A new way to rate the news: how does it make you feel?

Aggregation of news headlines and user ratings is so commonplace it’s hardly worth a second thought. Except, that is, if you’re interested in the business of news, or in improving the way we experience and act on news. Common as they are, headlines remain the bedrock of online news, so we see a continual flow […]

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The lost summer of newspapers

Reporter: If you could’ve found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would’ve explained everything. Other reporter: No, I don’t think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost. With the curse of memory, a current […]

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A preview of Poynter Online’s new design

The academy for journalists in St. Pete plans to unveil its redesign, nine months in the making, later this week. Cleaner, yet still busy, the site changes to more horizontal navigation and provides access to Romenesko from all pages. It looks like Poynter has also added personalization tools. Online director Bill Mitchell describes the changes […]

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Jon Stewart and trust, for those who might have missed it

Years after the rest of of us knew it, New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani coronates Jon Stewart as “a genuine cultural and political force.”  The three-page spread, nearly literary in scope, acknowledges the fake anchorman and his satirical The Daily Show as an important news source. Stop the presses. “Is This The Most […]

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Beyond MSM, many views and images of China and Olympics

Like many of you, I’ll be glued to the tube for the Olympics and fresh glimpses of the world’s oldest civilization. Fortunately, there are other ways to look at a four-leaf clover. China has more than 30 million bloggers, by some estimates. A few are political. A few have been imprisoned. Some are unusual, such […]

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China: A view from the back of a galloping horse

Much of the world will form opinions about China from the legions of mainstream broadcasters and journalists descending on Beijing for the Olympics. A lot of it is an exercise in first impressions, Western perspective and cultural context. Thirty years ago I toured China as a young reporter covering the first U.S. trade mission to […]

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We Media’s Witnesses: Everything you thought you knew about the news has changed.

The 800 reporters from the world’s news organizations who descended upon Blacksburg, Va., on April 16, 2007, to cover the shootings of students at Virginia Tech quickly discovered an inconvenient truth. Though remote, Blacksburg was hardly isolated. Students, educators and citizens reported the horrific events first-hand through long-established digital and social networks. The news reached […]

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