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“And the 15th Best Newspaper Web Site Award Goes to … “


by Jerome Weeks 18 Feb 2009 12:33 PM

The Dallas Morning News. According to the Neiman Journalism Lab. A bit of a surprise, frankly, to anyone who tries to use it regularly. But congrats, anyway. The top 5 sites are pretty predictable: NYTimes, USA Today, WashPost, LATimes, Wall Street Journal. It’s toward the bottom of the list that things get interesting. The Houston […]

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The Dallas Morning News. According to the Neiman Journalism Lab.

A bit of a surprise, frankly, to anyone who tries to use it regularly. But congrats, anyway. The top 5 sites are pretty predictable: NYTimes, USA Today, WashPost, LATimes, Wall Street Journal.

It’s toward the bottom of the list that things get interesting. The Houston Chronicle is #14.

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  • For me ad-driven media is not news but business promotion. End ads and we’ll get real journalism again.

  • Stephen Becker

    Tom – it’s interesting you say that. Salon.com has a story today about the idea of non-profit newspapers:
    http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/02/17/newspapers/index.html

    Of course, that opens up a whole other set of problems, namely the influence that the money providers could potentially have on the content. But that’s really not too much different from the current situation, I suppose.

  • Stephen, The democratization of the media scares mainstream media and they have all kinds of scenarios to warn people of away from indie media – a media that doesn’t depend on supporting big business at every turn. But the real fear for me is the mainstream mess we have now.
    Dallas Morning News has ads on the front page and on the Sunday comics page. Their every move is to support advertisers, not please readers. So when readers have an option they flee in droves.
    The indie media is more honest, passionate, and real. They also cover what we want to read. Example where is there any news of colleges in the mainstream. Students aren’t even thought of as readers because they aren’t rich enough to buy the junk that papers advertise.
    I’ve written about a no ad newspaper that depends on readers buying a copy, not ads. That makes all the difference.
    Give the indie press time and they’ll match and exceed the in depth reporting of ad driven media. if they haven’t already.