Change, Sure; Extinction, No

Tom Foremski wrote last weekend about the inevitable demise of newspapers:
“If you are in the path of a disruptive technology you are toast. Disruptive technologies disrupt.”
OK, but toast can be made into croutons. What we have to do is separate the content from the delivery mode. The ink on paper from the journalism. Yes, the [...]

Has print news come full circle?

theprintedblogvol1no11
Today a new entity makes its debut in Chicago, The Printed Blog.
It’s an ambitious project mixing opinion and multimedia and some hyperlocal observations that would normally be solely online. But they are appearing in print, downloadable by pdf and set for distribution through several micro channels.
The debut is a little disappointing. [...]

Hard Copies Ease Hard Times?

Washington Post story
The election hangover has subsided, but not the renewed journalism high many of us are feeling. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country stood in lines at local news stands and news outlets to get a hard copy of fresh news the day after the historic election of Barack Obama November 4. [...]

The Silence Heard Round The World

        I am getting ready for a panel at the upcoming Association for Educators in Journalism & Mass Communications conference August 5-8 here in Chicago about what is missing in news coverage and opinion in domestic and international media.
       Well, women are missing. We are invisible. And while it may only be an historic omission, [...]

News and the City

While it seems every MSM outlet on the planet was pontificating on the adventures of Carrie and her girlfriends from “Sex and The City” in stories about the movie about the television series, real news was happening around the globe. But the space was there for the girls from New York.
OK, I went to the [...]

Sam Zell and CableVision’s $650 million plan

     I was a guest on Chicago Public Radio’s 848 show on newspapers this morning. The interview with Ashley Gross followed a business piece by Diantha Parker on the future of the Chicago Tribune, recently bought by real estate giant Sam Zell. Also in the news today is the deal for New York-Based Cablevison Systems to [...]

French Fried Green Beans, Mac & Cheese and A Crystal Ball

I was in Milwaukee recently as a speaker for a newsmaker event for the Society for Professional Journalists at the Newsroom Pub. First off, the pub did not resemble a newsroom, and Teddy Roosevlet’s signature was on a glass-encased, framed chalkboard on the wall, along with hundreds of other signatures. They didn’t ask me for  mine. [...]

Updates on Front Page Data March 2008

After a few of my recent discussions and book signings, readers asked if I had updated the material since I launched the project. So I decided to take one day, March 4, 2008, and do a simple content analysis, counting the number of stories on the front page, with the number of features. As you [...]

A Mile High and On The Air

A few weeks ago I was a guest of the Society of Professional  Journalists in Denver to speak at the Denver Press Club about my new book. The audience of journalists from the Rocky Mountain News, http://www.rockymountainnews.com/ , Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/ and other local publications asked a lot of good questions and made me rethink much of [...]

Not afraid of change

I spoke before a group of fabulous women journalists, writers, authors and marketing creatives Saturday and it lifted me up. The Illinois Women’s Press Association is a cross-generational collection of women who keep reinventing themselves and keep pushing forward at a time of great tumultuous disruption in the media.
We talked about staying relevant and telling [...]