A former student of mine, Hannah Margaret Allen, is a founding editor at a new website called Inverse. The site is aimed at people who are seriously into looking at the present and the future. Here’s what she says about it: “Men’s publications have historically leaned on the idea that manhood is an achievable goal, • Read More »
Permanence is one of the five most important characteristics of the web (the other four being capacity, immediacy, flexibility, and interactivity), as explained in chapter 1 of Web Journalism. Until now. it has not been the subject of much discussion. But a high-level conference on blogging and journalism at Harvard University last week has spurred thinking about one part of the idea of permanence – archiving.
A couple of stories from Romenesko’s blog on today show that big time news organizations are discovering the immediacy of the web.
News organizations see the day — very soon — when the web will be the centerpiece of what they do. Not print or over-the-air broadcasting. The good news is that the web is a relatively low-cost way of distributing information compared to printing presses and delivery trucks. The bad news is that the overall economics are not as lucrative. More bad news: news organizations haven’t figured out how to use the web to gain audiences. Many do not even understand what the web is about. (Unfortunately, that goes for many journalism schools, too.)