Quotable: November 2007 Archives

In their current configurations, newspaper companies are screwed. They would begin to help themselves by acknowledging and starting to deal with this.

-- Henry Blodget, stock analyst reduced to journalist

Blackfive.net on Glenn Reynolds' prodigious blogging in action:

... it has long been surmised that he chains law students to banks of computers like galley slaves and then blends up puppy smoothies to power his superhuman output capacity. Not true, he is actually a collection of Cray supercomputers housed in a remarkably affable and convincing human transport. Since this was the most self-referential event in history I sat next to Glenn and watched him take and upload some pics in reality and then watched them appear on my laptop at the same time, he did this while simultaneously conducting a video interview and cooking a chicken dinner.

(via Reynolds' Instapundit.com)

If you're in a newsroom and the editor doesn't say that change is needed, you should leave

-- Melanie Sill, late of the Raleigh News & Observer and now editor of the Sacramento Bee.

(via Howard Weaver)

We can't go on running islands.

-- Steve Yelvington

Yelvington makes a compelling case for an "and strategy" in viewing social networks as platforms for newspaper-type content. He notes: One of the most interesting, Neighborhoods, is being used by a company that runs a real estate listing website to slip their listings into Facebook space. Think about that for a minute.

And earlier this week, Rob Curley, in announcing the Washington Post's newsTracker, fleshed out some of the business reasons he sees in Facebook applications (a small slice of a huge audience).

A colleague last week dismissed Facebook apps as not worth the development time because there is "no business model." Perhaps. I can remember when Google had no business model ... and today GOOG. And I've heard it said I'm working in an industry with no future business model. Hmm.

The photo is of part of the Chiswell Islands in the Gulf of Alaska and is a National Ocean Service, NOAA photo.

 
Editors need to stop pining for the old world and intensify the leading to the new one,
 
The first thing that has to go is the attitude. Our institutional arrogance has done more to harm us than any portal.

-- Tom Curley, the Associated Press

(Full text of speech)

"Free is more complicated than you'd think."

-- Scott Adams via free preview and more thoughts from Max Magee and Tim O'Reilly