Does this sound familiar? An innovation replaces an earlier convention and, in time, becomes a new convention. It is a cycle — a process in which insight inspires change and creates value. We rarely recognize innovation while it’s happening. Instead, innovation is often a label applied after the fact, when the results are clear and [...]
Alan Mutter at Newsosaur is nonplussed at a journalism student’s unfamiliarity with Mike Royko (1932 – 1997), the beloved Chicago newspaper columnist. As a teenager, I read Royko’s syndicated columns in the local rag that served as a newspaper in my hometown in Pennsylvania, and I confess, I loved them. Probably they had some influence [...]
Paul Conley is on a rampage with a series of posts based on the idea of digging a “fighting hole” (which many of us would call a foxhole). He’s writing about B2B journalism, but most of what he says applies equally well to daily newspaper journalism. He’s saying employers should not offer any training in [...]
Journalists everywhere need to quit whining and go into action. Howard Owens has issued a challenge for all your non-networked friends — you know, the ones who never read any blogs except Romenesko or Shop Talk. The ones who don’t know how to work their digital cameras — or worse, don’t even own one. Yeah, [...]
The other day, a friend of mine said some sites we were discussing should get together and become a “portal.” I had to bite my tongue. Portals — what a sad, misguided idea that was! Portals always seemed to me like an undifferentiated mess — like the failed Pathfinder site that Time Inc. carried around [...]
A school is not a museum, and a movie theater is not a restaurant. If a newspaper were a building, what kind of building would it be? Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while [...]
The Newspaper Association of America finds itself chained to a product description in an era when the product (the medium) is not in a sustainable position. The NAA formed in 1992 when seven newspaper industry associations merged. One, the American Newspaper Publishers Association, was founded in 1887. In 1887, there was only one way to [...]