Online Journalism Awards 2012:
Online Commentary, Small

Dear judges:

I am happy to submit my entry into the Online Commentary, Small category of the 2012 Online Journalism Awards.

As director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, I’m lucky to have a front-row seat to the evolution of the news. We’re a small newsroom (three reporters plus me) tasked with tracking journalism innovation, chronicling how the field is adapting to and being changed by the Internet. Most of our work is smart reporting, but we do believe it’s important to mix in commentary and analysis to cut through competing claims.

My entry in this category is a sample of my commentaries from the past year — an eventful one in journalism. We promoted these pieces through our active social media presence (including one of journalism’s most popular Twitter feeds, with nearly 90,000 followers). Each drew attention from across the web. I hope you enjoy reading them; I enjoyed writing them. Thanks for your time.

Best,

Joshua Benton
Director, Nieman Journalism Lab

My three pieces

— November 23, 2011: Working on spec: On the power of hard data, bad product reviews, and Jim Romenesko. When it comes to aggregation, right and wrong can come down to how it feels.

[When Jim Romenesko was pushed out at Poynter over allegations he’d violated the rules of aggregation, it led lots of journalists to wonder what, exactly, those rules were. In this piece, pulling together technology and journalism, I argue that intent and experience are paramount in determining the bad actors in a rapidly evolving space.]

— September 12, 2011: Four observations (and lots of questions) on The Boston Globe’s lovely new paywalled site. It’s well designed, has a clear personality, and features great content. But is it what Boston readers want?

[When BostonGlobe.com debuted last fall, I immediately knew it would be a touchstone for newspapers online — a combination of print aesthetics, responsive design, and a unique business proposition. Within a couple hours of launch, I pulled together my praise, concerns, and questions into a piece that was much discussed in design and journalism circles.]

— August 15, 2011: From soup to nuts: Google buying Motorola is a skirmish between two biz models, and news needs both. Modular versus interdependent: how two approaches to structuring a business show the tension underneath the news industry’s adjustment to the Internet.

[You may notice a theme in my commentaries: an attempt to bring wisdom and knowledge from other fields into how we think about journalism. This piece tries to do the same, using a corporate merger as a way to examine two models for how the news industry could organize itself as it tries to adapt and survive.]