Welcome to the 51st episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali as co-hosts. This week we take a deeper look at the changes at various local newspapers in North America, lowering their print frequency from daily down to a few times per week. Is this an alarming trend or a natural evolution of newspapers as they move toward a digital-first future? We convene an esteemed panel to discuss the future of print papers, including new USA Today president and publisher Larry Kramer and NYU journalism professor and PressThink blogger Jay Rosen. Would Kramer consider lowering USA Today’s print frequency? “I wouldn’t rule anything out,” he said.
We also talked with one of the more prominent programmer-journalists, Brian Boyer, who is leaving the Chicago Tribune news apps team to go to NPR to lead their new news app team. What made him make the move to radio, and how will his job differ? We talk to Boyer about his plans to bring more data know-how to public radio.
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Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.
Here are some highlighted topics from the show:
Intro
0:30: Rafat moving to Queens
1:10: Mark: Print newspapers are like a sick uncle with cancer; you never know if it’s terminal
3:40: Rundown of stories on podcast
Future for print newspapers?
5:10: Special guests Larry Kramer and Jay Rosen
7:10: Rosen: What’s disturbing is the failure to come up with new sources of revenues
9:20: Kramer: Some job cuts are production-oriented, even though they are editorial
13:00: Kramer: USA Today is unique, considered the hometown newspaper for people on the road
16:30: Rosen: Print, broadcast production routines were crutch that aren’t there any more
19:30: Kramer wants mobile apps at USA Today to be more native to mobile platforms
23:40: Kramer: People are overwhelmed with information; print media can be curators
Brian Boyer moves to NPR
27:00: Special guest Brian Boyer
28:30: Boyer: Radio is a better fit for my rushed, chaotic online lifestyle
30:30: NPR will have a news app team providing data journalism with context
32:45: Boyer: We hope to work closely with NPR reporters on storytelling
More Reading
A Doomed Romance With a New Orleans Newspaper at NY Times
Could New York Be Wronger About New Orleans? at Huffington Post
What Print Cuts at Times-Picayune Mean for Papers at Ad Age
Canada’s Postmedia cuts copy editing jobs, stops some print editions at Poynter
Why We Killed Our College Daily Paper for a More Digital Future at MediaShift
Larry Kramer named USA TODAY president, publisher at USA Today
Most major newspaper groups are now experimenting with paywalls at Poynter
NPR snags Brian Boyer to launch a news apps team at Nieman Lab
NPR creates news applications team as part of strategy for multimedia audio at Poynter
Weekly Poll
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about how often you want to read your local newspaper in print:
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. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+