I have been reading peer-reviewed articles. LOTS and LOTS of them. But the last two left me unclear on the concept – as in, I thought I understood the value of reflection and revision and I thought I liked thoughtful, academic writing but these went through the process and yet provided none of those things so far as I could see so is it the concept I’m not getting or just these articles. I just need to come across another one that leads me to go YES or NO, but that makes me think of something new. That’ll happen later today, I’m sure
For now, though, doesn’t it seem like this — Specifics on Newspapers from the “State of the News” Report (Editor & Publisher).
They don’t bury the lead here – “The business of journalism is quickly running of out time to transform its model, a new study from the Project in Excellence in Journalism found.”
and this — News You can Endow (New York Times) — Yale’s Endowment officer David Swensen argues that newspapers should be endowed like colleges and universities, freeing them from a business model that won’t work and protecting them as necessary to the public good. (This one is a couple months old, but I just saw it today):
By endowing our most valued sources of news we would free them from the strictures of an obsolete business model and offer them a permanent place in society, like that of America’s colleges and universities. Endowments would transform newspapers into unshakable fixtures of American life, with greater stability and enhanced independence that would allow them to serve the public good more effectively.
ETA – related to this = How to Fix American Journalism, Part II (Sara Catania at Huffington Post)
and this — Daily News Habit Doubles among U.S. Mobile Users (TechCrunch)
The number of people who access news and information daily on their mobile phones doubled from 10.8 million in January, 2008 to 22.4 million in January, 2009.
are connected?
And connected as well to scholarly publishing – at least in the way that Alex Reid posits after getting back from the CCCC conference — the crisis of scholarly publication: a regurgitating choreography of CCCC 2009 (Digital Digs):
I think it is fair to say that we are in a related situation in terms of scholarly journals and books. Arguably the old system must break before a new one will have a chance to emerge. In the interim, and already, we can see a variety of measures and experiments–from blogs to online journals like Kairos to WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press to open source textbooks.
If you only click one of the links, I’d suggest the Digital Digs piece – it’s got a lot you’ve probably thought about before, but presented in a way that shook some things loose in my head
info-fetishist 