The Future of News

I've finally had time today to read Merrill Brown's piece for Carnegie on the "future of the news business" that Rupert Murdoch and others have cited. (Perhaps you're going to the related gathering at Museum of TV and Radio tomorrow?).

A lot is stuff that's obvious and been around, but it's also a good, comprehensive amalgamation, and I think contains the important issues for every news executive to consider. I am, frankly, heartened by the pro-activeness of many of the quotes compared to a sort of "pooh-pooh" attitude I've seen in the past about the news consumption habits of young folks. Are we finally moving away from the "eat your spinach" mentality and considering that the consumer may deserve the news as s/he wants?

Been Away

Apologies for not posting more on this blog in the past month. My bad. I was, though, blogging last week for "the brilliant Rafat Ali's" PaidContent.org, on a paid subscription conference. I had thought the conference might be morose, but it was instead quite optimistic. People are making money again. I'll let my coverage on Rafat's site speak for my conclusions.

Blackberry Causes Clown Envy

Posted today's entries from the National Magazine Awards luncheon from my Blackberry, many while sitting at table with luminaries such as Robin Blackburn, who runs the awards from Columbia U. Her husband, a clown -- in the real, not metaphorical, sense for NY-based Big Apple Circus -- was suffering Blackberry envy. Also at the table was Internet luminary Omar Wasow, whom I first met while judging the General Excellence for Internet awards. He was, for fun, handicapping the awards as they were being announced.

Gen Excellence 500K-1 Million

It's Wired. Editor Chris Anderson thanks magazine magnate Sy Newhouse, ultimate boss of a lot of people in this room. Not Sy's first time getting thanked today.

And the Winners Are

General excellence, 250-500K, Martha Stewart Weddings. Guess who accepted with her editor? Who looked very good and was smiling a lot. "Nobody knew I would come," she said then thanked her staff and ASME. Couldn't see if she was wearing an ankle bracelet.

Schmoozing and Seating

At the National Magazine Awards luncheon reception at the plush and chandeliered Grand Ballroom area of the Waldorf Astoria. Biggest activity is schmoozing. A few folks standing off on tthe sides, like me playing with their Blackberries. The biggest parlor game is checking the 30-page photocopied seating chart we were all given to see who's sitting with whom -- terribly important, it would seem in the NY magazine publishing world.

Nice Video, Bad 404s

Was at the offices of a major tech journalism company in Manhattan. Met some very smart people who really know the ropes. In their reception area, they had a nice flat screen TV with an application that flipped through pages of their Web sites.

Very nice. Brilliant, even. Except that it, apparently randomized, would every 5-10 screens show a "page missing." That's probably not what you want to show off to visitors.

... But Why No blogs?

'Course, I didn't really blog the New Media World conference myself, just wrote an observation the day after, but if blogs are SUCH a phenomenon, was no-one blogging the conference? (Then , again, who has time?)

New Media World: 'Blogs are Good'

Back from New Media World conference, the digital component of America East, a newspaper trade show. The mantra was "link out / link in." Meaning, let a thousand blogs flourish, link to them, let everyone in your community write on your site, link to their sites, get them to link to you, so that your local newspaper site either a) rises naturally in search results and becomes the site that comes up when someone in a search engine types, say, "Hershey, Pa. shoes" or "Fredericksburg Wine" (keynote address of Lincoln Millstein of Hearst digital, though he didn't mention those places specifically) or b) the local portal for everything in the community (a major point of Andrew Langhoff of Ottaway Newspapers in his keynote a day later).

I do wonder, though, what the place then is for learned journalism and analysis or if there's a place for subscriptions -- either for an entire site or part of it.

The audience was made up mainly of executives and editors from small-to-medium size newspapers, many of whom are (still!) struggling with what to do on the Web. The other part of the mantra, from Millstein, Langhoff and the wrap-up address by Elizabeth Osder was that small papers, rather than fighting the Web, should "leverage" it. As the trusted local voice, they should be the first place people come to for anything local.