Will the Managing Editor Go with the Times?

My local newspaper is The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and it has been re-orging a bunch over the past 18 months. Because I am a communicator who helps share important medical discoveries for my organization, an academic health system, I am concerned that there a fewer reporters with health and medical beats. When you are working in a place that has a reponsibility for sharing discoveries, especially with federal funding supporting a lot of this, the goal is to get the news out to the public about how they are benefitting from advances.

So, keeping up with trends, I read a recent column by Mark Fitzgerald, an Editor and Publisher editor-at-large. He says managing editors may be a middle management phenomenon that may eventually go away. Read an excerpt here and visit his column.

"What, M.E. Worry? Managing Editors May Be On The Way Out: In the rest of corporate America, the middle manager has been an endangered species for the better part of three decades. With so many papers losing them, will the managing editor position soon disappear?

"In some ways the wonder is that the M.E. position has hung around so long. In the rest of corporate America, the middle manager has been an endangered species for the better part of three decades."

PRWeek's Social - Blogging Competition

The blogging activity by PRWeek bloggers should have interesting results, but a lot to keep up with in the meantime. Check it out:

As part of its 10th anniversary celebration, PRWeek is honoring one of the most important technological advancements in content distribution of the past 10 years: the blog. The celebration comes by way of a competition. PRWeek personnel selected 16 of its favorite blogs, and ask each of those bloggers to select another blog to nominate for this competition. You will find the logos of all 32 blogs here and a bracket of the competition here. The competition will be a single elimination tournament, voted on by you, the reader. The tournament will take place over five weeks. For the first round, we will introduce eight new blogs every Monday and Wednesday. Polls will close on Tuesday at 11:59 pm EST, and on Friday at 5:30 pm EST. Bloggers have agreed to participate in the tournament, and were allowed to promote their participation on their blogs and elsewhere.

The Changing Newsroom - an Extensive Report

Public relations professionals, many of us ex-journalists, are watching in dismay as newspapers continue to unravel across the nation. The recent Pew coverage says:

"The majority of newspapers are now suffering cutbacks in staffing, and even more in the amount of news, or newshole, they offer the public. The forces buffeting the industry continue to affect larger metro newspapers to a far greater extent than smaller ones. In some cases, these differences are so stark it seems that larger and smaller newspapers are living two distinctly different experiences. Fully 85% of the dailies surveyed with circulations over 100,000 have cut newsroom staff in the last three years, while only 52% of smaller papers reported cuts. Recent announcements of a further round of newsroom staff reductions at large papers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post, indicates these differences may be widening further."

A very extensive report of the latest survey of newspapers can be found at The Changing Newsroom. The Project for Excellence in Journalism is a research organization that specializes in using empirical methods to evaluate and study the performance of the press. It is non partisan, non ideological and non political. "Our goal is to help both the journalists who produce the news and the citizens who consume it develop a better understanding of what the press is delivering. The Project has put special emphasis on content analysis in the belief that quantifying what is occurring in the press, rather than merely offering criticism and analysis, is a better approach to understanding."

"Doctored" Photos Easy in the Digital Age

I usually check out Scientific American for my science blog WendSight, but this story warrants a view by PR professionals. I pulled the main points from "Digital Forensics: How Experts Uncover Doctored Images" written by Hany Farid.

It says, "Fraudulent photographs produced with powerful, commercial software appear constantly, spurring a new field of digital image forensics. Many fakes can be exposed because of inconsistent lighting, including the specks of light reflected from people’s eyeballs. Algorithms can spot when an image has a “cloned” area or does not have the mathematical properties of a raw digital photograph."

Visit SciAm for an interesting read and photos! Visit this link to see the photo credit.

Make Way for New News Media

I was scouting the pages of Fast Compnay, and see a concept for new radio that looks interesting. From a public relations point of view, if you have a product for NPR, then this looks good.

Writer Linda Tischler says of the show The Takeaway, "The first goal was to create a public-radio news program that replaces highly produced, carefully edited segments, such as those on Morning Edition, with something that feels a little more on the fly--open and conversational. New York's WNYC, which coproduces the show with Public Radio International (PRI), its distributor, drew its inspiration from the BBC Radio's popular 5 Live, a highly interactive alternative news broadcast in the U.K."

Bottom line: get to know the new media, because the old media is not going to be influential for the generation in its 20s right now.

Hologram "Transports" CEO to Meeting

I like to look at ways technology impacts public relations and what to plan for in the future. A company in Australia has sent its CEO to a meeting via a hologram.

Read here. "The future of Australian communications technology has been showcased in Adelaide with a live hologram used to address a business conference. Telstra has used the latest high-speed broadband technology to transmit an image of its chief technology officer Dr Hugh Bradlow in real-time, from his office in Melbourne. The image has been projected as a hologram, to make it appear he was standing on stage. David Thodey, from Telstra, says the technology has the potential to revolutionise how Australians do business.

Considering the cost of travel and hotels, this is going to look better and better as time goes on.

Photo credit goes to aplink.wordpress.com.

Amazon Kindle: Simply Amazing

I am going to look like I work for Amazon, but this product is amazing. Some of you probably already have it! Kindle: a Wireless Reading Device. Consider what the future holds beyond Amazon and books. See what Wikipedia says.

Here is what it can do:

Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
Holds over 200 titles. Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours. Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot.

Jeff Bezos says: Three years ago, we set out to design and build an entirely new class of device—a convenient, portable reading device with the ability to wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers.

Thanks to electronic paper, a revolutionary new display technology, reading Kindle’s screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper—and nothing like the strain and glare of a computer screen. Kindle is also easy on the fingertips. It never becomes hot and is designed for ambidextrous use so both "lefties" and "righties" can read comfortably at any angle for long periods of time.

We wanted Kindle to be completely mobile and simple to use for everyone, so we made it wireless. No PC and no syncing needed. Using the same 3G network as advanced cell phones, we deliver your content using our own wireless delivery system, Amazon Whispernet. Unlike WiFi, you’ll never need to locate a hotspot. There are no confusing service plans, yearly contracts, or monthly wireless bills—we take care of the hassles so you can just read.