Friday, June 17, 2011

Digital-first gets another advocate: UK Guardian CEO

John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register Co., has been generating a lot of buzz for his revolutionary pronouncements to newspaper editors that they need to put digital first, print last. (Here are his 10 Tweets to transform newspapers.)

Now he has something of an ally in the UK.  In an interview with Paid Content, Guardian Media Group CEO Andrew Miller echoed some of the scary phrases of Paton by saying that Guardian is realigning the business to be digital first.

He also predicted that all newspapers will eventually exit print, although he would not say when.


Saturday, June 11, 2011

African news service thrives as cooperative



Justin Arenstein never really wanted to work for a big corporation, but that is how he started out in journalism. He was a reporter working on contract covering one of the desperately poor shantytowns of his native South Africa.

He and his colleagues ran afoul of corporate management by covering the death squads that were assassinating black activists opposed to apartheid. They quit en masse and decided to start their own news organization, which was the beginning of what is today the African Eye News Service.


African Eye functions as a cooperative, with each reporter keeping half of the revenue generated by his or her own stories and the rest going to support the enterprise. Launched 18 years ago, it has 15 full-time journalists and a network of correspondents covering six countries -- South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania and Malawi. It has gained a reputation for editorial independence and aggressive investigative journalism.



Thursday, June 2, 2011

News organizations have attracted $187 million in grants since 2005

The new ecosystem of small news organizations continues to evolve at breathtaking speed. When you consider that it has been only four years since the news industry’s business model went into free fall, the number of new organizations and their quality are impressive. 

Also impressive is the financial support that they have attracted. J-Lab has just updated its database of grant activity to news projects since 2005, and the totals are: 


  • $186 million 
  •  from 274 foundations
  •  to 146 news projects
  •  775 grants
  •  23 states