Media Industry Archive

Two sources confirm to me tonight that  CurrentTV, Al Gore’s bold venture into user-generated-content (UGC) for TV, is going to announce layoffs Tuesday in both its San Francisco and Los Angeles offices. According to these sources, the company’s top-level execs spent the weekend discussing which staffers to lay off. Apparently, there is  tension between the northern office, which...

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Open-source investigations: the new new journalism — Journalist David Cohn has launched a non-profit project that raises funds from different donors to complete investigative reports on big topics. Journalists can pitch story ideas, as can the general public. Funds are raised on the project’s website, Spot.us, and the finished article is offered free to any publication. [Source:...

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President-Elect Barack Obama has promised much greater transparency in terms of making sure more public records are available online. One way to assess his commitment can be evaluated at his unprecedented use of the web, which is a developing story. Check out his shadow government site. For now, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he has earned that much. My hope, as a career...

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Many media executives, struggling to adapt, continue to focus too much on the tools of new media as opposed to opportunities those tools create.   I’m continuously hearing about how this company or that is going to go “multimedia.” Too often, what this means to the exec in question is telling the same stories as always, but now releasing them as video or audio files as...

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One dynamic sector of online media deserves a special call out as we evaluate the web’s overall performance in the 2008 election cycle. That is a cluster of new political pollsters — especially FiveThirtyEight, Rasmussen Reports and Pew Research — all of which called the popular vote breakdown perfectly — Obama 52% and McCain 46%. With ever more powerful data analysis...

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Department of Justice says no to Google-Yahoo ad search deal — Google withdrew its proposal after the DoJ said it would file an antitrust lawsuit if the collaboration between the two search giants went forward. The arrangement would have “denied consumers the benefits of competition,” the DoJ said. [Source: Wired] Obama’s win gives a boost to print publications —...

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The U.S. News & World Report is continuing its disappearing act. Less than half a year ago, the former newsweekly announced it was cutting back its publishing frequency to become an every-other-weekly. Yesterday, it announced that henceforth it will publish on a monthly basis. As we’ve noted on a number of occasions, the “newsweekly” category of magazines has been...

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Both when I was a young reporter, and later on when I was a news director, managing editor, or bureau chief, election nights were always the highlights of the year. Originally, we followed the results via an almost continuous series of updates from the Associated Press, coming across those old ticker machines with bells. An intern would tear off the latest numbers report and rush it over to the...

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Forbes magazine president Steve Forbes gave a rousing speech at the Marriott Marquis hotel in New York last night in which the publisher of the self-proclaimed “Capitalist Tool” proposed a three-pronged plan for economic recovery — all of them requiring the intervention of the nanny state. At the 33rd annual Knight-Bagehot foundation dinner, he said: The “uptick”...

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Election Day coverage: where to watch – MediaBistro offers links to all the places where you can follow today’s election coverage live online. Editor & Publisher reporters are keeping track of local news coverage as it unfolds across the country. [Sources: Fishbowl NY, Editor & Publisher] Bad economy good for CBS ratings — The TV network known for its aging demographic...

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