UPDATED ON FEB. 28 – News from the online news business this week. Read all about it:
The Rocky Mountain News shuts down forever, leaving another major American city a one-paper town. Rival Denver Post pays tribute in Rocky’s Last Run.
Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle and other dailies, attempts to avert closing any of its papers by announcing a precedent-setting deal with Helium, the Web content mill site. Helium’s “citizen journalists” will produce local and lifestyle stories in a test roll out with two Hearts papers in Connecticut.
In magazineland, Mr. Magazine, aka Samir Husni, a journalism prof and head of the j-school at the University of Mississippi, declares America’s magazine publishing model DOA and announces a new center dealing with magazine and print innovation called Magazine Innovation Center.
The Columbia Journalism Review jumps onto the magazine reinvention bandwagon too, getting a $230,000 MacArthur grant to study how magazines can adopt best practices and improve editorial content on their Websites.
Speaking of CJR, the magazine’s Megan Garber turns in a cheeky Dear Abby-style advice column to explain the do’s and don’ts of using Twitter while poking fun at the techies, TV news stars and celebs who’re quickly populating the au courant microblogging service.
One more I forgot about – Jonathan Weber, founder and CEO of NewWest.Net a Rocky Mountain West news site, and former EIC at The Industry Standard during the dot-com boom, debuted a weekly column on The Big Money about the realities of running a Web 2.0 business. Weber’s a great thinker and a great writer (disclaimer: I’ve worked with him before so I’m biased) – a definite must read.
No surprise as to what’s the top story in the news business this week: the closing of the Rocky Mountain News. Sadly, it probably won’t be the last major (or minor) daily newspaper to close its doors for good. Any questions or comments?
Michelle,
I’d be interested in your perspective on Helium.
Kerry: Freelance message boards are buzzing over the pros & cons of writing for Web content shops like Helium. I’m planning to address this in an upcoming post. Stay tuned.
Michelle
Walter: Unfortunately I have to agree with you. The Seattle PI is on its last legs with lots of discussion whether or not the owners will turn it into an online only paper – that would be an exciting breakthrough for online news but I’m not sure the financials pencil out. Hearst has said they need to cut 47 percent of the SF Chronicle’s staff to keep the doors open, who knows if they can do that and continue to put out a decent product – that’s probably why they did the deal with Helium.
Michelle