Ryan Sholin

Tag: local news

  • Why we don’t read your paper

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Tim Ball, in a post titled “Newspapers and why nobody reads them” writes: “The problem for newspapers isn’t that I’m getting this information from another source. It’s that I don’t want it at all, and the local-local focus of metro newspapers in the last several years has made them not just less valuable to me,…

  • Building a local news site from scratch

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    Ryan Sholin
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    [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…

  • Mercury falling

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    Ryan Sholin
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    [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 know…

  • Work with us, people

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    Ryan Sholin
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    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…

  • ReportingOn.com

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Thanks to everyone who noticed the pillow-soft launch of ReportingOn.com in the only link in my Resolutions post, and especially to those of you who commented, e-mailed, tweeted, or blogged about the project. At the moment, it’s just an URL, an idea, and a comment thread, but it’s building momentum, and that’s pleasant. A few…

  • Manifestology

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    Ryan Sholin
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    {In the spirit of the journalism blog carnival, I’m linking to posts by some of my fellow barkers on display today as I have time.} Pat Thornton lets fly with a manifesto + examples in “The Web is the greatest thing to ever happen to journalism.” A clip: “Go local – Many papers are adding…

  • If it weren’t for those meddling Montana kids…

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    Ryan Sholin
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    The funny thing about disruption and disintermediation is that you never see it coming if you’re the incumbent, the old school, the big slow mover lumbering into the future baby step by baby step. Know what I mean? Wes Eben, publisher of the Big Horn County News in Hardin, Montana knows what I mean. Well,…

  • Meeting story hydraulics

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    Ryan Sholin
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    John Robinson, editor at the Greensboro News & Record, on stepping away from the “meeting story”: “Welcome to the world of hard choices. It’s always been this way. We don’t cover everything. We don’t even cover what we used to. Newspaper staffs are getting smaller, yet the number of meetings and events, of commissions and…

  • All I’m going to say about the Google/AP thing

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Google News now links to wire stories from the original source (AP, AFP, etc.), hosted by Google, in addition to the 5,137 versions of each wire story posted at individual news sites. Three reasons why this is good for newspapers: Newspaper.coms no longer have to spend time, money, and resources on trying to build the…

  • Rearranging the lipstick on a sinking pig

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Mark Potts, fresh from the demise of Backfence, rolls out a to-do list for newspapers who actually want to re-invent themselves — as opposed to those that want to have lots of meetings about re-invention. A few of these I’ve been throwing in your face for quite some time, dear readers, so I won’t give…