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Aggregators vs Producers: Introducing findingDulcinea, Mahalo, and others to come

Brian Stetler pointed it out three months ago in the New York Times.

The younger generation is reading tons of news. But they’re not relying on the same filter—the editors in a news room—to tell them what’s interesting and worth reading. Instead, they’re relying mainly on their social networks.

This is part of what Clay Shirky calls the “publish then filter” model. In the past, publishing something was expensive, so the act of having it published came with the implicit promise that someone thought it was worth the paper it was printed on. With the internet, that’s not longer true (or one might argue it’s still true, but the “paper it’s printed on” is worth jack s#%!).

Crap gets published all the time. The filtering process now happens after things get published. In the future, you’re not going to walk into a job interview with a bunch of clippings (”how many times has your writing been worth publishing?”), you’re going to walk into a job interview with a list of permalinks and the times those links were dugg, bookmarked on del.icio.us, or stumbled upon (”how many people thought this was worth reading?”).

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June 20, 2008 | Filed Under Interviews | 3 Comments 

Robert Niles to Newspapers: Don’t bring a plastic fork to a gunfight

Robert Niles teaches at USC and is the editor of Online Journalism Review. The OJR is a fantastic resource for anyone who is interested in the nature and trajectory of journalism.

Niles has a history as a web editor, reporter, and editorial writer at several newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the Denver Rocky Mountain News.

I had a chance to ask him a few questions about personal branding and about existing newspaper comment policies. Here’s what he had to say:

Jason Preston: In your post, you talk about the stunning lack of emphasis on newspaper authors. Do you see the internet (and blogging in particular) changing the way journalism is branded in the next five or ten years? Will people read Ebert, Pogue, and Mossberg, or will they read the Sun-Times, the NYT, and the WSJ?

Robert Niles: Many readers got the Chicago Sun-Times, then Tribune, for Mike Royko. I know a few people who would have dumped the LA Times by now if it weren’t for Steve Lopez. Jim Murray sold a lot of paper for the LAT back in his day, and many liberals bought the NY Times’ now-defunct “Times Select” subscription online just to get Paul Krugman.

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April 15, 2008 | Filed Under Interviews | 4 Comments