News 24*7

The network effects that destroyed traditional news organizations are benefiting digital startups, which can grow virally and generate outsized impact in their communities. From Unimedliving My teaching colleagues are experts on the economics of the media industry, and we recently had a lively debate on how to reverse the financial crisis of journalism . The collapse of the industry's business model is endangering the institution of journalism-the Fourth Estate, a counterweight to power--by eliminating journalists and media coverage, especially for local media. It's a question that was explored recently by Ken Doctor at Nieman Lab in his report, "Newspapers are shells of their former selves. So who�s going to build what comes next in local?" Doctor details a number of initiatives by non-profit and for-profit organizations aimed at filling the gaps in local news coverage involving hundreds of media outlets. But using the standard industry metrics, it doesn't a app...

Marty Baron, center, with U. of Navarra faculty and students. Photo by Manuel Castells Marty Baron, editor of the Washington Post, came to speak at University of Navarra events in Madrid and Pamplona last week. Baron's message made me proud to be an American and a journalist. The whole world looks to the U.S. for leadership. Here is an excerpt from his speech in Madrid. " At the center of our mission is journalism that holds powerful institutions and individuals accountable . We have an obligation to speak truth to power. And the powerful in our world should never be allowed to suppress it. For all the challenges we face in the media today, this is the greatest. It is why we as journalists must stay faithful to our central purpose. Someone must still tell things as they really are. No government power, no powerful institution, and no powerful individual should have the right to stop us . And we in the press should not stop ourselves because of fear or self-censorship. These a...

A renowned media critic sounded the alarm in 1960 about corporate takeovers of newspapers and layoffs of hundreds of journalists. He worried that the power of the press was being concentrated in too few hands. Liebling, from Slate.com (Versi�n en espa�ol) It was in his column in the New Yorker, The Wayward Press, that A.J. Liebling tossed off one of his most memorable lines in a parenthetical aside: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" (New Yorker, May 14, 1960, p. 109, paywall). What is still true today is that corporate owners of newspapers are focused on maintaining their profit margins and are laying off journalists to do so. The newspaper and magazine industries have lost 54,000 journalism jobs since 2003. But it is no longer true that newspapers monopolize production and distribution of news. The Internet has given everyone with a computer and Internet access their own printing press. You do not have to be a mogul to publish your opinions. The...