‘A Death Notice for Obituaries?’ Or an opportunity for entrepreneurs?

If you ever lost a friend who wasn’t fully appreciated, read Jim Naughton’s A Death Notice for Obituaries? Or read it if you’ve ever read an obituary for someone you didn’t know, but after reading the obit wished you had (like I wish I had known Tom O’Meara). Or read it if you ever were touched by a well-crafted obituary of someone you knew.

Obituaries are important news stories. As Jim Sheeler, author of Obit, tweeted of Naughton’s piece:

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‘Good enough’ and ‘value-added’ work together in entrepreneurial journalism

Howard Owens gives a great explanation of what makes his journalism venture successful. But he mistakenly extrapolates to some rules about what other entrepreneurs should not do.

I recommend reading Howard’s post Forget “value-added journalism” — Think, disruptive innovation and Kevin Anderson’s post Journalism: What added value will add revenue? Howard was responding to Kevin, so I suggest reading Kevin first, then Howard, then coming back and finishing this.

Howard understands correctly that his venture, The Batavian, is succeeding with a simple formula of providing lots and lots of community news. He isn’t “adding value” with many feature stories or investigative journalism that would take considerable time. Instead, he says, he is following Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation formula by providing just “good enough” quality, but lots of it.

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Entrepreneurial journalists need to master social media

Our entrepreneurial journalism class at Georgetown will be discussing social media the next two weeks. Of course, you could do a whole course on social media, which offer some of the most important tools an entrepreneurial journalist will use, so this will be an overview more than a deep dive.

Social media can be part of the solution for all three of the key challenges an entrepreneurial journalist faces: content, distribution and monetization.

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Resources for fighting the local battle

Today I’m a discussion leader for the American Press Institute’s Digital Delivery seminar. The morning program I’m involved in is The Battle for Local: Crowded, Competitive, Hyperlocal. I’ll be mentioning several resources for the seminar participants, and I’ll share them here.

Of course, I’ll be discussing TBD at some length.

Of course, I will be talking about the Complete Community Connection.

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Journalists’ Code of Ethics: Time for an update?

Update: The SPJ Code of Ethics was updated in 2014, incorporating some suggestions made here.

During a Twitter chat Thursday about journalism ethics in social media, I tweeted that the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics could stand an update.

Scott Leadingham, editor of the SPJ magazine The Quill, responded that SPJ’s Ethics Committee is always open to suggestions. Scott asked what I would update. This is my answer.

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Jim Brady is leaving TBD

I just posted on TBD: Jim Brady leaves TBD.

He’s a great friend, journalist and innovator. Sorry to see him go.

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Craig Silverman’s accuracy podcast and slides

Thanks to Craig Silverman for letting TBD and the American University School of Communication post a podcast and slides from his Oct. 28 accuracy workshop.

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