One of the challenges of discussing the besieged newspaper business is that it’s not like just any business, or it shouldn’t be. There is a public-service component to newspapering that is often at odds with the pursuit of maximum profits. That, in fact, is the industry’s core problem as readership and revenue continue to […]
Na Imprensa Internacional
An interesting debate seems to be shaping up about the future of newspapers. On one side, recent newspaper chain purchaser Warren Buffett, who tells Howard Kurtz publishing newspapers three days a week, which Advance Newspapers’ Times-Picayune will begin to do later this year, will drive readers away from print: “This three-day-a-week stuff really kills […]
“PRINT is dead” was a common refrain a couple of years ago. The costly print advertisements that kept magazines and newspapers alive were migrating to the web, where they earned only pennies on the dollar. To publishers, it felt as if a hurricane was flattening their business. But as the storm has cleared, a […]
God save us from the queen. There’s nothing like a regal celebration to bring out the royal pains of American television. And the four-day extravaganza to celebrate the 60-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II was particularly rich in folly. With so much time and so little new to say, anchors and commentators are emboldened […]
In the United States, the nonprofit model for journalism has been around for decades, but in Brazil, it’s a novelty. For three award-winning journalists, it’s a novelty seen as the the only way to reporting on issues and in areas neglected by traditional media organizations. That’s why, in March 2011, Tatiana Merlin, Marina Amaral, […]
BY ONE measure, it was dying. In March 2005 the daily circulation of the Times-Picayune, the best newspaper in New Orleans, was around 257,000, up to 285,000 on Sundays. Seven years later those numbers had dropped to 134,000 and 155,000. Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005; in 2010 the city’s population was just 71% of […]
WE ARE ANONYMOUS – Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency (Parmy Olson, 498 pages. Little, Brown & Company. $26.99) *** In December 2010 the heat-seeking Internet pranksters known as Anonymous attacked PayPal, the online bill-paying business. PayPal had been a conduit for donations to WikiLeaks, the rogue whistle-blower site, until […]
“Just in time to spoil the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Obama Justice Department is trying to do what Richard Nixon couldn’t: indict a media organization. . . . Charging Julian Assange with ‘conspiracy to commit espionage’ would effectively be setting a precedent with a charge […]
Ryan Chittum’s “The Washington Post Co.’s Self-Destructive Course” is a blistering attack on the paper’s management of its journalistic mission and its economic viability. Chittum examines the financial structure of both the The Washington Post and its parent, the Washington Post Company, most of whose revenue (and all of whose profits) come from Kaplan, […]
Columbia University in the United States and the School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM in Portuguese) in Brazil worked in collaboration to launch the Journalism Magazine of the ESPM, the Brazilian version of the influential Columbia Journalism Review, reported the portal Meio e Mensagem. The magazine, to be published every trimester, started circulating at […]
Among the brand-name French theorists of the mid-20th century, Roland Barthes was the fun one. (Foucault was the tough one, Derrida was the dreamy one, Lacan was the mysterious one — I like to imagine them sometimes as a black-turtlenecked, clove-smoking boy band called Hors de Texte, with the hit album “Discipline ’n’ Punish.”) […]
Most consumers have no idea what an M.V.P.D. is, but they mail a check to one every month. What they call Comcast or Time Warner Cable or DirecTV, the government calls a “multichannel video programming distributor,” or M.V.P.D. for short. When that mouthful of a phrase was coined decades ago, it was pretty easy […]
Spare a thought for the Wall Street analysts who turned cautious in the run-up to Facebook’s IPO last week. More than a decade ago, analysts were roundly criticised for overhyping worthless dotcoms that their employers then foisted on an unsuspecting investing public. So wasn’t it a good thing that the number-crunchers at Morgan Stanley […]
Last weekend none of us had access to our e-mail. Our university was migrating its e-mail program, so we were given several weeks’ notice that we would be cut off from the world from 5 p.m. on Friday to some time on Monday. The response to this pending communication vacuum prompted reactions ranging from […]
Public policy debates often involve appeals to results of work in social sciences like economics and sociology. For example, in his State of the Union address this year, President Obama cited a recent high-profile study to support his emphasis on evaluating teachers by their students’ test scores. The study purportedly shows that students with […]
Lauren Fishman and Matt Van Horn stood at the altar together. A trellis of sunflowers and violets framed the couple, as the rabbi led them through their declaration of love and commitment to each other. Their friends and family sat watching as the two stared deeply into each other’s eyes. Then the groom pulled […]
World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it’s important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere. It’s a threat that will become very real for those covering the street protests expected this weekend […]
Charges against Rebekah Brooks and testimony from her and other former senior figures in Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper empire have kept the British media and political establishment glued again to investigations into the press over the past week. Yet investors in Mr Murdoch’s $50bn television, film and publishing group, have paid little attention, instead […]
Facebook’s initial public offering has all the hallmarks of becoming a milestone in financial history. Depending on current estimates, it could well become the technology IPO of the decade. In its eight years of existence, the company founded in a Harvard dormitory room by Mark Zuckerberg has managed to connect people virtually in a […]
Gentlemen: Sometimes to your irritation, I have spent the past 16 months writing the Fact Checker column for The Washington Post, vetting the statements uttered by politicians in both parties. I know you don’t really like the Pinocchios I bestow on a regular basis to both of you for inaccurate or misleading remarks (except when […]