Writing in the HuffPost, he says:

The future of journalism is not about some single new-fangled product and company taking over from the old-fangled and monopolistic predecessor. News come from a broad ecosystem with many players adding in under many models for many reasons. News organizations will organize news in this diverse new framework, aggregating, curating, organizing. Laid-off journalists are starting blogs, alongside other bloggers. Some people will volunteer, podcasting their school-board meetings, just because they care. When we demand transparency from government as a default, data will become part of the news ecosystem we can all examine. Some of this will be supported by advertising, some by contributions from foundations, some by contributions from individuals, some by volunteer effort. And it will all add up to a new pie, one slice of which will be efforts such as the one HuffPost is announcing.

Footnote: AP report of the HuffPost venture says:

The Huffington Post is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to set up a $1.75 million fund to pay staff journalists and freelancers.

The investigative fund will direct reporters to look first at stories about the nation’s economy.

Feisty piece by Rachel Cooke

Make no mistake, this is a crucial time. If those of us who love books, and libraries, and believe they are a vital, beautiful and cherishable part of our cultural and social heritage, take our eye off the ball now, we will regret it. We must make a fuss, and we must name and shame those who are set on destruction. “We need to say that these cuts are entirely wrong,” says Shirley Burnham, who is leading the campaign to save the Old Town Library in Swindon. “I compare it to sub-prime mortgages: if someone had said something forcefully, at the time, we would not be in the mess we are in now. People need to realise that once something is gone, you never get it back. Libraries are like train stations in that respect.”

Thanks to Lorcan Dempsey for the link.

Print-on-Demand has just acquired a high-profile advocate. For years, readers of his blog have been emailing in photographs of the views from their windows.

So, after nearly 3 years, and well over a thousand published, we’ve decided to compile all your best windows into a book. A photo book? In this economy? And didn’t you call the publishing industry “one of the shallowest, dumbest and most archaic in the U.S” – two years ago? You bet, now more than ever. That’s why we’ve decided to bypass the publishing houses altogether and experiment with print-on-demand. We’re going to try to publish the book independently, through no established publishing house, as an experiment in blog-based, print-on-demand publishing.

Before you all rush to get in on the act, it’s worth noting that he demands that you surrender the rights. He gets to own your work. Smart, eh?

From the Editor of The Buffalo News…

Maybe this is what Mark Twain had in mind when he quipped, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

The former Buffalo newspaper editor must have understood what it’s like to be alive and well, even as the public wipes away a quiet tear at your demise.

That’s what life is like these days for many of us who work at The Buffalo News. People seem to think we’re at death’s door.

It’s far from true. There’s no question that American newspapers are going through difficult times. Large, well-established papers in major cities are going bankrupt or, in a couple of cases, closing altogether.

Here at The News, we’re more fortunate— although certainly not unaffected by the difficult trends.

How are we more fortunate?

1. We’re making a profit. The decline in advertising revenue is significant—and likely to get worse— but we’re still in the black and planning to stay that way.

2. We have none of the crippling debt that many newspaper owners are carrying. Many of those debt-heavy papers would be making money if it weren’t for their debt load.

3. We have extraordinarily high acceptance among local residents. The News, as a print newspaper, has the highest “market penetration” among the 50 or so largest metropolitan dailies in the United States.

4. Our Web site is the leading local media Web site, by far, in Western New York. When you combine the Web site and the newspaper, we’re reaching 80 percent of Western New Yorkers on a regular basis…

Very perceptive column by Emily Bell.

In the struggle to find new terminology that accurately describes concepts we don’t fully understand, sometimes language fails us. ‘New media’ is one such term that fails to describe seismic structural change, and insultingly foists the moniker of ‘old media’ on to vibrant formats such as broadcast television and newspapers. What we mean when we say ‘new media’ is most often ‘digital’.

This is much more helpful, as ‘digital’ carries with it a whole set of properties that can be readily understood and that go beyond media and into other areas of society. One key, defining principle of things that are ‘digital’ is that they can be very easily copied, compressed and transmitted. In other words, ‘digital’ and ‘free’; (in every sense, not just the monetary sense) go together like Morecambe and Wise, fish and chips, or banks and bailout.

This is something that the media, their ruling institutions, governments and regulators are all currently coming to terms with: once something is digitised, the ability over time to control it, charge for it, regulate it or contain it exponentially decreases…