Is Warren Buffett’s recent acquisition of the Media General chain a brilliant gamble, or an indication of his faith in the long-term prospects of newspapers? Clay Shirky argues it is neither — he says Buffett misunderstands some fundamental things about the business he has bought. Read more »
Just days after U.S.-based media chain Advance Publications announced printing cutbacks and layoffs at its New Orleans and Alabama papers, a national newspaper chain in Canada said it is cutting back, laying off more staff and looking to erect paywalls at several of its papers. Read more »
In a discussion about his use of Twitter as a reporting tool, NPR strategist Andy Carvin made some interesting points about the value of crowdsourced journalism — including the importance of being transparent about the process, and the virtues of being human. Read more »
As painful as the decision to stop printing daily may be for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and its staff, it grappling with a reality that almost every newspaper will have to face sooner or later, whether they want to or not. Read more »
The pitched war between content owners and technology companies doesn’t have to persist if media companies would acknowledge and adapt to the new realities of digital distribution, famed venture capitalist Fred Wilson told attendees at paidContent 2012. Read more at paidContent »
paidContent 2012: At the Crossroads is today at The TimesCenter in New York. Hundreds of media, entertainment, info and tech execs will be there in person to talk about the best ways to make content pay. You can join us via our livestream. Read more at paidContent »
Newspapers are suffering from a number of problems, but one is the nature of the product that many still produce — the monolithic, ruthlessly objective, single-voiced editorial style most have grown accustomed to doesn’t work in a world where anyone and everyone can be a publisher. Read more »
New research about how news is verified through Twitter and a crowdsourced debunking of some fake Wikipedia entries reinforce the point that social networks and online communities can be powerful tools for the real-time verification of events, something that used to take place behind closed doors. Read more »
Facebook’s advertising woes, including the highly publicized departure of General Motors, reinforce the fact that while Facebook may function like a social network, on the business side it looks almost exactly like a media company — and that is going to be a major challenge. Read more »
Twitter describes itself as an information network rather than a media entity, but it is making some interesting moves into the content business, including hiring a sports producer to curate content and sending out a weekly email of highlighted content. How far will it go? Read more »
The appointment of Ross Levinsohn as CEO is a sign Yahoo wants to focus on media as the core of its rebirth, but does the company have what it takes to succeed as a new-media entity? There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Read more »
In an interview about the future of the media industry, Google’s head of news products Richard Gingras said that newspapers are like old-fashioned internet portals such as AOL and Yahoo, and that unless they can adapt to the web instead of fighting it they are doomed. Read more »
The news that Canada’s largest newspaper is launching a paywall brings back memories of an earlier paywall attempt, and how that led one GigaOM writer to the discovery of blogging — and three reasons why paywalls are not the solution to the newspaper industry’s problems. Read more »
Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton says he is making the network’s revamped discussion platform the centerpiece of a new advertising effort — hoping to convince brands that they should come and talk about their products and services in Gawker’s comment section instead of on Facebook. Read more »
I Can Has Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh’s day job may involve funny pictures of cats and other internet memes, but he also has some serious opinions about the future of journalism, including the idea that journalistic objectivity as we know it has outlived its usefulness. Read more »
The recent dramatic declines in users of some Facebook social-reading apps from newspapers like the Washington Post reinforces a lesson that media companies need to keep in mind at all times — namely, that Facebook is the information gatekeeper now, and you are just a provider. Read more »
When they think about competition, many traditional outlets still seem to look mostly at media players such as the Huffington Post or Buzzfeed. But the reality is that much of what is competing with journalism in the digital world are things we barely recognize as journalism. Read more »
Publishers saw the iPad as a chance to turn back the clock and convince consumers to pay for content in a new form. But that dream has collided with reality, and now some content producers — including MIT’s Technology Review — say the standalone content app is dead. Read more »
Surrounded by an overwhelming amount of digital content, many people are looking for something that can fill the role of a digital newspaper — filtering and highlighting interesting content. Among the many startups trying to solve this problem is a San Francisco outfit called Prismatic. Read more »
The legal profession has undergone a lot of change over the past few years, but don’t dismiss it as an anachronism just yet. As the web changes the way citizens consume and digest information, including on important legal issues, lawyers should remain as important as ever. Read more »
Book publishers are trying hard to argue that e-books cost almost as much to produce as printed ones, and therefore prices for e-books should be higher — but the bottom line is that consumers don’t care what a publisher’s costs are, nor should they. Read more »
The changes Twitter just announced it is making to its “Discover” tab are designed to make recommended links and topics more personalized, and therefore more accurate — which is a good thing, because that is the single biggest business challenge the company faces right now. Read more »
Some of the media industry’s leading “data journalists” have published a crowdsourced handbook for the practice of data-oriented journalism, including examples of some of the best projects, tips on how to hire hacker-journalists — and an argument for why data journalism could help save the media. Read more »
Newspapers find themselves at a crossroads: they need to generate more revenue in order to stay in business, but some of the ways they could do that might conflict with the public-interest aspect of journalism. How do they find a middle road — or can they? Read more »
Journatic, a media startup that produces hyper-local content for newspapers, has been criticized as a “content farm.” But in an interview with GigaOM, founder Brian Timpone says not only his model more efficient than that of a newspaper, but it can actually help produce better journalism. Read more »
At a time when everyone is talking about how important it is for commenters to use real names, Gawker is going in the exact opposite direction. And while that may benefit Nick Denton for all kinds of selfish reasons, it’s still an experiment worth watching. Read more »
The Chicago Tribune has laid off most of its hyper-local unit and hired what some describe as a “content farm,” while other outlets are using content that is generated by algorithms. Is this the future of news, and if so should we be happy about it? Read more »
Should the New York Times charge hedge funds or large financial institutions more for early access to market-moving stories like its Walmart exposé? Reuters blogger Felix Salmon says yes, but doing this would fundamentally change what the New York Times and its journalism are all about. Read more »
Gawker Media founder Nick Denton talks about whether we are in another technology bubble, what the decline of Facebook and Twitter as conversational media say about social networks, the death of advertising and whether he has any interest in selling his digital empire. Read more »
Gawker Media founder Nick Denton says that he wants to fix the way that online comments work, but in order to do that he is having to reinvent Gawker itself — by trying to flip on its head the way that online content works. Read more »
Book publishers argue that Amazon is a vicious monopoly that has too much power over them and their content. But they need to realize they gave Amazon much of that power themselves when they agreed to shackle all of their books in DRM chains. Read more »
Italian bloggers are up in arms after ministers secretly resurrected their attempts to introduce a new law that could see them fined thousands of Euros for not responding quickly enough to request for corrections — an approach dubbed the “blog killer” by critics. Read more »
The Pulitzer Prize win by the Huffington Post has been hailed by some as the first win by a “blog,” but the reality is such terms have become increasingly meaningless. All we have now is media, some of which is journalism and some of which isn’t. Read more »
Ahead of Q1 earnings, Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson filled in a vital blank spot in his plan to remake the media company. Last week, he sketched an outline.
Tuesday he has to color between the lines. Read more at paidContent »
Chartbeat announced a $9.5-million round of funding and a series of new features aimed at giving websites and publishers better insight into how users are engaging with their content, something that has become increasingly important as Facebook becomes a major player in online advertising. Read more »
Some traditional media entities seem to be hoping for a single magic bullet that will cure their revenue problems, but it is more likely success will come from making a number of smaller bets. Unfortunately, large media players don’t tend to be good at that. Read more »
Three months after it hired Vivaki founding partner David Kenny as its new CEO, the Weather Channel is bringing in another former top operative from the Publicis-owned media and digital-agency division, Curt Hecht. Read more at paidContent »
The viral video of a nine-year-old boy who built a magical arcade out of cardboard at his father’s auto-parts business in Los Angeles has a lot to say about the spirit of entrepreneurship and creativity that fuels much of what we write about at GigaOM. Read more »
As the Department of Justice pursues an antitrust case over e-book prices, publishers say they need “agency pricing” to prevent Amazon from increasing its monopoly and decimating the book industry. So who should we be rooting for, the giant retailer or the giant publishing houses? Read more »
One of the most disruptive aspects of social media is that it allows newsmakers such as politicians to reach an audience directly, instead of going through traditional channels. This is changing the relationship between sources and the media not just in the U.S. but everywhere. Read more »
