This week’s Mediatwits podcast takes a walk on the dark side. We have our usual roundtable with Mark Glaser moderating, along with Seattle Times’ Monica Guzman, USC’s Andrew Lih and Reuters’ Felix Salmon. Plus, special guest Amy Mitchell from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism will break down the massive State of the News Media report that was released last Monday. It’s full of bad news for legacy media, but does offer some glimmers of hope for digital media, with the rise of native ads, mobile ads, video ads and targeted ads. Is the glass half full or empty?
Plus, we’ll discuss the strange case of Matthew Keys, indicted for allegedly providing passwords for Tribune Company servers for the Anonymous hackers who defaced the L.A. Times’ site. Meanwhile, print pubs continue to struggle with the Boston Phoenix shutting down, and Washington Examiner and Daily Variety going weekly. And the producer of “Veronica Mars” has raised $3.7 million and counting on Kickstarter to do a movie version of the old TV show.
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Mediatwits Bios
Ana Marie Cox is a senior political columnist for The Guardian. She is the founding editor of the Wonkette blog and has covered politics and the culture of Washington, DC for outlets including the Washington Post, Playboy, GQ, Mother Jones and Elle. She is the author of the novel Dog Days and lives in St. Paul, Minn. Follower her on Twitter @anamariecox.
Mónica Guzmán is a columnist for the Seattle Times and Northwest tech news site GeekWire and a community strategist for startups and media. She emcees Ignite Seattle, a grab-bag community fueled speaker series. Mónica was a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and seattlepi.com, its online-only successor, where she ran the experimental and award-winning Big Blog and drew a community of readers with online conversation and weekly meetups. Follow her on Twitter @moniguzman
Andrew Lih is a new media journalist, and associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism where he directs the new media program. He is the author of “The Wikipedia Revolution” (Hyperion 2009, Aurum UK 2009) and is a noted expert on online collaboration and journalism. He is a veteran of AT&T Bell Laboratories and in 1994 created the first online city guide for New York City (www.ny.com). Follow him on Twitter @fuzheado and buy his book here.
Felix Salmon is the financial blogger for Reuters. He was named one of Time Magazine’s 25 Best Financial Bloggers, and offers his frank view on the maneuverings of Wall Street, Washington and popular culture. Watch him on Felix TV or follow him on Twitter @felixsalmon.
Special Guest
Amy Mitchell is acting director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. She manages all aspects of the project including the design, analysis and writing the project’s in-depth research reports. This includes the Annual Report on the State of the News Media, research into how technology is changing the flow of news information today and what this all means for the way news outlet gather and report the news. Prior to joining PEJ, Mitchell was a Congressional research associate at the American Enterprise Institute where she researched public policy and the relationship of the press, the public and government. She has authored and co-authored several works including “Thinking Clearly: Case Studies in Journalistic Decision Making.”
More Reading
1. Pew’s State of the News Media report: All doom and gloom?
Digital: As Mobile Grows Rapidly, the Pressure on News Intensifies at StateoftheMedia.org
5 Key Takeaways from Pew’s State of the News Media 2013 at MediaShift
Bleak Outlook for the News Media in Charts at The Atlantic
This is the Scariest Statistic About the Newspaper Business Today at The Atlantic
Pew’s State of the Media: Ignore the Doomsaying; American Journalism Has Never Been Better at Slate
2. Reuters deputy social media editor indicted for conspiring with Anonymous hackers
Reuters’ Social Media Editor Charged with Helping Anonymous Hack at L.A. Times at Reuters
Reuters Employee Charged With Helping Anonymous Hack News Site at Wired
Matthew Keys: I’m Fine and Everything Will Be OK at Poynter
Reuters’ Social Media Editor Accused of Helping Anonymous Has Long Strange Internet Past at Gawker
3. Death of Print Roundup: Struggles for Boston Phoenix, Washington Examiner, Daily Variety, Time Out Chicago
How Boston Phoenix Kept Its Readers But Lost Its Advertisers at MediaShift
Washington Examiner Shifts Business Model from Daily Newspaper to Political Site and Weekly Print Magazine (BusinessWire)
End of an era for Daily Variety at L.A. Times
Time Out Chicago to Nix Print Magazine and Go All Digital at the Chicago Sun-Times
4. Veronica Mars Kickstarter raises $3.7 million
The Veronica Mars Movie Project at Kickstarter
Will the Veronica Mars Kickstarter Revolutionize Indie Film at BuzzFeed
Veronica Mars Kickstarter Paves Way for Cancelled TV Series at Business Insider
Poll
Be sure to vote in our weekly poll, this time about the state of the news media:
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian and fiancee Renee. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+
