so long as we have a monetization model of information that prioritizes the wrong stakeholders — advertisers over readers — we will always cater to the business interests of the former, not the intellectual interests of the latter

“Is it fair for the CEO to leave with $37 million while we take less and less and less?” Russell asked. “We’re here to say that’s wrong.”

click to enlarge

Indianapolis Newspaper Guild President BobbyKing helped to organize the rally. Rebecca Townsend
The guild, which has a dues-paying membership of about 80 percent of all the employees it represents — including reporters, photographers, copy editors, researchers, page designers and custodial staff — met with Star management following the rally.

“We’re concerned about our families’ economic situation and we’re concerned about the future of the newspaper,” King said. “We’re not asking for the moon — just the 10 percent back from two years ago and cost-of-living raises of 3 percent a year.”

he worked his way through a detailed presentation about outsourcing most operations other than sales and editorial, focusing on the cost side that might include further layoffs, stressing digital sales over print sales with incentives, and using relationships with the community to provide some of the content in their newspapers

CNN is cutting dozens of editorial jobs following a three-year review of its “workflow” operations, TV Newser reported. According to a memo obtained by paidContent and attributed to CNN SVP Jack Womack, technology and user-gen has made the network a little less reliant on editorial staffers, particularly photojournalists.

Yesterday, he was publicly taken to the woodshed in the blog he created for, well, I’m not really sure

The San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s own daily, was poised to ride the digital whirlwind. What happened?

Given that “journalism” presently encompasses “publishing accounts of things you’ve seen using the Internet” and “taking pictures of stuff and tweeting them” and “blogging” and “commenting on news stories,” this proposal is even more insane than the tradition “journalist licenses” practiced in totalitarian nations.

Because now anybody can publish, and anybody turns out to really mean “anybody.” That includes teams, leagues, athletic organizations, agents and athletes themselves – all those who used to speak through sportswriters. As a result, the rules of the game are swiftly being rewritten

Breaking News:

The nation’s top experts unanimously agreed Tuesday that the current struggles of the U.S. economy were no reason whatsoever to stop investing in print media, which they said was easily the safest and most profitable place to invest one’s money.

Poynter:

Melissa Lyttle: It’s the one that was our lead photo the first time around, where [Bernie Lierow is] hugging her and she’s just kind of dangling, lifeless and limp, and not hugging back. And that scene happened again … I made this picture in the living room this time where he was hugging her. It’s very clear: She’s holding his head. She’s kind of playfully biting his nose and kissing him back. … It’s the same down to the fact of lensing and composition and moment.

Dead on critique of newspaper websites. Brilliant!

Techmeme’s “mimimalistic” aggregation approach — a headline and a snippet — brought 746 page views, according to Google Analytics. Huffington’s “short but thorough paraphrasing/rewriting” brought 57, Dumenco writes, although the site is “vastly bigger” than Techmeme

A widening phone-hacking scandal is prompting a broad reassessment of the balance between press freedom and privacy in Britain, even as France grapples with the consequences of its tradition of protecting the powerful.

Some reporters in the rotating pool of journalists who chronicle the president’s movements are sending tweets and TwitPics before the pool reports go to all of their colleagues, and that’s creating problems

“Synergy was the Trojan horse with which FitzSimons and Kern attacked the values of journalists, cut costs and set their focus on local news because it was often cheaper to produce,” writes Mr. O’Shea.

Link: O’Shea blasts ex-Tribune execs, current editor in new book | Poynter.

what had been planned as a dissection of Hastings’s major articles evolved into a broader conversation about American exceptionalism, the process and duty of war reporting, the privatization of American war making, and the Pentagon’s intensifying effort to “tear down the wall”
between public affairs and propaganda

Link: Guernica / Full Metal Racket

Yesterday the final decision was made to close the School of Journalism and Mass Communication that is not only my part-time employer, but my alma mater. My father also taught photojournalism part time at this school and graduated from its predecessor College of Journalism at the University of Colorado. The old school will be replaced by a double degree in journalism and another discipline at the university, and details of how that will work remain vague.

Though I and many of my colleagues wish a purposeful change of how journalism is taught at CU would have unfolded differently from this, the decision begs an examination of what it means to have a journalism education. This may still be well served by CU’s plan, depending on how it unfolds. I am hopeful.

Link: What is a journalism school for? « Perfesser Kev

Some time ago, if you were lucky enough to have created an image that all wanted, you could easily sit on it and wait for your phone to ring. Not really anymore. The center of the business gravity has shifted. To those who create value around the content.

Link: Thoughts of a Bohemian » Blog Archive » Of Paywalls, expectancy and stupidity

“The Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation,” Mr. Tasini said in a conference call with reporters. He vowed to picket Ms. Huffington’s house and turn her into an outcast in the liberal circles where she made her blog so prominent.

Link: Huffington Post Is Target of Suit on Behalf of Bloggers – NYTimes.com