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

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, [...]

It’s offical: Fev at “Headsup: The Blog” agrees with one of my previous admonitions.

The day after Thanksgiving is usually a slow news day but never fear, dear journalist, there is a HUGE cultural event that demands coverage! Time to throw everything you got at it! Luckily you had the forethought to build a database. Now make sure you’ve got a Twitter hashtag set. Then, on Friday, get some [...]

I missed this because my feedreader is purpetually at 1000+ unread items, but I would be remiss if I didn’t link to Mindy McAdams’s reponse to Dan Conover’s 10 reasons why newspapers won’t reinvent news. I was overly optimistic when I took issue with some of Mr. Conover’s assertions. Ms. McAdams is, of course right. [...]

On Xark, Dan Conover lists 10 reasons why he no longer believes newspapers will be significant players in the reinvention of news. It’s a pessimistic piece and I can’t say that I fully disagree with him. I think I’m just more hopeful (some might say naive). First are his reasons; my responses follow. 1. Newspapers’ [...]

So The Gazette is planning to live with the Associated Press. A difficult decision, I’m sure, but one I fully support. My suspicions were aroused when Steve Buttry tweeted about a meeting with the AP bureau chief and the regional vice-president. And this evening, Mr. Buttry moved this on the Twitter wire: My letter notifying [...]

More on this later, but this is a great example of operating in the so-called “link economy” by recognizing that more can be made from becoming a reliable source of information by linking to stories from others (even your competitors) than by producing your own duplicate version. First came this: Then came this: Yes, that [...]