42% Wouldn’t Miss Their Local Newspaper
I’m just going to let you read the Pew Research Center’s latest study for yourself. What does this say about the conventional wisdom that readers want more hyperlocal news coverage? Do they really?
50 Media Sites Bloggers Link To The Most
Have you ever wondered which mainstream media Web sites get the most love from the blogosphere? Well, Technorati has created a new index, the Technorati Attention Index.
“Linking is arguably the truest measure of a blog’s influence, and more importantly, in a world without filters or controls, linking is the control,” quips Jen McLean, VP of Marketing at Technorati. “But the blogosphere is not self-contained. What about bloggers’ other sources? This is something we’re asked pretty frequently…So what is the influence of mainstream media sites in the blogosphere?”
Here are the top 50 most linked Web sites in the past 30 days, according to the index:
- YouTube
- New York Times
- BBC News
- CNN.com
- MSN
- Guardian.co.uk
- Washington Post
- Yahoo! News
- Reuters
- Los Angeles Times
- Telegraph.co.uk
- MSNBC
- The Wall Street Journal
- Time
- Wired
- USA Today
- Boston.com
- FOX News
- Daily Mail
- ESPN
- CBS News
- Financial Times
- Forbes
- San Francisco Chronicle
- Chicago Tribune
- The White House
- New York Post
- New York Daily News
- International Herald Tribune
- PBS
- Salon.com
- BusinessWeek
- Slate
- Newsweek
- New York Magazine
- Economist.com
- CBC.ca
- San Francisco Examiner
- MarketWatch
- Chicago Sun-Times
- US News & World Report
- Houston Chronicle
- Yahoo! Sports
- Entertainment Weekly
- Seattle Times
- E! Online
- People
- Science Daily
- Style.com
- The Christian Science Monitor
Follow Me On Tumblr
Just wanted to let you all know that I’ve started a tumblelog. It will be mostly unrelated to journalism or new media, but it’s a place for me to share things that I find interesting or inspiring.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the micro-blogging platform, here’s a bit from Tumblr’s Web site:
“Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML. Even use your own domain name.
We launched, 2 years ago, out of our office in New York City. Since then, we’ve grown from a team of two, to more than six people. Tumblr is something we’ve always wanted, and we’re thrilled that so many people care about it as much as we do.”
You might even want to start your own.
Facebook Moves Into Twitter Territory
From GigaOM:
“Today, Facebook announced several (and somewhat big) changes to their homepage/newsfeed, as well as the removal of most distinctions between public pages and profiles. These changes are an attempt to take on Twitter, which Facebook failed to acquire late last year. Facebook has always been the proponent of a more interactive web; but growing popularity of Twitter has shifted the focus from mere interactivity on a more real time web. Real time web, as we’ve argued in the past, is the next logical step in the internet’s evolution. Twitter currently leads this move to a “now web,” but today Facebook took steps to becoming a more real time web company.”
The Rocky’s Final Edition Video
A masterful multimedia piece and a first-class exit:
Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.
The Rocky Mountain News Publishes Final Edition
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News is closing up shop.
It’s nation’s first metropolitan newspaper to go completely under, although it may not be the last. The San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Chicago Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News are also at risk of folding.
It’s so surreal to see the entire industry collapsing right before your eyes. It’s a feeling that’s hard to put into words, even for the most talented writers. But I thought the Rocky Mountain News did a really great thing by putting this photo slideshow up on their Web site, depicting the staff’s reaction to the news.
The images are both compelling and heartbreaking. Unfortunately, I think there are going to be many more disappointed faces in newsrooms across the country. The Rocky Mountain News was Colorado’s oldest newspaper and a winner of four Pulitzer Prizes.
The newspaper will publish it’s final edition today, February 27.
Blog On
Alright, kids.
I’ve returned from my hitchhiking trip, which turned out to be one of the greatest experiences of my life! Let me tell you, there’s no better way to experience West Texas than cruising through the vast desert landscape in the back of a pickup truck.
I traveled from Austin to San Antonio to Del Rio to El Paso. Then, I caught a ride with a couple truck drivers all the way to Phoenix. And after thumbing it for a month, covering 1,500 miles with nothing but a 50 pound backpack, I decided to take a Greyhound bus the rest of the way to San Diego and Los Angeles. Trust me, hitchhiking loses its charm after a while.
But it was a great trip and I have no regrets. Everybody I met along the way was incredibly kind and generous, some even offering a shower and a place to spend the night. I probably won’t go hitchhiking again, but I’m glad I did it once. If you’re really curious to see the exact route of my trip, I created this nifty little Google Map.
So now that I’m back, I will be resuming my regular blogging duties on all things related to new media and journalism. Sorry I was gone so long, but understand it was a hunger that just needed to be satisfied.
As Thoreau said: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
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