ISSUE

Winter 2006

Goodbye Gutenberg

Journalism is on a fast-paced, transformative journey, its destination still unknown. That the Web and other media technologies are affecting mightily the practice of journalism is beyond dispute. Less clear is any shared vision of what the future holds.

In this issue, words about journalists' experiences in the digital era transport our vision forward, while our eye takes us on a visual voyage back to a time when newspapers wove communities together.

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Articles

Technology

Will News Find a Home on YouTube?

With little original news reporting surfacing on this Web site, ‘perhaps an important lesson learned is that tools don't make a tradesman.’
Morris Jones
December 15, 2006
Features

Capital Crisis in the Profitable Newspaper Industry

Solving this ‘will call upon levels of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship infrequently found in newspapers in recent years.’
Robert G. Picard
December 15, 2006
Features

Looking Past the Rush Into Convergence

As technology drives big newsroom changes, what will happen to journalism?
Edward Wasserman
December 15, 2006
Features

Evolving Definitions of News

‘Journalists may have thought it was necessary to set the old school aside to accommodate the new realities, but with the new realities there is no new ethic.’
Tom Bettag
December 15, 2006
Technology

Feeding the Web While Reporting the Story

At The New York Times, multimedia storytelling is becoming more a part of the journalism and less of an afterthought.
Neil Chase
December 15, 2006
Technology

Finding New People to Tell the Stories

‘… progress in democratizing journalism doesn't necessarily translate into more or better news coverage—at least not yet.’
Craig Cox
December 15, 2006
Technology

Enterprising Journalism in a Multimedia World

With video, audio and interactive data, The Associated Press makes its investigative reporting accessible, useful to other news outlets, and compelling to its consumers.
John Solomon
December 15, 2006
Technology

Confronting the Dual Challenge of Print and Electronic News

‘To make best use of both editions, we need to be increasingly disciplined about what goes where.’
Paul E. Steiger
December 15, 2006
From the Curator

Examining the Core of the Nieman Experience

The Curator explores how the foundation can best cultivate the skills journalists will need in the digital era.
Bob Giles
December 15, 2006
Technology

When Walls Come Tumbling Down

The Associated Press is making ‘radical adjustments’ to its news reports and business strategies in response to the Web.
Jim Kennedy
December 15, 2006
Technology

Myths and Realities of Convergence

‘… news organizations will be best served if they focus on stories—not delivery platforms.’
Randy Covington
December 15, 2006
Features

Tired of Waiting to Move Ahead

With plenty of ideas about how to move journalism into its digital time, a journalist tries to push the industry past its natural inclination to ‘voice the “no ways.”’
Geneva Overholser
December 15, 2006
Features

Media Convergence: ‘Just Do It’

Changing people’s way of thinking is key to ‘the media revolution’ in northern Denmark.
Ulrik Haagerup
December 15, 2006
Features

Navigating the Road to Convergence

‘Being small and a family-owned company are attributes that have helped us to become a multimedia news organization.’
Ralph Gage
December 15, 2006
Journalist’s Trade

Community Building on the Web: Implications for Journalism

The founder of craigslist speaks about online lessons he shares with new media journalists.
Craig Newmark
December 15, 2006
Technology

When the Web Feeds the Newspaper

The letter ‘i’ in iHerald stands for ‘interactivity, the individual and the Internet.’
Eric Blom
December 15, 2006
Opinion

The ‘P’ Word in the Book Business

‘Newspapers constantly editorialize about other professionals hiding their misdeeds, but with this they were silent.’
Margaret Engel
December 15, 2006
Technology

The Digital Reach of a Newspaper’s Code of Ethics

‘It offers readers ideas and phrases to use in their criticism of our journalism, which has a way of sorting serious critics from simple haters.’
Dean Miller
December 15, 2006
Opinion

Teaching Journalism Students to Value What Is Authentic

‘I thought by sheer will I could be the one teacher who led his students away from plagiarism.’
Brent Walth
December 15, 2006
Technology

Sights and Sounds of a Newspaper’s Editorials

An editorial page editor describes ‘a wide-open, creative new world for journalists who want to make use of new media and relate to newspaper readers in new ways.’
Susan Albright
December 15, 2006
Books

Must-Read Books on the larger media environment in which journalism is practiced

To understand the larger media environment in which journalism is practiced—”the new ocean we’re swimming in,” as Jane Ellen Stevens calls it—she offers four must-read books:“The Search: How Google and…
Jane Ellen Stevens
December 15, 2006
Opinion

Plagiarism Goes by a Different Name on the Web

A journalism class experiences firsthand ‘the slippery new terms being used in our slippery times.’
Judy Muller
December 15, 2006
Nieman Notes

Newspapers Have Met Their Enemy Within

‘The question is not whether the newspaper is dead, but whether it can be rescued from unreasonable demands.’
Watson Sims
December 15, 2006
Features

Newspapers and Their Quest for the Holy Grail

Putting the Web first might be ‘the most difficult transformation in our mindset, but we should go ahead and flip our world on its head.’
Michael Riley
December 15, 2006
Technology

Narrative Journalism in the Era of the Web

‘Once the idea of using footnotes took hold, the question became whether we could use them for more than their usual purpose of attribution …’
Lee Hancock
December 15, 2006
Technology

Taking the Big Gulp

‘The Web is its own medium with its own characteristics. It is not newspapers. It is not TV news. It is not radio.’
Jane Ellen Stevens
December 15, 2006
Nieman Notes

Goodbye to All That—A Memoir

‘My introduction to daily journalism began with a murder. My introduction to Niemanry also began with a murder.’
Edward C. Norton
December 15, 2006
Journalist’s Trade

The Challenge of Community Building

Knight Foundation asks whether the community role newspapers play can be replicated by new media and offers to support those who show it can.
Gary Kebbel
December 15, 2006
Features

Journalism and Web 2.0

‘Tomorrow’s potential readers are using the Web in ways we can hardly imagine, and if we want to remain significant for them, we need to understand how.’
Francis Pisani
December 15, 2006
Features

We Can Adjust to Changing Demands, But Should We?

‘People can adapt to anything if the order comes from the person who signs the paychecks.’
Joe Zelnik
December 15, 2006
Features

Risk-Adverse Newspapers Won’t Cross the Digital Divide

‘Newspapers lacked the external vision necessary to see the vast range of opportunities created by the Internet.’
Chris Cobler
December 15, 2006
Features

Toward a New Journalism With Verification

‘This journalism must recognize that the distribution, the organization, and the sources of our work must change.’
Bill Kovach
December 15, 2006
Journalist’s Trade

Newspaper Gallery

This model #1 linotype machine, built between January and June 1893, was first used in the Baltimore, Maryland area. It was sold to The Rappahanock Record circa 1925. Newseum collection/gift,…
various contributors
December 15, 2006
Features

Caught in the Web

As journalists, we think about what the Web means for work we do in reporting and disseminating news and information. Given its transformative capacity, we can regard the Web as…
Jon Palfreman
December 15, 2006
Technology

Blogging News in China

‘In China, the Internet enjoys relatively greater freedom than other media. Even so, three of the articles I posted on my blog vanished without notice.’
Luwei (Rose) Luqiu
December 15, 2006
Uncategorized

Winter 2006: Introduction

Journalism is on a fast-paced, transformative journey, its destination still unknown. That the Web and other media technologies are affecting mightily the practice of journalism is beyond dispute. Less clear…
Melissa Ludtke
December 15, 2006
Features

A Dinosaur Adapts

‘Unencumbered by the need to squeeze words into a finite space, the Internet proved better for me, as the writer, and I'd argue for readers, too, than newsprint.’
Kevin Cullen
December 15, 2006
Journalist’s Trade

Why Anonymity Exists and Works on Newspapers’ Web Sites

‘If we require real names in print, shouldn’t we do the same thing online?’
Steve Yelvington
December 15, 2006
Features

Meshing Purpose With Product

Heeding the warning against forcing ‘existing quality standards into new technology,’ a journalist is cautiously optimistic about the digital future.
Philip Meyer
December 15, 2006
Technology

An Optimistic Plunge Into Multimedia Reporting

‘One columnist took on a controversial local issue and covered it in a way we'd never done before.’
Joe Howry
December 15, 2006
Technology

Inviting Readers Into the Editorial Process

In online polling about story selection, editors at the Wisconsin State Journal learn that ‘the readers who vote consistently do choose weighty stories.’
Ellen Foley
December 15, 2006
Technology

The Quickening Pace of Change

In March 2005, David Stoeffler, then vice president of news for Lee Enterprises, issued a challenge to the company’s newspaper editors: Give me ideas that will revolutionize your paper.RELATED ARTICLE“Inviting…
Ellen Foley
December 15, 2006
Features

Vanishing Jobs at Newspapers

RELATED ARTICLE“Are Journalists the 21st Century’s Buggy Whip Makers?”– William DietrichEmployment news at newspapers is bad, but just how bad depends on who’s counting. Between 1992 and 2002, the number…
William Dietrich
December 15, 2006
Technology

The Global Voices Manifesto

We believe in free speech: in protecting the right to speak—and the right to listen. We believe in universal access to the tools of speech.To that end, we seek to…
Ethan Zuckerman
December 15, 2006
Opinion

Letter to the Editor

Editor’s Note: Nieman Reports relies on journalists who write for our pages to provide an accurate account of events and experiences they share with our readers. Though we work to…
Liz McLemore
December 15, 2006
Technology

Puzzling Contradictions of China’s Internet Journalism

A journalist who has worked in China says that ‘the Internet has strengthened the power of the central government, not undermined it.’
Fons Tuinstra
December 15, 2006
Features

Are Journalists the 21st Century’s Buggy Whip Makers?

Newspapers might vanish, too, if they continue to ‘dream of past dominance while taking their product and trying to fit it into their competitor's terrain.’
William Dietrich
December 15, 2006
Technology

Gathering Voices to Share With a Worldwide Online Audience

‘Global Voices pulls together interesting threads of conversation and reporting from the global cacophony of blogging voices.’
Ethan Zuckerman
December 15, 2006