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The Associated Press announced Monday that any website that uses its content must get AP permission and share revenue with the wire service. Any site that did not comply with these arrangements would face a legal challenge. A variety of online sites use AP content, from search engines like Google and Yahoo! News, to news aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to articles, and smaller sites that reproduce the articles in full. You can read about the aggregating issue in the New York Times article found here…….Continue Reading AP threatens aggregators with lawsuit

The Minnesota Newspaper Guild has launched an awareness campaign it hopes will save the Minnestor Star Tribune (MST). Using a Facebook page, YouTube videos, a Web site, and other methods of outreach, the guild hopes to raise awarness that the paper is danger of going under. You can read about the efforts to save the MST on the Editors' Weblog…….Continue Reading A campaign to save the Star Tribune

Cable providers as well as cable networks are increasingly concerned by the threat of free content online. The fear is that their content will soon be available for free, and networks will have to be funded solely by advertising, like newspapers. One idea is to provide the content online only for cable subscribers, while others are worried that any restriction in online viewing may drive people to piracy and illegal downloads. You can read the New York Times article here…….Continue Reading Cable networks debate providing content online

Many have expressed excitement over the new Huffington Post Investigative Journalism Fund, which will support projects in investigative reporting. Others are concerned that the role of The Huffington Post as a funder might bias the journalism towards the left, reflecting the blog's well-known slant. Others doubt that lump-sum journalism is a viable option for the future. In the short-term, it may work, but the long-term sustainability of such funding remains tenuous. You can read the full article on Journalism.co.uk here…….Continue Reading Excitement, criticism over Huffington Post initiative

The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation has given West Virginia University $85,000 to produce multimedia content for rural newspapers. The university's journalism school has begun training rural newspaper staffers to produce video and audio content, as well as blogging and social networking. Read the Charletson Daily Mail article. — April 6, 2009…….Continue Reading Grant for WVU to help rural newspapers

The New York Times has launched a new interactive feature that allows readers to upload their pictures of the economic recession to its Web site. The project is titled P.U.F.F.Y. – photo upload form for you – and had its trial run during the Hudson plane crash. The site now has hundreds of photos, in categories of business, home, transportation and others. You can read the Editors' Weblog post about P.U.F.F.Y. here. Postscript (7/14/10): From browsing the NYT website, it seems as if P.U.F.F.Y was a one-time experiment with only moderate success. There are no other areas on the website……Continue Reading The NY Times; new citizen photojournalism

The Reynolds Journalism Institute is a nonprofit think tank affiliated with the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. The Institute is working to preserve journalism and help journalists monetize on their work. One of their first ventures is creating a social networking site that allows solo journalists to connect and collaborate with one another. The Institute is also funding research for a portable, electronic device that would carry the news. The Institute is funded by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. You can read about the work of RJI in this article by the Associated Press…….Continue Reading Think tank trying to help solo journalists

In The American Journalism Review, Paul Farhi contends that the Associated Press may have hastened the decline of newspapers by providing online carriers with their wire service. Newspapers, which have watched their medium unravel as audiences move online, own the AP. Thus, says Fahri, they have been handing their online competitors the means to challenge their very viability. You can read Farhi's article on AJR here…….Continue Reading Claim: AP has helped undo newpapers

Martin Langeveld does the math on charging viewers for online news, and he guesses that newspapers would be facing a net loss in revenue if they imposed pay walls for their content. There is little data on which to base these calculations, so there are a fair amount of assumptions involved in his assessment, but the conclusions are nevertheless noteworthy. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. — April 3, 2009……Continue Reading Does it pay to impose a pay wall?

At The Cable Show, Rupert Murdoch discussed his company's future plans–such as an investment in a four-color Kindle-like device–and dismissed the idea that a closure of the San Francisco Chronicle would be a bad omen for the future. Perhaps most interesting, Murdoch maintained that the New York Times would work well under a pay wall, countering common opinions that the Wall Street Journal is unique among newspapers in consumers' willingness to pay for content. You can read Murdoch's comments on paidContent.org's post…….Continue Reading Murdoch discusses newspapers' future