Comments on: Newspapers: Find your essence

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:49:45 +0000

This seems to be an argument in favor of critics becoming bloggers and newspapers cutting ad sharing deals with the more successful ones. Or critics/bloggers trying to go it alone.

By: Notes from a Teacher: Mark on Media » Sunday squibs

Notes from a Teacher: Mark on Media » Sunday squibs — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 03:12:40 +0000

[...] Newspapers: Find your essence. Jeff Jarvis points to the reinvention of one newspaper which has chopped its film reviewer and NFL writer because it realized its coverage was redundant. [...]

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 01:20:15 +0000

You’re right; film and food and travel are national.

Unless, of course, someone covers them as a local phenomenon. And then they can be intensely personal.

Film critics can easily cover the revolution of what’s happening on PCs as people become their own filmmakers.

Food writers can easily cover the food of their local towns instead of trying to do umbrella holiday stories.

And travel, well… travel always starts local, doesn’t it? After 9/11, the travel beat became relevent again as it helped millions of daily travelers navigate changes to their airport routines.

It isn’t the beats that are necessarily national. It’s how you cover them.

By: Criticise Me at twopointouch: web 2.0, blogs and social media

Criticise Me at twopointouch: web 2.0, blogs and social media — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 00:28:58 +0000

[...] Earlier this month, Jeff Jarvis noted that Guardian Online has taken similar steps with its arts and entertainment coverage, throwing its columnists into a conversation with other critics – the former audience. (More: another paper bins its critics) Filed under: opinions, social news, newspapers | Tags: blogs, journalism, newspapers. [...]

By: WebIndent

WebIndent — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:51:15 +0000

It’s great! I remember…

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 18:35:35 +0000

I can see both sides of this issue. I understand papers need to be hyper-local, to have an invested interest in their communities, but how does using canned wire stories help the paper? Even if it’s an online paper?

By: Robert Gable

Robert Gable — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 18:22:04 +0000

I’m just a reader here but this approach would torpedo my subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s the voices in the newspaper that keep me reading, be it Mick LaSalle as film critic, Joshua Kosman as classical music critic or Jon Carroll as progressive columnist. Lose those guys and the Chronicle becomes just another newspaper i.e. the San Jose Mercury News.

And if the paper instead goes with more local coverage, I live in the suburbs not San Francisco. So better coverage of San Francisco board of education meetings, if such a thing exists, is useless.

We get two free weekly papers with much local coverage of the towns I live near. And I have to say they are so boring I’ve stopped reading them. I want voices, not facts.