Invisible Inkling

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

All About Media

The eleventh obvious thing: Your subscribers are dying

July 16, 2007 – 6:44 am

Here’s a newsroom exercise sure to drive a stake of fear squarely into the heart of your circulation manager:
Count the number of obituaries printed in your paper in the last year for local residents over the age of 60.
Now compare that number to your paper’s drop in circulation over the same period.
If you see a [...]

Just the FAQs, please

July 6, 2007 – 7:30 am

Jeff Jarvis on the Local Challenge:
“The biggest challenge facing local news organizations today is figuring out how they can gather more and produce less. That is, how can they help other people produce, so the news organizations have something worth gathering?”
Gather more and produce less, indeed. It’s hard for lifelong newsroom types to see [...]

Wave your nerd flag high

June 27, 2007 – 7:41 am

Will Sullivan of Journerdism and the Palm Beach Post gets the Bryan Murley IM interview treatment over at Innovation in College Media.
In a wide-ranging interview (heh…) Sullivan offers a bit more advice than we usually get from his linkblogging, although the studied eye should be able to find the wisdom in the snark, as always.
Will’s [...]

Newspaper community site philosophy

June 19, 2007 – 9:47 pm

Steve Yelvington talks about Bluffton Today in an e-mail interview he’s posted, reminding me that there are reasons why community sites work and there are methods to manage and market them to the community:
“There’s a lot we can learn from Internet startups if we just recognize that geographic community is actually a special interest. A [...]

I’m exactly as pompous as I sound. No more, no less.

June 14, 2007 – 9:04 pm

If, for any reason, you can’t get enough of me prattling on and on about the future of newspapers in text, you can enjoy 33 minutes of me getting interviewed by Cameron Reilly, who apparently is the king of all podcasting in Australia.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve heard me say all this stuff [...]