Nick Bergus Thoughts on what media do, and can do better, and other things

So I installed Le Petite URL, which generates a shortened URL for posting on my own domain, and registered nberg.us (it isn’t immediately functional but by the time you read this it should be). I just wanted to run a test.

Priests, or going down with the Titanic
Jeff Jarvis, paraphrasing Howard Owens in The real sin: Not running businesses
Like priests looking for someone to sacrifice, Alan Mutter, Steve Buttry, Howard Owens, and Steve Yelvington have been on the lookout for the sin that led newspapers astray. For Mutter, it’s not charging; for Buttry, it’s not innovating; [...]

The Adult Entertainment Industry
Jessica Pressler’s What the Newspaper Industry Can Learn from the Adult Entertainment Industry
A recent story in the L.A. Times takes a look at the struggling porn industry, which, like the newspaper industry, has been deeply affected by both the downturn and the changing technological landscape. DVD sales of porn have ground [...]

A Hospice
Bill Keller, quoted in Matthew Flamm’s Pay up or the newspaper gets it
It’s kind of like being a motivational speaker in a hospice. But I do think that newspapers are going to weather this time and come out of it healthy.

A Married Couple
Jay Rosen, on Twitter
Maybe AP and its members are like a married couple afraid to call it quits. So the tension comes out at scrapers, linkers and freeloaders.

1996 Honda
Jim Barnett’s Why NYT Co. might not be as quick to sell the Globe as you might think at Nieman Journalism Lab
The Globe does cost a lot more than my Honda to operate. But the really big bucks — the $1.1 billion purchase price — is money long since spent. Just like the cost [...]