“ Reading magazines — and newspapers for that matter — is becoming a niche activity, and it behooves the industry to reward its true fans with palpable, physical quality.”
— David Carr
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Posts tagged with media
The New York Times - Not Dead Yet
Marco reports that The New York Times is finally doing something that actually sounds like 2011: News.me.
It’s hard to imagine such an interesting sounding app, that’s downright progressive even, coming out of the same firm that just last month implemented a paywall with so little skill or subtly. We can only hope that News.me will be great and whoever is in charge of this project gets the authority to fix the rest of the newspaper’s apps and digital offerings.
On the News
Hands down the best essay about the New York Times that I’ve read. From Mandy Brown at A Working Library.
I don’t anymore because of the paywall. Or at least not as much. Certainly not on the iPad. And with less enjoyment. My favorite way was the way I read it before March 28th or whenever the foolishness began. It seems to be free at work (from the Lincoln promotion?), but the same login springs the paywall at home. It’s easy enough to get around the paywall, but it’s annoying. The whole thing is frustration generating. As one friend pointed out over email, they’ve adopted a consumer experience perfected by the airline industry where everyone pays a different price and everyone feels ripped off. Setting a price is fine, but not like this.
How do I read The New York Times?
Without joy.
Rob Neyer - Media Harbinger
In an aside, Joshua Topolsky, formerly of Engadget, holds up Rob Neyer joining SB Nation as a signal of quality and the way forward in internet publishing.
You could certainly do a lot worse than considering Rob Neyer to be a harbinger of coming changes in web-based media.
In the 1980s he was researching for a then still outside the mainstream Bill James, in the 1990s he became a full time web-only writer for ESPN, and was authoring his own baseball books by the 2000s (and pretty good ones too).
Neyer was probably the first writer posting stuff online almost everyday that I wanted to read every day. He writes clearly, has always given others credit and praise (with links!), and is quick (maybe too quick) to concede ignorance and equally fast in admitting his own mistakes.
And more important than being humble, Neyer has good taste. He is a professional appreciator in the cast of High Fidelity. I don’t have time to follow every recommendation, or even a small fraction of the ones he makes, but from Baseball Prospectus to books to movies to the choice cuts from other blogs, Neyer always serves up the best stuff.
My estimation of SB Nation (which I had always seen as Etsy for sports fans) increased right away when he joined up. My estimation of Topolsky is now up too.
Via DF.
On Linking to Primary Sources
Trust but verify, as they say. The New York Times erodes the credibility of it’s writers by not allowing links in their iPad app.
Via DF.
“ Young people today are better and more broadly educated than any in history. They are accustomed to the internet, and have become expert browsers, by which I mean they navigate themselves in an unruly ocean of instant information.”
— Mark Bowden
“ Cable news, with a few notable exceptions, is a joke. And potential or real presidential candidates, active partisan fundraisers, pollsters and consultants, even if a couple are ostentatiously taken off the payroll, are the ones laughing the loudest all the way to the bank.”
— Norman J. Ornstein, AEI
This is the second quote I pulled from the NYT’s Room for Debate, When Pundits Run for President. Last week I was going to post something about how Room for Debate was super annoying and one of my least favorite features on one of my favorite websites. This week I just opened all the little arguments up in tabs and I’m in love.
“ There is no separation between politics and media. Any distinction is purely theoretical. The reality is that the two overlap so much that it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins and that makes for intriguing classroom discussions.”
— Ken Rogerson, professor of public policy at at Duke University.
Rogerson goes on to credit (blame?) social media and journalism’s Crossfire culture (my term not his) for the current state of affairs.
“ The truth is, writers like Kottke and Gruber are not common. Despite the tremendous amount of consuming they do, they share and filter with high quality. They are really a breed unto themselves, and their success is proof of that. But they are also what other writers should aspire to — not to be the next John Gruber or to sound just like him though.”
— Chris Bowler
