RRJ Editorial Blog
A must-have app for your iPod
February 08, 2010
According to Advertising Age, Maxim is joining GQ and Esquire by making its issues available as an app for your iPod Touch or iPhone. The GQ and Esquire app each cost $2.99 per copy. With that price, and the convenience of not having to stuff one more item in my bag, I'm definitely interested. Imagine videos, slideshows and more embedded within your articles, exactly where you want it.
But, put a longer article on there and (for me) the appeal is gone; there's only so much time that can be spent reading on those screens before my eyes burn out. Still, I'd like to read a magazine on there at least once. With a screen so small, I don't know how appealing the layout design can be, but, perhaps, that doesn't matter to everyone else. If having these apps makes a magazine more accessible, and more read, then maybe more mags should put some or all of its content in an app form. Now if only I had an iPod Touch to try it out myself.
Posted by RRJ at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
F is for Friday
February 05, 2010
And some other choice phrases that might describe the snafu the Review team noticed in The Globe and Mail yesterday.
The first line of a Report on Business story by Susan Krashinsky reads: "Vancouver's radio dial is about to get a bit more bolshoy."
The story is about a Russian media group taking over Vancouver airwaves for the Olympics. Notice anything off about that first sentence?
Bolshie is a slang term that derives from the term "Bolshevik," meaning left-wing, socialist or uncooperative, according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.
Bolshoy, on the other hand, refers to the Bolshoi Theatre, a world famous ballet and opera theatre in Moscow.
Somehow, I feel that's not the reference Krashinsky was going for.
Posted by RRJ at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
Farm publications rock
February 03, 2010
Much has been made of the new Canada Periodical Fund, which Masthead calls the "biggest shake-up" to hit mag-funding in a long, long time.
We all had a fun time parsing the politics behind the changes the feds were making to magazine funding: Artsy, small circulation mags were upset to learn that they may get their funding cut off completely, since publications now have to meet a 5,000 minimum paid circulation to qualify for funding. Some larger magazines may actually get more money. Magazines aimed at minority groups will not have to meet a minimum circulation requirement, but, gay and lesbian-oriented titles will. No one will be able to receive more than $1.5 million in funding. Except farm publications. Hmm...what could it all mean?
Well, American mag-lovers should be doing some parsing of their own, according to David Westphal of the USC Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism. In a just-released study, he writes that funding and postal subsidies are "a matter of life and death" for many publications and that they've been quietly shrinking for years—since 1792, in fact.
Posted by RRJ at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
Journalism: SAVED!
February 03, 2010
By Tyler Harper
Writing for this blog is no fun. It's true. As I searched for something to write about journalism or media that wasn't bleak or depressing, I found my options were slim. Do I opine on the ease of which Reuters' kills their own stories whenever Obama calls? Or maybe I ought to discuss Prism Magazine , the new online mag about national security published by Maher Arar?
No. None of that is very fun. So it was with great relief that I opened my inbox and found this email:
"Hey Tyler,
Seeing as you guys are arguably the preeminent J-School in the country, I figured we'd offer up our take on how to save the newspaper biz...
Cheers,
Chris & Noel"
First of all, that's a choice use of the word preeminent. Second, I was shocked to find Chris and Noel had put together 25 completely plausible ways of saving this sorry industry such as, "Make the job of paperboy more lucrative by giving the person something more valuable than newspapers to deliver, like firewood or drugs."
Finally, someone has taken the pressure off me to save the industry! My favourite item on the list, by the way, is number two. By way of pure coincidence, check rrj.ca next Tuesday to read 1,000 words on what I have to say about it.
Posted by RRJ at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
This blog will soon be sued under copyright laws
February 02, 2010
By Joyce Yip
Rupert Murdoch's success as one of the first newspaper publishers to put material online has now backfired. He is calling search engines such as Google News and Digg thieves for using their copyrighted content to fatten their own pockets.
"They are feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others. And their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not 'fair use.' To be impolite, it's theft," Murdoch said in November.
As a result, publications such as National Post and Winnipeg Free Press may be making their readers pay, or worse, change copyright laws.
But Google claims that it generates a lot of traffic for newspaper websites, and if any publication wants its content off the engine it can add a simple programming code on to its website. Moreover, Sara Rotman Epps, a media analyst at Forrester Research, argues that Google is often used as a scapegoat for newspapers' decline in subscriptions and advertisements.
If copyright laws are changed, journalists, especially web reporters, will have to find original content for their articles. And as bad as this sounds, I feel worse for the source who could be interviewed 50 times or more on the same subject.
Posted by RRJ at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
Human after all?
January 29, 2010
This week, the American Society for Professional Journalists issued a press releaseurging journalists in Haiti to respect their role as reporters of the news. The SPJ claims that some journalists have been blurring ethical lines, immersing themselves into their stories opposed to simply reporting the carnage. Some journalists have gone so far as to exchange their aid for interviews.
However, Israeli journalist, Natasha Mozgovaya, a reporter on location in Haiti, says: "No matter how often you tell yourself that the reports you file will help mobilize desperately needed aid for those who survived the earthquake, the fact remains: Instead of giving them water, you're sticking a camera in their faces. Even as they writhe in pain, you're asking them questions."
This calls into question the ethics of remaining passive amidst devastation and havoc. As journalists should we stand by idly, camera and notepad in hand, instead of digging victims out of rubble or driving the injured to hospitals? Perhaps there is no simple answer to this question. Perhaps we'll only truly know how to react when we're in that situation, hearing, feeling, seeing, the drama first hand.
Posted by RRJ at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)
In Fox we trust?
January 28, 2010
By Robyn Urback
According to a new little poll[pdf] that's getting a whole lot of attention, Fox News is the most trusted news network in the United States.
Almost half of the 1,151 American registered voters who were surveyed by Public Policy Polling said they trusted the network. Results were less positive for CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC.
"A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most
neutral and unbiased conveyors of news," said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy
Polling. "But the media landscape has really changed and now they're turning more
toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear."
Well, if that's true, I should probably start tuning in to "The Weather Network: San Diego."
So, what do these results tell us? I'd say it's that we need to start rethinking our modern news network recipes for success.
To start, we need a lot more shouting, and a healthy dose of fear mongering. I don't care if McCarthyism was 60 years ago; dropping a "Red" or "socialist" now and again is key to an attractive news report. Throw in some pundits, radicals, a little photo doctoring and a "Fair & Balanced" motto, and you're laughing. Occasionally you might have to cover a natural disaster or something of the sort; it's just part of the game. Don't worry—you can almost always make it political.
Posted by RRJ at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)
CNN's Vice
January 26, 2010
By Mai Nguyen
A magazine known for its urban coolness and lewd imagery has partnered up with CNN. Vice Magazine, a former zine hailing from Montreal, has started featuring a series of short documentaries on CNN.com (the first went viral last Wednesday).
It's an unlikely pairing, but Vice founder Shane Smith says there's logic behind the madness.
"If I wanna stay the same, if I wanna be Vice, that used to be like, 'Fuck everybody, and Dos and Don'ts, and all this shit,' then I should retire. Because that shit's over. It is. It's over."
Well said, Smith, but to translate, Vice is ready to settle down and take this journalism thing seriously.
And the magazine didn't sweet-talk its way to this deal. CNN.com staff have been charmed by Vice's consistent transparency in its reporting, which is duly noted in the first doc where Smith and his crew interview residents and ex-warlords of an impoverished and crime-ridden Liberia.
Vice is one of the few Canadian magazines that have found success in the United States, with editions spanning the globe. How it's been able to do it has been a surprise to most Canadian journalists. And what seems at first to be a ludicrous joint venture now might just blow up in our faces and prove to be a smart move. Looks like Vice is getting ready to resign as the hipster's Bible.
Posted by RRJ at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)
And the Pulitzer goes to
January 25, 2010
No serious discussion would contain National Enquirer and Pulitzer Prize in the same sentence, until now.
On Thursday afternoon, Washington Post staff writer, Howard Kurtz broke news of Enquirer executive editor Barry Levine's intention to submit his paper's writings on the discreditable behaviour of John Edwards for one of the prestigious prizes. "It's clear we should be a contender for this," Levine is quoted as saying.
As shocking as the tabloid's sensational covers is that three years of Enquirer coverage on the issue was vindicated by the former presidential candidate's confession yesterday stating that he had fathered a child with his mistress.
In 2008, after the tabloid broke news of Edward's affair and published a photo of him with an unidentified baby, the former senator denied being the father on ABC's Nightline. A year-and-a-half later, he chose to finally admit it to NBC.
Before you go declaring the end of journalism as we know it, note that the 2010 Pulitzer only considers publications from 2009, which excludes much of the paper's '07/'08 reporting on the matter.
Still, it's frightening to consider a Pulitzer Prize winning Enquirer.
Posted by RRJ at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
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