We live in a multimedia world, surrounded by images, but words still have power. That’s what I took away from a Newsweek feature about two new English versions of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” The piece quotes one of the translators,…
Market research indicates that sports is near the bottom of the list of reasons people give for watching local TV news. Some stations, most recently WTKR-TV in Norfolk, Va., have decided to drop the local sports segment to save money…
News aggregators like Yahoo!, MSN and AOL have supplanted network television as “power hubs for news,” Rachel Rosemarin reports in Forbes. Two out of every five people who use Yahoo! look at its news, finance and sports sites–50 million people…
News organizations are in a constant battle for online traffic, but what actually works to draw readers? Blogs, live chats and interactive databases, according to industry leaders quoted by Editor&Publisher. Jennifer Carroll, vice president of new media for the Gannett…
Journalists sometimes miss or underplay big stories by trying to be objective in the wrong way, says UNC’s Phil Meyer. Instead of presenting “both sides” and letting the audience decide, Meyer argues in the new Yale Climate Media Forum that…
Being a good journalist does not mean you can’t have personal opinions; you just can’t let those opinions creep into your reporting. But how do you stay independent from what you are as opposed to what you think? By being…
The news as we know it is ending but technology might save it, Michael Wolff writes in Vanity Fair. He points to the research we’ve all seen: under 30s have no “news habit.” When they want information, they don’t browse…
Hyperlinks aren’t just a simple way to add interactivity and context to a Web story. They could also be a way for news organizations to keep users apprised of what’s new on a story without having to update the original.…
How can you avoid being suckered by sources or stampeded by the competition? Do your own homework. That’s the advice from Stuart Taylor of the National Journal. His book about the Duke lacrosse case, “Until Proven Innocent,” says the news…
Why do so many news Web sites use full-screen text instead of voiceover narration for video and slide shows? Angela Grant, multimedia producer at the San Antonio Express-News, believes “producers are afraid of using voiceovers because they are ‘like TV.’”…
