Category Archives: journalism

My 2012 Watch List

December 18, 2011 – 11:00 pm

TweetWhen it comes to cracking the digital media code, 2011 involved more testing than learning. Media companies seem to be locked in a feverish search mode. Their sense of urgency is reinforced by the continuous depletion of worldwide fundamentals: digital advertising’s encephalogram remains flat (at best); and when audiences grow, revenues do not necessarily correlate. [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Also posted in online publishing | Tagged , | Comments (8)

The Best of Curation

December 11, 2011 – 10:43 pm

TweetI love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is definitely one of those things. The companies are called Instapaper, Longreads, Longform. I love the material they find for me and I’m in the debt of developers who wrote neat applications [...]

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The Blogosphere’s Soft Corruption

September 11, 2011 – 7:18 pm

TweetThe TechCrunch / Arrington saga is the perfect illustration for the stealthy corruption plaguing digital information. Skip this paragraph if you know the story. In a nutshell: on September 1st,  Michael Arrington, founder of the site TechCrunch, announced the launch of a venture fund (Fortune broke the story). Rather small token by Silicon Valley standards: [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (23)

Politico’s Way

September 4, 2011 – 7:55 pm

TweetTo cover American politics, Politico deploys an editorial staff of 150. This is more than any news organization in the United States for the same beat. It all started five years ago: a niche website launched by three seasoned political reporters who sharpened their claws in mainstream medias. As envisioned by John Harris, Jim VandeHei [...]

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It’s all about accountability

June 26, 2011 – 8:31 pm

TweetCompared to Anglo-Saxon journalism standards, French practices are regrettably lax. It doesn’t mean that France doesn’t have remarkable writers, editors or medias; but, too often, their practices are just sloppy. Here, journalists abuse anonymous quotes and are too cozy with their sources. Papers are insufficiently edited, reporters routinely go after a story with a pre-defined [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (12)

Losing value in the “Process”

June 19, 2011 – 7:07 pm

TweetDigital media zealots are confused: they mistake news activity for the health of the news business. Unfortunately, the two are not correlated. What they promote as a new kind of journalism carries almost no economic value. As great as they are from a user standpoint, live blogging / tweeting, crowdsourcing and hosting “experts” blogs bring [...]

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Jazz Is not a Byproduct of Rap Music

June 12, 2011 – 7:26 pm

TweetDefining article as a “luxury or a byproduct” as Jeff Jarvis did last month, is like suggesting jazz is secondary to rap music, or saying literature is a Deluxe version of slamming. Reading Jarvis’ Buzz Machine blog is always interesting, often entertaining and more than occasionally grating. His May 28th blog post titled The article [...]

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Dangerous Blend

May 15, 2011 – 8:50 pm

TweetLast week, the Columbia School of Journalism released “The Story so Far“ (PDF here). For news zealots, this is tantamount to the Vatican publishing a sex manual. Still, this work is one of the best reports ever written on the state of modern journalism. Its authors, Bill Grueskin, Ava Seave and Lucas Graves, detail the [...]

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Lessons from the Bin Laden coverage

May 8, 2011 – 6:53 pm

TweetOne after the other, the newscycles of momentous events keep reshaping the digital information landscape. The latest example of such alteration is the Bin Laden story, it just set a new reference point. For traditional media, this raises the pressure yet another notch; they must rethink everything: organizations and processes – as well as business [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Also posted in online publishing | Comments (20)

Bob Woodward: how many page views?

April 10, 2011 – 7:12 pm

TweetThe legendary journalist was in Paris last week, promoting (“flogging”) his last book: “Obama’s Wars“. (Large excerpts in the Washington Post here). It was the standard book tour: TV and radio appearances; a well-timed cover story in Le Monde Magazine; same quotes, same anecdotes everywhere. Still, I was curious. After all, he’s one of my [...]

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