Interesting point from Charles Apple, reflecting on Advance Publications announcement that several of its papers will cut back to three days of print editions:
The management is claiming that the Times-Picayune isn’t going away: In fact, it’s moving to become an around-the-clock digital-first-type operation. I have no quibble with that. In fact, that’s probably overdue. The problem I do have with that: It’s happening at a cost to low-income readers. It’s happening at a cost to older readers. Some of the very constituencies we’ve been striving to serve. Instead, we’re going to put primary focus on folks with iPads and smart phones.
And, yeah: I think that sucks. Advertisers might like that. But I didn’t get into this business to cater only to upper-class folks. I suspect a lot of journalists of my generation agree. And are equally shocked and disappointed by this move.
(Source: apple.copydesk.org)
A CEO who has realized that her audience – her customers – is the most important thing the company has will stop at nothing to give those customers what they want. Anything to make them feel as if they’re getting value from the company. And although she’ll monetize their aggregate value with advertisers and marketers, she’ll also protect them from underhanded sales pitches or confusing pricing strategies that infuriate the web-savvy.
(Source: blogs.reuters.com)
Alexis Madrigal writes at The Atlantic:
… our cultural expectations of radio — funneled through different technological listening devices — are changing. It may be broadcast over traditional airwaves, but it’s webby. It feels interactive and interrogative rather than narrowly investigative. Abumrad and Krulwich aren’t coming from on high, but right there with the listener adventuring through the story.
These guys, and their whole team, have changed the way I and others strive to tell science stories. The sky’s the limit, and I can’t wait to explore what’s coming.
I rarely work in an audio medium, but the storytelling methods used on Radiolab still influence the way I strive to tell stories. The conversational tone is impossible to fake, wonderful to listen to and makes the “learning” part of the program fade away.
Actual note in a photo assignment today:
“He (subject of photo) asked that if you go in the barn, don’t yell, because that upsets the cows and they start ‘shitting all over the place.’”
To understand why customers disappeared, why she entered a self-described period of rage, why the cannoli now costs $9, why the Zarzours will close the shop when their lease runs out in September and how Natalie Zarzour became Chicago’s most provocative pastry chef in a profession with little provocation, just ask her about the “Lobster Tail.”
By Kevin Pang, Chicago Tribune
Saving as an example of how to explain a veiled industry. Also, the story is cool.
(Source: chicagotribune.com)
