Newspaper publishers need to quickly solve a troublesome equation. As carbon-based readership keeps dwindling, the growing legion of digital readers is poorly accounted for. This benefits advertisers who pay less for their presence.

Putting aside web sites audience measurement, we'll focus instead on the currently ill-defined notion of digital editions. A subject of importance since digital editions are poised to play a key role in the future of online information.

Continue reading on Monday Note

You're reading a wrap-up of the Sept. 22 Republican presidential debate when you land on this claim from Rep. Michele Bachmann: "President Obama has the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern times."

Really? You start googling for evidence. Maybe you scour the blogs or the fact-checking sites. It takes work, all that critical thinking.

That's why Dan Schultz, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab (and newly named Knight-Mozilla fellow for 2012), is devoting his thesis to automatic bullshit detection.

Continue reading on Nieman Journalism Lab

Carolyn Washburn, editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer, says cutbacks require that news leaders define their "unique role" in the news ecosystem - as a watchdog, for example. To focus, smaller newsrooms also need to stop doing some things.

Continue reading on Knight Digital Media Center

Mark Medici, then-vice president of audience for the Dallas Morning News, triggered a brief media frenzy in October when he said at a conference that within three years the Morning News wouldn't be publishing seven days a week. Though the paper quickly backed away from his remark, with Publisher Jim Moroney asserting that the Belo-owned paper has no intention of cutting back, the flap raised the question of whether daily newspapers will soon cease to be daily.

Continue reading in American Journalism Review

After an initial wave of excitement about iPad magazines, some publishers have dialed back their enthusiasm. But the readers who have actually downloaded them like them quite a bit.

So says a survey commissioned by a publishers' trade group: It finds that two-thirds of people who read magazines on tablets and e-readers think they'll be spending more time with digital issues over the next year.

Continue reading on All Things Digital

Updated: It's a distributed digital-information network that gives subscribers short news updates in something approaching real time, whether on the web or a mobile device. If you said Twitter, you would be right. But that same description also fits traditional newswires like Associated Press and Reuters. So how are they trying to evolve and compete with this new social news service?

Continue reading on Giga OM

by Mario Garcia

Resurrection is the word many are using to describe the reappearance of the long time evening daily, Pittsburgh Press, now back as an online newspaper. Will others follow?

So it is all about the "lean back" approach and reading newspapers in the evening.

Why am I not surprised?

Continue reading on Garcí­a Media

by Steve Outing

I recently participated (well, sort of -- via a remote Skype presentation) in the University of South Carolina's "Journalism, Sustainability, and Media Regeneration Conference." Its organizer, Professor Augie Grant, sent a survey to everyone who attended that opened with a couple questions that I should not answer but cannot resist:

"Think about all of the possible forms of delivering news and information online. In general, what 'top of the mind' ideas do you think 'online news' will look like in 20 years?"

Continue reading on steveouting.com

When it comes to editorial practices, online and non-online platforms are increasingly given the same importance. Break the story online, give the analysis in print. That's the approach taken by many B2B magazines, newspapers and even TV news programmes. But commercially, is the gap between bits and bytes still too big and are predominately print-based publishers moving too slowly?

In a low-key announcement yesterday, Guardian News & Media says that as part of its "digital first" strategy it will consolidate print and online advertising systems into one ad selling platform.

Continue reading on TheMediaBriefing

A BLAZE of bullets greets your arrival in a country torn by war. You dive for cover as a gun battle rages around you.

As a journalist, you're desperately trying to capture the story, taking photos while fearing for your survival.

You flee for the safety of a partially destroyed building to avoid the crossfire. . . this could be the streets of Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, the back alleys of Mogadishu, or the hills of Helmand Province.

Yet it is the world of "WARCO" - a video game designed to train journalists to operate in the combat zone.

Continue reading on the PANPA site

A former regional newspaper editor has come up with a 10-point plan to help cure the crisis in the regional press - which includes a call for debt relief for big PLC publishers like Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror .

Neil Fowler, Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford , outlined his plan in a lecture in which he warned that Johnston, Trinity and Newsquest -owner Gannett were "having to pull as much cash as possible out of their businesses to service these debts - which in turn is causing those businesses long term damage."

Continue reading on TheMediaBriefing