So here’s how these things go. You write 85+ posts over the course of a handful of months. Some of them are are considered, thoughtful pieces, many with even a modicum of original reporting. Others are appreciative notes and links to discussions elsewhere.
A few are smartassed screeds, one of which takes apart some recent (I’ll still say it) idiocy by Paul Mulshine in the Wall Street Journal.
Guess which post got linked from Romenesko and unleashed what I like to call a robust discussion in the comments?
So, just a quick reminder. This isn’t a blog that takes any joy from the current condition of the U.S. newspaper business. I spent 12 years of my life inside it and would probably still be cheerfully toiling away on change from within had that buyout offer not been so timely and irresistible.
Here are some ideas I’ve floated over the past few months in these very pixels that might benefit from further discussion:
- A proposal for a network ad model
- A proposal for creating a “sales and deals” beat
- A proposal to rethink the local news product mix for a major metro
- A discussion of how my old organization made decent money creating local, long-form video
- Five simple, cheap ideas to increase engagement with local audiences for news organizations
- Four ideas to help fix the classified problem
- My soapbox: journalists need to become better curators of their beats
Bradley J. Fikes says
December 29, 2008 at 11:37 pmNo need to apologize. If journalists are going to find a new business model, we’ll need some humility to determine what we’ve been doing wrong and how to make it right. Progress won’t come through maudlin anecdotes about the dead past or whining about how journalists are not appreciated for their vital contributions to democracy. Non-journos aren’t swayed by such pitiful braggodocio.