You can choose as to whether this is a half-full or half-empty glass. A survey just released by Cribb Greene and Associates indicates that 51 percent of 239 smaller-market publishers surveyed believe ad revenue will be up next year. But that’s down from 71 percent in the spring survey. This survey is certainly worth checking out as an indication of what publishers are thinking. Other interesting stats: 43 percent would consider outsourcing printing, up from 32 percent; 50 percent believe profits will be the same or better as in the past; and 86 percent believe their local economies are improving or stable. Cribb Greene is the oldest newspaper and publication brokerage in the nation.
Author: Kathryn Jones Malone
Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.
If you’re a reporter who uses Twitter (and if you aren’t, why aren’t you?), take a few minutes to look over this list of six suggestions on how to make Twitter work for you. No obscure techie-stuff here, just concrete, practical ideas you may not have thought of. Reminders include suggestions about upgrading your bio and your photo to ideas about how to use Twitter to prepare for interviews. And if you get really interested in Twitter as a reporting tool, there are lots of useful links to help you dig deeper.
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Video on the Go Workshop Materials
Aaron Chimbel, a faculty member at the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism, led a workshop for community journalists in September 2010 on shooting and editing simple video stories using the Flip video camera. Below are his handouts from the workshop.
Here’s a story that’s easy to localize: The Texas Tribune has a story on the health of inmates in Texas county jails. Sheriffs say that sickness among inmates – often made worse by chronic ailments and drug or alcohol addiction – rivals the illness rates in state lockups, despite the fact that counties house only half the number of inmates. There are no state standards for health care in county jails, and illnesses can spread quickly and are expensive for jail budgets. You may find that it’s a costly and significant problem in your own county.
This week the Center, and indeed all of community journalism, lost a friend and mentor.
Phil Record, long-time Star-Telegram editor and ombudsman and for the past decade professional in residence in journalism ethics at the Schieffer School, died of a heart attack Sunday evening. Phil was a consultant in ethics for the Center and had spoken at several workshops and answered queries in our Ask an Expert service.
Phil represented the best of what it means to serve our readers. He was committed to honesty, fairness, accuracy, and the highest standards of ethics in our profession.
He will be missed at the Center, but he will also be missed by all newspeople everywhere who relied on his wise advice and his insights on difficult ethical dilemmas.
U will ROTFL when you and ur BFFs from the paper check this out. It’s a CWOT, but it’s GR8.
Typically we point to specific articles in Around the Web. But here’s something different: The Center for Rural Strategies http://www.ruralstrategies.org in Kentucky publishes some fascinating research in its online newsletter The Daily Yonder http://www.dailyyonder.com. It’s all about rural counties in the United States and much of it applies to Texas. The latest http://www.dailyyonder.com/ba-divide/2010/10/17/2995, for instance, is about the serious lack of university degrees in rural areas and what that means for economic development. To keep abreast of the latest research, much of which you can localize for your newspaper if you’re located in a rural area, go to the Daily Yonder’s Twitter page
So let’s assume somebody wants to set up an Internet-only competitor for your newspaper. Something that could deliver the same types of news you do, just online. A competitor for advertising dollars. Someone who would offer the news and photos and videos of your community, and probably at no cost to readers. You know how much it might cost another newspaper to come into town and set up a duplicate version of your operation – but how much would it cost an Internet start-up to come in and do exactly what you do, but do it online? Warren Webster, president of AOL’s Patch, which is doing just that, has a figure: 4.1 percent of what you are spending now, to duplicate everything you’re doing on the Web. Aaaarrrrgh! Check out this article. (And by the way: I talked with an editor at Patch last month, and she said they are already in the initial stages of getting ready to enter the Texas market.)
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A commercial for newspapers
Here’s something you might want to link to on your website. It’s a several-minute ad for reading newspapers in general, in the voices of all kinds of folk who love their papers. It’s a feel-good piece for us, too, in a day when so many people are claiming they can cut newspapers out of their information diet. Give this video from the Newspaper Association of America a few minutes – you’ll be glad you did, and you’ll want to share it.
As if women journalists didn’t have enough trouble in a traditionally male-dominate field, now there’s Journalism Barbie. It’s the newest Barbie, available for Christmas. She’s dressed in pink and has a microphone and camera and, of course, black stilettos adorned with tiny bows. And every blonde hair is in place.