Using Crowdsourcing And Digital Publishing To Hold Governments Accountable

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File this under ‘(forced) radical transparency’. UK newspapers have taken upon themselves to publish the unedited expenses claims of every MP. Guardian has made the claims publicly available for crowdsourcing, that is, allowing anyone to sift through the vast material (457,153 pages so far) looking for entries that “deserves further scrutiny”.

Try it here. The interface is [...]

A Catastrophically Mistaken Newspaper Ad

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“New Catastrophically Huge Sunday Edition.”
This poster ad is the accomplishment of a major Danish newspaper; I’ve translated the heading as best I could. It depicts a devastated forest scenery, the publication in question, and a red splash advertising a dirty cheap trial subscription.

I’m sure you can imagine the marketing execs brainstorming for ideas, wanting to [...]

How Many Reporters Do We Need?

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How Many Reporters Does It Take To Unscrew A Lightbulb?
I don’t have the exact answer to this  question, but as I argue below looking at just some of the trouble in today’s newspaper industry, the answer is probably ‘Too many, and too well paid’.
Steve Rubel had an interesting post yesterday, stating that the newspaper reporter [...]

RSS to PDF Converters Showdown: FeedJournal vs. Tabbloid

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Blogging is publishing, right? But it never really achieves that print-and-ink feeling, right? Wrong.
Well, sort of. I’ve been playing with two blog-to-PDF services (actually RSS-to-PDF), as it’s a nice thing to compile your precious writings once in a while. You can email it to your Mom who doesn’t get blogging, or print it to a [...]