Tom Altman’s Wedia Conversation

Caught an interesting post at PJNet:

Beneath the somber tales of shrinking revenues and staff cuts is an even more somber reality about the news business: The nearly two-century-old marriage between consumer advertising and journalism is on the rocks.

Good stuff…

In a post from the Tech section of the New York Times “Entrepreneurial Journalism in the Facebook Age” Saul Hansell brings up some good points:

Every now and then, I meet someone idealistic and perhaps foolish enough to want to embark on a career in journalism. Until recently, my advice was largely the same as anyone had given for many decades: Find a gig where you can write — a small town paper, freelancing for an alternative weekly, a business trade publication (my route). If you’re good, the story went, you would find you way to bigger publications and forge a career.

Today, it’s hard to give that advice, when the economic underpinnings of all those places you were supposed to be trying to work for are so shaky. Is there any good advice other than to learn how to trade mortgage-backed securities? I’m not sure that that opening an account on Blogger and hoping for the best will pay the rent.

This is truely an interesting time - it seems the “old media” giants are starting to wake up.

It seems to be a great time to be starting out in journalism. Just don’t ask advice from anyone who has been in the business for more than five years.

I’ve been out of town for a couple of days - so I’m posting this from a Caribou Coffee house. The post makes an interesting point…

My advice is instead of going to journalism school, go to school for something concrete like medicine or some kind of science or something and then use the knowledge you get in that field as a wedge to get yourself into journalism. What journalism really needs is more people who are reporting who actually know something.

This is an interesting post by Amy Gahran called “Participatory Journalism in the USA“

Why participatory journalism matters, why it isn’t new, and how the news landscape might evolve because of participatory journalism.

There is a lot of good stuff here - it gets a little long.  There is also a video and slide deck available.