For my class on entrepreneurial journalism at the UBC j-school, I draw on the ideas of disruptive innovation of Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School. Christensen argues that incumbents tend to focus on sustaining innovations, making small improvements to existing products. What large incumbents struggle with is disruptive innovations – newer and less expensive products that may initially not be as good as the existing one. Christensen outlined the lessons
PDF At the AEJMC conference, Richard Karpel, executive director of the ASNE, provided an assessment of the state of the newspaper industry in the US. He said the US had 1,400 daily newspapers. In 2009, the industry had lost 5,200 jobs, about 11% of full time jobs. This compares to 5,900 job losses in 2008 Now there were around 41,000 jobs in the newspaper business. Karpel expected the decline in positions
In my latest post for PBS Mediashift, I discuss two recent developments in the Canadian media landscape. This week was marked by the purchase of the Canwest newspapers and the launch of OpenFile: Two Canadians took a gamble that local news still matters this week. The two represent the hopes of both old and new media. One was a $1.1 billion buyout (in Canadian dollars) of Canada’s largest newspaper chain,
The third panel at International Online Journalism Symposium tackled the big one: how can newspaper companies survive in the digital era. Session chair Earl Wilkinson, executive director and CEO, International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA), set the tone by talking about headlines predicting the death of newspapers. But in his view, newspapers are facing an economic downturn, above all in the US and UK. As a result, the storylines on print
It’s not often that I have myself in agreement with The Daily Mail. But it made a good case for staying free on the web in its presentation to shareholders at an investor day on Monday 19 April. The slides of the day provide an outline of the publisher’s strategy. Among the key points on charging for its services: “Readers will not pay to consume general news on the web.”
An amusing and poignant video about newspapers by cartoonist Ted Rall and David Essman, entitled Stop the Presses: How to Save Newspapers. (Via Rob Cottingham) Print
Paul Steiger gave an insight into the first two years of ProPublica at a talk in Toronto on Monday. The CEO of the investigative journalism non-profit said they were “a year ahead” of where they had expected to be. The initial challenges were brand recognition, getting partners and concerns about bias due to its left-leaning funders. Steiger admitted that the timing of ProPublica’s launch in 2008 had helped in setting
We shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that most of news still comes from traditional sources. This is the conclusion of a study in the US by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that most original reporting still comes from primarily newspapers, followed by television and radio, despite the proliferation of digital media. Newspapers accounted for two-thirds of new information, followed by TV at 28% and radio at
The Globe and Mail has beefed up its digital news operation, with the appointment of Anjali Kapoor in the newly-created position of Managing Editor, Digital, and the return of Kenny Yum as Editor, globeandmail.com. Image by cfarivar via Flickr The changes were announced by the Globe’s John Stackhouse in an e-mail to staff, saying: These changes are very much driven by my desire to have an editorial management team that
Image by Simon Scarfe via Flickr The editor of the Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, is the latest senior figure to predict that media organisations are going be charging for online news. In a speech at a Media Standards Trust event in London, Barber said: How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air. But I confidently predict that within