Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

I heard a few months back about a pretty forward thinking project by the Journal Register newspaper company in the U.S. called the Ben Franklin Project.

The papers would publish their print editions and websites using nothing but free tools and crowdsourced journalism.

From their site:

The Journal Register Company’s Ben Franklin Project is an opportunity to re-imagine the newsgathering process with the focus on Digital First and Print Last. Using only free tools found on the Internet, the project will – from assigning to editing- create, publish and distribute news content on both the web and in print.

Traditionally the model has been for the reporter/editor to determine what should be covered and how it should be covered. That story would then weave its way through the journalistic process – reporters gathering facts from the usual stable of sources and the editors guiding the efforts – before ending on the printed page. From there the vast majority of newspapers have then pushed those stories onto the web. They are literally going from a slow medium to fast. And that’s just backwards both in timing and audience desires.

The project involved some 18 publications and wrapped up over the July 4th weekend. The projects appear to be a success and there are definitely a lot of very exciting lessons here for adventurous publications. I’ve listed some of them below, but there’s lots to mine here from the BFP’s blog. Continue reading…

Most Canadians won’t see it until later this week, but this week’s New Yorker, which hit U.S. newsstands on Monday, has got a lot of Canadian content advertising.

From the New York Times:

The issue, which is coming out on Monday, has a cover date of June 28. Inside, every ad page other than a house ad has been sold to Canadians: more than a dozen government units, tourism organizations, financial firms and educational institutions.

Continue reading…

Kickstarter isn’t anything new but it’s worth a second look because of what it could mean for an ambitious journalist or artist.

The Kickstarter concept combines aspects of the long-tail, crowdsourcing, e-fundraising and micropayments. An artist writes up a pitch and the amount of cash they’ll need to complete it. They then solicit funds for the project. No money changes hands until the target amount is met. Kickstarter takes 5% of the funds to cover their costs.

From their FAQ:

Kickstarter is focused on creative ideas and ambitious endeavors. We’re a great way for artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, athletes, adventurers, illustrators, explorers, curators, promoters, performers, and others to bring their projects, events, and dreams to life.

Continue reading…

There was a time in media when professional journalists hated bloggers. They hated their guts and thought they were little more than badly-adjusted, shut-ins who sat around at home and wrote ill-informed (sometimes patently wrong) rants. I thought that time was behind us. Obviously, I was wrong.

Michael Cooke, editor-in-chief, of the Toronto Star accepted an award recently at the Canadian Journalism Foundation and trumpeted the investigative work done by his journalists. Cooke also took the time to slam bloggers and citizen journalism.

“Is journalism one hundred unpaid bloggers all talking and yattering at once, or a city filled with amateur citizen journalists uncoordinated in all their efforts? Those bloggers and citizen reporters are as close to real reporters as karaoke is to Frank Sinatra live and in person.”

He quickly followed that up with a conciliatory comment about how there’s room for both “serious” investigative journalism and yattering bloggers. It was like splashing cold water in someone’s face and then following it up with a handshake and an introduction. You’re not going to get a warm reception.

Cooke isn’t just wrong about this, he’s plain insulting. I wonder how the citizen bloggers who contribute to the Star’s Your City, My City blog feel about Cooke’s remarks? Or what about the bloggers who have their uncoordinated work rewritten by Star staffers feel about this?

Sure, many, many bloggers aren’t worth a second glance but a few show the tenacity, smarts and journalistic moxie that any editor or professional journalist would find enviable.

It’s also patently unfair to compare a Toronto Star journalist, with the resources of Canada’s largest paper behind them, and a nice salary to allow them to work full-time, to a blogger, who more often than not is doing this for exposure, for fun or just for the sheer passion of it. They often have few resources to work with, little or no training and most certainly don’t have the luxury of pursuing their work full-time. It would be like an NBA star badmouthing the guys who play 3-on-3 at their local gym. It’s in bad form.

The journalism ecosystem has changed and bloggers are a legitimate and crucial part of it. A better thing to do would be to figure out how to interact with bloggers and citizen journalists. What Cooke and other recalcitrant traditional journalists should do is try to figure out why, despite the scant rewards and obstacles, so many do take that microphone in their hands and try to do their best Frank Sinatra.

Just in case it wasn’t dead obvious that journalism is transforming before our very eyes, Poynter Online has made it perfectly clear with this graphic that looks like 200 moments from 2000-2009 that transformed the industry.

Poynter’s Bill Mitchell talks about the decade that inspired the graphic:

Funny thing about the transformation of media: there’s often no way to tell, in the moment, whether any given development signals a passing fancy, a seed of destruction or a glimpse of tomorrow.

Thus were most of us puzzled, at the time, by the introduction of the CueCat, the acquisition of Times Mirror and the founding of Facebook.

But there’s nothing like a little hindsight to provide some context.

A little perspective, in 2000 U.S. newspapers saw a peak in advertising ($49-billion) but right around the corner was one of the things that would soon level this lucrative market, Google’s adwords. Friendster, founded in 2002 and one of the early harbingers of social media, is now a punchline.

Check out the graphic, or click on the image below:

If you’re interested in the future of print journalism then James Fallows’ lengthy Atlantic feature about how Google is helping save newspapers is a must-read.

A few things I learned from the piece:

1. Stop blaming Google for your woes newspapers

Blaming big bad Google for “stealing” all that content is a popular past-time for certain news executives. It’s just plain wrong. Google News lifts abstracts from pieces and doesn’t slice, dice and repackage news like other outlets. Also, you can easily stop Google from indexing your sites. Why wouldn’t you do this? The traffic that Google brings to your site is simply too valuable. Continue reading…

The title of this photo says almost as much as the photo itself, “Soldier’s goodbye & Bobbie the cat.”

Hugh McGuire of Book Oven posted this on Twitter a few days ago and I finally got around to writing about it:

The distinction between “the internet” & “books” is totally totally arbitrary, and will disappear in 5 years. Start adjusting now.

A few of my friends, literary types that they are, totally disagreed. I want to parse this statement a bit because I do agree with it, to a point.

With the success of the Kindle and the iPad, ebooks look like they’re here to stay. Their continued existence doesn’t threaten the existence of the book so much as it is forces us to return to a very basic interpretation of the book.

A book is a physical object, it’s something bound and limited by the covers. It has boundaries and limits. The ebook tries to keep some of these trappings but really they’re fictions. Ebooks need covers and binding the same way that that album you downloaded from iTunes needs liner notes. What you’re getting when you download the ebook version of Moby Dick isn’t Moby Dick the book, it’s Moby Dick the text.

If we’re thinking just about texts then the internet is going to decimate the bookstore and publishing. Heck, it gutted the music industry and has film and TV execs seeing pirates and thieves around every corner, and these are products that are more complex from a bits and bytes perspective. Plain, simple, old words just don’t have a chance.

I think this is what Hugh is getting at with his statement. Of course, it’s easy to see why people get angry about this. People don’t just like books, they love them. I love them too.

Where Hugh and I diverge is that I actually see a very real future for the book. It’s going to come from embracing the physicality of books. Great paper stock, beautiful design, a certain playfulness with the reading experience, all of these are hard, if not impossible, to replicate with your ereaders.

What does this mean for publishers? Don’t skimp on design. Make your books desirable objects. For retailers? Make your stores nicer. I don’t go to your store to get the cheapest price. You’re always going to lose to online retailers on that front. Go boutique. Go niche. Make yourself a real world place that people want to visit. For the reader? Start paying attention to how your book is designed. Admire a nice cover. Appreciate the typography. And, this one can’t be underemphasized, keep buying books.

In five years, more and more ‘books’ might be read online and on ereaders. But you’ll still be buying books, real, solid books printed on paper. They’ll just look a whole lot nicer. Start adjusting now.

Photo from Flickr Commons.

Thanks to pal and author Brian Joseph Davis and Eye Weekly I got my hands on Yann Martel’s much anticipated follow-up to Life of Pi, Beatrice and Virgil, a few weeks early. I even got to chat about it a bit in Eye’s Pop Fiction Book Club. Part one, part two.

And because that’s not enough reading, a gang of us are tackling Colum McCann’s gorgeous novel Let the Great World Spin over at the Afterword Reading Society.