If there was ever a need for a scholarly discussion of online media it is now, when more people are turning away from newspapers and to the Internet for their news.
But don’t tell that to the University of Southern California. Earlier this week, the university’s Annenberg School of Journalism pulled the plug on the Online Journalism Review, an e-zine that spent 12 years chronically the growth and development of the online news business.
According to Niles, USC will continue to help mid-career journalists learn new media skills through its affiliation with the Knight Digital Media Center.
In a June 16 post on the site, OJR’s Robert Niles told readers: “The decision to suspend OJR for now means that I have left the University of Southern California. But I am not going offline. I will continue to write, daily, about new media and journalism at my new website, SensibleTalk.com.”
SensibleTalk will pick up where OJR left off, according to Niles, who’s running the site with his wife and fellow journalist Laurie. He envisions it as “a community for journalists who want to speak truth to power, and for readers who want to do the same. That’s why I call the site ‘analysis from the reality-based world.'”
According to Niles, the site will include interviews with journalism entrepreneurs, educators and reporters, Q&As with politicians and activists, and resources for journalists, such as a math tutorial he developed several years ago