* The changing newsroom: from the Pew Research Centre. It provides a good statistic look at how much things have changed in the US newspaper industry over the past few years.
--eg. that larger papers are much more greater affected by cutbacks than smaller papers, cuts especially in coverage of international news (no surprise there).
--Something one of the editors said that's quoted in the paper is worth mentioning here:
"I hated to make that cut," the editor said. "I read all these things about how
cutting film critics is a good choice because you can get film criticism from other places, but those are the same arguments you hear about foreign coverage, national coverage or state government coverage. Eventually, you wake up one day and find there is no somewhere else because everyone has done the same thing you’ve done. It’s very troubling."
--Another point that's interesting is that readers don't care too much about the loss of international coverage, or of the science writer, though they are unhappy when their crossword puzzle is cut. Wonder if that will embolden the "toe-cutters".
--I also found this quite interesting: that the cutbacks mean shorter news stories, but that investment continues in investigative journalism. eg. "shorter news stories and richer enterprise".
--And where are the cuts coming from? Here's the bar chart stats:
It seems the cuts are resulting in the loss of the more expensive but also the most experienced and talented journalists. One editor says: "I read the stories (in my own paper) today and I see more holes, questions I want answered that are not," lamented the editor of a large metropolitan newspaper. "I see more stories … that aren’t as well sourced as I’d prefer."
Here's the intro to the research paper:
Meet the American daily newspaper of 2008.
It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and the stories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less space devoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects. Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper. The crossword puzzle has shrunk, the TV listings and stock tables may have disappeared, but coverage of some local issues has strengthened and investigative reporting remains highly valued.
The newsroom staff producing the paper is also smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web. The staff also is under greater pressure, has less institutional memory, less knowledge of the community, of how to gather news and the history of individual beats. There are fewer editors to catch mistakes.
Despite an image of decline, more people today in more places read the content produced in the newsrooms of American daily newspapers than at any time in years. But revenues are tumbling. The editors expect the financial picture only to worsen, and they have little confidence that they know what their papers will look like in five years.
This description is a composite. It is based on face-to-face interviews conducted at newspapers across the country and the results of a detailed survey of senior newsroom executives. In total, more than 250 newspapers participated. It is, we believe, the most systematic effort yet to examine the changing nature of the resources in American newspaper newsrooms at a critical time. It is an attempt to document and quantify cutbacks and innovations that have generally been known only anecdotally. MORE
* Comment piece from The Economist on the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Speaking truth to power. Where are today's intellectual dissident writers?
* An e-reader for newspapers like The Guardian by 2015? And rolled-up too ...
* Five steps to fostering innovation in the newsroom. Not sure how new these ideas are, to be honest, but I guess it's important to keep hammering on these points.
* The wire agency the Associated Press's study on consumption behaviours of young adults, across the United States and the world. Some conclusions were that there was
--more reading of news "above the fold"
--email is very closely linked to news
--constant news checking because of ... boredom!
--way in which people consume news, laptop, TV, all at the same time
--readers WANT depth, especially during breaking news
--consuming news while doing something else, eg. driving
--news fatigue, could explain why Daily Show with Jon Stewart-type shows do well
--people love resolutions to stories (that's why they likes sports and ent)
--packaging is one of the solutions
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