Inside Pages

Here’s an interesting rundown of newspapers adopting paywalls, along with a few theories about why.

The article at Ebyline.biz notes that paywalls are gaining steam, particularly among the largest-circulation publications. The article also contains this choice line:

Having sunk resources into building robust online businesses, big papers now can’t afford to abandon their online ad revenue but can’t rely on it, either.

There’s a lot of that going around.

As seen on : Rodney King Beating Video

News-gathering organizations can vastly expand the scope of their coverage by leaving it to computers. That’s because machines are more consistent and comprehensive, and thus better at spotting significant tends and patterns. What’s more, machines don’t take vacations or sick days, and you don’t have to pay them overtime.

Reporter Erin Moody sent this to me this morning. There was no credit attached, so I cannot give it here, but I think she found it on Facebook. It was too good not to share.

Competition from online news is hobbling newspapers. Streaming and file-sharing have done the same to the recording industry. Web-based video providers are mounting a serious threat to network television and cable companies.

All of this is undeniable.

Curiously, there seems to be no small number of old-media customers cheering for the obliteration of industries that have long served them fairly well. Not so curiously, I find that discomforting considering what I do for a living.

With the S.C. party primaries nearly upon us — the first election in which post-2010 reapportionment applies in a large-scale way — several readers and a few candidates have requested that we run detailed maps of new districts.

NetNewsCheck today features an an exclusive interview with Chris Hendricks, McClatchy Co.'s VP of interactive. The Q&A explains how digital is playing a huge role at his company ... which, of course, would be The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette's company, too.

What a whirlwind week(-plus) for Facebook and its creator, Mark Zuckerberg. First, the wunderkind turned 28. A few days later, his social medium made its initial public stock offering, which went from buzz to fizzle.

Had the mayor shouted his resignation over a bullhorn, or had a high-speed chase led America’s most wanted through our parking lot, we still might not have risen from our seats. By golly, six of the newsroom’s most senior members — with well over 100 years of journalism experience between them — were debating pressing matters.

Like whether the “Presented” in the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing should be capitalized or left lower case.

Call it Twitter-tics.

It’s the neural speed at which political imbroglios go viral or get escalated in 140-character bursts. This recent article on Ad Week’s website notes how quickly Mitt Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom mounted a Twitter offensive against Hilary Rosen after the Democratic strategist’s incendiary remarks on CNN last month about Romney’s wife Ann never having worked “a day in her life.”