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

Selling snowmen to Eskimos
Information Architects‘ “The Value of Information”
Information on the Internet is as common as snow in the arctic. You can’t expect Eskimos to buy a snowman.
Jay Rosen on Twitter
Journalist: hey, I made a snowman. Inuit: nice! Journalist: it took me all day. Inuit: what’s your point? Journalist: that’ll be five bucks.

The irony of Connie Schultz’s video diatribe against parasitic aggregators being embeddable shouldn’t be overlooked.

It this week’s Hoopla, Gazette Communication’s weekly for “young adults,” there is a short interview with Doug Roberson, longtime booker and bartender at Gabe’s and the Picador. After the interview, Mr. Roberson was laid off. This sucks.
But to make matters worse for Mr. Roberson, when the story appeared online, it ran with this editor’s note:
Shortly [...]

I complain about The Gazette in this space a lot, partially because it’s a good target as the largest media company in the Corridor Crandic, and partially because I want it to be a great organization. So, today, some kudos.
Todd Dorman is a guy who gets it. Three columns a week about stuff that matters [...]

Gazette Communications publicly announced its reorganization (which I’ve written about here and in the Corridor Business Journal) and laid off 13 employees. According to the media company, the restructuring will result in 100 fewer jobs.
The restructuring sees Steve Buttry move from editor of The Gazette and GazetteOnline to overseeing the entire news gathering operation and [...]

In Monday’s Corridor Business Journal is the first of what we plan to be a monthly media column that I will write with John Goodlove. In this installment, we wrote about the recent announcement that The Gazette is restructuring its newsroom, and the following staff uneasiness.
Mr. Goodlove is a grizzled newspaper veteran while I’m younger [...]

Today I’m reminded of a lesson I learned in a reporting 101 class:
People die.
People do not pass away. They do not meet Jesus. They do not cross over. They are not lost.
People die.

For the last six months, The Gazette has done an admirable job covering the 500-year flood that covered downtown Cedar Rapids in June and the city’s recovery since. Local stories by local writers about local people and local challenges. This week, the organization looked back at the changes the flood wrought, and put all of [...]

Earlier this week, Gannett slashed at least 1,900 jobs by one tally. The Des Moines Register and the Iowa City Press-Citizen are among the Iowa newspapers Gannett owns and both saw layoffs; 41 at the Register and 11 at the Press-Citizen.
Sure the economy is in bad shape, and newspapers have been shedding jobs everywhere, but [...]