John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 30, 2009, 12:07 am
The NYT continues to do as much as anyone with data-driven stories.  Today on A1 was a feature about the rise and concomitant de-stigmatization of food stamp usage across the country.   But the int...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 27, 2009, 1:31 am
My friend Alan Mutter has an annoying habit of actually analyzing data rather than waving his hands at it.  Recently, he did his trick on the latest numbers out of NAA, which remain dismal (16 straig...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 22, 2009, 11:35 pm
Richard Perez Pena writes in the NYT about the new news venture, begun by ex Tribune journalists.    The barely suppressed animus between the Tribune and the CNC staffers is understandable, especia...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 14, 2009, 7:01 pm
In Commonweal, Andrew Bacevich asks, essentially, “why not Mexico instead of Afghanistan?”    A thought-provoking companion piece to David Loyn’s In Afghanistan:  200 Years of Br...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 8, 2009, 8:47 pm
NYT media axe David Carr happened to be in the offices of The Texas Tribune when the terrible news broke in Ft. Hood.   His piece is up on the NYT site.
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 7, 2009, 5:15 am
In my not-so-humble and entirely un-objective opinion, The Texas Tribune opened with one helluva week.  These are stories you simply will not see anywhere else.  Consider, in no particular order: E...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 4, 2009, 6:01 am
In case you’ve had the good fortune to spend the Great Recession on a desert island, here’s a snippet from the Columbia Journalism Review that summarizes the media landscape to which you have retu...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 2, 2009, 9:06 am
In a supposed debate between the old and the new, at least the following was concluded: Both sides agreed that good journalism, foreign reporting and freedom of the press should be preserved, but non...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Nov 2, 2009, 8:57 am
In paidcontent, Andrew Clark presents a trenchant view of Murdoch and his minions’ attack on Marissa Mayer and GOOG’s “promiscuity.”  Pretty ironic, as Jack Shafer points out:...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 31, 2009, 2:26 am
I was pleased to read Robert Heath’s comment on my recent blurt wrt to the un- and re-bundling of newspaper content.  In it, he directed me to a post of his in July.  Quoth Mr. Heath, citing ...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 29, 2009, 5:23 am
As well constructed a paragraph on the electronics of content as you’ll ever see: Why is it so hard for content makers to create value on the web? Because the web has evolved to minimize conten...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 25, 2009, 5:05 pm
In CJR,  WaPo vet Len Downie and Columbia J-School Professor Michael Schudson provide thorough treatment of the state of journalism.  While I don’t agree with all their recommendations, I coul...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 16, 2009, 3:13 am
Speaking in Hong Kong, AP honcho Tom Curley declares a surplus of news.   Which either means there is too much happening in the world, or that there are too many journalists.  Or, I suppose, both.Â...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 9, 2009, 10:29 am
Dave Mann writes: A new set of numbers, released in July by the U.S. Census Bureau, shows how far behind Texas has fallen in Latino voting. The Census Bureau estimated, based on the number of Spanish...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 9, 2009, 7:36 am
I don’t know anything about photography.   But my friend Keith Kesler sent me this wonderful post written by one of his friends about the takeover of the field by the digerati.  Sounds famili...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 4, 2009, 3:18 pm
If not for Matt Thompson, I doubt there would be a Texas Tribune (well technically speaking there’s still not one, but I’m assured that there will be soon).  It was Matt who got me thinki...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 4, 2009, 3:08 pm
His “7 Pointers” are as good an analysis as I’ve read.
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 4, 2009, 3:01 pm
Clay Shirky does content analysis of his hometown newspaper and is dismayed to find that, “most of the substantive part of that day’s Trib wasn’t locally created, and most of it wasn’t new...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Oct 3, 2009, 4:30 pm
So, a couple of days ago, Jack Shafer called us silly–us being the growing number of people who are willing to put our money where our mouths are in suport of quality journalism.  I’m pre...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 30, 2009, 11:39 pm
The whole spiel really is all a little touching, and quite impressive–especially the psychoanalysis part.  What it isn’t is new.  Or maybe commercial media pundits have been relieved of ...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 29, 2009, 3:22 am
So.  Pretend you’re in commercial media.  Or, suspend your reality suspension and just say you’re simply a fan of Tony Romo or (coming rapidly to a Twin City near you)  Brett Favre.  B...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 25, 2009, 10:49 am
From my friend Dave Sikora.  Maybe it’s not nine minutes funny, but it’s still pretty damned good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CqRcCHk_Pc
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 25, 2009, 6:24 am
This is just marvelous, stunning news: San Francisco financier Warren Hellman will invest $5 million to develop a nonprofit journalism venture that will provide regional news coverage online and feed...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 24, 2009, 5:55 pm
This from Judy Sims, formerly VP Digital at the Toronto Star Media Group:  “4 Easy Steps to Becoming a New News Organization.”  This is not bad, as these things go.  But it leaves out t...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 20, 2009, 10:39 am
I know next to nothing about entertainment journalism.  I’m not a big consumer, and I don’t know much about the business.  But holy moley, New York’s  9/14 cover package on late-n...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 20, 2009, 10:29 am
Her Sunday essay sent me scrambling to find the General Social Survey,  which has been published since 1972.  Lord, what a way to kill a morning.  From it, she extracted some tidbits about the tre...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 16, 2009, 8:52 pm
This really is a marvelous piece by a terrific guy.  Glad he’s the captain of our new ship.
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 12, 2009, 9:25 am
Paul’s post is about as crisp and cogent analysis of the current state of play as I’ve seen.  In part: The health care debate is rather simple, really. The fundamental problem is this: T...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 11, 2009, 12:12 pm
So now CNN reports that South Carolina Republican and self-appointed Hyena in Chief Joe Wilson has raised $200k in the wake of his calculated, embarrassing stunt .  Unfortunately, the rest of the cou...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 5, 2009, 12:10 pm
Interesting and sympathetic article about the Grahams and their position with the Washington Post in Vanity Fair.  I love this turn of phrase: In a sense, the Grahams are managing, and financing, th...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 5, 2009, 8:04 am
In her Saturday WSJ piece, Peggy Noonan utters the five words that the GOP will use implicitly and explicitly, over and over, freighted with racial cargo and not, between now and 2012:  “HeR...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 3, 2009, 12:48 am
A survey of small paper paywall efforts, courtesy of Paidcontent.org.  Honestly, folks.  Is the game really worth the candle?
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 3, 2009, 12:38 am
Alan Mutter  keeps coming the steady drumbeat of bad news for newspapers: In round numbers, total newspaper advertising sales are likely to drop by $10 billion in 2009, which would put them roughly ...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Sep 3, 2009, 12:09 am
In a long and thorough survey piece, Massing does a nice job dimensioning the news biz landscape.  (Oh yeah, and gives The Texas Tribune a nice mention deep into the article).  Here’s the real...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 29, 2009, 8:23 am
Via Jeff Jarvis, watch this clip of James Murdock and his BBC/Guardian critics.  While the arguments from both are utterly predictable, it’s tough to think of a better advertisement for the nee...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 28, 2009, 8:59 am
The news out of Newspaperland continues to be bad, bad.  The worst part is that the second derivative keeps getting bigger: Newspapers’ financial woes worsened in the second quarter as adverti...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 22, 2009, 4:32 pm
I grew up with this magazine, and am lucky that my connections to it have only grown over time.  I count as my friend Mike Levy, the visionary founder, former publisher and current irascible ass-pa...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 14, 2009, 8:36 am
Ok, that may be a little harsh, but it’s the phrase Bill Wyman uses to explain why he thinks most online newspaper offerings aren’t that compelling (shoutout to Mark Potts, who posted abou...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 13, 2009, 11:20 am
Interesting the way the eye works as newspapers attempt to maneuver readers through their various offerings.  In this case, the NYT print version blurbed a blog post by Catherine Rampell which sounde...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 11, 2009, 1:08 am
In his post on the Harvard Business site, Umair Haque lays out better than I ever have the characteristics of the genre which The Texas Tribune  aspires to inhabit.   Particularly, the idea of R...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 8, 2009, 12:23 pm
Today’s NYT has an eyebrow-raising and refreshing interview with Rocco Landesman, incoming NEA Chair.  I had never heard of this guy, but I like him already: He was particularly angered, he sa...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 5, 2009, 2:22 am
New friend John Temple, Former honcho of the dearly departed Rocky Mountain News, has on his blog a wonderful series about reporters reinventing themselves.  This one, by the Rocky’s fomer Wash...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 2, 2009, 5:21 am
Hank Morris as a latter-day Willie Sutton.  If you’re a state employee with a defined-benefit plan, this should chill your blood.   At the same time, Cuomo has done what any NY Attorney Gener...
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John T. posted an article on Insomniactive - Aug 2, 2009, 5:09 am
I don’t know Zachary Karabell’s work, but his piece in The New Republic is certainly food for thought.  His setup: The major signposts for the U.S. economy–namely GDP growth and em...
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