The PD has been the Big Dog for news content in this state for a very long time, including solid political coverage, especially in the past year. Time will tell what a “reset” business means for the robust newsroom required to do all of that. And it may be a harbinger of what awaits political coverage elsewhere as the newspaper landscape continues to change.
United States Project
06:50 AM - November 27, 2012
‘Resetting’ The Plain Dealer
What’s to become of Cleveland’s daily, a bright spot in Ohio’s coverage of election 2012?
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
This is the best moment to be in journalism (25)
The WSJ editorial page hits rock bottom (19)
A backgrounder for understanding the storm that hit Moore, Oklahoma
Is the ‘chilling effect’ real?
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113219/doj-seizure-ap-records-raises-question-chilling-effect-real
One year ago four journalists were brutally murdered in the bloodiest attack on the press in Mexico’s drug war. For those left behind the pain — and the threats — continue
50 years of foreign reporting from the NYRB
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
At the blog of the Cleveland Digital Publishing User Group (CDPUG), I posted a review of the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Internet strategy to date. It produced a reply, also posted there, from Steve Newhouse, the head of the privately held Advance operation. http://blog.cdpug.org/?p=1785
The newspaper's management hasn't developed a high performing web site and the conservative nature of a family owned business may work against the firm placing another bet on innovative design that incorporated 21st century digital media.
My concern is that while a "harvest" strategy involving content management might assure some level of advertising revenue, it might not produce the quality of journalism one would expect from a newspaper in one of the nation's largest cities.
A strategy of print and digital media if well designed, and that includes apps for mobile devices, could bring back the under 40 demographic. We'll have to wait and see what Advance comes up with.
#1 Posted by Dan Yurman, CJR on Tue 27 Nov 2012 at 07:06 PM
Dan: Advance websites in general suck, and they've done nothing to improve them in any of the places where they've already gone non-daily. Steve Newhouse or anybody else who says this isn't about cost-cutting is full of it.
#2 Posted by SocraticGadfly, CJR on Thu 29 Nov 2012 at 01:51 PM
My mother is 93 years old and my mother-in-law is 88 years old. Both of them cannot get out of the house without help. They subscribe to the Plain Dealer daily and both spend part of their day reading it. I will be retiring in a few years and I was planning on expanding to daily service. If the Plain Dealer is losing money then it is a fact of life that it must be trimmed but if it is making any money at all then it will be a great disservice to the community to cut its operations.
#3 Posted by John, CJR on Mon 3 Dec 2012 at 05:53 PM