Holtz Communications + Technology

The journalists who complain about Wikipedia’s lack of accountability will love the fact that the founders of the collaborative encyclopedia are introducing a wiki to allow anybody to report news. Currently in beta, Wikinews works just like Wikipedia, except (as co-founder Jimmy Wales notes) authors will need to create original content instead of summarizing existing material.

Wikinews was inevitable. Back around 1995, I…

Concerned that young readers—in the 18-to-34-year-old bracket—are unsubscribing at a clip of about 4,000 readers a month, the Washington Post conducted focus groups to find out why. They learned these readers wouldn’t take a subscription even if it was free, mainly because they don’t want stacks of old newspapers collecting around the house. It just doesn’t make sense to them when they can get the same…

The Association for the Advance of Science is no slouch of an organization. When they present their awards for science journalism, they’re looking at serious issues in legitimate media. Those who insist blogs are poised to grow into a mature medium can take heart that The Loom, a blog covering technology and science, won one of the awards for a three-part…

Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox makes no apologies for posting exit poll results, even though mainstream media avoids the practice for fear of swaying election outcomes. Cox told the Online News Association, meeting in Los Angeles, that bloggers who provide information readers want make it harder for news outlets to sit on a story. Still, Online Journalism Review’s Mark Glaser told the conference…

Sree Sreenivasan, a professor at Columbia, has been pitching journalists for three years now to develop their own personal Web sites. In the latest installment, on Poynter Online, he notes that Australian journalist John Martinkus was able to establish through a Google search that he was, indeed, a professional journalist, prompting his Iraqi kidnappers to release him. Sreenivasan also points…

By the time news photographers got to the scene of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh’s murder, the victim’s body had been covered. Fortunately for Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Aron Boskma—just some guy with a camera-equipped cell phone—happened to be passing by and snapped a picture of the body with a knife protruding from it. The newspaper was the only one to carry a photo of the…