Posts by Mathew Ingram
Yahoo swears it isn’t going to screw up Tumblr — but how realistic is that promise?
As the dust begins to settle from one of the most significant acquisitions in web-land since the Facebook/Instagram deal, the warm glow of euphoria created by Yahoo’s $1.1-billion takeover of Tumblr has given way to the harsh reality of blending — or, more importantly, not blending — two vastly different companies and cultures. In a [...]
Why Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for $1 billion makes a certain horrible kind of sense
According to a blizzard of anonymous news reports, Marissa Mayer is working feverishly to land the biggest fish of her career as CEO of Yahoo: namely, the $1-billion-plus acquisition of New York-based Tumblr, the ultra-hip blog network — the two are reportedly involved in discussions that could come to fruition as early as Sunday. Although [...]
Crowdsourcing is here to stay — now it’s about building tools for networked journalism
As the media have become more social and thereby more “networked” — whether they like it or not — smart publishers like The Guardian and ProPublica have taken advantage of this phenomenon to crowdsource knowledge in a variety of ways. A decade or more after the concept started to become commonplace, the battle over whether [...]
It’s not about how long-form your content is, it’s about engagement with the reader
There’s been a bit of a backlash brewing in media circles lately: a growing movement against the idea that online journalism has to consist solely of hundreds of tiny news briefs or slideshows, and in favor of the idea that “longform” writing can also thrive online. Along those lines, the technology site Fast Company provided [...]
Why focusing on ‘time spent’ with print misses the point about how the news works now
According to some research from the consulting firm McKinsey and Co., so-called “legacy” publishing and broadcast platforms like newspapers and TV networks still account for more than 90 percent of the time that consumers spend getting their news. That’s a somewhat surprising figure — one that seems to suggest that much of the doom and [...]
Back to the future: What if the ‘mass media’ era was just an accident of history?
When it comes to the traditional media business, there is often a pervasive nostalgia for “the good old days,” when a handful of newspapers and TV networks ruled over the media landscape and profitability was so taken for granted that huge family dynasties with names like Sulzberger and Bancroft were built on that foundation. Many [...]
News flash: Twitter doesn’t have to hire journalists to be a powerful media competitor
When Twitter recently posted a job listing for a “head of news and journalism,” it sparked a rash of posts and commentary about how the company was becoming a media entity — until Twitter staffer Mark Luckie tossed cold water on that idea with an interview in which he poo-poohed the notion that Twitter had [...]
News flash: Twitter doesn’t have to hire journalists to be a powerful media competitor
When Twitter recently posted a job listing for a “head of news and journalism,” it sparked a rash of posts and commentary about how the company was becoming a media entity — until Twitter staffer Mark Luckie tossed cold water on that idea with an interview in which he poo-poohed the notion that Twitter had [...]
Is it the best of times or the worst of times for journalism? Yes
If you’re convinced this is the worst possible time to be a journalist, there’s plenty of evidence to support you: just this week, there have been cutbacks at the New York Post and news of cuts at the venerable Village Voice, not to mention periodic bankruptcies and printing-press shutdowns. But if you believe this is [...]
Is it the best of times or the worst of times for journalism? Yes
If you’re convinced this is the worst possible time to be a journalist, there’s plenty of evidence to support you: just this week, there have been cutbacks at the New York Post and news of cuts at the venerable Village Voice, not to mention periodic bankruptcies and printing-press shutdowns. But if you believe this is [...]