The Next Newsroom Project

Building the ideal campus newsroom for the next 50 years

Blog Posts Across The Next Newsroom Project

Chris O'Brien Reports, reports and more reports on the future (for good and for bad) of journalism

If you're just getting back from a long family vacation or returning to the start of a new academic year, then you've got plenty of reading to catch up on. This summer, there were several interesting reports from various corners about the state of news and the future of journalism. These are each well worth digging into if you're interested in taking a hard look at where we need to go next.
  • The most recent of these was posted by Vin Crosbie, a new media consultant and critic, at his
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Posted by Chris O'Brien on August 28, 2008 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Jeff Jarvis shares his first lecture with his interactive journalism class

With the new academic year under way, Jeff Jarvis shares his PowerPoint presentation from the opening lecture of his interactive journalism class. Jarvis blogs at BuzzMachine and is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism.
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Posted by Chris O'Brien on August 28, 2008 at 11:00am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Daily Californian to stop publishing on Wednesdays for financial reasons

For those who haven't seen this yet, the Daily Californian, the student-owned, independent newspaper at University of California at Berkeley has decided to stop publishing on Wednesdays due to a drop in advertising revenue. Editor-in-Chief Bryan Thomas told a local Bay Area newspaper:
"We're making cuts now, it's a one-year fix to get us through the next year. We're focused on the long-term…
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Posted by Chris O'Brien on August 26, 2008 at 10:38pm — 3 Comments

Chris O'Brien Is free software the model for journalism's future?

Over the Idea Lab blog, Christopher Csikszentmihályi of MIT's Center for the Future of Civic Media submitted a posted earlier this month called "None of Your Business Model." He wondered if rather than focusing on new business models, whether journalism should look to the free software and open source movements for ways to sustain reporting in the future:
"Whatever t…
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Posted by Chris O'Brien on August 22, 2008 at 3:35pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien A conversation about the Beatles and Innovation

Earlier this summer, I had a brief Twitter exchange with Publish 2.0 Founder Scott Karp about the Beatles and innovation. He tweeted something that caught my eye: skarp I'm a big Beatles fan. But the mysterious nature of how innovation happens i… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on August 22, 2008 at 12:31pm — 1 Comment

Jared Silfies What would your ideal CMS contain?

As far as features or services go, what would you desire in a CMS? There's a need for a better platform incorporating what the innovators need to produce better content. What would you use? Web 2.0 integration, multiple users, variable workflow, mobile integration, image and content management for association with authors, new models for advertising ... and what else? Simple question, right?
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Posted by Jared Silfies on August 16, 2008 at 7:00pm — 1 Comment

Chris O'Brien Is Twitter the newsroom of the future?

This is cross posted from the original that appeared last week at the Idea Lab blog. If you wish, please join the discussion over there:

I was sitting at my desk at the San Jose Mercury News on Tuesday when I first heard about the Los Angeles earthquake through an inter-office message from a colleague. My next instinct was to click over to my

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on August 4, 2008 at 10:06pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien A new multimedia newsroom in Brazil

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on August 4, 2008 at 12:12am — No Comments

Greg Linch Launching beta.themiamihurricane.com

We've just launched beta.themiamihurricane.com! I did a blog post to introduce it at my blog, The Linchpen: Announcing beta.themiamihurricane.com Please let us know what you think by using our feedback form. Continue

Posted by Greg Linch on August 1, 2008 at 7:00am — 2 Comments

Ryan Thornburg Survey of Online Duties and Skills

I've just come back from the field on a survey of people who work online at newspapers in North Carolina. The structures of who newsrooms -- who works with whom, who does what, etc. -- will be important for the next newsroom. I've started blogging some of my analysis at www.futureofnews.net. Continue

Posted by Ryan Thornburg on July 9, 2008 at 1:18pm — 1 Comment

Chris O'Brien The Next Newsroom in Second Life

This is re-posted from the Idea Lab blog where it originally appeared:

slnewsroom1_003

In April 2006, I was sitting in a Durham,

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on July 8, 2008 at 10:30am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien CopyCamp: Community Unconference in the Newsroom

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on July 2, 2008 at 10:32am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Newsrooms are entering a hub-and-spoke future

Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com recently paid a vist to the BBC to check in on their efforts to build a new newsroom. Jarvis wrote up his visit for his weekly column in the London… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on June 18, 2008 at 11:15pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien A nice nod from Ning

I came across this a bit belatedly. But the folks at Ning, which operates the platform that runs this site, gave us a nice shout out last month. Thanks, guys! Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on June 17, 2008 at 9:49pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien The Future of Civic Media

For the past year, I've been fortunate to be part of a group of folks who were awarded grants from the Knight Foundation through a program known as News Challenge. My project involved researching and designing the ideal newsroom for the student newspaper at Duke University. We called it the Next Newsroom Project. One of the terrific things about the program was… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on June 13, 2008 at 9:38pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Don't stop the presses: Students still read student newspapers!

Over at the Student Newspaper Survival Blog, Rachele Kanigel points to a new study showing that on college campuses, students still read the college paper. In print. Kanigel writes:
"While professional newspapers are grappling with falling readership, particularly among Facebook-crazed college students, student newspapers are still widely read by their target audience. That's the word from Alloy Media + Marketing, which just annou…
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Posted by Chris O'Brien on June 5, 2008 at 5:45pm — 1 Comment

Colin Crawford AP 2.0 and a new news model

Well worth a read - Full report: http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf Study shows young adults hit by 'news fatigue' By KARL RITTER http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGPYi5zho-vnKJOBdbY96X2qsPjwD911NHNG0 STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Young adults experience news fatigue from being inundated by facts and updates and have trouble accessing in-depth stories, according to a study to be unveiled at a global media conference Monday. The Context-Based Research G… Continue

Posted by Colin Crawford on June 3, 2008 at 5:00pm — 1 Comment

Chris O'Brien Grim scenes from the Mercury News

(photo by Martin Gee) After watching the newsroom at the San Jose Mercury News dwindle from 420 to 170 people through six rounds of layoffs and buyouts since 2001, I have plenty to say about the state of newspapers and what's gone wrong. But mostly these da… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on May 6, 2008 at 1:00pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Pixar director on using space to drive innovation

If you've seen Ratatouille or The Incredibles, then you've seen Brad Bird's work at Pixar. Tech blog GigaOm highlighted an interview that Bird did with McKinsey consultants on how Pixar maintains an innovative culture. There's a lot of valuable lessons and ideas pulled together here. But of particular note are Bird's comments on Pixar's space:
"If you walk around dow…
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Posted by Chris O'Brien on May 5, 2008 at 4:05pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Newstools2008 Links

There are a lot of great sites being thrown around at the Newstools conference. I'll be posting as many as I can catch to the NextNewsroom Del.icio.us stream. The feed is below the members box on the right of this page. Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on May 1, 2008 at 9:52am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Newstools 2008 Conference begins

I'll be attending the NewsTools2008.org conference in Sunnyvale today and tomorrow. There's a Saturday session, but I can't make it down for that. I'll be posting a few notes about the sessions here. Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on May 1, 2008 at 9:27am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Madison paper stops the presses

The big news this weekend in newsroom tranformation was the decision by The Capital Times of Madison to stop printing its daily edition. According to The New York Times story by Noam Cohen… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on April 28, 2008 at 1:16pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien BBC opens integrated newsroom

Once again, newsrooms overseas are leading the way in reinventing themselves. The BBC unveiled its newly integrated newsroom last week. I'm still trying to hunt down pictures or video from the new diggs. But for now, the best story out there (sent in via Christian Oliver) can be found here… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on April 28, 2008 at 12:42pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien The backpack student journalist

Found this courtesy of Mindy McAdams' blog. The photo comes from student journalist… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on April 22, 2008 at 10:44am — 2 Comments

Chris O'Brien Ning profiled by Fast Company

(founders Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen) One of the things that saved me over the past year was switching our site from Drupal to Ning. That's the platform this site is built on. It's a kind of social-networking-in-a-box deal. While there… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on April 18, 2008 at 4:00pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Live Blog from Day 1 of the Next Newsroom Conference

NNDay1
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Posted by Chris O'Brien on April 16, 2008 at 10:35am — No Comments

gregflynn New Newseum opens Friday

New Newseum opens Friday April 11 Washington DC. I drove by last Sunday.



An article from tomorr

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Posted by gregflynn on April 10, 2008 at 11:00am — No Comments

Sanjay Bhatt Returning home from the conference to learn The Seattle Times will cut 200 jobs

Dear friends, After spending the weekend in Durham with my journalism mentor and enjoying the Full Frame documentary film festival, I returned to Seattle last night. The headline was pretty stark: The Seattle Times plans to cut 200 jobs. The cuts will include 30 layoffs in the newsroom. I still have my job for now. A second round of layoffs may be implemented; that depends on how many people volunteer to leave for a bigger severance package. I also blogged on the NextNewsroom conference at my… Continue

Posted by Sanjay Bhatt on April 8, 2008 at 8:09am — No Comments

Sanjay Bhatt Two more blogs join the blogosphere...

I welcome you to check out two blogs I have started. They've been percolating in my head for a while, but I think the conference's arrival got me to hunker down and start blogging. www.saveourpress.org vivamedia.wordpress.com I'm new to blogging and getting my feel for pace and content. It's fun to read people's comments, and I encourage you to add yours. Continue

Posted by Sanjay Bhatt on April 1, 2008 at 9:43pm — 1 Comment

Andy Bechtel Covering politics: a one-day conference after Next Newsroom

You may have heard that Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill are only 10 miles away. OK, how could you not know that if you watch college basketball? So after the Next Newsroom conference, consider making the short drive to Chapel Hill on Saturday for a one-day conference aimed at helping student journalists cover political campaigns. Topics include planning your coverage, understanding polls and working across media. Here's where to get more info: http://jomc.u… Continue

Posted by Andy Bechtel on March 31, 2008 at 11:54am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Technorati

Technorati Profile Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on March 28, 2008 at 10:44am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Sanjay's video...

Following on Sanjay's post below, here's his work via YouTube in all its glory: Nice work, San… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on March 27, 2008 at 2:38pm — No Comments

Sanjay Bhatt Check out this 3-minute video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfdoY9L19wQ In my quest to promote more multimedia at my newspaper, I have been working on a multimedia package about a South Seattle neighborhood in transition. On Wednesday, the Seattle Times published my documentary short along with a photo gallery, a map, timeline and print story. Check out the print story, photo gallery, video and graphic at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004306604_georgetown26m.html. PLEASE forward the link to your frien… Continue

Posted by Sanjay Bhatt on March 26, 2008 at 8:00am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Is that my corpse they're talking about?

Here's a link to a post I made at the IdeaLab blog this morning: http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/03/is-that-my-corpse-theyre-talki.html Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on March 13, 2008 at 1:37pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Three weeks to the Next Newsroom Conference

After months of work, we're closing in on the start of our conference next month. I'm excited by the lineup of speakers we have on Day 1. And I'm also really looking forward to the conversations we'll have on Day 2. We just launched our conference wiki which has more details about the agenda, a list of attendees, and a place for people to propose topics for the breakout sessions on Day 2. By coincidence, someone just pointed me to a feature in Fortune… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on March 12, 2008 at 3:11pm — No Comments

Sanjay Bhatt Do Newspapers Get It?

I recently responded to this question posed by one of our members. I'm posting it here too. I was responding to a post that newspapers aren't embracing new technology quickly enough to stay relevant in the digital age. *** I think "quality control" is the operative phrase when it comes to newspapers allowing users to submit photos, videos, reviews and other bits of information on news websites. If you troll the comments on news websites, those that aren't moderated can degenerate quickly. For… Continue

Posted by Sanjay Bhatt on March 5, 2008 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Andrew Tutt Duiki.com and the making of "Wiki" Media

I began Duiki.com all the way back in the summer of 2006. Right now, Duiki has about 300 legitimate articles, of which only about 30 are really unique and substantial. These 30 articles provide the bulk of the use and interest in Duiki, and drive its continuing place at the… Continue

Posted by Andrew Tutt on March 2, 2008 at 8:30am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien The Washington Post vs. washingtonpost.com

(Washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady...Photograph by Darrow Montgomery of the Washington City Post) The Washington City Paper published an extensive profile of the online strategy use… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on February 21, 2008 at 5:00pm — 1 Comment

Chris O'Brien Shootings at Northern Illinois

A terrible day for Northern Illinois University with the tragic shootings. Under pressure, the staff of the Northern Star, the NIU student paper, did an incredible job to pull together an 8-page special section that ran th… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on February 15, 2008 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Will there be a newsroom in the future?

The nature of our project is to try to design the "newsroom of the future." But the other day, Leonard Witt of Kennesaw State University, started a discussion around the first, most obvious question we confronted:
"Does the newsroom of the future really need to be a brick and mortar newsroom?"
You can view the various respon… Continue

Posted by Chris O'Brien on February 14, 2008 at 1:57pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Stony Brook University's Newsroom of the Future...

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on February 8, 2008 at 4:05pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien A deathwatch for newspapers...?

From the guy who brought you the Internet browser comes a "Deathwatch" blog post on the New York Times. Mark Andreessen (founder of Netscape, Ning), was apparently angry over the hiring over conservative columnist William Kristol:

"I

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on February 8, 2008 at 3:37pm — 1 Comment

Brian Crews What's going on at Duke these days...

some of the media groups are becoming much more active these days...
  • several of them are redoing their websites.
  • WXDU is redoing its bylaws.
  • They also started a new talk show with the center for doc. studies, called Durham Noise Network.
  • Cable 13 is trying to do a major studio upgrade (about $150k worth).
  • freewater publications is shooting lots of films. Including one big shoot on Super 16
  • Small Town Records is cl
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Posted by Brian Crews on February 8, 2008 at 9:36am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Stanford Daily breaks ground on a new home!

stanforddaily

Congratulations to The Stanford Daily which broke ground Tuesday on its new home in the heart of the Palo Alto Campus. Pictured above is Stanford Daily alum Lorry Lokey '4…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on February 5, 2008 at 9:45pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Get ready for The Next Newsroom Conference

washington_duke_inn

The Next Newsroom Conference is officially only two months away. We'll be sending e-mail invitations out this week with details on how to register and what you can expect when yo

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on February 4, 2008 at 11:28am — No Comments

Ken Rogerson The ever-present Wikipedia question . . .

I just received an email from the International Center for Journalists. Agence France Presse banned its reporters from using Wikipedia and Facebook as sources in news stories.
http://ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P=DiscussionArticle&ID=307172
Good idea or bad idea? Or "it is part of the world we live in and we have to deal with it" idea?


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Posted by Ken Rogerson on January 28, 2008 at 12:44pm — 1 Comment

Ken Rogerson North Carolina Marine(s)

A few days ago a student told me he was going crazy about the coverage of the Marine Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean and his role in the death of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach. (see series of articles: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/laurean/) It has been covered in the national media and a cursory (admittedly non scientific) search shows it has been mentioned in many other news sources.

This is a tragic story, but is it worth all the coverage?

Some years back, an… Continue

Posted by Ken Rogerson on January 25, 2008 at 9:43am — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Series by UCLA's Daily Bruin examines college media's challenges...

Anyone interested in the challenges facing college media, especially independent college media, should check out a series that ran this week in The Daily Bruin, UCLA's independent student newspaper. There are three stories posted so far, including one that features The Chronicle, and its editor…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on January 24, 2008 at 12:48pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien What do online journalism skills look like?

If you're thinking about exploring the world of online journalism, then Erik Ulken, an editor for latimes.com, has an interesting post about what kind of skills are needed. He teaches an online journalism class at the University of Sourthern California. For his students, Ulken combed through listings for job openings, and then built a tag cloud of the words us…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on January 23, 2008 at 12:09pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien A few big themes...

This year continues to speed by. I'll be flying to Durham, N.C. this weekend to huddle with The Chronicle's board to clarify our plans going forward. The next step will begin right after that, as we write our first draft of the proposal that will become the Next Newsroom.

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on January 22, 2008 at 3:04pm — No Comments

Heather McCalley Birmingham News, Jan 17 2008

At 1:40 this afternoon, a soft hum permeated the 110,000 square feet of The Birmingham News. Editor Tom Scarritt exclaimed, “It makes it feel alive, and I like that.” His second floor newsroom is part of a grand new headquarters for the city’s morning paper, which circulates 150,000 papers daily on weekdays and 175,000 on Su

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Posted by Heather McCalley on January 21, 2008 at 1:43pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien How do you encourage innovation in college media?

Over the weekend, Mindy McAdams had a post over at her Teaching Online Journalism blog about innovation and college media. She highlights a new article from noted designer Hugh Dubberly about how innovation happens. You can read her full post here and part of

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on January 21, 2008 at 12:17am — 2 Comments

Ed MacBean Do newspapers get it?

As mentioned in my previous post, I work for a software company offering a variety of web 2.0 services of user-generated media, comments & ratings, blogs, and forums to the newspaper industry. As a vendor, it has been extremely frustrating to get newspapers to adopt, or especially actively promote and encourage this level of interactivity. I think that true journalism is a critical part of a functioning democracy, but their state of paralysis risks making them increasingly irrelevant in a co… Continue

Posted by Ed MacBean on January 16, 2008 at 10:01pm — 3 Comments

Ed MacBean My angle on the Next Newsroom

I am not a journalist, and have never wanted to be. While I try to stay on top of the news, I havent subscribed to a newspaper in over a decade, and when I did it did more to fill my recycling bin than anything else. I read the Chronicle, but didn't even know where there offices were.

So, what in the world am I doing here?

Well, for starters I was at Duke with Chris O'Brien, and either through random chance or cosmic destiny, I bumped across his profile on facebook. Other than… Continue

Posted by Ed MacBean on January 16, 2008 at 9:23pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien More on the New York Times...

The New York Times continues to get attention for its new building. Slate is the latest to weigh in with a slideshow essay.…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on January 10, 2008 at 2:40pm — No Comments

Audrey Martin Former restroom becomes newsroom

Trinity Western University's student newspaper, Mars' Hill, (named after the place where Greeks and Romans waxed eloquent in past centuries), is a biweekly for a student population of approximately 4,000. The newsroom is located in a former dorm and the staff was appalled to find out their space held the toilets, showers and washbasins in the old days. How would I know? It was my dorm decades ago. Sounds crazy, but it's really OK now and answers for the high windows along the t

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Posted by Audrey Martin on January 7, 2008 at 3:20pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien A Duke alum on the new media front lines...

One of my colleagues at the Mercury News recently passed around a copy of a Fortune magazine story about The Washington Post and its race to re-invent itself. The lead of the story featured Barry Svrluga, a Duke grad from 1993. And his anecdote demonstrates just how dramatically -- and quickly -- newspapers are changing:…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on December 4, 2007 at 2:30pm — 2 Comments

Chris O'Brien Culture and the newsroom...

This week I made another trek out to North Carolina. Officially, I was invited out there by Phil Meyers, the renowned journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I spoke to his graduate class for about three hours, giving me plenty of time to gab about my work at the Rethink team at the Mercury News, and the Next Newsroom Project.

While I was out there, I also hosted a gathering at Duke for folks to talk about the Next Newsroom Project. My goal for the even…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on November 20, 2007 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien The innovative newsroom..

Last week, I got a note from someone who'd been following this project and the blog. They sort of summarized the lessons and ideas they were getting here. And they wanted to know if I generally agreed with their take. I did, and here is a copy of my e-mail that I wrote in response:

Thanks for your note. I think your reading is right on the money. There is definitely a push for journalists to learn new tools: video, audio, web. But in the larger framework, we're being asked to…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on November 11, 2007 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien What skills should a college journalist develop?

There's an interesting debate shaping up in the college journalism blogosphere over the skills a college journalist needs. Is it writing? Multimedia? Some of both?

This was touched off by a post from Leonard Witt, a j-school prof at Kennesaw State University. He was worried that in all the rush to focus on multimedia, the essential skills of writing and reporting would get lost. He was responding to…

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on November 5, 2007 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Chris O'Brien Lessons from UNC Charlotte's new newsroom...

A stream of never-ending red eyes has brought me back to the East Coast once again. This time, I’m in Washington, D.C. for the College Media Convention. I managed to get to the convention hall just in time for the first panel, which appropriately enough was about: “Building the ‘ideal’ Student Media Workplace.” I’ll be giving my own talk on this topic on Saturday.

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Posted by Chris O'Brien on October 29, 2007 at 1:00pm — No Comments