Canadians Miss Out On Doctor Who Season Finale -from Slashdot by timothy
-darthcamaro writes “Canadians were among the last people in the world to get the season 4 finale of Doctor Who which already aired in the UK and Australia. The Canadian public broadcaster — CBC — decided to cut out nearly 20 minutes from the episode, leaving fans wondering what was going on. Doctor Who isn’t the easiest show to follow at the best of times — but Canadians are now up in arms (or at least hockey sticks) over their taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s lack of respect for SciFi hosers.”

Looking For a New Journalism Business Model? Try Cable -from Poynter by Rick Edmonds
“There is still one media format, however, growing and making money hand over fist: cable television.”

Detroit Papers Set To Curtail Print -from WSJ.com
“end home delivery on all but the most lucrative days — Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On the other days, the company would sell single copies of abbreviated print editions at newsstands and direct readers to the papers’ expanded digital editions.”

Not Tonight Dear, I’d Rather Blog -from WSJ.com  “An online survey commissioned by Intel has found, among other things, that 46% of women would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up the Internet for that long. The numbers get bigger for certain age groups; 49% of women aged 18-34 would make that choice, and 52% of women aged 35-44.”

The Rumplo Holiday Tshirt Guide -from rumplo  where else can you get your kid a cmyk tshirt?

You’re Not Going To Win A Pulitzer Prize -from Seth’s Blog  “As newspapers melt all around us, faster and faster, the people in the newspaper business persist in believing that the important element of a news-paper is the paper part.”

Nicholas Carr is off writing his next book, Into The Shallows -from Rough Type

Weymouth: WaPo ‘must be the indispensible guide to Washington’ -from Politico.com  “focus our increasingly scarce resources on things that will make us indispensable to our customers, and thus create value for our business, while eliminating efforts that no longer make a difference to our readers.”

The New York Times Cash Crunch -from Gawker.com “Though apologist analyst were apparently out in force, and though the firm bragged about selling $1 million in Barack Obama knicknacks (whee!), there was no hiding the New York Times Company’s financial distress at a bank’s media conference in New York Tuesday.”

Poor Chicago -from BuzzMachine  Is Jeff Jarvis the real “grave dancer”?

The Newspaper Industry and The Future of Journalism -from AmericanUniversity Radio “A panel joins guest host Katty Kay to discuss how the on-going recession is affecting the already struggling industry and what it could mean for how Americans get their news.”

Tribune Company Files for Bankruptcy -from NYTimes.com  I got the alert for this yesterday via wsj.com  It was a paid only article.  2takeaways from the experience. 1. you want beaking news first?   Pay for it.  2. we may see a rapid division of upper and lower class as less fortunate people rely on free sources of news.

The Fundamental Problems of Newspapers on the Internet -Seeking Alpha  my article “The Krugman Paradox” got picked up on seeking alpha.

if gamers ran the world -from  Infovore via kottke “So what does a future run by gamers look like? Well, if they can handle complexity, and they’ve stocked up all the magic item chests ready for when scarcity hits” this is amazing

Twitscoop.com -”We could tell you how we combined cutting-edge financial markets mathematics with Ruby and Jabber magics but we won’t. We’d rather have you tell us what doesn’t work in our algorithm by sending us an email to feedback [at] twitscoop [dot] com – we know we still have a long way to go and are prepared to work on it.”

Tribune Co. Taps Lazard,Weighs Filing for Chapter 11 -from wsj.com -pure online players are suffering from The Krugman Paradox and Unbundling.

Survival is Competitive Differentiation -from Gigaom   .whether you own a pizza shop, or General Electric, these are probably ideas you have considered.  Read through the comments section.

Neighborhood Watch Puts Florida Home Sales on the Map -from MediaShift  .The article is about the st. Petersburg Times Django database for house hunting, but it raises other points about traditional media’s failings.  I love this example, “There are two crimes I care about: There’s the crazy dude with the machete who hacks his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend’s head off and mounts it to his car and waits for the police to show up; and my neighbor’s lawn mower getting stolen out of his garage.

One of those you’ll find in the pages of the newspaper, guaranteed, the other is the opposite: you’ll never, ever, in a million years read about my neighbor’s lawn mower getting stolen out of his garage in the pages of the St. Petersburg Times.”

Image Courtesy of forbiddendoughnut via Flickr

We can’t always work right? I headed into NYC to see Wintuk at the WaMu theater near madison square garden.  Nice venue, we get there and some older lady is in our seat.  She won’t move, the show is starting so they move us up to the 6th row!!! Awsome!  Thanks old lady!

The show starts slow, but when the puppeteers come out with the monsters and the HUGE birds, and dogs… Those were amazing.   At the very end we got snow (blue and white paper) blown at us from the cieling.  It was really cool.

To end the night we went over to the paker meridian hotel 118 W57 street to the burger joint.  If you don’t know about this place… you just found out.  The best burgers in new york city without a doubt.  Then a quick look at the tree in rockafella center, yep there it is, and then we went home.  I’m going to sleep now.

-robert

So Robots Can’t Do Everything After All -from Gigaom  “Well, well, well — maybe there’s a place for human beings in the new media landscape after all”  Human editor needed

The Death of the Middle -from The New Yorker

Times Extra -from NYT.com  a new linking tool on the front page.  will it work?  Who knows, but I like that it’s free, and cost little to attempt.

Everything you wanted to know about Google but were too afraid to ask -from Slideshares.net

Wikipedia gets $890,000 for the Luddites -from Cnet  If they make it more user friendly, I could totaly see wikipedia becoming the next big thing for newspapers to develop into “local focus” websites.

Why Twitter Didn’t Sell to Facebook — Really -from GigaOm

Who needs newsprint when we have the Internet? -from Inlandpress.org “The site is still focused on building audience, in the hope that it will be profitable in the future.”  I still cannot find an economically viable online newspaper that does journalism.  Help me.

StateStats is hours of fun. It tracks the popularity of Google searches per state and then correlates the results to a variety of metrics. -from Kottke.org

How Gannett Newspapers Got into This Fix -oberjuerge.com  profit figures leaked ahead of anticipated layoffs

Digg: Not for Sale -from businessweek.com  yet another wildly popular web business that is not yet cash flow positive.

Advertising is falling fast online and in print -NAA.org (click on the “quarterly” tab)

I am the future of journalism contest -from Publish2  The prize is a job!!!   Contest ends on December 30, 2008 at 12:00 pm ET.  wow, a job an’ everything!

Pownce to shut down after Six Apart sale -from Cnet.com  ”Additionally, we heard that the self-funded Pownce was trying to secure a round of venture capital. It looks like that didn’t work out. This is, after all, not a great time to be raising money.”

NYT sees success in Facebook push -from NiemanLab  Yeah, the NYTimes is doing extremely well online.  The problem is their print costs and family dividend are bankrupting the company.  It is rumored that Rupert Murdoch will buy the paper.  

Indy gets cosy with Daily Mail to cut costs -from FT.com UK newspaper news, “The Independent newspaper has taken the radical step of moving into the same office building as the Daily Mail, in a drive to cut costs.”

The iPhone and the Ensuing Wireless Broadband Boom -from GigaOm.com  WOW.  Look at slides #10 and #12.  The move to data away from voice is clearly apparant.

UPS Promotes Regifting On Web Site, Facebook -from MediaPost.com With PR like this, who needs newspaper advertising?  Uh Oh… Shhhhhhh

Citizen Journalists Provided Glimpses of Mumbai Attacks -from NYTimes.com  I’d say it was more than “glimpses”.  The coverage on twitter good.  Try #mumbai

India Security Faulted as Survivors Tell of Terror -from WSJ.com  In my opinion, the best newspaper article about the Mumbai attacks came from the Wall Street Journal

Building the data desk: lessons from the L.A. Times -from OJR.org   I’m going to turn this into an Interview, their work at the LA Times is amazing.

Newspapers’ bitter prospects for survival -from FT.com   “A former British newspaper owner, who asked not to be named, said: “The plain truth is that there is an oversupply of newspapers and an undersupply of advertising revenue.’But there is no lack of demand for information, for intelligent comment, for good journalistic writing. It is just a question of being innovative with regard to using the web and keeping your costs under as great control as possible.’”  Speaking about newspaper business in the United Kingdom.

Post-Recession: Big Rebound for Digital, Internet -from MediaPost.com  ”If history is a guide, digital out-of-home advertising will return to percentage growth rates in the high double digits…”

Detroit newspaper Daily Tribune says it will cut its print edition to four days a week from six -from Businessweek.com If their website http://www.dailytribune.com/ is any indication of how they are planning for the present and future economic sustainability of their enterprise, I fear for the viability of the business.  Get some original content up on that site ASAP mr. publisher.

Cumulus CEO: Radio In Death Spiral -from MediaPost.com  ”Everyone in the radio business knows the medium is headed for tougher times, but one of the starkest predictions comes from Cumulus Media President and CEO Lew Dickey Jr. He says that “half the companies in business today will be gone within 36 months.” ”

McDonald’s double cheese goes up to $1.19 -from Chicago Tribune  GREAT!  cpm rates are dropping 21% quarter over quarter and newspapers are too scared to charge for online access buy McDonald’s has no problem raising the price of its cheeseburger, why? “The move stems from soaring ingredient and commodity costs, which have reduced profits on the dollar menu.”

Man Walks On The Moon -from THE ONION remember when everyone was getting excited on November 5th when Obama was elected and The New York Times ran a headline with 96 point font for only the third time in its history?  Well, this blows that font out of the water.  Warning, Explicit Language on that link.  

How to start a Twitter event hashtag -from contentious.com Excellent summary and cited sources for starting hashtags for events.

Watch as Vladimir Nabokov reads the first paragraph of Lolita in English & Russian, shares his favorite books, and lists a bunch of things that he doesn’t like. -from Kottke.org

Guardian Launches Full RSS Feeds, First Media Company Not To Suppress RSS Adoption -from publishing2.com

This is not a post, but a website proving that not everything on the internet lives forever -”A compendium of what services and companies are no longer available for our Internet pleasure and use.” ItDied.com

Facebook targeted Web 2.0 start-up Twitter ”The negotiations, which put a valuation of as much as $500m on the 2½-year-old private company, could throw a fresh spotlight on its rapid growth and prompt other big internet companies to consider bids.” -from FT.com 

The ‘O’ in Obama   interesting interview with the designer of the “O” Obama logo.  -from NYTimes.com

Our Core Value Problem a discussion stemming from Pubmatic’s disclosure that cpm’s have fallen again. -from MediaPost.com

Newsrooms Can Grow Twitter Followers By Using Twitter For Link Journalism ”Newsrooms should make Twitter into a platform for link journalism. Local news orgs should set up Twitter feeds where they link to interesting non-local news (i.e. NOT AP!).” -from Publishing2.com

Google Seduces With Utility -from NYTimes.com David Carr  Excellent article highlighting how Google is getting into our daily lives and how we are using new media to run our lives.

The Newspapers: Rating The Top 25 Newspaper Websites -from 247wallstreet.com This is an older article from June 2008, but it has lots of newspaper website analytics and I love comparing past to present.  My favorite is that they declare what we’ve been suspecting on metaprinter.  That “The New York Times (Average daily circulation 1,007,256) (Compete online audience: 12,188,886) NYTimes.com is the single best daily newspaper site in the country. “  BUT THE PAPER IS LOSING MONEY!  This is a revenue model problem, not a readership problem.

Should Newspapers Become Online Ad Brokers? -from PBS Mediashift  I’m not convinced that this is the correct direction newspapers need to go in order to remain profitable.  I do think that newspapers need to dramaticaly simplify their advertising process, but to become a broker would shift the focus away from their core product which is generating and reporting news.

Rating agency’s outlook down on newspaper industry -from Axcess News  Moody’s outlook on the newspaper industry for 2009 is bleak.  The article cites the biggest problems as Cashflow from declining print ads and their resulting liquidity ratios which drive up debt costs.

Don’t Blame the Journalism  ”The economic and technological forces behind the collapse of newspapers” -from American Journalism Review

The state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago. -OVERVIEW from stateofthenewsmedia.org A very long read, but well worth it.

State of the American news media in 2008 NEWSPAPERS -from stateofthenewsmedia.org ”Newspapers are still far from dead, but the language of the obituary is creeping in. The industry has been in declining health for some time now. It got sicker rather than better in 2007, and 2008 offers no prospect of a quick cure.”

Nine Questions: How Will CNN Change the Wire Game? -from ContentBridges Interesting article on how CNN’s announcement to create a new Wire Service may affect the newspaper industry.  This is in advance of the CNN Newspaper Summit in Atlanta on Dec. 1

The 7 Greatest Stories in the History of Esquire Magazine… in Full -from Esquire People love lists and ranking.  Newspapers need to do more stuff like this to increase reader engagement.  What’s the greatest Washington Post article ever written?  I’m sure there are many, but I can’t know that.  Memo to newspapers: create lists.

HuffPo Raises $15 Million Third Round From Oak Investment Partners; $100 Million Valuation Ballpark -from PaidContent.org  ”The Huffington Post has raised another $15 million in funding, according to the Times UK, as it continues on a high growth trajectory, which also means a high cash burn….to be fair, the site’s traffic went through the roof and sky during the election season, and it has been investing a lot in expansion.”  Newspaper owners take note.  This is a successful link site that spins your content.

Mainstream News Outlets Start Linking to Other Sites -from NYTimes learn more about what the Huffington Post is doing.

Now see how a newspaper site, readingeagle.com is getting in on the link game. ”Sure, we love readingeagle.com, but we like to see the world beyond Berks, too. Here are some web sites or articles of interest to Reading Eagle newsroom staff. Check them out!”

“With the swift pace of change in the media landscape, it’s easy to overlook how far college news media has come in a short time. There has been some great innovation in college media, even as some lag behind.” -from MediaShift

“Why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web” -from 37signals.com The author makes a pretty good case for why this one page site is damn good. Branding, Revenue, Usability, its all in there.

Printable High Resolution Poster of Barack Obama November 5th newspaper mosaic. Very Cool and Free. -obamanewsmosaic.com

“The market and the internet don’t care if you make money” Tribes author Seth Godin discusses free content and the publishing industry -from 26thstory.com

“Common Trends of Newspaper Websites” -from SmashingMagazine

“A 30-year study of television habits published in the December issue of scientific journal Social Indicators Research suggests that unhappy people watch considerably more TV, vote less, read fewer newspapers and are generally less socially active than happier people.” -STL Today

“Ziff Davis To Close Print PCMag, Focus On Online; Still Looking For Options For Gaming Division” -from PaidContent.org

“Adobe Max 2008, Michael Zimbalist, vice-president, research and development operations at the New York Times Company demoed an advanced news reader application that properly renders articles and media content as they were intended, regardless of what size of display or what platform the user is on.” -from itbusiness.ca

“Pacific Northwest regional news Web site Crosscut.com, founded by David Brewster, likely will morph into a nonprofit, as online advertising revenue has fallen short of projections.” -The Seattle Times

“Google has just added image archives from LIFE Magazine, the storied American photo journal, to its image search. Google Images has launched a special page for the collection, allowing you to browse photos by specific topic like Marilyn Monroe or Winter Olympics. You can also now append “source:life” to any Google Images search to see photos from the magazine.” -Mashable

“Economic crisis a boon for “FT’ U.K.-based newspaper’s push in U.S. pays off as readers seek global perspective” -BtoB Online

“Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American Flag Cake” and other moments of genius in an interview with the The Onion assistant editor Megan Ganz and feature editor Joe Garden. -The Washington Post

News Websites: More bucks for the click -Monday Note’s Frédéric Filloux shares some great thoughts on newspaper website page one links, page view numbers, and why the ratio needs to be better managed.

CEO of News Media Corp. sees prosperous future – Inland Press Q&A with Rochelle, Ill.-based News Media Corporation, owner and founder John Tompkins. “The publisher at all our papers is the ad director and handles accounts and leads the sale staff. They meet twice a day, once to set goals and a second time to see how well they did. There’s much more accountability against goals…”

CEO Summit on Saving an Industry in Crisis -I requested a pass to attend and was denied, because I was not a newspaper CEO.  Ok, so what great ideas did the CEO come up with at this summit?  “Don’t sit and cower and weep about your problems. Inspire.”  wow.

Can Crowdfunding Help Save The Journalism Business? -Great in depth article

GigaTweet has recorded the Billionth Tweet and counting click watch the running tally in real time.

Online Piracy Costing Publishers Millions, Study Says -Forbes.com article

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A ‘Good’ Video -”the only requirement for our winning video is that it be somewhat watchable or provide even a shred of enjoyement for people other than those who made the video”.

The news coming from Condé Nast gets bleaker. – from TheBigMoney.com “You live and die by the quality of the content you create,” says Jellinek. “If you’re just a magazine clone, you’re never going to attract an audience. The failure of [Condé Nast's] Web sites is a failure of vision and ability to translate the DNA of their titles into an online environment.”

Is Jeff Jarvis gloating too much about the death of print? -Slate.com journalist Ron Rosenbaum slaps the smile off Jeff Jarvis’s face.

Jeff Jarvis Slate rebuttal -”I am the honoree of an attempted hatchet job by Ron Rosenbaum in – what’s the name of that site? Salon? no, Slate (I always get them confused).”

1.2million Fake NY Times Distributed -”City residents awakened yesterday to a phony issue of The New York Times with the banner headline Iraq War Ends”

Online Tool Makes It Easy for Small Advertisers to Advertise in the Orange County Register’s Publications -”It’s a user-friendly and affordable way to place ads in a matter of minutes, and offers a practical solution for businesses that do not have time to consult with a sales representative.”

Online Subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal’s Web Site Raise About US$100 Million

Fairfax Media Reports Being Well Positioned for the Challenges Ahead, No Further Cuts Likely -”The chief executive of rival News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, this month warned that media groups around the world faced a difficult period…”

Management of the Associated Press and Its Newspaper Owners Not Necessarily Seeing Eye-to-Eye on the News Service’s Role

Interesting note about the size NYT put Obama in thier headlines. -kottke.org

Kinsey Wilson, on what the Internet means to public radio and its affiliate network. -forbes.com