Daily Archives: May 26, 2015

The dangers of journalism include getting doxxed. Here’s what you can do about it.

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Source: poynter.org

by Published May 19, 2015 10:58 amUpdated May 19, 2015 11:13 am

This is another in a series of articles by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press covering legal issues that affect journalists. RCFP’s First Look Media Technology Fellow Jenn Henrichsen wrote this article.

 

read entire story here

Threatening journalists over their reporting is not a new concept, but the age of electronic media has brought a new method of intimidation and harassment known as doxxing.

Doxxing – named for docs or documents and also called doxing or d0xing – starts with publishing someone’s personal information in an environment that implies or encourages intimidation. Typically done online, the information then is used by others in a campaign of harassment, threats and pranks.

A Mental-Health Epidemic In The Newsroom

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Source: http: huffingtonpost.com

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This is the first installment in our series on mental health in the newsroom. Here are the second, third, fourth and fifth installments.

When Hurricane Katrina swirled onto the Louisiana shore and residents of New Orleans clogged highways to flee, John McCusker stayed behind.

A photographer for The Times-Picayune for more than two decades, McCusker paddled through the city’s muddy waters in a kayak, day after day, documenting the destruction. Like many of the city’s residents, he had lost his home and all of his possessions. His family had relocated to Birmingham, Alabama, five hours away.

Newsonomics: Buying Yelp — and making it the next core of the local news and information business

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The pricetag would be high, but it might be worth it to reassemble one part of the old newspaper bundle — tying together local news and local services.

By  @kdoctor May 21, 2015, 7:31 a.m.

 

Source: niemanlab.org

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Yelp’s for sale, and the news has generated the usual, now-tiresome lists of potential buyers: Google, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook. It’s like all the money in the business world slid off one end of the table and sluiced down to Silicon Valley. Forget the old spend-a-week-without-the-Internet experiments; is it possible to spend a week without talking about one of those companies?

Speculation has it that the asking price of $3.5 billion might be too rich for any of those players, or anyone else. Yelp’s audience is still growing — up 7.5 percent year-over-year to 142.5 million in the first quarter — but its revenue and audience growth is slowing. Total revenue will come in at about $580 million this year. It’s lost 40 percent of its market cap in less than a year, as investors have decided it’s lost its growth mojo.

Shoptalk: Don’t “Fold” Too Early on Print

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Source: editorandpublisher.com

by: Tom Ratkovich

I’m a fitness enthusiast and a poker player. While I’m better at the former than the latter, I’m always looking to improve my game. Before stepping onto the elliptical machine for some cardio recently, I downloaded a favorite poker podcast. The subject: folding your cards too early can be a mistake and cost you money.

The message was essentially this: fear and failure to commit can lead to a loss of opportunity as circumstances evolve.

Or something like that.

As an owner of and a supplier to newsmedia companies, I related this lesson to the legacy newspaper—specifically, to the traditional print product.

I question whether many of us are “folding too early” on our print business. Are we relinquishing opportunity for audience and revenue growth by moving too far too fast away from print?

Many prognosticators suggest that the opposite is true—that if we fail to move away from print ASAP, our business is a risk. I’m not so sure.

Let me be clear—I am NOT a print apologist. While I believe the future of the newsmedia is bright, I am “platform agnostic.” I don’t believe we must decree how audiences consume our content. Thus, I have been critical of an uncompromising “digital first” mandate for the legacy newsmedia company. Instead, we must think CUSTOMER FIRST—and be relevant in content, in timing and in channel.

To get to the point, here are four reasons for integrating print as an essential component of a diverse, multi-platform strategy:

Print audiences are vital sources of data and revenue—data that enables relevance, and revenue that funds other strategic initiatives.
Print audiences are a source of customers for other offline and online products.
The ability to offer advertising solutions that can be integrated and optimized across multiple platforms offers a compelling proposition to advertisers vis-à-vis single channel providers.
Print advertising works.

Regarding this last point, I am an admirer of Alan Mutter (newsosaur.blogspot.com; Editor’s note: Alan also writes a monthly column in E&P). I don’t always agree with him, but he makes me think. Alan recently referenced a study by eMarketer citing an interesting statistic: the amount of ad dollars by medium divided by the amount of time spent with each. The result: In 2014, advertisers spent $.83 per minute to reach print readers—and only $.07 per minute to reach mobile users. Alan argues that “markets abhor this sort of inefficiency”—and that further migration of ad dollars from print to mobile is imminent.

I agree that the downward trend in print spending is likely to continue—but I certainly disagree with the characterization of the print/mobile dichotomy as “inefficient.” The fact is that for today at least, print works. There are advertisers willing to tolerate the higher investment associated with print because the ROI is superior to what they would get elsewhere. As Alan implies, the markets are rationale, and people will spend their money where the return is highest.

The situation will continue to evolve. Mobile advertising—particularly location-based applications—will become more sophisticated and, ultimately, more effective. But for today—and for the near future—print produces a superior result for many advertisers. Perhaps most importantly, an integrated communications portfolio that includes a variety of print, digital, mobile and other multichannel solutions for advertisers offers a competitive positioning that is unique in the media.

In conclusion, putting any platform first—whether print, digital or other—is, IMHO, misguided unless the business is built ground-up for that specific platform. Such a proviso is not the case for the legacy newspaper company. Instead, a thoughtful, progressive transformation to an agile, platform agnostic media enterprise that delivers relevance and value to consumers, and optimized, multichannel solutions to the merchant community, is the path to a sustainable future.

Tom Ratkovich is the managing partner of LEAP Media Solutions and can be reached at tom.ratkovich@leapmediasolutions.com.

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