Being a billionaire means Warren Buffett’s views on all kinds of things get a lot of attention — but his comments about the benefits of newspaper paywalls suggest the octagenarian investor misunderstands what the business of content looks like in our digital and hyper-connected age. Read more »
WikiLeaks is trumpeting its latest release, a cache of millions of internal emails from StratFor, a security-consulting firm with ties to the U.S. government. But the nature of the emails and a partnership with the hacker collective Anonymous raise questions about WikiLeaks’ continued relevance. Read more »
There’s been a lot of debate about whether a Forbes blog post that excerpted and summarized a New York Times story qualifies as journalism or not — but to some extent that’s a red herring. The only question that matters is whether the reader is served. Read more »
A new policy from Sky News bars reporters from posting anything other than work-related content on Twitter, and even forbids them from retweeting anything that doesn’t come from a Sky account. As with so many other similar policies, this completely misses the point of social media. Read more »
The New York Times has signed up over 300,000 people to its digital subscription plan, but that doesn’t even come close to making up for continued declines in ad revenue. A new CEO is going to have to think creatively about where the paper goes now. Read more »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said on Monday that the company is not a media entity, but in most of the ways that matter, it clearly is — and that’s why its recent decision to selectively censor content that flows through its network is so important. Read more »
New York Times media writer Brian Stelter says the ability for sources to “go direct,” as Rupert Murdoch has done with Twitter, is a generational shift in the media industry. But is it a good thing or a bad thing for journalism and news consumers? Read more »
Britain’s Daily Mail has eclipsed rivals including the New York Times to become the web’s biggest newspaper. But other media companies hoping to emulate its success will have their work cut out — unless they’re prepared to play fast and loose with the normal rules of journalism. Read more »
According to Facebook, reporters have been especially receptive to the Subscribe button feature launched in Sept. 2011. The number of journalists who have enabled the subscribe button is now in the thousands, and the average journalist has seen a 320-percent boost in subscribers since November. Read more »
A newly granted Apple patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday describes a system through which your clothing could talk to your iPhone to help it create tailored workouts that know you better than you know yourself. Read more »
The firestorm of criticism that erupted over the New York Times public editor’s question about whether reporters should be “truth vigilantes” is a sign there is still a huge gap between what the mainstream media thinks its job is and what readers think. Read more »
Many traditional journalists see “citizen journalism” as a negative thing, an untrustworthy source of information that diminishes their role as gatekeepers of the news — but New York Times foreign correspondent and author Nick Kristof says that he sees the value of the phenomenon. Read more »
Some newspaper websites made a little ground with their paywall strategies over the past year. But the media industry should be very careful about over-interpreting the successes of a handful over the struggles of the multitude. Read more »
Updated. On Wednesday morning, the New York Times sent a number of emails urging customers to call a toll-free number to renew their subscriptions. They seem to have been sent by Epsilon Data Management, an email marketing firm which had a major data breach in March. Read more »
TV viewership is still on the rise, with the typical American watching five hours a day now, according to research by Nielsen. That hasn’t slowed the growth of online video: In fact, the amount of content streamed is accelerating, too. While it hasn’t yet made a ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Are Google, Yelp and Facebook scared of Siri? If they aren’t they should be, as should any mobile website, service or app that depends on advertising. Siri is the first user interface that shifts our attention away from our phones’ screens, but it won’t be the last. Read more »
AOL’s recent acquisition of the Huffington Post for $315 million has centered a lot of attention on its content strategy — big part of which is automating and standardizing content that attracts search-related advertising. While there are some clear benefits to this “content farm” approach to content, there are also some significant disadvantages. Here we look at some of the leaders in this sector and their histories, as well as the key risks and benefits of the content farm strategy. Companies mentioned in this report include AOL, The Huffington Post, MySpace, Demand Media, Google and Associated Content. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
