25 posts Search results for "James Breiner"
Ba yau be masu tallafawa aikin jarida suka fara sha’awar labaran da su dadada wa jama’a ba. Jaridun da ke rayuwa kan tallafi kadai irinsu National Geographic da Mother Jones sun yi shekaru gommai ana karantawa. Gidauniyar farko da aka yi dan tallafawa bincike mai zurfi a aikin jarida an kafa ta ne a shekarar […]
Media startups from the Arab world have had to battle censorship, lack of funding and unstable political environments. In a roundtable hosted by GIJN in December at the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism forum in Jordan, founders of four startups shared their innovation tactics to survive and thrive, including renting out excess office space, training, events and paid newsletter subscriptions.
Customer, profits, monetize. These are just some of the words that make journalists cringe because they sound so dirty when associated with our ethically-produced investigative journalism. But university professor James Breiner argues that journalists and the media need to add these words to their vocabulary without feeling squeamish.
Interest by the philanthropic community in supporting public-interest media is not new. Donor-supported nonprofit magazines like National Geographic and Mother Jones have been around for decades. The original Fund for Investigative Journalism dates back to 1969, while America’s National Public Radio began in 1971. Following the end of the Cold War, Western governments and foundations […]
Communications lecturer and former Columbus Dispatch business journalist James Breiner on how credibility works to the advantage of independent media.
The old news business model has been serving advertisers and investors at the expense of the most important people in the media equation — the public, the readers, the users. But now that digital media have broken up that arranged marriage of advertising and news content, publishers are rediscovering the importance of focusing on serving readers.
Many media investors see disaster everywhere they look, as traditional media lose audience, revenues, and relevance. However, the importance of media is “absolutely obvious” and media companies need more support from democratic societies than they are getting.
For high-quality journalism to thrive after the collapse of the traditional business model for media, independent media outlets need to leverage on their social capital to generate revenue and ensure editorial independence. The economic value of social impact can be used to justify and attract investments from foundations, NGOs, businesses, the public, and even government.
Given all the trash, half-truths and outright lies published on digital media, people are placing a higher value on media that verify information and demonstrate high ethical standards. Paul Steiger, founder and executive chairman of ProPublica, tells of a major donor to his online publication who “absolutely hated” an investigative story that they had published about a group “near and dear to the donor’s heart”. Steiger told the donor that the information was verified, and the story was fair. “We will just have to agree to disagree,” he told the donor.
Cross-border cooperation was the big takeaway from a three-day meeting of investigative journalists from 17 countries in San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 4-6. Billed as “The First Caribbean Meeting of Investigative Journalists: Tracking the Stories that Connect Us,” one aim was to create a counterweight to the power of organized crime by cooperating across borders, according to Carla Minet of the Center of Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico.
A year ago I wrote an article about digital media startups around the world and attempts to categorize and analyze them. Some of that material is now a bit dated, and I have come across some other analyses and lists that have good road maps for media entrepreneurs.
For the last seven years I have been interviewing and profiling successful entrepreneurial journalists in various countries of various socioconomic classes. I’ve talked to publishers and editors with staffs of as many as a hundred as well as some one-man/one-woman bands. The ones that survive and thrive after several years share some common practices.
We hear a lot about the next Silicon Valley, but we don’t hear much about the Valley of Death. That is where 80 percent of tech startups go to die. Startups die or join the walking dead mainly for two reasons: they don’t have enough cash or they don’t have enough knowledge to get to the next stage of development. They are unable to show investors that their project could be commercially viable. The Media Factory News Accelerator, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, wants to change those odds of making it across the Valley of Death.
Launching a news publication online is the easy part. Paying the bills and surviving for several years is the hard part. Three of those who have evolved and survived for at least five years are La Silla Vacia, a political website in Colombia, Homicide Watch, a news and data platform in three U.S. cities, and Texas Tribune, a news site focused on Texas civic life.
After years of predictions that this year would be the year of mobile, finally it has arrived. So here are some numbers that should prompt strategizing and action by digital media publishers. What small and large digital publishers ought to learn from these figures is that the public is moving so quickly to mobile consumption of news and social sharing that they need to take action.
In People Problems Part 1, we talked about two common kinds of complaints that you as a manager might hear. “I don’t think Karl is showing enough commitment to his work.” “The technical staff is being rude to our salespeople.” Here is a method for developing your colleague’s problem-solving skills, followed by how to apply it in these two cases. If you focus on developing your people, your organization will develop far more rapidly than if you focus on just the num.
If you are leading a team in a small media organization, you need to get the best out of your people. Everyone has to be a contributor. This is not just a selfish thing. You get the best out of people by helping them develop their own talents, overcome obstacles and reach their own professional goals.
As 2013 nears an end, we’d like to share our top ten stories — the stories that you, our dear readers, found most compelling. The list ranges from impassioned calls for journalists to fight back to the dangers of big data, from the latest techniques for tracking business across borders to the arcane practice of plane-spotting. Please join us in taking a look at The Best of GIJN.org.
I may have misled people for the last few years by saying that investigative journalism is not a business but a public service. Investigative journalism does, in fact, have commercial value. While investigative journalism may not produce the web traffic of popular topics, a media organization reaps intangible but valuable benefits. Jeff Bezos, for one, seems to appreciate that value.
If you want to study journalism, you have more choices today, at lower cost, and of higher quality than ever. Sometimes you will get that at a university and sometimes not. That represents a challenge for universities. In a lecture at a journalism conference in Puebla, Mexico, I described a personal experience taking a course in data visualization from one of the world leaders in the field, Alberto Cairo, author of “The Functional Art.” This kind of course represents a major challenge for universities, because their monopoly on expertise and certification is eroding. Just as occurred in the news business, competitors are emerging who are offering attractive alternatives.
