The Newspaper Disease

Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under journalism

Roger Black on The Newspaper Disease:

As with the federal government, it won’t help to keep doing more of the things that aren’t working. It won’t work to keep cheapening the product. To use Gordon Bethune’s line about a similar problem in the airline business: “You can take so much cheese off the pizza that nobody will eat it.”

Read the rest of the article here.

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Comments (2) | May 14th, 2008

The Death of the Newspaper. (gulp)

Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under journalism

Before coming to grad school I thought newspapers were the only home for me and the only place I’d want to be.

I’m not so sure about that anymore. More and more I’m starting to think of life outside of newspapers, which feels weird sad to say.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I need to get some photos off to the big brown box from a shoot today.

Fading to Black and Praying for Papers are two blogs that look at the state of (sad)affairs in newspapers today.

From The New Yorker article Out of Print:

Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.

Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn’t the enemy. In fact, it’s the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it.

Thanks Marcus Yam and APAD


At the Kentucky Derby last weekend.

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Comments (0) | May 9th, 2008

Saying no to video?

Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized

Hopefully you read this already. If not it’s worth your time. Koci started a well needed discussion with his recent article on MultimediaShooter to which Colin responsed with a list of changes papers need to make.

I agree with a lot of them including my hate for watching videos in a little window. You also ever try to find a multimedia piece more than a few days old on a newspaper website? Good luck.

A few quotes from Koci:

And no matter how hard I try, it’s just not working. We don’t seem to be making the kind of money you said we would and people aren’t really watching. You said video would save newspapers, I distinctly remember you saying this at your speech at ASN.

I love journalism and would’ve done anything to save the profession (and MY job). There WAS gold in the hills for some and maybe there’s some left, but not for most newspapers. Because, once again, our beloved industry came late to the party.

The viewer doesn’t know or care if the image moves like video or is a well paced audio slide show, they want a good story. Period.

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Comments (0) | March 2nd, 2008

When will newspapers get it?

Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under newspapers

As I do most mornings I spent a portion of my time checking my RSS feeds. Besides the print edition of the NYTimes and NPR it’s how I get most of my news.

So the question is when will newspapers finally understand you can’t take your content from the printed page and just plaster it to your website? The web is a community that thrives on linking and commentary and not cut and paste journalism.

Reading my RSS feed for the Louisville Courier-Journal this headline caught my eye:

Flurry over a photo prompts explanation

Apparently there was an outcry from readers over an image that ran on the sports page after Louisville beat the University of Kentucky in men’s basketball the day before. I couldn’t tell what the photo is about since I can’t seem to find it anywhere on their site. A search of the archives turns up nothing as it wants me to pay for the article with no guarantee the story will include the photo I’m looking for. Browsing through their 4 photo galleries (scroll down to 01/05/08) from the game turns up nothing. This image was good enough to run as their lead on the sports front, but doesn’t find a home in an online gallery of over 100 pics? I see one image that looks like it might be the one, but it comes from the second half and not the first as the article states.

There will be no apology. However, I think an explanation is in order because it encompasses what’s involved in selecting photos to illustrate stories — and what can happen if context is lost on, or not apparent to, the news consumer, which is what I think happened in this instance.

Apparently they also forget about context for their online audience since we have no way of seeing the image that sparked the public editor to write this column and address their readers.

One of their readers get it:

Here’s what makes me mad: writing a long essay about a photo, but not showing it online or providing a link to it. I have no way to make my own judgment, because the C-J isn’t showing me the picture in question. I’m out of town and did not see the original publication…..To my original point… why should readers have to dig up this stuff? See, there’s this thing called the Internet, and it has a feature called “links” by which you can actually show us what you’re writing about. Cool, huh?

Rant off.

Not all is bad in the online world. Check out the new look of the Las Vegas Sun. Refreshing.

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Comments (2) | January 14th, 2008