UCLA Extension New Media Reporting: Week 9 Summary

During our Week 9 session we debated some more whether pay walls in online journalism can work. This time we discussed our assignment: Analyzing this excerpt of Chris Anderson's Free and coming up with an argument for or against the future of pay-wall publications.

Surprisingly many of you argued for the viability of online subscriptions, stating that if the writing were compelling enough, the product focused enough and the content fresh enough, we should pay for it. I still held that the pay wall's possible heyday was at least 10 years ago, when the industry would have had to erect a universal wall and have each and every publication adhere to it. Today there would be too many leaks by aggregators.

UCLA Extension New Media Reporting: Week 8 Summary

During Week 8 we talked about using Twitter as a channel to spread news. I noted that some AP reporters were recently chastised for breaking news via Twitter before the wire service had spread the information.

I argued that AP's thinking on this might be a little behind the times. It's good for reporters to live tweet events on a few fronts: First it establishes them as a brand and makes followers want to go to them for news. This only benefits their organizations. Second it teases the news. As you know Twitter is a limited medium. If you want to dig deeper and find out details, you'll have to go to the news outlet in question for the bigger picture. Finally, live tweeting events (as many reporters did during coverage of the Occupy L.A. evictions this week) breaks down the wall between news product and process, letting readers in on the raw material of news and allowing them to make their own conclusions.