Reporting into structure: How journalists, crowds and robots can work together

In previous posts, I’ve written about structured journalism’s potential to improve newsroom economics by rebundling news as networks of structured information, and to provide new value to consumers by giving them more control over the news they consume. But what does structured journalism do for journalists? Will structure merely contribute to the tech-driven weakening of … Continued

WordPress moves news past the printed newspaper

Local newspaper sites have long broken all the rules for building a sticky site. Most still load painfully slowly. They are difficult to navigate and — let’s be honest — often ugly.—Matthew Hindman, Shorenstein Center For centuries newspaper design has stayed about the same. In 1880 printers introduced halftone photographs and in the 1980s the … Continued

The Apple News app is not living up to its hype

The Apple News app launched with much hype on September 15. I’ll always remember that date because the app’s launch was a major determinant for me to pivot Reportory, my news customization platform, from a consumer-facing service to a license play for publishers. The Apple News app hadn’t launched when I first profiled 15 other … Continued

Undergoing the great entrepreneurial pivot

Many entrepreneurs find themselves pivoting at some point during their entrepreneurial journey. Even some of the leading tech companies today pivoted in their early days: Instagram initially was a check-in service called Burbn; Facebook was FaceMash, asking users to rate which person was hotter; and YouTube was a video dating site. Whether pivoting sales strategy, … Continued

Models for preserving news archives that long served the industry leave digital content in peril

Edward McCain, digital curator of journalism at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, spoke about the growing loss of born-digital content at Dodging the Memory Hole: Beyond NDNP, a meeting of concerned archivists, journalists and other stakeholders held on Sept. 16 in Washington, D.C. Below are his remarks. How many of you read George Orwell’s novel … Continued

McCainspeakwrite plusgood, or How I came up with the name ‘Dodging the Memory Hole’

We started digging our current Memory Hole a few decades ago: Technological systems that support the creation and presentation of modern journalism, those digital troves holding “the first rough draft of history,” morphed so quickly and frequently over the years that we no longer know where the treasure is buried. Like drunken buccaneers, journalistic enterprises … Continued