News of the Week 4/14/08

Murdoch: Technology Driving Vast Changes in Media
"Media mogul Rupert Murdoch warned that “technology will continue to destroy all of the old ways and old assumptions, especially in the media."

How to Target the Right Social Media Sites
"What too many bloggers overlook is that Digg and StumbleUpon are just two of the hundreds of available options, and they may not be the best fit for every blogger."

Magazines: An argument in favor of print
"It’s worthwhile to give some thought to why certain contents are really wonderful in one medium and not so great in another medium — no matter how you try to adapt them to fit better."

It’s time for the newspaper industry to die
"…it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the newspaper industry to reform its basic production processes to support online community building, so long as the industry sees itself as the "newspaper" industry."

It’s Time for Newsrooms to Walk the Talk of Change
"Seems like nearly every day I get a notice in my in-box about a new conference, a new initiative, a new working group that will be looking at ways that traditional media can change with the digital times."

Net gains and pains for journalism
"So we talk about citizen journalism, the way readers have become the "former audience", how the commercial model which made newspapers possible is being challenged by Google and Craigslist, and the need for any professional journalist to have multimedia skills."

I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day
"Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc."

Sam Zell: A Tough Guy in a Mean Business
“I have discussed with many of you our mutual concern about the cyclical eroding of content quality to meet budgets manufactured in the corporate office,” he wrote in a staff memo in February. “I promise you, in time, we will end that downward spiral."

Comcast, Twitter And The Chicken (trust me, I have a point)
"And this brings me to the point of this post. Within 20 minutes of my first Twitter message I got a call from a Comcast executive in Philadelphia who wanted to know how he could help. He said he monitors Twitter and blogs to get an understanding of what people are saying about Comcast, and so he saw the discussion break out around my messages."

Bloggers Leverage Their Collective Voices Against Companies
"The old rule was an angry customer might tell 10 people your firm blew it. That rule no longer holds true. There are blog writers who have the reach to communicate with hundreds, thousands and even millions within days."

TweetStats: Spy On Other Twitter Users
TweetStats is an interesting research tool for Twitter, but exposes how open the system really is.

The Declining Power Of The Firm
"Umair [Haque’s] central tenet is that we are in the midst of a groundbreaking shift from a centralized economy dominated by large "orthodox" companies to a "edge economy" dominated by end users."

PatientsLikeMe – Medicine – Doctors – Computers and the Internet
"There are a little more than 7,000 Todd Smalls at PatientsLikeMe, congregating around diseases like Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis (M.S.) and AIDS, all of them contributing their experiences and tweaking their treatments."

A Strategy for Building Niche Focused Blog Networks
"…if I were going to start a blog network afresh today as a single blogger that I’d probably do it focused around a single niche rather than starting focusing upon numerous topics with numerous blogs."

In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop
"A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant str

Newspaper Chain Hires Adviser as It Weighs Restructuring
"While the company struggles to make its debt payments, its operating performance has declined."

What’s Next for Newsmagazines?
"…now that 111 employees at Washington Post Co.’s Newsweek have taken buyouts, including many longtime editors, it’s clear that their cultures are finally being blown up and reinvented."

My Essential Twitter Tools
"Twitter is extensible, and many third-party developers are creating tools around the simple data being exported for a variety of unique applications."

Breaking the Techmeme Habit
A review of the many places to get tech news on the web, and the reason why Techmeme is best.

Blogonomics: Valleywag Pay Slashed
Website Valleywag pays authors by the amount of page views they get. Now, that pay rate is changing, and not in favor of the authors.

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