What is better for a brand? A.) 25 million Facebook fans B.) An article in the New York Times Ideally, you’d like both. But if forced to pick, I’d probably go with A. Facebook fans are a constant – a set of people who have opted into your content. While they don’t all receive your […]
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The End of Channel Media
February 6, 2012 
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CNN used to be a cable news network. The New York Times used to be a newspaper. The Huffington Post used to be a blog. But that’s not the case anymore. CNN, New York Times and the Huffington Post (like almost every other major news organization) are no longer defined by their channels. This is […]
Read morePaywalls, Journalism & the Boston Globe
October 21, 2011 0 Comments
When I was a newspaper reporter, my peers and I referred to ourselves as “Inked-Stained Wretches.” It was our way of celebrating the broadsheet. The printed product that we all wrote for. From an early age, I wanted to be a newspaperman. I was the editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper; news editor and […]
Read moreThe Day of Infamy for Newspapers
August 29, 2011 2 Comments
For the newspapers, July 1, 1980 is a day of infamy. (And no, it isn’t because at the time “Do That To Me One More Time” by Captain & Tennille was one of the biggest hit songs.) July 1, 1980 is the day when the Columbus Dispatch launched the first newspaper website and put free […]
Read moreNewspapers Should Replace Reporting with Journalism
July 28, 2011 9 Comments
Reporting isn’t journalism. This is a distinction that few people understand, including many in the news business. And an inability to distinguish between the two is one reason why newspapers and other traditional media outlets continue to lose paying customers to the Web. We no longer need traditional media and professional reporters to inform us […]
Read moreJournalism Ethics in the 86,400-second News Cycle
July 7, 2011 0 Comments
It is difficult to imagine the ethical journey for journalists who would authorize hacking into a missing teenage girl’s mobile phone in order to scour the content for a salacious headline. Worse is when these same journalists then delete messages from a full voicemail box so that additional messages could be left behind – giving […]
Read more Facebook has Evolved into a Personalized Newspaper
May 5, 2011 0 Comments
At a recent meeting with a Facebook representative, he said something that really struck me: “The News Feed has really developed into the daily newspaper of our lives.” It’s true. Think about the way we now peruse Facebook – much like how we used to read newspapers. We scroll Facebook at various points in the […]
Read moreIs American Journalism Working Anymore?
April 21, 2011 3 Comments
Peter Finley Dunn, the late writer and humorist, once described the role of journalism to “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.” When I was a journalist, Dunn’s quote was at the heart of how I practiced the craft. I believed deeply in Dunn’s assessment and even scribbled the quote onto my journalism notebooks as a […]
Read moreOther Reasons Why Newspapers Aren’t Read
April 8, 2011 1 Comment
Journalists and media observers spend a lot of time exploring how the Internet and social networks are cutting into the readership of print publications like magazines and newspapers. I plead guilty as charged. There is little doubt that digital communications is undermining print. The Pew Research Center noted in its “State of the News Media […]
Read moreThe New York Times Big Gamble: Paywalls (Again)
March 17, 2011 13 Comments
Starting on March 28, the New York Times will dive headfirst – yet again – into digital subscriptions and… take a deep breath… paywalls. Or should I say the dreaded and much maligned paywalls. The last time the New York Times tried this they dove into the shallow end of the pool and nearly broke […]
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