8 posts and columns on news media

The Web as a Household Appliance

The ethic of the Web is to say what you know as quickly as you can, and then reiterate over and over again. The Web is kind of a self-cleaning oven, and what you have up there can grow more accurate as time goes by. That’s never true of print. It’s always there for the ages.

David Carr, to Terry Gross on “Fresh Air”

QOTD: Let Them Eat Facebook!

This provocative debate isn’t even being acknowledged in most American coverage of the Internet’s role in the current uprisings. The talking-head invocations of Twitter and Facebook instead take the form of implicit, simplistic Western chauvinism. How fabulous that two great American digital innovations can rescue the downtrodden, unwashed masses. That is indeed impressive if no one points out that, even in the case of the young and relatively wired populace of Egypt, only some 20 percent of those masses have Internet access.

– Frank Rich of The New York Times on the overhyped role that American social media companies have played in Egyptian unrest

Ad Sales, Pay Walls, and Absolutely Nothing About iPads at the New York Times Earnings Call

in Media on February 10, 2010 at 8:01 am PT

The New York Times said things got better–or, if you like, no worse–during the last quarter of 2009. But investors are disappointed that the publisher isn’t more optimistic about 2010, and they’re pushing shares down this morning. Let’s see if the paper’s executives can turn that around during their earnings call.