Invisible Inkling

Ryan Sholin on the future of newspapers, online news and journalism education.

All About community

Building a local news site from scratch

April 27, 2008 – 11:30 pm

[If you're reading this in late April 2008, I've managed to post something on time for this month's Carnival of Journalism, hosted by Yoni Greenbaum this time around.]
Lately, when failing revenues and/or an ill-fated JOA results in a newspaper closing up shop, there’s talk of “what if” they continued publishing online, but I have yet [...]

Mercury falling

March 5, 2008 – 9:52 am

[NOTE: What follows is a view of the last two years of trouble at the San Jose Mercury News from my personal point of view, as a graduate student in the neighborhood, a reporter (and later as an editor) working for the same parent company, and even as a reader. I don't pretend to [...]

Work with us, people

March 3, 2008 – 7:40 pm

GateHouse Media is hiring two reporters. Here’s the important bit from Boss Owens’ post on the matter:
The ideal candidate:

A recent college graduate (or graduating this spring)
At least six months experience blogging
Capable of shooting and editing his or her own video
Ready to do more than sit in an office and make [...]

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Introducing WiredJournalists.com

January 22, 2008 – 10:07 am

At the end of 2007, Howard Owens* published a blog post outlining a year-long program he called 2008 objectives for today’s non-wired journalist.
A few of the objectives:

Become a blogger.
Start shooting your own pictures.
Do the same with video.
Join social networks.

Howard soon started fielding e-mails and requests for guidance from reporters looking to take him up on [...]

Debunking the coulda-shoulda-woulda myth of online news

January 21, 2008 – 7:18 am

I’m trying quite hard to stay out of the business of chasing after curmudgeons with a laptop in my hand, shouting “But you got it all wrong!”
Trying. Quite. Hard.
So let this be just a generic blanket response to a common misconception about the business of online news.
The premise, as laid out in hand-wringers [...]