Readin', 'Ritin', and (Publishing) 'Rithmetic

Despite the rise of websites and search engines as alternatives to „classic“ news sources such as television, newspapers and the radio, the TV is still the news source most people around the globe rely on. That’s the result of a global survey of more than 30,000 online consumers across 60 countries conducted by Nielsen.

When asked where they get the news, 53 percent of the global respondents named the television as one of their go-to sources. Search engines and social media sites were the second and third most popular choices with newspapers relegated to fourth place.

Not surprisingly, news preferences vary across different generations. However, TV is the most popular choice for Millennials (21-34), Gen Xers (34-49), Baby Boomers (50-64) and the Silent Generation (65+) with Generation Z respondents (15-20 years old) the only ones favoring social media sites over TV for news consumption....

Dear budding journalist,

Thanks very much for your email! I’m always happy to meet just about anybody, and would love to find some time to have that coffee with you.

Of course I’m also very flattered by the lovely things you said about me, and about how you’d love to have a career in journalism where you might be able to do the kind of thing that I do.

But you won’t. The job I’m doing now was inconceivable when I was your age, and, similarly, if you’re lucky enough to have done well in this industry by the time you’re my age (I’m 42), then you’ll almost certainly be doing something which almost nobody today could foresee....

Books do furnish a room, but according to many in the publishing industry, the fear is that emails, online video texts and tweets will prevent them being read.

"When we talk about gender imbalance in the media, it’s not just about women being generally underrepresented compared to men–it’s also about what topics they’re covering. Are women’s voices present in the media conversations around the full range of important issue areas of the day, or are they still siloed into certain traditionally feminine spheres? Welp, take a look at today’s depressing chart brought to you by Foreign Policy using data from The Op-Ed Project."

We often have cause to complain about media coverage of sex work, but we haven’t had occasion to talk about how good stories can be edited into inadequate ones as they travel from reporter to final outlet. The fate of Jordan Flaherty‘s story about Project ROSE (Reaching Out to the Sexually Exploited) is a great opportunity to look at what happens when a journalist tries to show the public the whole story but is met with resistance from his employer.

Two weeks ago, I saw Ira Glass talk about how stories enable us to see ourselves in the lives of others.  “The story is a machine for empathy,” Glass has argued elsewhere. “It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people’s situations.” Here, Glass is concerned not only with what stories to cover, but how to tell those stories. If we want to begin better reflecting the lived experiences of our communities we need to tackle both.

A year ago, Andrew Haeg left his work in public broadcasting to develop what he called an “empathy engine” to help journalists better engage and understand communities. In a blog post announcing his new project, he quotes Jose Antonio Vargas’ keynote at the 2012 Online News Association conference. Vargas said that journalism “has given me the biggest gift that anybody could ever give me […] the gift of empathy. Of seeing and listening to people who may not agree with me and who feel different than I do.”

So the question of empathy has two facets: empathy in the newsroom, and the empathy our stories foster in our readers. What connects these two elements is the act of listening.

by Josh Stearns

"Journalism is changing, and so is the role of women in the workplace. But the two are not always evolving in harmony. Women substantially outnumber men in journalism training and enter the profession in (slightly) greater numbers, but still only a relative few rise to senior jobs. The pay gap between male and female journalists remains stubbornly wide, and older women - especially if they have taken a career break - find it difficult to retain a place in the industry.

Women in journalism still cluster around particular subject genres. Historically, they were almost totally confined to “pink ghettos”, but as more women entered the industry, there was an expectation that their opportunities would expand and that they would duly embrace areas that had been traditionally male, like hard news, crime or politics.

But a byline analysis of UK national newspapers in 2012 indicates that some areas still have very few women, in particular politics, sport and opinion writing. These findings are also supported by qualitative interview data. There are similar lacunae in the US press."

How Does Media Consolidation Limit Your Media Choices? #infographic Frugaldad via Businessinsider Guest post by Yin Wu I look 4Ward to your feedback. Keep Digging for Worms! Author: Bill - Dr. William J.