The. First. Post.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
    - Mark Twain


That said, hello and welcome to my very first blog post.
To all of my former teachers, my apologies in advance for the numerous errors you're sure to encounter.

To get right to the point, I started this site as a way to study the business of journalism, and for the more selfish reason of finding myself a job in said field.
You see, I LOVE outstanding journalism (examples to follow), and for a while, I thought I had found my calling in life - to travel the world, find compelling stories and share them with people.

Then I started to learn more about the journalism industry, and the media world, in general, and I got scared.
The media world is undergoing tremendous volatility right now, with the advent of the free-model internet, and subsequent decline in readers and revenue sources (classifieds, advertising). When even the the gold-standard papers such as the N.Y. Times are laying off newsroom staff, what does that say to the many out there working there way up the ladder at smaller regionals and city dailies. On TV, there are only two news shows in the Top 40 rankings, 60 Minutes and Dateline, and only one does serious journalism (60 Minutes).
The internet has obviously democratized the news business, with citizen journalists and bloggers, but John Carroll, former editor of the L.A. Times, made a good point at a conference not too long ago - we also need big media to be able to stand up to big business, to protect reporters with strong legal departments.

Now I don't think that the N.Y. Times is going to go away - people will always need multiple news sources - but to date, the industry is searching for the most effective way of transitioning to this new future of interconnectedness - blogging, tweeting, linking, analyzing, commenting, showing video, all for free, while doing so in an non-annoying, advertising-effective way. Rupert Murdoch, new owner of the Wall St. Journal (you may have heard of him) recently commented that he'd like to change the Wall St. Journal subscription model to free and entirely based on ad-revenue.

To date, it doesn't seem like anyone's figured out an effective journalism business model, or, put another way, *I* don't see or understand one yet, so that's what I'm setting out to do.
My goal is to write about what's out there already, the various business models, and how emerging technologies might shape the field's path. I should mention that there are plenty of media professionals out there, like Jim Romanesko of the Poynter Institute, and PBS's Media Shift, run by Marc Glaser, that are industry standards - I'm just an outsider -  but I thought more voices couldn't hurt.

Along the way, I've been studying emerging social networking and technology trends, including microblogging (here's my tumblog for some laughs ) and twittering (you can follow my tweets here media business models, both traditional and online advertising, brand management, sociology, pop culture, and many other topics in the national zeitgeist, which I hope you'll teach me about.

As a quick close - I want to thank everyone who's taught me this much so far - my amazing family,  uber-talented, generous friends, and my patient bosses.

Thank you,
James

Comments

[Jen]

why no personal shoutouts? points for using the word zeitgeist. otis is reading this with me. he likes it too.