Best of WordCount: Oregon edition
I live and work in Portland, Oregon, and this weekend’s Best of WordCount is dedicated to the area’s burgeoning media community: Can the techies save the news? – If the scene at the recent BarCampPortland III meet up was any indication, that could very well be the case. The Smalltown News – Small newspapers are [...]
WordCount weekly news recap
Bad news continues for news companies. Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection, freezing deferred compensation payments to former employees and making it uncertain whether freelancers with unpaid invoices will get their money from the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. Listener-supported radio news hasn’t escaped the current downturn. This week National Public [...]
OC Register experiment to move some edit functions to India
I write about outsourcing a lot, for publications like Workforce Management and IncTechnology.com, so I know companies are outsourcing more of what they consider to be non-essential business tasks: processing payroll checks, staffing health benefits call centers or other back-office human resources or finance department duties. Sometimes it’s to reduce overhead costs. Sometimes it’s to [...]
Will freelance writers save newspapers?
Are freelancers the wave of the future for newspapers? They might be. Daily newspapers are trimming jobs and looking for other ways to cut costs, and one way to do that is by using contract workers such as freelancers. Some papers, including major dailies such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, routinely [...]
NY Times, SF head list of top newspaper Websites
If the future of news is online, newspapers are still figuring out exactly what that means and the best way to go about it. That’s the conclusion Douglas McIntyre of 24/7 Wall Street comes to after analyzing 25 top U.S. newspapers’ Websites. McIntyre, editor of the financial news Website, gave A grades to only two: [...]
CJR Covers Biz News Sections' Demise
Maybe I should be pitching stories to the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR, the venerable bimonthly covering the news industry that Columbia University’s Journalism School publishes, just filed this story about the demise of the daily newspaper standalone business section. I wrote about this back in February, when the Denver Post announced it was folding its [...]
By Naming Stanton Editor, LA Times Bets Big on Digital
The Los Angeles Times today named Russ Stanton editor. Depending on how you feel about the present state of the newspaper business, this is either really good or really bad news, and for Stanton, a really good or a really bad job. I’m of the mind that it’s good on both counts, and not just [...]
Best Blogs for Writers
When writers aren’t writing, they’re reading about how to be a better writer, or be a better marketer of their writing, or about who else they could be writing for. That’s what I found when I asked freelance, newspaper and magazine writers and editors to name some of their favorite blogs for writers. It’s an [...]
While Other Papers Sink, Oregonian Swims
The same day the New York Times ran this depressing story detailing everything bad about the newspaper business – dropping circulation, constant management changes, drastic staff cuts, etc. – my local paper had a story about how bad sales were at major department store chains in December and January. Coincidence? I think not. As the [...]
Newspaper Business Sections: Going, Going, Gone
If you pick up the Denver Post and can’t find the business section, it’s no mistake. According to this item in the Talking Biz News blog, the Post is dropping its weekday stand-alone business section starting next week and folding business into the news section. The Post is just the latest daily to kill its [...]
Click here for the RSS feed
