Quotable
On newspaper serendipity
The recommendation systems of Amazon and Netflix ably steer us to more of what we like. But tempting us to xenophily, luring us to stuff we don’t know and wouldn’t think we’d enjoy, is as yet a purely human skill. It’s the bread and butter of the daily newspaper.
— Harry R. Lewis, professor of computer science, Harvard University, and co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, opining in The Chronicle of Higher Education
Whether paying sources is worth it
A story is a story. We’re not squeamish about the means. And the paroxysms of the j-school ethicists add to the satisfaction.
— Gawker CEO Nick Denton, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital
Renaming the ‘TV journalist’
There are no TV journalists anymore. There are video journalists.
— Charlie Tillinghast, an online video guru at MSNBC.com, discussing the effect of the company’s content distribution strategy
Social networks are enhanced by exclusion
The value of a social network is defined not only by who’s on it, but by who’s excluded.
— Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley analyst, in an interview with The Economist
Journalism is more than a business model
(Journalism) is not business model; it is not a job; it is not a company; it is not an industry; it is not a form of media; it is not a distribution platform. Instead, journalism is an activity. It is a body of practices by which information and knowledge is gathered, processed, and conveyed. The practices are influenced by the form of media and distribution platform, of course, as well as by financial arrangements that support the journalism. But one should not equate the two.
— Robert Picard, Professor of Media Economics, Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping University, Sweden, writing in his blog, The Media Business
Journalistic bias at nonprofits
… journalistic bias is a function of human intention, not the business model under which the story is produced. For-profit, nonprofit, it does not matter. If a reporter or editor has an axe to grind, he or she is going to find a venue to grind it.
— Jim Barnett writing on his blog, The Nonprofit Road
Are bloggers journalists?
There are people in the States right now tying themselves into knots, trying to figure out whether or not bloggers are journalists. And the answer to that question is, it doesn’t matter, because that’s not the right question. Journalism was an answer to an even more important question, which is, how will society be informed? How will they share ideas and opinions? And if there is an answer to that that happens outside the professional framework of journalism, it makes no sense to take a professional metaphor and apply it to this distributed class.
— Clay Shirky speaking at a TED Talks event on the net’s collaborative culture
About the transformation of media
Contradictions, confusions, and multiple perspectives should be anticipated at a moment of transition where one media paradigm is dying and another is being born. None of us really knows how to live in this era of media convergence, collective intelligence and participatory culture. These changes are producing anxieties and uncertainties, even panic, as people imagine a world without gatekeepers and live with the reality of expanding corporate power.
— Henry Jenkins writing in Convergence Culture, Where Old and New Media Collide
On the power of a tweet
I’m amazed (and scared) at the power of one tweet to drive this much coverage.
— Mark Glaser executive editor of PBS Media Shift, commenting about the slew of coverage brought on by his tweet hinting at a looming purchase of a prominent online company
Not all online content producers are journalists
The popular claim that ‘we are all journalists now’ must be refuted; perhaps we are all producers of online content, but the great values associated with journalism must be nurtured to ensure the high quality reporting that a thriving democracy has the right to expect.
— Ernest Wilson, Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication in a piece for Poynter, “Where are J-Schools in Great Debate over Journalism’s Future?”
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