Category: Journalism

On iPhone Photos, and Moving Foward

⌘ Permalink

Art Terry, a professor at the University of Memphis with over 50 years experience in photography, on Damon Winter of the New York Times winning third place in the annual “Pictures of the Year” competition with a photo shot with an iPhone and the app Hipstamatic:

Photography is about seeing, recording the world around you from your own unique point of view and perspective. Apparently for some, if you want to see the world as a journalist you have to use a certain kind of equipment. We are past the days of the rangefinder Leica with black and white film — at least for every day use. I hated to part with mine. These critics need to get over it and move on.

Continue reading ⇢

Rupert Murdoch, on the iPad and Journalism

⌘ Permalink

At The Daily launch today in NYC:

New times require new journalism. Our challenge was to take the best of conventional journalism… and combine it with the best of new technology. Simply put, the iPad demands that we completely reimagine our craft.

There is a growing segment of educated and sophisticated consumers who do not read daily newspapers, but still consume media. This restricts their interests to what has been predefined.

Continue reading ⇢

Apple: Savior of the News #pastblast

⌘ Permalink

Ben Brooks, back over the summer:

At the D8 conference Steve Jobs remarked that perhaps the news industry needs an iTunes type model for news. He went on to say that we need news outlets so that we don’t become a “nation of bloggers”. Agreed.

The question then is does Jobs mean that we really need an iNews, or was he simply using that to illustrate the point that news is lost and needs a common strategy that they can band around? I of course think that Jobs meant the latter: news outlets need to band together to create a common and standardized system by which they will make money off of their content.

Continue reading ⇢

On Questions

⌘ Permalink

Frank Chimero:

Being interviewed online via email is an interesting proposition: all the questions are usually rendered before hand, making the interview more of a test or a MadLib than a conversation. It usually feels like you’re talking to a wall. Ideas don’t develop very well, they don’t flow any where. If conversations flow like rivers, this is hanging out in the kid die pool.

I’m currently interviewing several people for an upcoming feature on ForkBombr, and while it is slower, having an actual conversation is just so much better. It is crazy to think anyone would use a standard set of questions in most circumstances.

Continue reading ⇢

Jon Stewart, on Politics and the Media

⌘ Permalink

In an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross:

I think it made me less political and more emotional. The [more] you spend time with the political [world] and media, the less political you become and the more viscerally upset you become at corruption. I don’t consider it political, because ‘political’ I always sort of note as a partisan endeavor. But I have become increasingly unnerved by the depth of corruption that exists at many different levels. I’m less upset with politicians than [with] the media. I feel like politicians — the way I explain it, is when you go to a zoo and a monkey throws feces, it’s a monkey. But when the zookeeper is standing right there and he doesn’t say, ‘Bad monkey’ — somebody’s gotta be the zookeeper. I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They’re representing a constituency. Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we’re in a battle between tyranny and freedom — it’s a series of pendulum swings. And the swings have become less drastic over time. That’s why I feel, not sanguine but at least a little bit less frightful, in that our pendulum swings have become less and less. But what has changed is the media’s sense of their ability to be responsible arbiters. I think they feel fearful. I think there’s this whole idea now that there’s a liberal media conspiracy, and I think they feel if they express any authority or judgment, which is what I imagine is editorial control, they will be vilified.

Continue reading ⇢

On Headlines

⌘ Permalink

Chairmen Gruber:[1. In a footnote to an article on app economies.]

Sensational headlines are one of the worst aspects of web-based news media. Pre-web, there wasn’t much temptation for publications to juice their headlines, with the notable exception of tabloids. In print, all publications care about is the circulation for entire issues. With the web, particularly with CPM advertising, publications are motivated to drive traffic to each individual article. Total page views, rather than issue sales, are the metric, and one easy way to juice page views is to use sensational headlines.

Continue reading ⇢