Nov
14th
Sat
14th
Sep
30th
Wed
30th
Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News.
- Fmr Rocky Mountain News editor John Temple: Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News - Text and video of speech delivered at UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google in Silicon Valley
- Know what business you’re in.
- Know your customers.
- Know your competition.
- Know your goal.
- Have a strategy and be committed to pursuing it.
- Measure, measure, measure.
- Keep new ventures free from the rules of the old. Let the people running a new venture do what’s best for their business, regardless of the potential impact on the old.
- To compete in a new medium, you have to understand it.
- Invest in R&D.
Jul
24th
Fri
24th
Undeniably, there is money to be made in digital publishing with free reader access, but whether that revenue leads to profits depends upon the scale and scope of the organization. The potential revenue does not appear to be of the magnitude that will support the massive operations of existing news organizations. What works in today’s web landscape are lean and mean organizations with little or no management bureaucracy — operations where nearly every employee is working on producing actual content. I’m an extreme example — a literal one-man show. A better example is Josh Marshall’s TPM Media, which is hiring political and news reporters. TPM is growing, not shrinking. But my understanding is that nearly everyone who works at TPM is working on editorial content. Old-school news companies aren’t like that — the editorial staff makes up only a fraction of the total head count at major newspaper and magazine companies. The question these companies should be asking is, “How do we keep reporting and publishing good content?” Instead, though, they’re asking “How do we keep making enough money to support our existing management and advertising divisions?” It’s dinosaurs and mammals.
Jul
17th
Fri
17th
The irony is almost painful (yes, it’s a real minor-league baseball team). H/t Stacy T.
Apr
22nd
Wed
22nd
Apr
6th
Mon
6th
The current estimate of official global unemployment is 50 million; the International Labour Organisation (ILO) calculates that 50 million more could lose their jobs as the recession deepens. These figures are tragic for those affected. They are also relatively modest (without minimising the human reality in any way) when set against the 2 billion people in the world who are desperately poor. But this raises the question: how many “jobs” would be created if there were a system that aimed at housing and feeding those 2 billion? The world would then need those 50 million currently unemployed to go to work - and another billion more workers into the bargain.
If seen in this light, the financial “crisis” could serve as one of the bridges into a new type of social order. It could help all involved - citizens and activists, NGOs and researchers, local communities and networks, democratic governments - to refocus on the work that needs to be done to house all people, clean our water, green our buildings and cities, develop sustainable agriculture (including urban agriculture), and provide healthcare for all. This innovative order would employ all those interested in working. When all the work that needs to be done is listed, the notion of mass unemployment makes little sense.
