The New York Times’ announcement that it would be charging for some access to its website, starting in 2011, rekindled yet another round of debate about paywalls for online news. Beyond the practical question (will it work?) or the theoretical one (what does this mean for the Times’ notion of the “public”?), there remains another [...]

Tom Curley, president and chief executive of The Associated Press, was in China last week for a government-sponsored media summit, where he compared digital content to NCAA basketball and explained the AP’s plans to build revenue online. But Curley was far more revealing when he spoke without a prepared text on October 6 at the [...]

Since February 2005 — it is sort of stunning to think that this was more than four years ago — I’ve been intermittently blogging about the future of journalism, journalism and social movements, and media-related issues in general. And when I first started my scholarly investigations into how news practices were changing, in 2003, I [...]

The cover story in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine is a 13,000-word investigation of the New Orleans hospital where patients were euthanized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It’s a remarkable and tragic story that may also represent the most expensive single piece of print journalism in years.
This is the new economics of news [...]

The Detroit Free Press recently staged a promotion with Panera, the baked-goods purveyor, that offers a nice lesson in the economics of charging for news. Patrons who purchased a cup of coffee could also grab a copy of the Freep for a penny. More than 1,600 people took advantage of the offer each day, according [...]

Despite the fact that Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, wasn’t released until this week, it has still managed to generate much pre-publication discussion about the future of the digital economy. Anderson found himself enmeshed in a pre-publication plagiarism scandal two weeks ago when the Virginia Quarterly Review [...]

Yesterday’s meeting of top newspaper executives in Chicago, where they considered ways to charge for content online, has reignited the often-passionate discussion of whether news sites could generate subscription revenue from readers. Plenty has been written about the futility of erecting pay walls — much of which I agree with — but a few points [...]

We’re nearing the end of our month-long Nieman Journalism Lab Book Club (which has seeped into March). Here’s my discussion with Jay Hamilton, author of All the News That’s Fit to Sell, about Chapter 8. It’s one of the most interesting chapters in the book, dealing with “journalists as goods.” Among the topics we discuss:
— [...]

[For Chapters 7 and 8 of this month's Nieman Journalism Lab Book Club selection, we turn to Tim Windsor. For more info on the Book Club, check here. —Ed.]
While the previous chapter’s data about the early days of online news do not age well, the focus of Chapter 8 — the value of celebrity among television anchors [...]

Here’s the newest part of my interview with Jay Hamilton, author of this month’s Nieman Journalism Lab book club selection, All the News That’s Fit to Sell. Here we’re talking about Chapter 7, which focuses on what we can learn from the economics of online news around 2000. Our topics include:
— How the power-law graph [...]

We’re up to Chapter 6 in our video interview with Duke economist James Hamilton. He’s the author of this month’s Nieman Journalism Lab Book Club selection, All the News That’s Fit to Sell. In this chapter, Jay talks about the role prestige and personality play in how media is produced and consumed. Among the topics:
— [...]

Here’s the next installment of my interview with James Hamilton, author of this month’s Nieman Journalism Lab Book Club selection, All the News That’s Fit to Sell. Our topic here is Chapter 5, which focuses on, among other things, how market forces influence local TV news. Some of the topics we cover:
— How the format [...]

[For Chapters 5 and 6 of this month's Nieman Journalism Lab Book Club selection, we turn to Lisa Williams of Placeblogger fame. For more info on the Book Club, check here. —Ed.]
Who’s to blame for the scourge of soft news: men, women, or the system?
The list of people, trends, and things responsible for the [...]

Here’s the next installment of my interview with James Hamilton, author of this month’s Nieman Journalism Lab Book Club selection, All the News That’s Fit to Sell. Here we talk about Chapters 3 and 4, which use TV as a jumping-off point to discuss how economic incentives encourage certain kinds of news coverage and discourage [...]

[Here's Martin's review of Chapter 4 of this month's Nieman Journalism Lab Book Club selection. For more info, check here. —Ed.]
In Chapter 4 of All the News That’s Fit to Sell, James Hamilton tackles information programs on network television ranging from 60 Minutes, Dateline, 20/20 and the nightly news shows all the way down to [...]