The Next Newsroom Project

What we're reading

• Moviefone 2.0: National Post is using Foursquare to add content and context to the Toronto Film Festival » Nieman Journalism Lab
  www.niemanlab.org
  Share on:
• In praise of quick and dirty: when the pursuit of excellence is the enemy of success | yelvington.com
  www.yelvington.com
  Chris O'Brien says: Steve Yelvington writes: "Increasingly I believe that we in the media business doom ourselves by our devotion to quality. Before you get out the gunpowder, let me explain myself. I love excellence. Awesomeness is, well, awesome. But the premature pursuit of excellence can kill you."
  Share on:
• USA Today to Throw Open its Data This Month
  blog.programmableweb.com
  Chris O'Brien says: "Media Content providers are increasingly opening up their vast amounts of data to developers. The latest to announce this is USA Today, with plans to provide much of its content via an API later this month. The nationwide newspaper aims to raise internal awareness about its databases first, with public access and a developer contest to follow."
  Share on:
• PJNet - Blog – J-Lab’s Lessons Learned from 55 Citizen News Projects
  pjnet.org
  Chris O'Brien says: "J-Lab has funded 55 projects since 2005 with small grants, about $25,000. Many of these efforts sought to train citizens to generate stories for the site. Some were university projects. Others were launched by so-called “civic catalysts” – those bumblebees that pollinate a lot of community groups and carry a lot of knowledge about their communities."
  Share on:
• Betaworks and The Times Plan a Social News Service - NYTimes.com
  bits.blogs.nytimes.com
  Chris O'Brien says: "The News.me product has been in the works for the last six months and is due out sometime later this year, Mr. Borthwick said. It will initially debut as an iPad application, although a Web version may be introduced at some point."
  Share on:
• More Thoughts On Demand: A Referendum of Sorts on Google and Social - John Battelle's Searchblog
  battellemedia.com
  Chris O'Brien says: "I find Demand's IPO interesting for several reasons, but the one that really gets me thinking is the company's positioning - a new form of media company that leverages technology, algorithms, and scale. It reminds me of Yahoo - which picked up Demand-like Associated Content recently."
  Share on:
• What Apple’s new App Store rules mean for news orgs: Some new clarity, but still plenty of fuzziness » Nieman Journalism Lab
  www.niemanlab.org
  Chris O'Brien says: "After loads of criticism for unexplained decisions, inscrutable rules, and what appeared to be a desire to protect the public’s morals and the feelings of the powerful, Apple has decided to finally state what the rules are for getting your app accepted into the App Store for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. (The change comes packaged with another shift of interest to many developers: allowing them to use non-Apple tools to code their applications.)"
  Share on:
• Like It or Not, Twitter Has Become a News Platform «
  gigaom.com
  Chris O'Brien says: Matthew Ingram writes: "There’s been plenty of debate lately about whether Twitter has become “mainstream” or not, but examples continue to pile up of how the social network/microblogging platform has worked its way into our lives, to the point where it has become a form of media unto itself. Whether it will ever become mainstream in the sense that it gets used by your aunt or grandmother is almost irrelevant — the reality is that, for all its flaws, Twitter is a publishing tool, and an increasingly powerful one. And it can be used by anyone, journalist and non-journalist alike."
  Share on:
• NPR Takes 'Web-First' Approach to Blogging. What Does That Mean? - San Francisco News - The Snitch
  blogs.sfweekly.com
  Chris O'Brien says: "Tomorrow, National Public Radio will formally launch the Argo Project, a group of 12 topic-based news blogs hosted by different NPR affiliates across the country. Two of the blogs are Bay Area-based: KALW's The Informant, which focuses on criminal justice issues, and KQED's MindShift, which looks at how technology is changing the way students learn."
  Share on:
• MediaShift Idea Lab . What the Spot.Us Community Thinks of Objectivity | PBS
  www.pbs.org
  Share on:

Read more