Chris Boese's Weblog

OJR's Robert Niles: Writing skill is no longer enough to sustain journalists

Link: Writing skill is no longer enough to sustain journalists.

Boy, there's some intriguing stuff packed into this short Online Journalism Review piece by Robert Niles, stuff that gets said on the way to saying something else, and those are the bits that give me pause!

They seem to have more ramifications for the world of writing and literacy than they do for the world of vocational training for journalists, although they are also in some sense tossed off, and could use more support than a hasty generalization.

So I figure, why not look in at them here? Let's look beyond the practical vo-tech employment concerns and wax a bit philosophical.

First, to Robert Niles:

Writing skill is no longer enough to sustain journalists

By Robert Niles

What's the value of journalism?

The short answer is, of course, "whatever someone will pay for it." But a more thoughtful response gets at why people are willing to exchange something of value for news information.

Economics 101 teaches that if more people want something, and the scarcer it is, the higher the price. With millions of new websites competing for people's attention, advertising rates across all media have plunged, threatening news businesses that depend upon advertising income.

[Hmmm. Tell the Econ 101 argument to poets, and they may beg to differ.

While journalists have long had to contend with the idea that their best work has the value of the Daily Fishwrap, the thing that people pile up unread, throw away daily, or use to line birdcages, poets have lived with this deep knowledge, that their very best work, their best of the best, work that strives for standing the test of time, or ephemeral, contingent, and quickly forgotten work like performance art, has an economic value of precisely ZERO, since before the time of Gutenberg. 

This is neat: Ford named Brand of the Year for social media innovation

Link: Society for New Communications Research Announces 2009 Fellows` Choice Award Winners for Innovator, Visionary, Brand and Humanitarian of the Year | Reuters.

Neat write up below on Ford (I work for Ford at Razorfish).

Society for New Communications Research Announces 2009 Fellows` Choice Award Winners for Innovator, Visionary, Brand and Humanitarian of the Year

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--The Society for New Communications Research (http://sncr.org), a global nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank focused on the latest developments in new media and communications and their impact on business, media, culture and society, today announced the Society`s Fellows` Choice Award winners for the Visionary of the Year, Innovator of the Year, Brand of the Year and Humanitarian of the Year as part of the SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards program.

The 2009 SNCR Fellows Choice Award winners are:

* Visionary of the Year: David Plouffe, President Obama`s campaign adviser, for his successful use of social media communications tools and technologies in the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign strategy

* Innovation of the Year: The Kindle, the popular software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 for reading e-books and other digital media

* Brand of the Year: Ford for its innovative use of social media to improve the way the company communicates with its stakeholders

* Humanitarian of the Year: The Iranian Political Bloggers for their courageous use of blogging tools and Twitter to try share their experiences with the world and to try to effect political change in Iran

"The SNCR Fellows have chosen an incredibly impressive variety of individuals and organizations for this year`s award winners. These special award winners have the vision and success to provide a valuable example to others and we are honored to be able to acknowledge them through this awards program," commented Jen McClure, president, SNCR. 

[...]

The Society for New Communications Research is a global nonprofit 501(c)(3) research and education foundation and think tank focused on the advanced study of the latest developments in new media and communications, and their effect ontraditional media and business models, communications, culture and society. SNCR is dedicated to creating a bridge between the academic and theoretical pursuit of these topics and the pragmatic implementation of new media and communications tools and methodologies. The Society`s Fellows include a leading group offuturists, scholars, business leaders, professional communicators, members of the media and technologists from around the globe - all collaborating together on research initiatives, educational offerings, and the establishment ofstandards and best practices. For more information, email us at [email protected] or call +1 408.266.9658.

SNCR

Media: Jen McClure, 650-387-8590 [email protected]

What to think about the CNN.com redesign?

I've been checking out the screenshots and early weekend implementation of the new CNN.com redesign. Several of my journalist and non-journalist friends have been weighing in on links I've posted on Facebook (although my CNN buds have been keeping fairly quiet, as is proper. I did same in public forums when I worked there).

Disclaimer: I was a cyberculture columnist for CNN.com from 2002-2005, where I often had to advocate for certain "bloggish" types of discourse that were not generally permitted on the site because the online common wisdom or ways of knowing (crowd-sourced consensus on cyber-topics, usually) couldn't be traced to some important person quoted as saying "X" (an absolute requirement for CNN.com at the time), or because online "conventional" wisdom didn't necessarily jive with journalistic copyediting standards of "The Row" at that time.

Times have certainly changed, both in the network and with the site's embrace of citizen media (something I was also an early advocate for), and now, in its turn toward the site stylings of online "opinion writing" found at Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, among other blog and news aggregators (more on that below).

For what it's worth, a full archive of my CNN.com columns can be viewed here. I was employed by Turner Broadcasting from 2001 to the end of 2006, when I moved to NYC to take a position at Razorfish, ironically, the company responsible for the CNN.com 2007 redesign (UX and creative). I was not involved in the redesign at either company.

That should cover all necessary disclaimers. All I'm doing here is giving my impressions on the 2009 redesign (largely positive, I'll tell you why), in spite of my friends' initial reactions on Facebook (largely negative, I can speculate why), and what I think may have been lost from what I considered a visually stunning "liquid" (the gray modular look) redesign as proposed by Razorfish and executed by CNN.com in 2007.

What follows is my opinion and my opinion only, and in no way represents the views of any of my employers, past or present.

Rocky Mountain News Postmortem by John Temple, former editor/publisher

Link: TEMPLE TALK: Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News - Text and video of speech delivered at UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google in Silicon Valley.

I couldn't resist pulling some really interesting and insightful quotations from the text of this speech by John Temple at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit. I'd noted the earthquake the closing of the Rocky Mountain News sent through the journalism world back when it happened, and this follow-up sort of gives it additional context.

Background on John Temple: (bio pulled from his blog)

"John Temple is the former editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, which printed its final edition after almost 150 years on Feb. 27, 2009. Under his leadership, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other national awards for journalistic excellence. Temple also served the E.W. Scripps Co., owner of the Rocky, as vice president/news of the newspaper division."

Here are some links to places you can read or catch the entire speech, online:

Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News - Text and video of speech delivered at UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google in Silicon Valley

The death of the Rocky Mountain News in February rippled around the world. Many want to understand what happened and what we can learn from the loss of Colorado's oldest newspaper.

Today I kicked off the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Googleplex (the company's headquarters) in Silicon Valley.

The following is the text (The link takes you to Scribd, where you can print out the speech. I have also attached it below. I apologize for any inconvenience people have had trying to access my presentation) of my speech. You can also see a video of my presentation (the keynote slides, with my voiceover) at  Vimeo. Here is a link to the keynote slides themselves.

But here are the bits of the speech that jumped out at me (and has been gathering steam around Twitter too, I think). It is a tremendous look at something, a moment, I think, that will be seen as a key turning point in media history. Forgive me for taking the bits out of context (indicated by elipses . . .). Also, all indications of emphasis are mine.

[...]

Recently, when I asked my former colleagues at the paper for reflections on their experience since its closure, Bernie Lincicome, a fine sports columnist, wrote me back: “I feel like the cadaver being asked by the funeral director, how did you like the flowers?” I’m not sure what that makes this talk. Maybe the funeral director being asked to perform his own autopsy and offer guidance from the other side on how to save the lives of others suffering the same malady.

[...]

So some pretty smart people were at the top of the company that owned the Rocky Mountain News. Yet none of that was enough for the Rocky to survive in the Internet era. The Rocky published its final edition on Feb. 27 of this year, the first major paper to shut its doors after the economic crash of the fall of 2008.

On the day the closure was announced, Scripps CEO Rich Boehne told the staff assembled in the newsroom: "You are the model of what a great newspaper should be. It's a tragedy for the industry that you disappear."

[...]

 As one former Scripps executive told me in talking about what has happened to the newspaper industry, words that I think apply to the Rocky, “We had all the advantages and let it slip away. We couldn’t give up the idea that we were newspaper companies.”

Well, Scripps isn’t a newspaper company anymore in what was its biggest market. And today I’m going to walk you through the lessons I think might be taken from its largest paper’s failure. While this is going to be a newspaper-centric talk, I believe you’ll find that the lessons apply broadly across radio, TV, magazines and other media, too.

But before I subject the past to scrutiny, you need to know I don’t exempt myself from criticism. I was the top editorial person for the Rocky’s final 11 years and part of the business leadership team. I bear my own share of responsibility. It’s easy when looking back to see things that might seem obvious to us today, but it was a lot more difficult when we were in the thick of the fight, and most of the revenue growth and almost the total revenue pie came from the main newspaper product.

That said, the first lesson I hope people who care about the future of local news take from the Rocky’s experience is this: Being a “great newspaper” isn’t enough in the Internet era. You have to know what business you’re in. We thought we were in the newspaper business. Working on the Web, you need to think of now and forever. At a newspaper, people largely think about tomorrow. Thinking about tomorrow isn’t enough anymore. Consumers today want services when, where and how they want them, and they want to be able to participate, not just receive.

I love what Dan Froomkin is laying out here...

Link: Dan Froomkin: Why “playing it safe” is killing American newspapers | Nieman Journalism Lab.

It is outrageous that this man was just let go from the Washington Post, and I am expecting further outrage to continue to roll around the Nets on this topic.

But in the meantime, this series he did for the Nieman Journalism Lab is just pure gold, and I want to think hard about it.

For now, here's just a few quotes that grabbed me from part one (emphasis below is mine).

I hope to add more on this and his other topics in the next few days, including perhaps some reflections on my own journey to these same conclusions in a year that for some reason kept popping up in my mind today: 1989. Geez, was that really 20 years ago? It was when I had my own personal moment of truth about how I would continue to practice journalism in my life, as a quest, a mission, an avocation, nearly a religion, as Froomkin describes in the paragraph I have bolded below.

Series:Dan Froomkin on news’ future

Dan Froomkin: Why “playing it safe” is killing American newspapers

By Dan Froomkin /  May 26  /  8 a.m. 

We’re all in a state of despair these days over our inability to monetize our journalism online the way we’ve been used to doing in print.

[...]

Our reporters and editors are curious, passionate, and voracious discoverers and devourers of information; talented storytellers; and smart people with excellent bullshit detectors. As long as human beings are curious about each other and clamor for trusted information, there’s a place for us out there. The Internet hasn’t changed that. In fact it’s increased the market for what we’ve got: The Internet highly values people who know things, who can find things out, who can distinguish between what’s important and what’s not, who can distinguish between what’s true and what’s not, and who can communicate succinctly and effectively.

But we’re hiding much of our newsrooms’ value behind a terribly anachronistic format: voiceless, incremental news stories that neither get much traffic nor make our sites compelling destinations. While the dispassionate, what-happened-yesterday, inverted-pyramid daily news story still has some marginal utility, it’s mostly a throwback at this point — a relic of a daily product delivered on paper to a geographically limited community. (For instance, it’s the daily delivery cycle of our print product that led us to focus on yesterday’s news. And it’s the focus on maximizing newspaper circulation that drove us to create the notion of “objectivity” — thereby removing opinion and voice from news stories — for fear of alienating any segment of potential subscribers.)

The Internet doesn’t work on a daily schedule. But even more importantly, it abhors the absence of voice. There’s a reason why opinion writing tends to dominate the most-read lists on our “news” sites. Indeed, what we’ve seen is that Internet communities tend to form around voices — informed, passionate, authoritative voices in particular. (No one wants to read a bored blogger, I always say.)

[...]

The right way to reinvent ourselves online would be to do precisely what journalists were put on this green earth to do: Seek the truth, hold the powerful accountable, expose the B.S., explain how things really work, introduce people to each other, and tell compelling stories. And we should do all those things passionately and courageously — not hiding who we are, but rather engaging in a very public expression of our journalistic values.

[...]

Photo by J.D. Lasica used under a Creative Commons license.

I feel like it's the 80s all over again

It's not a good thing, but not wholly a bad thing either. The terrible tragedy of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas is bringing a lot of old relics out of the attic, and as the far right wingnuts brush the cobwebs off their terrorist tactics, something else is happening.

Some of the old style 70s feminists and other pro-choice activists who have been largely silent and inactive for the past 30 years are coming out of the woodwork too, speaking up and speaking out against what, if done by a Muslim in the United States, would have inspired a change in the National Terror Alert Level and anti-terrorist scare tactics of "Katie bar the door."

 I need to strongly qualify that last paragraph. There were some feminists and pro-choice activists, compassionate doctors, nurses, rape crisis advocates, suspected child abuse and neglect social workers, and many others WHO DID NOT go silently into that good night of feminist movement forgetfulness of the past 30 years. They have stayed on the job, day in and day out, and, as we see in the article below, risking their lives more fully every day, especially when there is a Democrat or pro-choice president in the White House.

 The medical professionals and social workers, the ones that kept working, like Dr. Tiller, the ones who are now speaking out nightly on MSNBC, these are people who didn't go away or shut down just because the movement politics had waned. They are true heroes.

For the rest of us, maybe we will remember our old activist selves. Maybe we'll remember what it was like to regularly staff the counter-protests at the clinics on Friday afternoons.

Maybe we'll remember what it was like to organize and stand up for what we believe in, as if it were the norm, and not something forgotten, in an old scrapbook.

Watch Rachel Maddow on MSNB in the evenings, and it makes you, makes me, remember the old days, of staffing the pro-choice tables in the student union on campus, bringing the speakers in, of marching and raising hell and pestering those folks with the oddly arched eyebrows and permanently angry faces protesting outside of clinics on Friday afternoons.

Maybe we forgot to be those people because the clinics disappeared, so we didn't see the protesters, forgot we still needed to fight back. I don't know why. I didn't stop being that feminist. But we sure did stop getting riled up over travesties that should have kept us riled up.

Some paragraphs in the article below just blew me away, so much so I have to bold them, call them out. Read them once. Then read them again.

Link: Cristina Page: The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing.

Cristina Page

Author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America

Posted: May 31, 2009 09:36 PM

The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing

For those who would like to think today's murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, is an isolated incident, here's the horrifying news: You are wrong. The pattern is clear and frightening.

In March 1993, three months into the administration of our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was murdered in Pensacola, Florida. That was the beginning of what would become a five-fold increase in violence against abortion providers throughout the Clinton years.

Today's assassination of Dr. George Tiller comes 5 months into the term of our second pro-choice president. For anyone who would like to believe that this is a statistical anomaly, a coincidence that doesn't portend anything, again, you are wrong.

During the entire Bush administration, from 2000-2008 there were no murders.

During the Clinton era, between 1994-2000 there were 6 abortion providers and clinic staff murdered, and 17 attempted murders of abortion providers. There were 12 bombings or arsons during the Clinton years.

During the Bush administration, not only were there no murders, there were no attempted murders. There was one clinic bombing during the Bush years.

One can only conclude that like terrorist sleeper cells, these extremists have now been set in motion. Indeed the evidence is already there. The chatter, the threats, the hate-filled rhetoric are abundant.

In the last year of the Bush administration there were 396 harassing calls to abortion clinics. In just the first four months of the Obama administration that number has jumped to 1401.

[...]

Battered women are at greatest danger of being killed by their abusers when they are most strong -- that is, when they muster the courage to leave. The same phenomenon may be true in the abusive political abortion debate. The pro-choice movement, specifically our abortion providers, are in the greatest danger of violence when we take power. When the anti-abortion movement loses power, their most extreme elements appear to move to the fore and take control. The murder of Dr. Tiller suggests that violence against abortion providers may be far more linked to the power, or lack thereof, anti-abortion groups have politically than to laws designed to increase penalties against such acts.

History has another disturbing lesson for us. The escalation of anti-abortion rhetoric plays a direct role in instigating violence. When anti-abortion groups ratchet up the rhetoric, they know exactly what they're doing and the results it will have.

[...]

Eleanor Bader, co-author of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism, in an article in March for RHRealityCheck.org about clinics bracing for an uptick in violence after the election of Obama wrote, "immediately after Obama's election, Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director of the National Right to Life Committee, called him a "hardcore pro-abortion president." The American Life League dubbed him "one of the most radical pro-abortion politicians ever," and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life warned that Obama will "force Americans to pay for the killing of innocents." Americans United for Life, the Family Research Council and Operation Save America quickly joined the chorus."

[...]

Many in the pro-choice movement believed that the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law, passed in 1994 in response to Gunn's murder, was responsible for reigning in violence against abortion providers. Clearly that is not the case. Based on statistics on violence against abortion providers compiled by the National Abortion Federation, even after the passage of FACE in 1994, there was still considerable violence and threats against clinic personnel, including six murders. As appears clear, the pro-choice movement has looked through rose-colored glasses, assuming or hoping that legalities can restrain terrorists.

In fact, it didn't abate after FACE, as we've seen. It was not until a comforting anti-abortion president did they calm down and stop the murder, bombing and harassment spree.

As a result of Bush's policies, recent reportings from clinics suggest that we may be seeing a surge in abortions. That has failed to inspire introspection from anti-abortion groups. That Clinton presided over the most dramatic decline in abortion rates in the recorded history of our country left them unmoved. That Obama has assigned his senior-most staff to the task of finding ways to reduce the need for abortion has not protected clinics nor providers nor Obama. Holder and his Justice Department should take note of the chatter and move aggressively against this form of domestic terrorism. The hate-filled rhetoric against Obama from the anti-abortion movement is at unprecedented levels, even for this reflexively inflammatory group. They refer to him as the "Most Pro-Abortion President Ever" ignoring the fact that he is the first to extend an olive branch in hopes that together we can make abortion more rare.

[...]

What's happening to journalism and journalists right now

You hear the news of the layoffs across the board, hitting the big papers, the big TV stations, the big chain media conglomerates (Gannett, Time Warner, Tribune Co).

But it doesn't really sink in until you understand an ENTIRE GENERATION of experienced journalistic talent is being lost. Yes, that was also lost in the late 1980s (I remember 800 people laid off in a fell swoop when the two Little Rock, AR newspapers merged, because that town wasn't big enough for the two of them, according to Gannett. That was repeated in Tulsa, repeated in Anchorage, AK, repeated everywhere). 

But the current purge is making the Reagan media deregulation, which ushered in the era of media monoculture monopoly, the anti-thesis of the "penny press" which, like the blogosphere, let a thousand journalistic flowers bloom, look like child's play.

Instead, the consolidation of the Reagan years left the media ecosystem INTENSELY vulnerable to a single attack of a bark beetle that seems to be wiping out dead tree media, among other things. And that was all in the name of protecting 20-30% shareholder profit margins in the 80s (not exactly an easy PR move to make, to tell all those people you were depriving of their livelihood that it was all in the name of profit margins that retailers and manufacturers haven't seen in decades).

The excuse now is that the gaping pie hole of the Internet isn't sucking up enough of the costs of print media, so to old media monopoly barons that means CONTENT CREATORS have to go. Because no one on the Internet craves news content and analysis, or topical or beat coverage at all, nuh-uh.

You don't think this is screwing up our world? Read the story below, and cry, not for this resilient laid-off reporter. Cry for yourselves, because we will all be deprived of ready access to his and other talented writers' work.

Except for that profitless, frictionless, RSS distribution system that is the Blogosphere.

All Hail the Long Tail!

Link: Gannett reporter made "independent" by noon: Former Gannett environmental reporter becomes "independent" by noon.

Former Gannett environmental reporter becomes "independent" by noon

By Bruce Richie

I started out this morning as a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. I ended the work day as an "independent journalist."

At 8:45 I headed over to Marpan Recycling to work on a story about the state's goal of achieving 75 percent recycling by 2020. That was the goal spelled out earlier this year in a comprehensive state energy bill. And the goal is about three times as much as the state is recycling now.

At Marpan, they're recycling about 2/3 of the construction waste that comes in. Concrete, metal, cardboard and wood are the main products that are sold to recyclers along with mulch.

Marpan's Kim Williams said the state could boost recycling if people purchased more products from recycled materials to boost markets. Starting in January, all construction waste now going to Leon County's landfill will go through Marpan first for recycling.

Upon heading into the office shortly after 10, I was called into the office of Executive Editor Bob Gabordi. I knew what was coming, especially when I saw managing editor Africa Price there.

I was being laid off, Bob explained, and he asked if I had any questions. I could have responded more politely but frankly I was annoyed. My job had already been changed three times this year, and now I was being put out of work. But we shook hands, they offered to help me and I offered to help them in the future. There was a modest severance package.

   Then I went home. I checked my e-mails. I returned a few phone calls. And I didn't know what to do next.

   So I ate my lunch and went to work.

   I went to the same state hearing that I had been planning on going to. But now I wasn't a Tallahassee Democrat reporter.

[...]

About 100 people attended, many of them from county recycling programs. Speakers chimed in with ideas about how the state could better educate residents to recycle or how it needs to create new markets for recyclable materials.

It seemed like news to me, but I was the only reporter there to cover it. And I wasn't even a newspaper reporter any more. Perhaps the other media were at the Environmental Regulation Commission meeting across town, where an important vote was scheduled on whether to adopt California's auto emissions. Or maybe they were not there either.

Earlier this year I would have covered the ERC instead. But my environmental reporting job got axed on Aug. 1 and I was reassigned to cover Leon County. Since recycling is inherently local, I figured I could at least cover the interesting concept of recycling 75 percent of our waste.

In this age of change, I feel certain there is a place for me to report on the important issues in Florida's Capital. Maybe I'll become a blogger, combined with some freelancing, combined with being on welfare. The reality hasn't really set in yet.

[...]

Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free

Link: Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free | The Blog Herald.

Link: TypePad - Why Blog - Journalist Bailout Program.

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program

Because your Tumblr and Tweets, while clever, will not pay your bills.

Hello, recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist! We're Six Apart (you know us as the nice folks who make Movable Type or TypePad, which maybe you used for blogging at your old newspaper or magazine) and we want to help you.

We're a company founded by bloggers, and we've supported online journalism from the beginning. During a time when so many great journalists are worrried about losing their jobs, we want to do what we can to help. So we've put together a program to put you on your first steps towards independence.

Wow, this is wild. I knew there were many reasons I've always got on so well with the folks over at Six Apart, since back in the early days, but here's something amazing. Turns out my old acquaintance Anil Dash is behind it. I love his post about the rationale behind it, here.

As demoralizing as all the newspaper, magazine, and media layoffs are, and despite Tina Brown over at The Daily Beast trying to scoop up all the laid off journalism talent she can snag away from Arianna Huffington over at Huffington Post (What, are Daily Beast and HuffPo going to become like the Elephants' Graveyard, the place where old journalists go to die?), good old Six Apart, makers of Movable Type, Typepad, Vox (and do they still own LiveJournal?) is opening the door to journalistic self-publishing.

What a relief! The problem I had with using Typepad with the sometimes technophobic journalists that I built blogs for (not all) is that they often have trouble setting them up in the first place, putting up the basic design. On the other hand, Typepad usability is the best (I think) for handholding noobs, and its interface still after all these years FEELS the most friendly.

When I was teaching my journalism seminar at the University of Montana, I could have gone with a free service, like Blogger (WordPress wasn't really a player yet at that time), but I forced the students to use the paid Typepad service, and because of it, got them up and running in the shortest time possible.

And the moral of this story, imho, is never underestimate the amount of handholding new users may need.

And at the same time (from Typepad's POV) it may also attempt to hang on to a professional user base that is being increasingly lured away to module, online magazine-style themes that are increasingly becoming popular on WordPress.

I'm looking forward to a new slew of journalists taking control of their profession from the corporate publishing interests, dictating better story selection, sounding off about the state of the field, with this terrific move from Six Apart for Typepad!

Link: Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free | The Blog Herald.

Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free

by Thord Daniel Hedengren

Six Apart has a clever “program” up to get recently laid off journalists to start blogging. They’re calling it the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program. Basically, it gives journalists these things for free:

• A TypePad Pro account for free. Usually costs $14,95/month.
• Enrollment in the Six Apart Media advertising program, to get the ad dollars rolling.
• An extra push on blogs.com.

They also offer support and whatnot, all for free. The only thing the journos need to do is send a link to their last piece for a newspaper or similar. And according to the post, there’s been an overwhelming interest in this, so they’re lagging a bit behind on setting the accounts up, but no word on closing the program.

You know what? This is brilliant!

My hat’s off to whoever on Six Apart that came up with this idea. It’s a great way to get journalists blogging, since most of them (or us, in some cases) just need an economic incentive and a set platform to get started. The pure notion that you’ve got everything set up, and ads rolling right away, well, that’s bound to attract a lot of people.

Me included, actually. I’m a bit curious to this, but since I haven’t been sacked from any of my writing gigs yet, I don’t think I can apply. Too bad.

Great work, Six Apart, and a great PR stunt as well!

 

Now this is one hell of a Dutch mint!

Link: Cool new Dutch coin.

How cool is this? Yeow! I just couldn't pass it up. Thanks to Kottke.org.

Cool new Dutch coin

Matthew Dent's new coinage for the UK was pretty great, but this Dutch commemorative coin is a fully contemporary chunk of wow.

On the front, the names of famous Dutch architects form an image of the queen while some Dutch architecture books on the back form an outline of The Netherlands. The design was done using free software running on Ubuntu/Debian. (via design observer)

 

The Night They Were Dancing in the Streets -- Daily Intel -- New York News Blog -- New York Magazine

Link: The Night They Were Dancing in the Streets -- Daily Intel -- New York News Blog -- New York Magazine.

A scene from Fort Greene last night. Photo: Getty Images

Or, as it led on another story by a neighbor, I guess, Andrew O'Hehir at Salon:

Link: I watched Fox News for five hours last night | Salon News.

I watched Fox News for five hours last night

By Andrew O'Hehir

Nov. 5, 2008 | On my way toward the prodigious outdoor party that broke out shortly after 11 p.m. on the streets of Fort Greene, the multiracial Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood where I live -- a party to celebrate a moment of generational and political shift in America unlike anything I've ever experienced -- I spent a few hours with a somewhat different demographic. But I'm not here to kick sand in the face of the Fox News Channel. For the first time in its existence, Fox on Election Night 2008 seemed a weak and piteous thing, trying to cover its nakedness with shreds of dignity, and staring mortality right in the face.

[...]