The Times They Are A-Changin’
I grew up reading the San Francisco Chronicle, home of Herb Cain, the best columnist in the country, as well as a famous story about “Snakes in Toilets,” and a derogatory reference in All the Presidents Men (Jason Robards, as the Washington Post editor says, “Naw, we can’t publish that, give it to the San Francisco Chronicle.”)
The Chronicle may not have always got it right, but they told a great story. And because I have a number of friends who work for newspapers, I’ve been fascinated by the struggles of newspapers to adapt to the challenge of the new media.
Newspapers are famously losing ad revenue to Google and Yahoo, readership to some of the same portals; and their reporting is being challenged by bloggers and even posts to YouTube.
But as my reporter friend Henry Weinstein said when receiving a journalism award a couple years ago, “Who the hell is going to gather and write the news in the future? — Elves?”
How can newspapers adapt and provide some of the three-dimensional story-telling that the big platforms, blogs and forums can’t?
Check out this piece from MediaStorm, by Luis Sinco, a “traditional” photographer for the much troubled LA Times about the Iraq vet portrayed above. MediaStorm is a marvelous project designed to teach journalists the new way.
Technorati Tags: New Journalism, New Media, Newspapers, San Francisco Chronicle
July 11th, 2008 at 8:33 am
A bit of digital weirdness: when you try to load this on an iPhone, you don’t see the story I’m citing here. Instead, go to http://mediastorm.org/ and find it there, under the heading, “The Marboro Marine.”