Nikki Usher | Nieman Journalism Lab

Articles by Nikki Usher

Nikki Usher is an assistant professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs this fall. She received her PhD in May 2011 from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She has published and blogged about topics ranging from citizen journalism, the origins of news on the web, the implications of the new media economy and news business models, and the changing identity of legacy journalists. Her dissertation is focused on how business newsrooms are adapting to the changing digital environment, with the The New York Times as her principal research site. She has conducted field research at NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, Marketplace public radio, TheStreet.com, and The Times. She was also a research assistant for the Knight Digital Media Center, where she still assists in projects looking at the evolution of newsroom leadership. Prior to life as an academic, Nikki was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. You can reach her at nusher@usc.edu.

@nikkiusher

This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)

“Contrary to what The New York Times has speculated, we are not at peak newsletter. We are just at peak newsletter via email delivery.”

The news industry will stop saying overdue UX fixes are too hard

“‘Too hard’ isn’t an acceptable answer in a college classroom, much less from some of the smartest technically minded people in the world.”

October 14, 2021

Higher ed and public radio are enmeshed. So what happens when the culture wars come?

With higher education at the crossroads of the culture war, public media is vulnerable to growing political interference over its operations.

July 12, 2021

“White audiences who will pay” is still metro newspapers’ survival strategy

“We don’t write for white subscribers, but it ends up being white people who read us,” a Midwestern news executive told an audience earlier this year.

Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media

“We need to admit news publishers are not sympathetic victims losing an unfair fight against anti-competitive practices — at least not now.”

All systems down

“This isn’t new blood for the news industry but journalism dialysis — old blood pumped back into the system for a fresh start.”

Three ways national media will further undermine trust

“It’s not that journalists shouldn’t engage in fact-checking, nor is it that journalists should avoid presenting facts as verifiable and trustworthy claims about the world — it’s that they shouldn’t be so obnoxious about it.”

The year of The Washington Post

“My real bet, though, is that the battle between the Times and the Post is being waged most when it comes to their rival international and national expansions. And the winner of that struggle is too close to call.”

May 12, 2014

Immediacy vs. importance: The tension underlying how the NYTimes.com homepage gets made

In this excerpt of her new book — based on months spent observing the inner workings of the Times’ newsroom — Nikki Usher shows how some of digital news’ most important real estate gets allocated, minute by minute.

February 3, 2014

In Des Moines, the Register’s new newsroom space aims to be a symbol of its digital future

The Gannett paper is finding that its new, more modern space can be useful as a marketing tool for the paper itself.

« Older articles