OJR
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Refocusing student media to a digital first operation
By Aaron Chimbel: We all know the way people get their news has been upended in the past two decades. If you wanted to get the days news a few years ago you had to get it when the news organizations said you could have it. That usually ...
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10 Reasons Why Online Journalists Are Better Journalists (In Theory)
By Emily Henry: 1. Were fighting to still be hereAll the on-the-fence journalists have left the field, leaving behind the few, the passionate and the dedicated as well as those who are just plain bewildered. But theyll figure it out ...
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Want to cover local? Then you'd better BE local!
By Robert Niles: Allow me to suggest one more mistake that the newspaper industry made that we shouldn't allow the slip down the memory hole. It was a practice that I am sure struck many newsroom managers as a smart one... at the time. B...
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How to use your interviewing skills to trend on Twitter
By Robert Niles: Journalists can be their own worst enemies when they try to interact with their audience online. If you think that the online medium somehow fundamentally changes the way that people interact, and that you need to adopt ...
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Sometimes you have to cut back to move forward
By Robert Niles: If you think that innovation is just about creating new products and services, you're missing what might be the most important step in leading a publication forward.A publication makes its greatest progress not when it i...
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10 things to remember about your readers, when they start to tick you off
By Robert Niles: Great reader comments, tips and blogs can help elevate a news website into a true community, one where people come together to learn from each other, enjoy each others' company and maybe even help address some of the "re...
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You'll get what you expect from your online community
By Robert Niles: What do you think about your audience?I'm not asking to recite any market research or website usage metrics you've collected about your readers. Give me your gut, emotional reaction to that question, instead. Let's tweak...
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With lower costs, independent eBook publishers hold the advantage
By Robert Niles: Have you been following the Amazon eBook "price fixing" case?Yes or no, don't let this story discourage you from eBook publishing. If anything, this case should be encouraging independent news publishers to jump into the...
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It's okay to be partisan, and a few new principles of journalism ethics
By Robert Niles: President Obama earlier this month refreshed attention to the way that some journalists twist the news by creating false equivalencies in their stories, in an effort to appear "fair" and "objective" as reporters."There's...
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Government reporters ought to explain their opinions, not hide them
By Robert Niles: Last week, a bunch of journalists in Wisconsin got in trouble with their papers for signing the petition to recall the state's governor, Scott Walker. And the news industry blew yet another chance to build some rewarding...
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Is your start-up news website legal?
By Robert Niles: Is your start-up news website legal?That might seem like an absurd question, especially for readers in the United States, where the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press. How can a news website be illegal? We...
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Turn news industry disruptions to your advantage
By Robert Niles: The 2012 State of the News Media report by Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism is out, and it includes some eye-opening numbers on who's making money from news these days.Here's a hint. It's not ne...
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The fastest-dying industry in America
By Robert Niles: Is any university in America still admitting students as print journalism majors?That question popped into my mind last week when I read a LinkedIn research post that claimed that newspapers have shed a larger percentage...
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What are students really buying in an education?
By Robert Niles: Will journalism education make some of the same mistakes as the journalism industry? It's a reasonable question to ask because Internet publishing threatens to roil the education industry every bit as much as it disrupte...
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Hyperlocal news sites stay away from election endorsements
By Robert Niles: It's election primary season in the United States, and I've noticed a traditional element of newspaper election coverage missing from the hyperlocal news websites I follow.Endorsements.My first full-time job in newspaper...
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The advertising industry Rorschach test
By Robert Niles: If you're working at a print newspaper (or magazine), here's a link to the scariest chart you'll see this year. (And here's the original source.)If you thought print was dying, well, according to that chart, it's not eve...
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If your news website ads aren't selling themselves, you're not ready to sell ads
By Robert Niles: If you're interested in how to make a hyperlocal news website work, please take a few moments to read the transcript of the chat I did with several other news entrepreneurs for the ASNE yesterday. ASNE put together a pan...
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Don't forget the importance of planning in a world without deadlines
By Robert Niles: If you want to run a journalism business, you can't keep thinking and acting like an employee.When you're a newsroom employee, your "customer" is you boss. That's the person who approves your check, after all. So you do ...
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Want to make money online? Here's what sells
By Robert Niles: Let me take one more swing at killing the zombie belief that "No one can make money online."Consumers are spending billions of dollars online each year, with $165 billion by U.S. consumers on e-commerce alone, back in 20...
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If you think you can do better than Patch, go ahead
By Robert Niles: Many online journalists have been clucking about AOL's Patch this week, after Jim Romenesko posted on reported changes coming at the network of local news websites.According to Romenesko's source, Patch is asking its loc...
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You've got to know the truth to tell it
By Robert Niles: Inherent within the whole "truth vigilante" meme lies a tough question for many journalists: "What if I don't feel qualified to decide who's telling the truth?"If you've ever asked yourself that question, give yourself a...
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Look at the bottom, not the top, of your traffic analytics to boost your website's readership
By Robert Niles: How can you increase your website's traffic by looking at your current website readership data?The answer to that question might seem obvious, but I warn you that too many news publishers approach this question from the ...
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It's not the medium - it's the market
By Robert Niles: Newspapers and book publishers could learn some valuable lessons from one another. Unfortunately, it appears that the book industry's going to make the same costly mistakes as the newspaper industry did, instead.I though...
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'Think before you act' and more rules for journalists on Twitter
By Steve Fox: A couple of weeks ago I was at a hockey game with my son. During the game, as I absentmindedly checked emails on my phone, I saw a Twitter note from an alumni of the UMass program saying "Look at what this person is saying...
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Tool, or trouble? Facial recognition might be driving some sources away from the news
By Brian McDermott: At first, Brittany Cantarella had no idea the man she accidentally swiped with her Chevrolet was named Lord Jesus Christ. But within two days, the minor traffic incident had gone viral. Reporters snatched the then 20...
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Should journalists be truth vigilantes? Hell, yeah!
By Robert Niles: Charles Bronson stars in... Photo by Fish Cop at en.wikipediaTruth VigilanteFrom IMDB*: "A New York Times reporter becomes a one-man vigilante squad after his story is murdered by copy editors, in which he randomly goes ...
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Wanted: human editors. Scrapers and robots need not apply
By Robert Niles: My world is awash in crap data. Several times a week, I open my snail mail box to find bulk-mail solicitations for some member of one of my websites, but sent to the site's street address. Every month or so, I'll get a s...
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How Best Buy can teach you *not* to run your news business
By Robert Niles: When was the last time you read something that prompted you to shout "Yes! That's exactly what I've seen. I've been waiting for someone else to notice that!"?For me, it was last night, shortly after Rob Curley posted a l...
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Banging my head against the computer screen
By Robert Niles: What a depressing day to be an online journalist.First, yesterday we lost access to Jim Romenesko (at least temporarily), thanks to a ham-handed and misguided "investigation" by his bosses at the Poynter Institute. Poynt...
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Diversify your ad base to survive in the news publishing business
By Robert Niles: I lost an advertiser on one of my websites last week. As much as I hate to lose customers, I understand completely why she felt she had no choice but to not renew her ad campaign.I'll start with some background, which wi...
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COPPA, part two: New study suggests a majority of kids are on Facebook... by age 12
By Robert Niles: A newly published study quantifies some of the fears I expressed earlier this year in a post about the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act [COPPA].The title lays out the problem: "Why parents help their children lie...
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One more option for self-published journalists: Talking with Will Bunch about Kindle Singles
By Robert Niles: Here's one more reason why you need to be looking at eBooks as part of your "I'm-a-journalist-who-needs-to-make-money" career strategy.Kindle Singles.Kindle Singles is Amazon.com's effort to promote shorter-length eBooks...
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Wherever you see a demonstration, journalism has failed
By Robert Niles: Wherever you see a demonstration, journalism has failed.I know that this might sound harsh to some readers, but people don't take to the streets to support a cause that's getting wall-to-wall news coverage. They take to ...
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Tips for promoting your news website or book on TV
By Robert Niles: Last week, I shared some tips for promoting your publication on the radio. This week, I'm expanding the list of tips to include ones specific to appearing on television.All of the radio tips apply to TV, too. But on tele...
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Apps vs. eBooks: Where can newsrooms and journalists make the most money?
By Robert Niles: How much time do you or your news organization spend developing apps? What's your return on that investment, and by that I mean - how much money are you making on app sales and from direct advertising on those app platfo...
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The news entrepreneur's dilemma: Which comes first, the money or the audience?
By Robert Niles: Reporters who would like to escape the annual threat of newsroom layoffs often ask me how they can get started running their own news websites.They're not so much worried about the technical steps in starting a website b...
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Which social media tool is the right one for PR professionals?
By Robert Niles: This past week, an email from a media relations rep got me thinking again about the ways that social media is changing how journalists and PR people work together.The email announced plans for a new ride at a theme park ...
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How evolution works, and why that matters to journalists
By Robert Niles: Many of us have talked about the evolution of the news industry in the Internet era. But what do we mean by that? I can't speak for others in the field, but when I talk about news industry evolution, I'm talking about a ...
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The 'high quality Web content' experiment has *not* failed - but some news publishers have
By Robert Niles: If you follow as many journalists as I do on Twitter, perhaps your timeline blew up last week, too, with links to Paul Carr's piece on TechCrunch asking Now Can We All Agree That The "High Quality Web Content" Experiment...
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News publishers shouldn't just 'set and forget' their websites' automated tasks
By Robert Niles: Do you know what your bots are doing?Many news websites have set up automated scripts and agents to handle a variety of tasks on their sites - from story migration to registration confirmations to page customization.But ...
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Two new features from Google, neither of which are named 'Plus'
By Robert Niles: The big news from Google over the past week or so has been the launch of Google Plus which I won't be writing about today, for reasons I'll mention at the end of this post. But I wanted to bring your attention to two ot...
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Patch is the news industry's problem, not its solution
By Robert Niles: Jack Shafer's right: hyperlocal efforts are "a complete waste of time and resources" as he suggested this week in Slate.Shafer missed one crucial qualifier in his hypothesis, though. Hyperlocal's a waste of time and mone...
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The limits of free speech?
By Robert Niles: Journalists are supposed to defend the freedom of speech, no matter what, right?But what happens when someone asks us to defend the right of someone to advocate taking our rights away? What then?An ESPN.com column last w...
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What if we are part of the voiceless community?
By Robert Hernandez: I hate hypocrites especially when theyre journalists.Ive been a bit disappointed with how some journalists have been writing about Jose Antonio Vargas recent announcement that he is an undocumented immigrant. Man...
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FCC report details fall of state, local news but offers wrong solution
By Jason Stverak: Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission issued a report on the state of journalism in the technological age. The year-long study is based on interviews with 600 journalists, scholars and industry lead...
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The latest in the top ad formats for online publishers
By Robert Niles: Let's answer a frequently asked question from start-up online news publishers: What ads should I put on my website? I'm not talking about which advertisers should you allow on your site - let's hope your sales skills wil...
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Crowdsourced tips to landing your first, paid journalism job
By Robert Hernandez: Okay, chances are this didn't really happen.I'm not sure how I heard this, but the story false or not stuck in my head when I was beginning my journalism career.The story allegedly goes that a young Herb Caen, wh...
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Twenty questions for a struggling business
By Robert Niles: When a business struggles, or fails, who is to blame?Is it the customer, for failing to support the business?Or is it the business, for failing to serve the customer?When music fans start downloading music instead of buy...
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Using technology to 'save' longform journalism: Q & A with Evan Ratliff, aka The Atavist
By Robert Hernandez: There are those who blame the digital age and the Internet as the causes of our short attention spans and disinterest in longform storytelling. Then there are those who embrace the technology and develop tools or a p...
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Are full RSS feeds now more trouble than they are worth?
By Robert Niles: Are full RSS feeds now more trouble than they are worth?I wondered that last week as the umpteenth Google alert hit my email in-box with a link to another "blog" that had scraped the full content of my posts. Curious thi...
