More readings on journalism

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

As the weekend winds down, here's some food for thought:

"Who Owns Newspaper Companies?" (Nieman Journalism Lab): Martin Langeveld, a former newspaper publisher, continues to document whose fingers are in the newspaper pie. Here he inventories the investors in publicly traded newspaper companies, concluding "that with a few exceptions, ownership is diversified to the point that no single entity owns more than 10 percent." That's not the case in what he calls the "distressed sector" -- the companies that have gone through bankruptcy court -- where certain investors seem to hold greater stakes.

"The Danger in the Doldrums" (Xark): With the earthquake and tsunami in Japan as backdrop, newspaper veteran Dan Conover (loooong bio here) contemplates the paradox of the news biz: that people seek out good journalism during crises, but could care less otherwise. And since doing top-notch reporting is as expensive on "slow" news days as it is on breaking ones, most media companies back-fill on the former: car chases, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan -- because readers still have to be delivered to the advertisers buying space. "It's what we do -- or don't do -- on the slow days that's killing our reputations," he says.

Musical interlude.

"The New Watchword? Deconvergence" (ReJurno): Journalist Jane Stevens makes a case for flipping the newsroom on its head: that reporters write for the Web, rather than print, and that their work then is repurposed for the newspaper. That way, she says, papers' online operations won't get pulled down along with the print operations. "[J]urnos just focus on building and managing their communities, their web and mobile coverage," she says, although she'd allow that "Maybe a couple of print-centric staff writers provide Sunday feature stories, but that depends on who the print audience is and what they want."

Bonus reads:

1. "The Newsroom Rush of Old" (Smithsonian): Think speed is new to the newsroom? Think again, as reminiscences born of an old city desk photo show.
2. "Dan Rather: Inside Mark Cuban's Gilded Cage" (Mother Jones): The 79-year-old former news dean of CBS is happy again as a shoe-leather reporter. 
3. "How to Not Get Hired" (Forbes): Humorous tales from the job hunt. Or, "been there, done that!"

Bonus video: In case you were worried about Maru (of course we watch cat videos on the Web!), word came from Japan that he is safe.

Beware print's Web siren

There you are at the breakfast table, sipping coffee and munching a muffin, when something in the morning paper catches your eye.

Interest piqued, you start to read, only to discover that you're being teased to take up the article online.

I hate that.

Breakfast for me is a quiet time, and I mean that literally: no talking, no TV, no radio. Mornings set the stage for the rest of the day, and I want to ease into it with coffee and print -- newspaper, book, long letter -- not push a button to stir something electronic. There will be time for that hubbub later.

I'm not alone: "I don't want to wake up and look at a screen. I feel like, you know, as a society, we try to put everything on that same goddamn screen. And pretty soon we're going to be eating on the screen, or like [audience laughter] making love through the screen. ... why does everything have to be on a screen?"

That's Dave Eggers, founder of the independent publishing house McSweeney's, talking about San Francisco Panorama, the 328-page broadsheet newspaper he published last fall as a tribute to print. He was interviewed last week at the annual meeting of the American Society of News Editors.

Not long ago, newspaper editors seemed to have a pathological need to shout about their online operations, intent on driving traffic there when websites were novel. That often took the form of "On the Web" squibs embedded in stories that told of court documents, transcripts and data that reporters scrambled to collect so readers might have a look themselves.

These days, the touts are still in the papers, but they're more likely to encourage feedback on stories or to advertise staff blogs.

On occasion, though, they revert to the old, teasing me to a story or graphic I can see only online.

Which leaves me oh-so-cranky and let down by print.