The illusion of moral decline

And other illusions that are not supported by reliable data There seems to be a natural human tendency to believe that people today are worse than people of previous generations. That people used to be polite and considerate and generous, but now they’re mean and cruel. Just look at all the crime, people say. And […]

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Podcasts evolve, with different flavors for different tastes

A new study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism finds that news podcasts are attracting large audiences as well as driving loyalty and revenue for many media outlets. And news podcasts have been generating many times more downloads than those focused on other topics, in part because of interest in information about […]

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The voice is mightier than the pen: podcast power

During 10 weeks of quarantine, I have been getting a lot more of my information and entertainment from podcasts. My interests in news, the arts, and business lead me to programs like Hidden Brain, How I Built This, The Indicator, Fresh Air, Planet Money, SER Historia, Radio Ambulante, El Hilo, Freakonomics Radio, Against the Rules, […]

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The message in the virus: differentiate or die

Freelance writers need to think like entrepreneurs One of the lessons we are learning from the corona virus is that the news is a commodity. Nearly everything you want to know about this disease is available online free, everywhere, all the time. In the language of economists, this kind of news product has little “exchange […]

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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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Making money Part III: How journalists can do ad sales

This weekend I spent a day and a half participating online in NewsU’s Revenue Camp for Journalism Entrepreneurs, an intense session on some of the new ways journalists are making money on the Web. (The entire course will be available to view online in a few days; Twitter comments from the course are at #revcamp.) The biggest mistake […]

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Reloading an old business model for new media

Veteran journalist Tom Stites writes on the Nieman Blog that new digital media might be overlooking a venerable method of sustaining themselves — the cooperative. The cooperative is defined as a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit. Today we might call it crowd-funding. When the market fails […]

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