Guiding media innovators toward solutions, around the world
Digital native differentiates itself with scrupulous precision, transparency Luca Sofri is a personality in Italian media. He has been a print journalist with several major publications and a television and radio commentator. But that was not enough to make his digital news startup financially sustainable. He experimented a lot in the past 12 years, glimpsed […]
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At ISOJ, stories of collaboration on viability, fact-checking, free expression The International Symposium of Online Journalism (ISOJ) has been a showcase of media innovation since its launch in 1999 by Rosental Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas, Austin. I’ve attended and spoken at several of […]
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Free-spending startups can die in one of two ways: either cancer or heart attack In a recent newsletter, I talked about how misinterpreting audience metrics can mislead digital news publishers into developing ineffective business models. Another common mistake made by digital media entrepreneurs can have catastrophic consequences: it’s to lose track of cash flow and […]
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The help is welcome, but the donor can pull the plug at any time A common stuggle for digital news startups is that they depend on grants to fund operations or to fund special projects chosen by the donor organization. So they suffer the uncertainty of whether they can pay their staff and continue providing […]
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Measuring the wrong thing or using the wrong scale is a formula for failure Numbers don’t lie, but people do. And worst of all, people lie to themselves about what numbers mean. The Big Lie in media metrics for years was the Biggest Number. Media publishers got away with touting their total monthly page views […]
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Digital entrepreneurs and philanthropists are collaborating to replace lost coverage Why write about “reasons for optimism” when so much is going wrong in our politics, economy, and environment? Optimism gives us confidence we can make things better. As I like to say, it’s another day of opportunity. The declining quality of local news coverage in […]
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If you build it, they won’t come; you have to persuade them why your work has value Why write about “reasons for optimism” when so much is going wrong in our politics, economy, and environment? Optimism gives us confidence that we can make things better. As I like to say, it’s another day of opportunity. […]
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