— Via Adrian Monck, British political cartoonist Matt Buck wonders about the future of his profession:
So, are we going to see people like me directly employed by political factions again in the future? And if that happens, will it be a good or a bad thing? Is it a return to the roots of cartooning and other fun and nastiness, or a step away from the at least economically independent media industry which replaced it, possibly for good reason?
There are arguments to be had, at least, over that same set of questions for word-types, too.
— MIT’s Henry Jenkins has a two-part interview with ex-Boston Globe editor Jack Driscoll about his experiences with small-scale community journalism online, such as his work on Rye Reflections, a small New Hampshire online monthly. He talks about one years-old idea that seems to me to still have merit:
Given how well that worked in developing the newspaper-reading habit, I suggested to newspapers that they publish high school newspapers on their websites. Boston.com, for instance, would have a schools subsection with all the Boston school newspapers and all the suburbs. No takers.
— I’m happy to see Felix Salmon is as pessimistic about PDF subscriptions as I am. This is not a road you want to go down, publishers: Don’t confuse your nostalgia for print for your audience’s demand for metaphorical print on their computer screens.
