Arianna Huffington vs. Newspaper Guild

According to an article on FoxNews.com, the 26,000-member national Newspaper Guild is taking a stand against the Huffington Post for not paying thousands of its writers. The union is asking all of its members not to share their work with the HuffPo to show their support for paid journalism. In response to the union, spokesman for HuffPo, Mario Ruiz, said that he also thought professional journalists should get paid, but also said that most of the writers they aren't paying are not considered professional; they are community bloggers who come from all over the place. Ruiz also said that HuffPo does have a staff of 160 full-time editors and reporters that it pays. Is HuffPo wrong for allowing bloggers to contribute free information or are the bloggers wrong for contributing information without pay? If a single video can sell for $150 to $1,000, HuffPo is saving a ton of money if they have 3,000 regular bloggers that they're not paying.

Kaleigh Robichaud

The Fix: Finding Your Audience and then Exploiting It

Maer Roshan is known for creating innovative and boundary-pushing publications such as Radar. In his new venture, The Fix he focuses on addiction and the people who live in a world of drugs, alcohol, etc. He spoke to NPR the other day about how he came up with the idea. It's a good listen on how to think about your audience and your niche.

Netflix Next Steps: How to Present Yourself

Netflix is shifting into streaming video online as its core business model. We will walk through this slideshow on Tuesday to discuss why this very simple presentation works and why it can serve as a template for your presentations to our panelists.

After Earning Money, How Does One Spend It?

Courtesy of a unique little website called quicktips.com, I found a short article regarding how much to spend on a website. The site also lists the pros and cons to using a custom design or template design as well as the general monetary investments you should expect to have to make to either. For those of us who have our economic models planned out (anyone?) this is a nice next step! Hope it inspires ideas like it did for us!

Hannah Saunders

Amber Johnson-Weeks

Yahoo is Said to Move Toward Personalized Content

Yahoo plans to announce it is developing a publishing platform for applications that would let users get personalized content on their phones and other mobile devices, following a decline in revenue and a stream of departures. Read more here.

From a friend... A perspective on technology.

  This a blog entry from a friend, posted on Facebook.  She discusses and relates her real life experience with news tech and how it affects her daily life.  Probably, how it affects most of us.... How important is it to keep up, and what new responsibilities come with new tech?

28 Ways for Your Website to Make Money

I came across this blog tonight that I found useful, and probably will reference through out the rest of our project. It hits the main ideas we covered in class, but with a couple more and with a fresh perspective. I found #26 interesting because it is possible to make tons of money by simply sending out news letters of notifications to the site's members. Check it out!

Hannah Saunders

Amber Johnson-Weeks

New York Times pay wall...will people buy journalism.

As we move into the discussion of the economics of your journalism start-ups, the story of the Times and how it created its pay wall may help you in your own deliberations about how to make money online.

So...how do I actually design an app?

As the end of the semester draws nigh, I've been getting increasingly nervous about how to pitch noozie to a panel of investors. How can I ask for money for a business venture when I have no idea to design it or what it will look like? I found this awesome article from Smashing Magazine that not only explains the steps in creating an iPhone app, but also provides many questions that may help you refine your business plan, regardless of whether your distribution model involves apps. I strongly suggest that you check it out if you feel like you've hit a wall with your ideas.

Erin

Presentation Inspiration

So it's still a few weeks before you need to present, but this talk by a spoken word artist at the Ted 2011 conference inspired me to be a better speaker and communicator. You may take some cues from how she connects with her audience. And at just under 20 minutes...it's about how long you should take for your presentations.

Ahh...the pressure of a name!

That's a little snippet from Pretty Woman in case you didn't catch it. :-)
But seriously...our group has been struggling with a name. We might be the only ones, but in case we're not I'm going to share some inspiration.
First I read an article that seemed legit. It wasn't. To the extent that I'm not going to even link to it. About halfway down the first page the writer says the best way to name your business is to hire a branding firm. Oh yeah, and that's going to cost you about $80,000. Um, no thanks. That pretty much ended my article search. I'm a DIY kinda girl.
Plan B fared much better. I Googled name generators and found this one, specific to businesses.
http://www.businessnamegenerator.com/
They even let you know if the .com, .net, .org, etc. is available or already taken. Pretty sweet.
Most of the names are kind of lame, but a couple I morphed into something I thought was catchier. That's about it. See y'all in the a.m.!

State of the Media: What is Happening with Community.

State of the Media report offers insight into what is happening at the front lines of journalism. Here is a look at community sites.

A Case for Free Content...and I mean free

Deciding whether to give away your content--instead of putting it behind paywalls or making it difficult to copy by using restrictive copyright under Creative Commons--is something that you will want to consider as you work through your content models. Here is a take from Cory Doctorow about why content should be free and why copyright regulations should be changed to reflect our new digital world.

The State of Journalism: 2010

For the next seven weeks we will be digging deep to understand where your news startups fit in relation to what's happening in the rest of the journalism world. I will be posting a story (or several) each week that you will read and then comment on, either in class or at the end of the blog post.

Here is the first one. A look at the state of journalism in 2010 by Rick Edmonds of Poynter.org