Finding a niche: do papers need to focus better on what they do well? September 27, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentJim Brady, web consultant to Guardian America: “You take most newspapers in the U.S., there are a couple things they’re really, really good at, better at probably than anybody else. And then there are a long list of things they’re just no better at—especially if you look at soft sections […]
I don’t think that producing a paper that’s great at 30 percent of the subjects it covers and OK at the other 70 percent really has much of a future on the Web, because it’s just too hard to compete. We’re in this social media world now where if I’m on Twitter or I’m on Facebook and someone sends me an article, three pieces of information come with that: what friend of mine sent me the article, what the headline says, and who produced the article. And I would argue that who produced the article is by far the least important of the three.”
The next big thing is not the semantic web – it's sensors and robots — edublogs October 17, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentEwan McIntosh on one prediction by Paul Saffo, who says we need to look two times the distance back to forecast the future:
"The next big thing is not the semantic web – it's sensors and robots
1950s TV – Broadcast
1980s Time-sharing – Email
1990s Cient sharing – WWW
2000 P2P – Napster
2010 Sensors – Smartifacts
[…]
The indicators are already in place, though I think we're probably missing it for the immediate ideas and opportunity that the web is offering in 2008.
We're moving from TV to the web, from the living room to everywhere, from watching and consuming to participating and creating, from few and large organisations to many and small individuals. […]
One forecast is looking a dead cert: the future's looking like one heck of a ride."
Time for journalism academics to get real (Tim Luckhurst) | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk September 30, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMight reflect lack of funding for such debates/research; low level of cross-over between business and journalism within universities; and the focus primarily on teaching journalism and, for most research, on other aspects of journalism more likely to attract funding (for research). Perhaps Luckhurst will be asking Kent Messenger group to fund it…
"There is a real opportunity here for journalism academics to step beyond the stale and abstract and engage with harsh reality. Can we stimulate a plausible, productive debate about the media economics of the internet era? Can we devise a model in which good reporters can be employed and good journalism can thrive? It would be the best possible response to those who doubt whether journalism has a place in universities."