AP should serve industry interests by shifting from content focus to business solutions

For all of my career and far beyond, the Associated Press has existed to serve the interests of the newspaper industry. For most of that time, AP has served our interests well. When our readers needed us to provide national and world news, stock tables and coverage of sports beyond our own markets, AP developed a [...]

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A breaking news story in Boston covered by Twitter

A tweet from @NiemanLab just called my attention to a Universal Hub blog post about a man hit by a trolley. As @NiemanLab noted, this was a breaking news report based solely on Twitter. From the report, I can read and link to eyewitness reports from Mark Epstein (@epstemar), who identifies himself as a student [...]

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Let’s focus on innovation, not protection

One of the first lessons I learned in chess was that the best defense is a good offense. In team sports, a defense can keep the other team from scoring and win a championship. But chess has two points: you try to keep your king alive and you try to capture the opponent’s king. The [...]

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A new approach to advertising at AnnArbor.com

One of my favorites in my collection historic newspapers is the one that tells of the death of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Jan. 23, 1973. It’s not that I celebrated LBJ’s demise, but I’m interested that the tragedy obscured the most significant news of the previous day: the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion and [...]

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Newspapers demand: “Gimme another ball”

I hesitate to write again about newspapers’ insistence on finding a way to make paid content work online. I’ve written that we can’t cling to the past, that we never made our money by charging for content, that we already know paid content doesn’t work and that people will find other news sources if we [...]

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A tough month of cancer news

Thanks to all who have prayed and expressed concern and support for my nephew Patrick, whose battle against leukemia I wrote about in February and again in March after his bone-marrow transplant. I wish I had an encouraging update, but tests this week confirmed that Patrick’s leukemia has relapsed. He and his parents are considering a range [...]

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Can we recapture Apollo 11′s sense of purpose?

I thought I would have more to say on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. Hanging on my office wall is a frame made for me by my son Joe to display newspapers from my collection of historic front pages. As I displayed the front page from the July 21, 1969 Columbus [...]

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Chuck Peters answers comments about my status

Chuck Peters responded this morning to a couple of comments on his blog, stating that I had been “marginalized” or “relegated to a lower-level room running out the clock on his contract.” I have already described my current role at Gazette Communications. I welcome people to state their opinions, either on my blog, on Chuck’s [...]

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Buttry’s Big Idea: Change the relationships

Here is the one-page summary of C3 that I gave colleagues at the Poynter/McCormick Big Ideas Conference today. The central point of my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection is that media companies need to change our relationships. We need new relationships with our communities and with businesses. Here’s how I explain it in the [...]

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Follow the Big Ideas Conference at Poynter

I’m at the Poynter Institute through Wednesday for the Big Ideas Conference. I’m one of 29 people in the media sharing innovative ideas. You can follow on the liveblog (I’m one of the livebloggers this afternoon and Wednesday afternoon) or on Twitter, with the hashtag #BigIdeas.

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Chaplain Frank Arnold’s war diary continued: “Visited Nazi extermination camp”

This is the World War II diary of Army Chaplain Frank M. Arnold II, my uncle. I have published four earlier sets of excerpts. Uncle Frank used ellipses a lot. I am not using every entry here, but if I use an entry, I use it all. The ellipses are just his writing, possibly indicating [...]

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Mississippi Gulf Coast recovering slowly

Here is a draft of a story I wrote for this Sunday’s Gazette, based on some reporting I did when I was in Biloxi last month and some follow-up reporting by telephone after returning to Cedar Rapids. For more on the recovery on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, check the coverage in the Sun Herald. Biloxi, Miss. – [...]

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