On Newspapers for Slashdot.com:
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| Newspapers Are Dying, Blog At 11 |
| from the news-that-fits dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday March 30, @14:36 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252 |
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The New Yorker is running a long and thoughtful piece by Eric Alterman on
the [0]death and life of the American newspaper. It's not news that
newspapers are dying, but the acceleration of the process in the last few
years is startling: "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers
have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three
years... The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death,
that the newspaper companies' solution to their problem was to make 'our
product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'" The article goes
on to profile The Huffington Post as exemplar of what is replacing paper
and ink. "The Huffington Post's editorial processes are based on what
Peretti has named the 'mullet strategy.' ('Business up front, party in
the back' is how his trend-spotting site BuzzFeed glosses it.)
'User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,'
Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the
secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking
sharp.

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252

Links:
0. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?currentPage=all