Google will rule the world: Exhibit 51,943

Suggested reading for today’s class: Austin’s earlier dissertation on micropayments.
We all know Google will soon rule the world. Here’s but one more piece of evidence:
According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, Google is developing a tool that will help publishers implement micropayment systems, letting them make pennies or fractions of pennies each time their content is [...]

Reporters & Editors at Strib Take Hold of Their Own Fates

The Newspaper Guild members at the Star Tribune — reporters and many editors — are doing something really smart. They’re not waiting around for whatever’s going to happen to their newspaper, which is now in bankruptcy and may face the same fate as now-dead papers in Denver and Seattle.
The Guild is looking at new [...]

What if newspapers didn’t exist?

This guy thinks we can save newspapers by killing off newspapers’ info-for-free Web sites — temporarily.
So, here’s the proposal: At the stroke of midnight on Independence Day, Saturday July 4, all daily newspapers ought to switch off their Web sites until Friday, July 10.
Call it “A Week Without a Virtual Newspaper.” Call it crazy. Call [...]

Fixing the Newspaper Business or “Do I Have to Do Everything Around Here?”

This has been on my to-do list for a while but it keeps getting pushed downstream by other, more pressing issues.   The volume of whining – along with the complaints about the whining – has gotten so loud, though, I figured I’d better take an hour or two and get it done:
“#23: Fix newspaper business.”
Pay [...]

The New York Times Sells Herself

The Gray Lady began selling herself Monday—she sold an ad on the front page. The front page has long been considered the one place in a newspaper you would never allow advertisers to contaminate. And now our nation’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, has committed an act comparable to Joseph Pulitizer’s running sensationalized [...]

Economic stiumlation, one industry at a time

Beyond ensuring lucrative work for Fred Armison for at least four years, Obama seems to be getting right down to business when it comes to breathing life into the struggling economy — at least in one sector.
Today we’re seeing several reports of newspapers across the United States printing extra copies of today’s paper, sure to [...]