The Jeff Beckham Weblog

Over on his Long Tail blog, Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson takes a more optimistic view of the financial situation the newspaper industry finds itself in. The recent news that advertising revenue had taken its biggest drop in 50 years set off the latest round of doom-sayers calling for the end of the newspaper era.
There’s [...]

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The Statesman’s entertainment site, Austin360.com, won a Newspaper Association of America Digital Edge Award for Best Local Guide or Entertainment Site in its circulation category.
The Digital Edge Awards categories, part of the Media Innovation Awards, drew more than 200 entries from U.S. newspapers of all sizes. The volunteer team of judges, who are all [...]

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Updated: The reporter, J. Michael Parker, has left the paper “by mutual agreement“.
Spotted first on Gawker:
An elderly couple featured in a San Antonio Express-News story about “the secret to a happy marriage” died within two weeks of each other after they were interviewed for the story and before its publication.
What’s worse, the paper did not [...]

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When it comes to the right way for local media to embrace the online world, I’ve been tempted for some time just to link to Rob Curley and add “What he said”.
My man just hit it out of the park again, this time with a piece in Harvard’s Nieman Reports that lays the the strategies [...]

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The AP looks at how newspapers are using widgets — small, stand-alone programs people can place on their own web pages or desktops — to “draw in new readers and to boost their brands throughout the Internet.”
In a way, it’s an extension of news feeds and another example that a person doesn’t have to come [...]

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Much has been written already about the New York Times’ decision to end their TimesSelect subscription service. Check out some of the best here:

Jeff Jarvis
Staci Kramer
Rex Hammock
Dan Gillmor

As those folks point out, there’s more there than just freeing the Times columnists from behind a paywall. The Times is also opening up their archives for the [...]

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The folks over at the Bivings Report have ranked the Austin American-Statesman’s website among their Top 10 Best Newspaper Websites in the United States.
Statesman.com came in at No. 8. The rankings said:
We really like the unique layout and coloring of this site’s homepage. We’re also giving this site points for allowing anyone to blog and [...]

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There’s a nice interactive feature on Statesman.com that lets you search the Austin Police Department’s records for any property crime reported in 2006. What’s more, there’s a slick Google Maps interface that allows you to zoom in on the location and get more details, including whether the report led to an arrest.
You can search the [...]

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Over at Read/Write Web, Josh Catone compares the recent redesigned sites for CNN, USA Today, and AOL News.
He gives the design edge to CNN, and the social-media advantage to USA Today (whose features are powered by Austin’s Pluck).

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Back in November, the New York Times wrote a profile on Brian Stelter, the 21-year-old writer of the TVNewser.com blog, which has gained prominence as the place to go for inside news on the television industry. Earlier this week, the Times has now hired Stelter as a staff writer for their Business section. It’s a [...]

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