MEDIA & JOURNALISM

The biggest challenge facing the journalism industry today is not declining readership, the economy or even the Internet - it is the increased competition that the Internet has made possible.

The journalist in me has been avoiding this post (too navel-gazing, too self-absorbed), but the blogger in me can't help it. Media is changing-how it is produced and how it is consumed. The worlds of blogging and journalism are colliding and I want to get some thoughts down on this transition before I forget what the old world was like or feel too comfortable in the new one.

Journalism is becoming a high tech industry, and that means that career norms for journalists are approaching those of high tech workers -- shorter job tenures, working for smaller companies, and much more. Here are ten things that can help journalists survive Web 2.0 with their sanity intact:

Since I already drilled a nerve with What Newspapers Still Don't Understand About The Web, which is on its way to becoming one of my most linked posts ever - and since everyone loves a sequel - I thought I would do a follow up for magazines. The lessons, of course, apply to every print publisher, who constantly discovers new ways to frustrate web users by prioritizing print over web.

Why is Google making more money everyday while newspapers are making less? I'm going to pick on The Washington Post again only because it's my local paper and this is a local example.

Commentary: Don't just rely on your content management system to make decisions for you. Decide how and where you will reward readers who want more information.

Commentary: Don't just rely on your content management system to make decisions for you. Decide how and where you will reward readers who want more information.

Commentary: Don't just rely on your content management system to make decisions for you. Decide how and where you will reward readers who want more information.

Rupert Murdoch wants his Wall Street Journal to displace The New York Times as the world's paper of record. His ambitions could be good news for the newspaper industry- or another nail in the coffin of serious journalism.

A 61-year-old woman elbows her 5-foot-2-inch frame to the front of the crowd mobbing Bill Clinton after a campaign event in South Dakota. As Mr. Clinton shakes her hand and holds it tight, she deftly draws him into a response to an article on the Vanity Fair Web site that examines his post-presidential life.

More people are tuning into what bloggers have to say, but should we trust them? Darren Levin reports.

More people are tuning into what bloggers have to say, but should we trust them? Darren Levin reports.

More people are tuning into what bloggers have to say, but should we trust them? Darren Levin reports.

On May 14, more than 100 reporters, editors and executives clustered in The Wall Street Journal's main newsroom to mark the retirement of Peter R. Kann, the longtime leader of their corporate parent, Dow Jones & Company.

On May 14, more than 100 reporters, editors and executives clustered in The Wall Street Journal's main newsroom to mark the retirement of Peter R. Kann, the longtime leader of their corporate parent, Dow Jones & Company.

On May 14, more than 100 reporters, editors and executives clustered in The Wall Street Journal's main newsroom to mark the retirement of Peter R. Kann, the longtime leader of their corporate parent, Dow Jones & Company.

The New Yorker magazine's David Remnick talks with All Things Considered's Senior Host Robert Siegel about his new collection of essays at an event hosted by the Smithsonian Associates in Washington, DC. Reporting is divided into five parts and covers suc

The New Yorker magazine's David Remnick talks with All Things Considered's Senior Host Robert Siegel about his new collection of essays at an event hosted by the Smithsonian Associates in Washington, DC. Reporting is divided into five parts and covers suc

The New Yorker magazine's David Remnick talks with All Things Considered's Senior Host Robert Siegel about his new collection of essays at an event hosted by the Smithsonian Associates in Washington, DC. Reporting is divided into five parts and covers suc

A lot of us who go into journalism are completely sheltered and naive about what it actually entails, disillusioned by unrealistic portrayals in movies that lack the actual two-weeks-standing-on-your-feet-and-Photocopying and ulcer-inducing insecurity that we face in our pursuit of a byline. I myself have a long history of being boondoggled by pop culture: I applied to NYU because I thought it'd be just like Greenwich Village in the 1950s, all beatniks in berets, poetic and artistic and sipping coffee over a dog-eared Village Voice. Naive, right? (I hope charmingly so.) For the most part, that fantasy has resurfaced as the gold ring to strive for in my albeit short career as a professional journalist.

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism -- a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.\n"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism.\n\nIn the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese arrived in Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to profile Frank Sinatra. The legendary singer was approaching fifty, under the weather, out of sorts, and unwilling to be interviewed. So Talese remained in L.A., hoping Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and he began talking to many of the people around Sinatra -- his friends, his associates, his family, his countless hangers-on -- and observing the man himself wherever he could. The result, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism -- a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction. The piece conjures a deeply rich portrait of one of the era's most guarded figures and tells a larger story about entertainment, celebrity, and America itself. We're very pleased to republish it here.

It all sounds so … uncomplicated, doesn't it? Boozy lunches at Michael's and evenings at Elaine's, unlimited expense accounts, stories that took months to report and longer to write, maybe a ramshackle house in the Hamptons to complement the musty, book-clogged apartment on the Upper West Side. But above all, there was the sense that magazine writing was at the center of a vital intellectual universe, with New York as its capital, and vaunted writers and editors such as Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Willie Morris, Harold Hayes, Lillian Ross, Clay Felker, Norman Mailer, David Halberstam, Nora Ephron and the like as its reigning princes and princesses, with salaries and perks and moist-eyed acolytes to match. Not to mention scandals, sodden confessions and rumors that could be safely traded and tucked away among trusted friends, with no danger of being scattered like seed spores across cyberspace. Gossip was community-building, not community-busting.

How many more years will we have to watch foreign correspondents parachute into a region and pretend they know what's going on? How many more reports coming out of the Middle East from hotel rooftops will be delivered by people who do not speak Arabic, or know what "the Green zone" in Iraq was called before coalition forces arrived?

His father was one of the greatest sportswriters of Sports Illustrated's golden age. And then it all fell apart. Now, a son tries to make sense of his father's legacy. By Mark Kram Jr.

His father was one of the greatest sportswriters of Sports Illustrated's golden age. And then it all fell apart. Now, a son tries to make sense of his father's legacy. By Mark Kram Jr.

His father was one of the greatest sportswriters of Sports Illustrated's golden age. And then it all fell apart. Now, a son tries to make sense of his father's legacy. By Mark Kram Jr.