16.03.2009

christopher.slaughter

R.I.P., Rocky Mountain News.... the Denver paper I delivered as a boy.  The news of its closure the other day made me sad, in a nostalgic way... but it was at least tempered by the fact that the paper's owner, the Denver Post, will continue printing its flagship daily.

Now, with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer announcing that it will become a Web-only paper, and that its last print edition will come out tomorrow, it's clear that this is more than just a few isolated incidents.  What's the old line... one is an exception, two is a coincidence, three is a trend.... and here we are at four.  Probably even more, if Time's list of newspapers in the ICU is even close to being accurate.

Internet and media maven Clay Shirky has posted a fascinating (if lengthy) essay on the trend he's been touting for years now. It's worth a read, but to cut to the chase, here are his final thoughts: 

For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.

Personally, I'm conflicted.  I guess because on the tee-vee side of the media playground, we've been watching a similar trend developing for a long, long time; as newsrooms "rationalise" their workforces -- and correspondingly, their coverage -- in ever-more irrational ways.  But so far, although we've seen overseas bureaux close left and right, and the appetite for international news wane to the point of anorexia, we haven't actually seen broadcasters stop doing news altogether.

Which is, I guess, the glimmer of hope in the announcement from the P-I  -- at least they'll still be doing an online version.  Won't be the same, but at least it's not gone entirely.  Of course, they'll be trying to do the same thing, but with fewer staff, fewer resources, less of a profile, all the attendant difficulties implied by the change.

I feel the pain of my print colleagues, and I share their concerns for the practice of journalism going forward (few more eloquently voiced than by former hack David Simon, creator of "The Wire").  But I've also long since migrated almost all of my print news attention to the Internet, and so I am somewhat less dismayed by the loss of a "dead-tree" daily paper.  I'm aware that every time I click on another online article, I hammer another tiny nail in the coffin of the print edition.  And while I do feel vaguely guilty about contributing to this trend, it really does seem inevitable.

But I hope Clay Shirky's right, and that journalism isn't dead, and that it's just the form that's changing.  Otherwise, God help us all. 

new media | news | business | God | journalism | blog | newspapers

24.02.2009

christopher.slaughter

It's not as if he usually goes out of his way to pull his punches or anything, but over at Daring Fireball, online pundit and Mac maven John Gruber is not happy with the Academy for dissing Wall-E...

Putting WALL-E up against Bolt and Kung Fu Panda rather than letting it compete against Slumdog Millionaire and Benjamin Button is like requiring a 13-year-old chess prodigy to compete only against other children, regardless whether he could stand his own against adult grandmasters. It’s a dismissive pat on the head.

 Read the whole rant here.... it's reasonably short, but in typical Gruber-style, well-argued and passionate.

rant | Oscar | animation | Academy Awards | Wall-E | Gruber | blog | movies

06.01.2009

tony.reno

In every office, the watercooler is that place where we bump into one another and fire off random conversational topics.  Certainly here at APV we come across many diversions that we discuss and then that later inspire our creativity.  So much so, that we decided to put those topics / ideas / conversations here on our website so that you may join in.  Whats even 'cooler' is that you can follow this conversation via your Twitter account.  Just add the Twitter feed @apv_asia and everything that comes up here will be sent there.  Neat huh?

Twitter | blog | tony | Cool Websites | Asia | blog-roll

05.01.2009

daniel.clarke

Mac World is in progress and little geeky trinkets are beginning to trickle out. The keynote isn't until tomorrow but here's one of the most talked about so far:

 It's an online photo management tool. It stores and organizes pictures mostly (but can work with videos as well)

There's also some basic picture editing and captioning tools. In particular you can lay out and decorate your collections (called albums) and it integrates with the rest of your Gmail suite. It has easy and controlled sharing tools built in.

Could be good for delivering and/or collaborating on storyboards.

It's been available for PCs for a while but you can now get the Mac version here.

apple | photos | google | blog

04.01.2009

tony.reno

Ok apv-bloggers, what should we call this thing before we go live?  Currently, it is the "blog-o-matic".  Some things I have thought of:

"apv diaries"

"apv's water-cooler"

"the water cooler"

"chit-chat"

apv | blog

08.12.2008

tony.reno

Due to my ability to turn the sweetest things sour, I have had my commenting rights revoked on tech blog GIZMODO.  Poor me.  Which Geek-God have I pissed off?  They refuse to reply to my request for explanation.  :-(

*Update*

I have been given a second chance!  However, I can not remember any comment that I made that was more silly than some of the ones I see up there.

From: "Gawker Media Comments"

Date: 10 December 2008 4:49:27 AM GMT+08:00

To: 

Subject: Re: Message from 

 

I'll give you another chance to audition. Try to make comments that add value to the discussion. If we like what we see, we will enable you to comment without review. The moderators like to have several comments to review before they approve an account. Try commenting on several articles to give them more examples of your commenting style.

Cheers

Michael 

Gawker Media Comments

gizmodo | banned | blog | tony