Month: April 2014

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I’ve very proud of The Newsroom. I have the time of my life working with the people that I work with, but there is a learning curve and unfortunately, those lessons are learned in front of several million people. Again, that’s what you sign up for. I wish that I could go back to the beginning of The Newsroom and start again and replicate what you have with a play, which is a preview period… But I’m feeling really good about how the third season is going. I’ll look back on it fondly and proudly and wish I could get every scene of every episode back so that I could do it all over again.

Aaron Sorkin apologizes for The Newsroom, a show that has a lot of problems – oh, so many – but which I really enjoy anyway. Admittedly, I’ve only seen season one so far, so the second season could take an astonishing nosedive, but still.
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One of the biggest reasons why I am good at what I do is my lack of experience. I don’t know the rules, therefore I think there is no box, and push things beyond their limits. I do crazy things on various social networks all the time, to find loopholes and tricks. Some people call it “gaming the system,” I call it experimenting.

You may be shocked to discover that the person who wrote this works in marketing. “Think outside of the box? I don’t even know there is a box!”
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“What works” on the web is not a mystery to publishers any more. The secrets of scaling are no longer confined to a sophomore’s sock drawer in a Harvard dorm. This new age of digital enlightenment means that when organisations are born they come with built-in expectation inflation. No recent journalism launches have attracted the same interest as last week’s Vox.com debut and the FiveThirtyEight’s that preceded it.

The Guardian’s Emily Bell on the future of web journalism and web-based writing in general.

In the same piece, she later makes a reference to Ev William’s Medium which is, she says, “devising ways for writers to publish without having to edit, or be paid.” Those last three words actually crystalized one of the reasons why I’ve been so ambivalent about Medium. I’ve wanted to be more onboard, but there’s something about the site that’s very “writers write for love, not money” that is the very opposite of appealing to me.

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taterpie:

Ok I have a few left but I need to go do yoga, so I’ll clear those later. This was just enough to make graemem say oh-so-Scottishly ‘are you serious?’ and I enjoy the thought of that XD

Graeme, when I clear out the Aidan Turner queue you should just take the day off.

Please note, Tumblrs: What I actually said was “Oh, for the love of God.” And then I saw Amy’s coda post above.

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The Toronto Star announced it will hire eight digital journalists who will be paid less than other journalists in the newsroom and it is considering another round of editorial buyouts. The newspaper also laid off 11 full-time page editors and eight staff in the circulation department.

The union said it is most concerned about the digital hires, which it said would result in a two-tiered pay system, with digital-only reporters paid approximately $200 less per week than an entry-level Star reporter.

“Some of these jobs, we don’t have a problem with… like the video assistant who will be responsible for cutting video,” said Dan Smith, vice-chair of the Star union. “But whether you’re writing for web or whether you’re writing for print, that’s the same journalism… and they should be paid the same.”

And then I find this story. Sometimes, the world just seems to want to remind you that it’s harder than it should be.
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The economic world is structured for people with jobs. Yet the self-employed population is growing by leaps and bounds — more and more people each year are paying higher taxes and buying their own insurance. We have no institutional protections, no security, no unemployment benefits when our contracts run out.

I know I’m far from alone — freelance journalists quietly, privately lament our low, late pay, our inherent insecurity, and the dual pressure to appear productive and successful while also available for hire.

Susie Cagle talks about life as a freelancer. A must read.

(Hey, dynamofire, you’ll be into this especially, I suspect.)

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Marvel has confirmed the end of their Essentials program of black and white reprints of classic material. Marvel has sold off almost all remaining inventory of older in-print volumes and will not be adding further books. ‘This material needs to be in color,’ Marvel Senior VP of Sales David Gabriel said. ‘So we’ll be replacing our Essentials program with more full-color Epic Collections.’

“This material needs to be in color” translates as “We can charge twice as much for the same material if we change format,” I believe.

It’s sad, but not surprising, that the line is going to be killed. Guess I’ll never manage to find cheap copies of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One now.