White paper: Two days dedicated to Dodging the Memory Hole

This white paper summarizes the Dodging the Memory Hole 2016: Saving online news event, with overviews of the panels and presentations, and projects produced by groups at the conference as well as student scholarship recipients. On Oct. 13–14, 2016, University of Missouri Libraries, in collaboration with the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, UCLA Library and … Continued

How The Washington Post built a publishing platform accidentally on purpose

The Elizabethan dramaturge John Webster gave one of his characters these immortal words: “There’s nothing of so infinite vexation/As man’s own thoughts.” Of course, he was lucky enough to live nearly 400 years before the first content management system was invented. In early 2013, The Washington Post found itself in a particularly vexing situation: The … 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

Need for speed 2: Newspaper data diving, metrics and methodologies

Welcome to the weeds, fellow bit-twisters and data divers. We can chat here without worrying about the numeracy nonbelievers. This post details the methodologies used in “Need for speed 1: Newspaper load times give ‘slow news days’ new meaning.” First, you and I both know “load time” is a fickle metric, completely dependent on the … Continued

News companies as tech companies: Some venture capitalists say yes

For years, the drumbeat among venture capitalists has been that content is expensive and is not worth their investment. But we’ve seen a turnaround, and the question is, why now? The answer may simply be optimism. As Hamish McKenzie and Sarah Lacy wrote in Pando Daily of the return to content: Large funding rounds don’t … Continued