Jarvis’s new role for journalists: be the organizer

Jarvis: think first of the community Several years ago I was working in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, where independent newspapers have a hard time surviving. The government denies them access to state-monopoly newsstands, overcharges them for their newsprint, and harasses them at every turn. We looked at one publisher’s website data to see if […]

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‘Desktop is the new print’ as public goes mobile

Julio Alonso, director general WeblogsSL (James Breiner photo) BURGOS, Spain — In 2004, management consultant Julio Alonso got the itch to write about gadgets and technology. He started a blog and a year later that evolved into the website Xataka. Since then he and his partners have built WeblogsSL, a community of 36 websites in […]

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8 practices of successful entrepreneurial journalists

Editor’s note: This post was updated 3 June with an eighth best practice. For the last seven years I have been interviewing and profiling successful entrepreneurial journalists in various countries of various  socieconomic classes. I’ve talked to publishers and editors with staffs of as many as a hundred as well as some one-man/one-woman bands. The […]

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Deal with the Devil: Facebook, Google, mobile apps

A deal with the devil. Versión en españolIt was the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke who wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And clearly many people think that way about applications for smartphones.   Mobile apps can show us detailed maps of most places on earth.    They can read QR […]

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In Spain, two digital journalism success stories

Ignacio Escolar, left, of El Diario and Pedro J. Ramirez of El Español (photo: James Breiner) HUESCA, Spain — Two of the leading figures of the digital media revolution took the stage together and chatted about what it is like to wear the hats of journalist, shareholder, owner, and chief salesman of their respective media […]

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Universities and entrepreneurship don´t always mix

Versión en español BRISTOL, England — A few years ago, I was on a team designing a master’s degree in digital journalism. The university required that we propose three areas of research for the professors in this program to pursue. One subject area we proposed was new business models for news. Another was the use […]

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