more at paidContent »
At our paidContent Live conference in New York, we heard about the disruption in publishing, journalism and advertising from speakers such as Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian, Jon Steinberg of BuzzFeed and blogger Andrew Sullivan. Read more at paidContent »
In this podcast, we talk with Joey Coleman, a blogger and journalist who decided that there wasn’t enough coverage of his home town in the traditional media — so he crowdfunded his own hyper-local news operation. Read more at paidContent »
In the aftermath of events like the Boston Marathon bombings, Twitter is often criticized for the way it indiscriminately distributes lies as well as facts — but as chaotic as that process is, we are better off for having it. Read more at paidContent »
Newspapers and other media entities have gotten used to thinking of themselves as the most important part of the equation — but why not focus on helping individual brands engage with their audiences and then share in the revenue? Read more at paidContent »
The U.S. newspaper industry has lost more than $40 billion in ad revenue in the past decade — over half of that in the last four years alone — and Google’s ad revenues are now more than twice what the industry pulls in. Read more at paidContent »
Foursquare said Thursday it has raised $41 million to expand its location-based service, but the financing is convertible debt rather than equity, which increases the pressure on the company to prove it has a real business. Read more »
Paywalls can bring in extra revenue for newspapers and other traditional media outlets, and they can help keep existing readers from leaving — but how do they help bring in new readers? And what happens if they don’t? Read more at paidContent »
Although its Storyboard editorial operation won awards for the content it curated from the Tumblr network, founder and CEO David Karp said Tuesday the unit is being shut down and all the editorial staff are being let go. Read more at paidContent »
There’s been plenty of focus on how publishers are catering to advertisers by producing “native” advertising, including sponsored content — but a much bigger trend is brands and advertisers that are becoming publishers themselves. Read more at paidContent »
Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientific research, has promised that it won’t become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren’t waiting around. Read more at paidContent »
Digital First Media chief executive officer John Paton says that paywalls aren’t the answer for newspapers, and that print is eventually going to go away — which is why the company needs to take more risks. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed has become the poster child for what some call sponsored content or “native advertising,” but despite the skills of founder Jonah Peretti, the secret to making ads go viral is not quite as simple as it appears to be. Read more at paidContent »
An early blogger and startup founder who had recently launched a new business focused on health and fitness, Allen Stern passed away last week and was remembered by his friends and blogging colleagues. Read more »
Our panel on writers who have built independent businesses around themselves — and one who has chosen to remain inside a traditional media entity — gets a new addition: viral publishing phenomenon Tim Ferriss. Read more at paidContent »
Film critic Roger Ebert talked about how much Twitter meant to him as a form of conversation, and his enthusiastic use of it as a way to connect with readers is a lesson to journalists of all kinds. Read more at paidContent »
Newspapers have been a blend of the serious and the entertaining for decades — why is it so surprising that a site like BuzzFeed could broaden its appeal into more serious topics as well as funny cat photos? Read more at paidContent »
Media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff argues that many traditional media outlets like the New York Times are trapped between the flow of real-time information and the need to stand back and analyze that stream. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter wants to get on the good side of third-party app developers with some new features for its expanded-tweet Cards, but the main focus of these new features is still to cement Twitter’s control over its ecosystem. Read more »
