It only seems like I’m kicking Tumblr when it’s down, quite literally. But I’ve been planning to write about giving up Tumblr for some time. The microblog’s service outage, now going on for more than 17 hours as I write, is just the news hook. TechCrunch gets my headline of the week award, partly stated: “Tumblr Redefines The Concept Of ‘Back Shortly‘”. I’ll say. TechCrunch is a WordPress.com VIP; not Tumblr.
On Nov. 19, 2010, the Economist released mobile apps for iPad and iPhone. I received email notification the same day and new print issue with info about the apps a few hours later. Economist charges one fee to subscribers. My print subscription provides access to online content and now to the mobile apps. That’s exactly the right approach. So why are so many other publishers doing digital wrong?
Film critic and social media convert Roger Ebert made a stand. I’m with him. No more top-10 lists.
I’ve been planning to write this post since October 31st, the day after Roger wrote for the Wall Street Journal: “Why I Loathe Top 10 Film Lists“. I wanted to put some distance between my agreement and responses from top-10 whores like Business Insider and Huffington Post—the latter dignified Roger’s commentary with a lowly tweet from a Mother Jones blogger.
On Friday, Keith Olbermann essentially got the boot from MSNBC for making three undisclosed political contributions—or that’s how I interpret suspended without pay. The donations violated MSNBC policies designed to prevent any apparent (or even actual) conflict of interest. For someone who does cover politics (Hey, wasn’t that Keith headlining election-night coverage?), it’s not unreasonable that there be no apparent bias.
I have come to loathe top-10 lists, and I have stopped writing them. They are a sucker’s play for pageviews, although I have always used top-10s mainly for their presentation value. Now that they’re everywhere and displacing original content, I’ve got something of a personal boycott going (hence, why there have been none from me recently at Betanews). It’s with that introduction I come to maim a top-10 list posted last week. “The truth about the newsroom—straight-up!” offers 10 things reporters “want from [public relations] pitch to coverage”.
Deanna White tweeted about the post, to which I responded after reading: “My list would look nothing like this. If that’s what my peers want, someone pull out journalism’s obituary & run it” (News organizations generally keep prewritten obituaries ready to run the second someone famous enough dies).
It was sickening enough when British oil giant BP set new standards for corporate scumbaggery in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, turning the Gulf of Mexico into its own personal toilet and imperiling entire species […]
I don’t share some bloggers’ enthusiasm for Associated Press’ new policy crediting them. On September 1st, the wire service issued advisory: “AP announces guidelines for credit and attribution,” which includes bloggers. AP shouldn’t credit bloggers because it opens way for lazy reporting and undermines the news organization’s reputation and credibility (well, outside the blogging community).
There goes the neighborhood. Big media is invading Tumblr. For weeks I had been meaning to blog about how old media might ruin Tumblr. I shouldn’t have waited. Monday’s New York Times story “Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr” raises the topic without rightly razing it. How could Jenna Wortham’s story have been any different, since The Times is among the old media vanguard invading Tumblr. Jenna’s story positions the big media invasion as something good. I most certainly don’t agree, given Tumblr’s free-for-all embrace.
When I started my online-only news career at CNET (1999-2003), the metrics for success largely extended from print: Scoops (and for me, provocative analysis). Now, as Jeremy Peters writes for the New York Times (“In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger”), the measure is pageviews—and scoops, too, for some news organizations. Journalists are burning out fast and young, and for easily discernable reasons. Too much is demanded of them (and for too little compensation).
I can’t much imagine how MSNBC.com could have designed a news site seemingly more unfriendly to generating static pageviews—unless there is some secret Google gaming formula. The secret sauce is there, and I love it. MSNBC.com’s updated news site pulls readers in rather than sending them out.
My fantasy newsroom is one where the public comes and goes (within reason, of course) and story ideas flow freely in all directions. In England in the 1600s, news grew out of coffeehouses this way. Decades later in the U.S. colonies, the venue of choice switched to pubs. (I like that journalism in America is tied up with drinking. Explains a lot.)
Here’s a big shout-out to the Freehold, New Jersey initiative above. I’m rooting for (literal) conversational journalism par excellence.
Doreen Marchionni
Until the Net arrived, the history of media had been a tale of fragmentation. Different technologies progressed down different paths, leading to a proliferation of special-purpose tools. Books and newspapers could present text and images, […]