“(H)ow do you decide what to focus on? That question is as relevant for a beat writer as it is for a book author. Each of us must apply a series of tests to a topic. The results of those tests will help us determine what we need to do next.”
Roy Peter Clark asks the question, and the archived chat helps with the answers.
Don’t forsake the hyperlocal news approach just yet. Poynter has details from a panel at SXSW:
Reports about the death of hyperlocal have been greatly exaggerated.Local news sites continue to pop up across the country, despite a high churn rate among small local sites. In 2007, one in eight Americans lived in a city or town with a local blog, panelist and Placeblogger Founder Lisa Williams said. Now, closer to half of Americans live in a city with a local blog. Data from Placeblogger, an index of local blogs, show that between 50 and 60 percent of the local blogs indexed by the site don’t make it, Williams said.
Williams also pointed out they’ve indexed 4,100 independent hyperlocal sites, small businesses with typically only a few employees producing a local news product.
As in all small businesses, these projects run the risk of a high failure rate. The problem is entrepreneurial: Most don’t have a revenue model. Indeed, the data in this panel revealed only 4 percent of local and community sites have an advertising rate card.
Running your own brand requires you to be a businessperson as well.
Related: Financial models for underachievers: Two years of the real numbers of a startup
Can you tell a story in a newspaper piece? In 300 words? In 140 characters?
Check out the most recent Poynter chat.
I love this new New York Times Tumblr, where they are posting archived photos in large sizes and good resolution. Love it. The first two are my favorite. So far.
And the accompanying cutline … three lovely links, context, quotes, a line you won’t soon forget. Brilliant:
Aug. 13, 1969: “Data processing cards joined ticker tape in paper blizzard,” read the caption on this photograph, which was published the day after the three Apollo 11 astronauts paraded through New York. The Sanitation Department cleaned up 300 tons of paper the following day. Mayor John V. Lindsay had urged employers to give their workers time to watch the motorcade. The city’s public events commissioner said the turnout was “the biggest ever in the history of New York.” Another article quoted an 8-year-old from Connecticut. “There’s a lot of confetti down there,” he said, “but I don’t see any astronauts.”
This one is definitely going in my RSS reader.
Via Poynter.
Things will soon pick up speed for Gannett’s Burlington Free Press. The Vermont paper will be the first in the nation to try a new size. Poynter has the details:
(I)t will begin publishing in a new compact format by the end of June, becoming the first daily to convert to the “three-around.” The paper will be 11″ by 15″ and divided into sections, which will be stitched
Think visually. What does that mean? I had to click through a handful of older Poynter pieces, but I found this nice explanation and image for three-around, if you are unfamiliar with the term.
Interestingly, the people that make the presses work in the three-around style, have been pitching this as an alternative for some time now. Everyone was hesitant. But distribution, fuel, newsprint are always growing more expensive. Margins are narrowing.
“We have a lot of people who say they want to go second,” Gore said, “but no one wants to be first.”
And now, designers and other interested parties will glance to the northeast to see how this new system shapes up.
