Ryan Sholin

Tag: The News Business

  • Everybody’s Talking Heads

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    Ryan Sholin
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    I’ve seen David Byrne’s blog post about a visit to the New York Times in too many places today to figure out where I saw it first. Here’s my favorite graf: “At present, it is mostly the ads in the Style section, and the glossy Sunday and T magazines that pay for a disproportionate amount…

  • 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…

  • The eleventh obvious thing: Your subscribers are dying

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    Ryan Sholin
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    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…

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

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    Ryan Sholin
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    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…

  • Hope for mobile news

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    Ryan Sholin
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    I’ve gotta admit, when it comes to the question of newspapers adopting new delivery systems, I’m usually the one wagging my finger and saying “You better…” But John Duncan over at The Inksniffer has a far more hopeful approach when it comes to the prospects for cutting deals with cell phone carriers and getting headlines…

  • Will the real online news business model please stand up?

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Terry Heaton’s take on the Yahoo/Amigos deal and other attempts to make up for lost print revenue with online advertising dollars turns on this point: “…the essential problem for all local media companies is their insistence in the belief that a model of scarcity online will generate the kinds of revenue needed to offset losses…

  • Imagination is everywhere

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Scott Karp says part of the problem with the newspaper business has been its lack of imagination: “Nobody imagined that somebody would be so recklessly uncapitalistic as to create a website where people could post classified ads for free. Nobody imagined that an online software company specializing in information retrieval, but which produced no information…

  • The obvious end of journalism schools?

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Dave Winer: “First, reform journalism school. It’s too late to be training new journalists in the classic mode. Instead, journalism should become a required course, one or two semesters for every graduate. Why? Because journalism like everything else that used to be centralized is in the process of being distributed. In the future, every educated…

  • Your readers don’t know everything, but don’t you go telling them that

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    Ryan Sholin
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    When your newspaper is the news, suddenly you’re thrust into the role of the person, the business, or the organization that gets a story published about them in the paper.

  • “The whole industry is in play”

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Mark Potts has this observation on the troubles Knight Ridder faced, the Tribune Company is facing, and the New York Times has on the horizon: “Ultimately, this is about much more than The New York Times Co., or Tribune, or Knight Ridder. The whole industry is in play. Where does it end? Gannett doesn’t have…