From the category archives:

Citizen Journalism

Oh New York Times, I know you’re having trouble making ends meet. I know it’s hard to keep up with the costs of dead trees and top notch journalists, but bringing back the pay wall in 2011? Are you kidding? You just want to cut off your links to spite your paper don’t you? Like Mashable said…
The company says that more details about the metered model will be revealed over the next few months. But let’s quickly look at what it almost certainly won’t do: attract links. Anyone who links [...]

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I don’t buy terribly many books anymore, or magazines, and certainly not newspapers. A bit of an ironic statement from someone who’s first book comes out in January, but I don’t equate publishing with paper. I assume that my books will have more life in digital editions than in paper ones. I’ve been writing in the digital medium far more than I ever have (or will) in works published on paper.
While it isn’t Earth-shattering news that newspapers, at least in print, are dying off. Local newspapers, the hyper local kind [...]

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Journalists seem to always be taking it on the chin. If it isn’t that their craft is dying (which I don’t think is true) or their publications are failing (okay that one is true), now it’s that in order to be agile journalists, keep employed, and be relevant they need to be programers too? Wow, harsh.

As the news industry looks to reconstruct its suffering business model, the journalists of today must reconstruct their skill sets for the growing world of online media. Because of cutbacks at many news organizations, the [...]

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Way, way back in 2005 I started live blogging at conferences. Blog Business Summit was the first a) blogging related conference I attended and b) the first conference I live blogged. From that point on I got to be pretty well known as a live blogger. It even got me into conferences and my travel expenses paid so I could live blog and cover a conference for companies. I think, in fact, I got pretty damn good at live blogging. I had my own style as well, a mix of [...]

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We often talk about the old guard media outlets having trouble adapting to “new media”, I think we pushed old media into such a corner that they either just crawled into the walls or came out swinging. MSNBC seems to be doing the later with the news that MSNBC scooped up the Breaking News Twitter account.
Breaking News has done a superior job at reporting news since it started, what only a year or two ago? Earlier this year they announced plans for paid/premium offerings and from the BBC article, it [...]

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I’m not sure if Rupert Murdoch is a brilliant business mind, just doesn’t get the Internet, or just plain nuts. Maybe buying MySpace was a good idea when News Corp bought it, but it certainly isn’t holding much value now. Now with his massive newspaper holdings also having trouble, if his papers are following all the other papers, he wants to remove his papers from the current market leader in search engines:

Yes, really. Rupert Murdoch’s crusade to blame Google for the failing newspaper business model continues today, as it emerges [...]

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If there is one city that, IMHO, has lead the charge of citizen journalism-media-coverage it’s Vancouver. Between Raincity Studios and NowPublic we have either supported or provided coverage of the Olympics that cannot be beat.
Yesterday Dave Olson and Raincity threw down the gauntlet at VANOC to allow them and other independent and unaccredited journalists to be allowed to attend media events.
The philosophy behind this desire to be included stems from their experience covering the last several games and providing alternative points of view on the games and the cultures of [...]

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Fresh on the heels of what could be argued as the first President that social media elected came a social media gaff in Vancouver’s mayoral race.
The story broke in the Vancouver Sun and was tweeted and blogged by many local digerati including Colleen of BuzzNetworker:
The lessons to take out of this? Register your name and your company name in all of the social marketing sites right away. Not owning your own name could come with serious consequences. And, if you’re trying to get people to choose you over another option, [...]

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Image by cfarivar via Flickr

As conservative as Canadian business have been jumping onto the Web 2.0-Social Media bandwagon, the Globe & Mail newspaper has been ahead of the curve. Yes, they kept a walled garden up for a while, but Mathew Ingram has been blogging there for years now and maintaining his own personal blog as well.
Today Mathew announced that the Globe & Mail is taking another bold step: building communities around the newspaper online. What does this mean when the rubber hits the road? No one, even Mathew, is [...]

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Thanks to a little late night tweeting and e-mailing I have a media pass to today’s Vancouver Board of Trade event and will be there with camera and laptop in hand (or on back):
As part of the Vancouver Board of Trade’s Tough Talk for Tender Causes™ series, the Case for New Communication Tools panel includes: Michael Allison, Communications Co-ordinator, Pace Group Stephen P. Jagger, Founding Partner, Reachd.com John Starkey, President, FCV Technologies
Moderator: Colleen Coplick, [...]

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I had a great time today at Media Democracy Day. I didn’t get there until after lunch time, but I managed to catch a couple panels and live tweeted them.
First was:
Journalism in a time of Big Media Domination
In much of the traditional media, newsrooms are being squeezed, local coverage diminished, and serious journalism abandoned. What does this mean for journalists and journalism as a whole? What are the challenges and opportunities? Could this void be filled by independent reporters and innovative journalism projects? In a media system dominated by [...]

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