OJR columns Archives - Page 3 of 8

An early look at news on the go

Mobile devices give news outfits another bite at the apple By J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review Steve Yelvington remembers the Friday night five years ago when, at the end of a new media gathering in Washington, D.C., a colleague took 20 of the conference-goers out to dinner. “He had an Apple Newton, big as a college yearbook and absolutely unreadable. He had downloaded a dining database, and so we walked, I swear, five miles to find a great restaurant. When we finally got there, it was closed.” Last summer, Yelvington and two colleagues were looking for a dinner spot in London’s Chelsea district, with one checking his Garmin portable phone, another his Dick Tracy-like Suunto watch/compass with Global Positioning System,

Europe puts its own stamp on new media

This column appeared April 2, 2002, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Also see the sidebar, Online news resources in Europe. While online journalism’s roots run deepest in the United States, dozens of European news publications have taken to the Web since the mid-’90s, and many of them now rank among the best news sites in the world. So today we give online news in Europe its due. First, a disclaimer: We weren’t able to capture all the different flavors of digital journalism in every corner of Europe. Some sites — such as the new-look Irish news portal Ireland.com, or Publico, the excellent news portal in Lisbon, Portugal, or Switzerland’s stand-alone Web news site

After the 2002 bubble burst for online news

Now that we’ve hit bottom, where do we go from here? This column appeared March 25, 2002, in the Online Journalism Review to kick off its new The Future of News section. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Now that the online news industry has survived the cyberspace swoon and woken up to the Mother of All Hangovers, what’s next? Opinion leaders in the online news business say they’re cautiously upbeat about the industry’s long-term prospects. While no one is saying that Web publishers have found the path to the promised land, many say the pervasive doom and gloom of 2001 — marked by cutbacks, closures and contortions — is being replaced by a sense that the worst is

Third party sites’ contributions to sports coverage

Outsourced sports solutions free up news sites to focus on the local This column appeared March 19, 2002, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Do you know the No. 1 sports event for online sports fans? Nope, not the Super Bowl. Not the World Series. March Madness — or, for the uninitiated, the NCAA college basketball tournament. And that presents something of a challenge for thin-as-a-wafer online sports staffs. How do you cover 64 college teams with the depth and tenacity demanded by hoops-crazed Net denizens? For more than 100 online newspapers, the solution has been to leverage the print paper’s sports staff, use the wire services — and sign up with The Sports

Niches of trust: 3 one-man consumer sites

Car Place, Theme Park Insider & Consumer World sometime outshine big media By J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review When it comes to consumer news and information, bigger is better, right? Not necessarily — and not when business interests and advertising dollars trump the rights of readers to obtain honest, hard-hitting advice that would send a media bean-counter into a stroke. As most newspaper and broadcast journalists can attest, there are some news subjects that are considered generally off-limits to the news side, especially if they involve major advertisers or business associates of the publisher. In two decades working at daily newspapers, I’ve had only two stories spiked: One reported on a minor lawsuit against family members of my newspaper’s publisher;

Independents Day: 4 grassroots media sites

When it comes to Net news, small can be beautiful By J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review Everybody knows about the 800-pound gorillas of online news — nytimes.com, CNN.com, MSNBC — but there’s another group that’s contributing mightily to the craft of Web journalism: the solo, lone-wolf operation. These outfits, each created and operated largely by one person, show that you don’t need a large staff and venture-capital seed money to do news on the Net. What the creators of KenRadio, Kuro5hin, IWantMedia and Metafilter share is a relentless drive, a passion for their subject matter, and an abiding respect for the power of the Internet to reach thousands of readers cheaply and effectively. In the case of Kuro5hin and Metafilter,

Online news on a tightrope

Credibility, terrorism, inclusiveness are themes at 2nd ONA conference This column appeared Nov. 1, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. The Online News Association’s second annual conference in Berkeley, Calif., last weekend showed an organization with the talent and pluck to tackle the considerable challenges facing the online news industry, though growing pains were still very much in evidence. The ONA folks unveiled the preliminary findings of its wide-ranging Digital Journalism Credibility Project, based on nationwide surveys of the online public and media professionals conducted in July. Time will tell if the events of Sept. 11 made those results moot. The report’s key finding, the study’s authors suggest, was that online consumers have

UC Berkeley panel: New forms of journalism

Weblogs, community news, self-publishing and more Following is a partial transcript of the panel on “Journalism’s New Life Forms,” held Oct. 27, 2001, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, at the second annual conference of the Online News Association. The panel was organized and moderated by J.D. Lasica. Panelists were Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, Rita Henley Jensen, editor in chief of Women’s Enews, Rusty Foster, founder of Kuro5hin, and Weblog pioneer Meg Hourihan. Transcribed by Alex Gronke JD Lasica: We have a distinguished group of panelists here today to discuss what we’re calling journalism’s new life forms. What I think they have in common is the propensity for interactivity; for personal, passion-based advocacy

A scorecard for Net news ethics after 9/11

Despite a lapse related to the terrorist attack, online media deserve high marks This column appeared Sept. 20, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Are journalism’s ethical rules of the road different in the online medium? This week, once again, the editor of an online publication received a powerful reminder that the answer is: Not really. Rising Tide Studios, a small New York media company that publishes the Silicon Alley Daily and Digital Coast Daily e-mail newsletters (60,000 subscribers between them) and tech news sites, published a first-person account last Thursday by someone who visited the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

A news service with a women’s agenda

Nonprofit launches journalism operation to cover women’s issues This column appeared Sept. 4, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Rita Henley Jensen, editor-in-chief of Women’s Enews, makes no apologies for her news service’s tilt on the news. “We do have an agenda,” she says. “It’s a pro-woman agenda.” Still not widely known, Women’s Enews is one of those fascinating experiments made possible only because of the Web. Launched in June 2000 by the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, the news service (at www.womensenews.com) is run by a small staff of professional journalists.