The urgency for solutions to the continuing erosion of local, legacy journalism grows greater by the day. And yet the challenge to create new newsrooms with a fighting chance at sustainability is as great as ever, too. The problem stems … Read more
On April 3, Mandy Jenkins paused from her work as general manager of The Compass Experiment — a partnership between Google and McClatchy to explore new business models for local news — to take a call. She had to be … Read more
Denmark is known as a prototypical welfare state, and the country reacted as such from the moment the corona crisis emerged in Europe—with top-down and far-reaching measures from the central government. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen went on national television … Read more
Graduation was approaching, and Northwestern University journalism student Stephanie Choporis faced a tough job market where her choices were few. She could have sought out a spot at a major newspaper or … Read more
Yesterday, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg argued that America’s advertisers have a civic obligation to save the news. Not only is he wrong, but he’s giving a free pass to news executives to keep their … Read more
Some months ago, The Economist ran a column about business schools. The tagline was: “Business schools are better at analyzing disruptive innovation than at dealing with it.” Sounds familiar, I thought. Ditto the media. For an … Read more
Brian McGrory, 51, was named editor of The Boston Globe just four months before the Boston Marathon bombings captured the world’s attention. Ten days into that coverage, McGrory spoke with David L. Marcus, NF ’96, the Globe’s former diplomatic correspondent, … Read more
Journalism is an escape artist. For the generation raised on Watergate, that lesson landed hard. The most powerful men in the world could not shut a story down. They lied and conspired, then bullied … Read more
Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation provides a framework to understand how businesses grow, become successful, and falter as nimble start-ups muscle in on their customers. It’s a familiar story, one that has played out in the steel and auto industries, among others. Now Christensen, in collaboration with 2012 Nieman Fellow David Skok, has applied his analysis to the news industry. Their goal in this issue's cover story, “Breaking News,” is to encourage news executives to apply the lessons of disruption to the media industry as a means of charting new paths to survival and success. Read more
