Media Insider: Digital Media Innovators, Reader Comments Halted, and More Media Moves

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s round up of journalism, blogging and freelancing stories from the week.

What I Learned Meeting Innovators in East Coast Media (PBS MediaShift)

After taking four weeks to visit several media companies, including ProPublica, Buzzfeed, The New York Times and NPR, journalism professor Cindy Royal presents her views on what makes each of these digital media companies distinctive. “This may seem obvious, but each newsroom is unique and has its own vibe,” Royal writes. From her observations, she discusses new and emerging roles, creating and amassing data, and audience engagement. She also points out a few similarities between the newsrooms and the tools that many of them are using. This is certainly a fresh perspective on digital media.

Are Media Companies Slacking? (World Editors Forum blog)

Speaking of newsroom tools, Slack is a two-year-old group chat app that is paving the way for organizing social circles, communications and content in a newsroom. This piece describes it as “a cloud-based communications application that automatically archives all interactions, provides a full search function and work across all platforms such as laptops, iPads and smartphones.” It also provides a “customization capability with bots,” and “heightened efficiency.” As this tool becomes more prevalent, it will be interesting to see how newsrooms continue to integrate it and just how popular it will be.

What Happened After 7 News Sites Got Rid of Reader Comments (Nieman Journalism Lab)

The internet has changed aspects of journalism and news reporting. Now, instead of a strongly worded letter to the editor, writers have been catapulted into a world of ridiculous comments and awkward approaches from strangers. At the same time, there are some great conversations going on about important, need-to-be-told stories. Here, several leaders from major news organizations – including Re/code, The Verge and Reuters – shared their thoughts on audience interaction, why they either halted or ceased reader comments, and what they do instead to initiate interaction.

Hey, What’s the Big Idea – About Journalism? (Poynter)

On a more positive note, writing coach Roy Peter Clark looks at the big picture and attempts to dissect the purposes of journalism and get to the root of “the big idea.” Clark shares the “big idea” for several hobbies, objects and actions before turning his focus on journalism. He shares several possible answers, like ” the responsibilities of citizenship include becoming well-informed,” and then asks readers to provide their thoughts on “the big idea about journalism” in the comment section.

Media News and Moves for the Week of September 14 (PR Newswire’s Media Moves)

Media Moves keeps you up to date with who went where in the world. In this week’s edition, a new publisher is named for Los Angeles Times, CNN hires several political reporters, and several changes takes place at The Weather Channel.

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Stephanie de Ruiter is an audience researcher with PR Newswire keeping up with media moves throughout the nation with a focus on blogs and online publications.