AAN Association of Alternative Newsmedia

Media Oxpecker: 'There isn't enough whiskey in the world'

march 15, 2013 04:00 pm

Every week we round up media news you may have missed while you were busy getting hungover on purpose.

Paul Carr says print publications can still survive, but only if we let print do what print does best:
For a print publication to thrive today, it has to stop trying to replicate a Web experience -- snappy boxouts! 140 character features! SEO-tested headlines! HASHTAGS ON THE GODDAMN COVER -- and start focussing on what paper does best. That means having the confidence (and budget) to run long pieces of journalism dealing with important or difficult subjects. It means investing in great, big art. It means pull-outs and fold-outs and other tactile tricks that just aren't possible on screen. It means making a product that will remain relevant far beyond the lifespan of a trending topic. There's a reason magazine nerds pine for the days of Spy or 1970s era Rolling Stone, or Ramparts or Scanlan's Monthly: Picking up a single back issue of any of those publications provides ten times more pleasure than a week spent on Buzzfeed.
Laura Hazard Owen says the demise of Google Reader could change the way a lot of web journalists do their jobs. BuzzFeed's John Herrman says Google Reader drove far more web traffic than Google+ ever did.

New York Times director of digital design Ian Adelman talked with Poynter about the Times' recently revealed website redesign.

Ann Friedman shares tips for when journalists date other journalists: "Do prepare yourself for a breakup line like, 'I can't be with you because I really have to focus on breaking these staff memos.'"

And finally, author and Esquire blogger Charles P. Pierce on the closing of the Boston Phoenix:
All I learned about being a journalist, and a good deal of what I learned about being a human being in the world, I learned because I worked there … This sucks beyond all measure. There isn't enough whiskey in the world.