Editor & Publisher looks at how newspapers dropped the ball (and Google picked it up):
“…as newspapers cede a portion of their ad revenue for Google to act as a middleman, there should be a lesson learned: whatever the “next thing” is, newspaper companies should figure it out and get on it right now, before someone comes along and does it first.”
David Carr has another warning to traditional media players:
“Traditional Media Will See ‘A Lot of Pain’… [they] need to develop multimedia skills if they want to “make it through this racket alive.”
But Dave Winer helps solve all these problems with 7 ways to improve professional reporting:
- Encourage your sources to have blogs.
- If a person you’re quoting has a blog, point to it from your piece.
- Shorten your URLs through redirection.
- Start your own blog, point to it from every one of your print stories.
- Float ideas for stories on your blog, much as you would with a person on your staff.
- Back to sources having blogs, I’d consider hosting those blogs.
- Share what you learn with your readers.