Technology360

The Reconstruction of American Journalism

This is the title of a new report by former Washington Post executive editor, Leonard Downie, Jr. and Professor Michael Schudson, The Journalism School, Columbia University.  They begin:

... Newspapers and television news are not going to vanish in the foreseeable future, despite frequent predictions of their imminent extinction. But they will play diminished roles in an emerging and still rapidly changing world of digital journalism, in which the means of news reporting are being re-invented, the character of news is being reconstructed, and reporting is being distributed across a greater number and variety of news organizations, new and old. ...

Some lengthy comments on public broadcasting begin on p. 5 of the online version (p. 12 if you make a 39-pp. pdf of the document).  Their recommendations for public broadcasting begin on p. 14 of the online version (p. 33 of a pdf) and look to reorienting public radio and television "to provide significant local news reporting in every community served by public stations and their Web sites."  I've given shortcuts to pubcasting material, but it's important to read their analysis and recommendations in context.

Link:  Columbia Journalism Review.  Thanks to Vivian Schiller for the link. 

Update: 28 October 2009:

The "atomic" version of Current newspaper has a page one overview of this report by Karen Everhart.  It's not yet on current.org.  Also on page one but not on the site is a report on the forward-looking Chicago News Cooperative.  WTTW-TV is a founding partner and the article says WBEZ-FM may also join the partnership.  I'll try to remember to add links when they appear.  --Dennis

Why is HD Radio™ important for public radio?

... Asks Caryn Mathes, GM of WAMU in Washington, in an essay reprinted from Current (can't find it there) for Radio Business Report.  WAMU is a public radio station that recently won a well-deserved industry award for its leadership in HD Radio™.  She concludes:

... However, I think that to truly “get” the importance of HD Radio, you must abandon the old metrics, and stop trying to layer those measurements on the new landscape.  ¶  The days of double-digit share are gone; 1-2% may become a good share in the brave new world. The landscape has irreversibly changed, with so many platforms available to tempt the listener. Podcasts, mobile, Internet radio – the competition for ears is everywhere, as we all well know. I believe that, comparisons to Betamax and 8-tracks aside, very rarely does a format completely disappear – the pieces of the audience pie simply get smaller, and you need to be accessible on every possible platform in order to get the same aggregate AMOUNT of the pie. ...

Link:  RBR.com.  --Dennis