I believe and hope we’re on the right path in the organizational changes we’re making at Gazette Communications. We’re getting some positive attention in the industry:
- OJR asked me to write and just posted a piece on what we’re doing: “News businesses must think about content, not just products, to ensure survival.”
- BeatBlogging.org will be interviewing me sometime today.
- Martin Langeveld on the Nieman Journalism Lab calls us a “news startup to add to your watch list.”
- Caroline Huber of editorsweblog writes about our changes (heavily citing Langeveld).
- I did an interview yesterday with Greg Linch and Daniel Bachhuber of CoPress for a podcast they plan to post soon.
- I just sent off a piece about what we’re doing to OJR.org, requested by Robert Niles. (I’ll post a link when he posts it.)
- Chuck Peters’ presentation at the MediaXChange was well received.
- Michele McLellan‘s News Leadership 3.0 blog praised our plans.
- Tim McGuire‘s McGuire on Media blog had kind words for me personally and made a flattering comparison to Outliers.
- Chris O’Brien called Cedar Rapids one of the “most important places to watch on the U.S. media landscape” in the NextNewsroom blog.
- I fielded calls yesterday from colleagues in New York and Florida, interested in more details on what we’re doing.
- Ann Michael described separation of content from product as a “powerful concept” in her Scholarly Kitchen blog.
- This recent attention is in addition to deserved praise Jason Kristufek has received for his leadership of the BarCamp Innovation gatherings around the country and for the continued interest in the News Mixer project a Medill School of Journalism graduate class at Northwestern University developed for Gazette Communications.
- I might have forgotten some other links. The calls, tweets and links have been coming pretty fast and furious.
All of this means nothing but ego stroking and eventual embarrassment if we don’t deliver in the executing of our plans. But a lot of people whose insights about innovation and journalism I respect think we’re on the right track. I find that encouraging.
Do not become too alarmed but I begin to detect that there is a growing tendency for” twittering” among yourselfs and hitting delete to the masses,who ain’t got the slightest idea of what your talking about, when you do not speak our language.
Sorry but most of us spent our lives surviving and not picking up on the jargon.We do comunicate among ouselves however,( even without spellcheck)
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Who are you trying to please, your readers or your peers? How much revenue do you get from any of the people/organizations listed above? It seems that you are spending too much time blogging and tweeting (or talking about blogging and tweeting) and not enough time doing good journalism.
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Thanks for your comments, Dan and Hank. I will address them both:
I use my blog for a variety of purposes: My columns in The Gazette appear first in the blog, so the primary audience for those posts is our local community. I comment sometimes on community issues but frequently I explain issues or developments at Gazette Communications. I also comment frequently on developments in the media. Those posts are written primarily for my colleagues here and elsewhere, though anyone is welcome to read them. If you don’t care about Twitter or other issues relating to innovation in the media, I know you won’t find all my posts interesting. On those days, I encourage you to check out some other Gazette bloggers, who might be addressing topics that are more interesting to you. Journalists have always spent time sharing information and ideas with colleagues. With blogs, we are more transparent about that sharing. I hear from some readers who appreciate reading about what we’re doing, so I will continue doing so, with no apology to those who aren’t interested.
As for “hitting delete to the masses,” that’s an interesting passage to see in Dan’s comment, since I have published seven of his comments on my last five posts. The fact is, I have received 303 comments since starting this blog in January and have published 279. That’s 92 percent. I don’t apologize for deleting some. I don’t delete any comments strictly for being critical. Some make personal attacks (on me or others) and I am not going to tolerate personal attacks on my blog. Criticize me or the company on an issue and I will publish your remark. Some remarks I have not approved because they contained factual errors. Other remarks that I did not approve mentioned specific Gazette employees who had lost their jobs.
As for spellcheck, I don’t edit comment s on my blog. I publish them, warts and all, or I don’t. You be your own editor and spellchecker.
As for Hank’s question, I doubt that we get any revenue from the organizations or people listed above. But whether people advertise has never influenced whether or how much we write about them.
Final point: Blogging and tweeting are part of good journalism today.
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I miss the Thursday tech page. It seems ironic you would drop that feature as you move the emphasis to alternate resources. I found the tech page useful for work and home. I regularly read Pogue’s post at NYT, cnet.com and Wired. Even after combing through those resources I still found the Gazette tech page a useful tool.
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Thanks for the feedback, Robert. I am passing you comment along to Lyle Muller, the editor.
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Thanks >>Points excepted
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