In 2006, Boston.com launched a local search tool that was supposed to be a big part of the site’s future. The project made perfect sense on paper: Readers would get search results focused on eastern Massachusetts. Those results would mix the best of the machine and human worlds by using algorithms and editors’ picks. Next [...]

[I've asked our nonprofit blogger extraordinaire Jim Barnett to respond to some of the ideas we've been exploring in our NGOs and the News series, cosponsored with Penn's Center for Global Communication Studies. Here's Jim's first take. —Josh]
Back in the 1980s, before they began full-blown advertising campaigns aimed directly at consumers, prescription drug companies used [...]

[This is the first essay in our series examining the evolving relationship between NGOs and journalism, produced with Penn's Center for Global Communication Studies. Kimberly Abbott of the International Crisis Group leads off by exploring the pros and cons of established news organizations relying on NGOs for help in their reporting. We're collecting the entire [...]

NYU professor and Internet thinker Clay Shirky gave a talk Tuesday at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, our friends just on the other side of Harvard Square. His subject was the future of accountability journalism in a world of declining newspapers. Even for those of us familiar with his ideas, [...]

The latest edition of American Journalism Review has an in-depth piece on the thinking behind the San Diego Union-Tribune’s willingness to spin off (though that’s not the official phraseology) its investigative team as an independent nonprofit, the Watchdog Institute.
Rather than wait for the ax to fall on her four-person team, investigative editor Lorie Hearn did [...]

It wasn’t quite the Red Sox winning the World Series, but The Boston Globe saw huge traffic yesterday as it covered the death of Ted Kennedy — a sign that local news sites can still dominate national stories on their turf.
The Globe, which had spent years preparing for Kennedy’s death, had more than 8 million [...]

If there’s one place where print journalism is thriving, it’s the stoop outside my apartment building in Boston. I counted 12 daily newspapers tossed against the steps at dawn this morning. But a look underneath their plastic wrapping reveals a crucial trend: Among the dozen papers, just one was The Boston Globe. Six were The [...]

I drive a 1996 Honda Civic, and I love it. Why? It costs me virtually nothing. It gets 30 m.p.g., we paid it off years ago, and I carry no collision coverage. I could sell it, but I won’t. It’s running great, and it probably will last several more years.
What does this have to do [...]

It’s been four months since Josh predicted that a news organization would sue The Huffington Post for copyright violation over its aggregation of headlines, ledes, and article summaries. The interim has been marked by saber-rattling, settlements, and dubious proposals for changes to federal law.
But I’m still hoping to see that lawsuit — not because [...]

I’m reliably informed that the current issue of Vanity Fair contains a lengthy, engaging, and revealing profile of Sarah Palin, full of unflattering details like an email she wrote to friends and family in the voice of God, signed, “Your Heavenly Father.” But I must confess: I haven’t read the piece. I’ve read about it.
So [...]

With no live programming in the morning, MLB Network had to scramble to assemble its crew after the bombshell broke Feb. 7: Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts and David Epstein were reporting that Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids in 2003 as a member of the Texas Rangers. But within a few hours, MLB Network [...]

Imagine one morning, you wake up from your troubled dreams and find yourself transformed in your bed into a horrible vermin… No, no, wait! Imagine you wake up and find yourself holding the keys to the Boston Globe. And Arthur Sulzberger is standing beside your bed, ready to hand you $20 million or so if [...]

Here comes the summer of paid content: Steve Brill tells me that his pay-for-news startup, Journalism Online, will soon announce deals with several newspapers to — in many cases, for the first time — charge readers for some of their digital content.
“We’ve signed a couple, we’re going to sign some more, but we’re sort [...]

In the high-stakes poker game to at least erase the Boston Globe’s reported $85 million annual operating loss and get to breakeven, it looks like management has won the first few hands.  Following deals with several other unions, the Globe and the Newspaper Guild reached a settlement in the wee hours this morning.  All of [...]

Amazon just unveiled a bigger, more expensive version of the Kindle that will, depending on whom you ask, “rescue newspapers” or just create “false hope.”
Though details weren’t immediately available, the new, $489 Kindle DX will be available at a subsidized price for those who buy digital subscriptions to The New York Times, Washington Post, [...]