From Net News Check
Newspapers are all missing the mark in digital, says veteran media critic Dan Kennedy, hampered in many cases by clumsy paywall adoptions and too much debt on their books to succeed.
Kennedy, whose book on community journalism, The Wired City, will be published this spring, has most recently focused his attention on nonprofit and hyperlocal news models. His conclusions: Nonprofits can be formidable but not necessarily a fit for every market. Hyperlocals, meanwhile, must find more non-advertising revenue solutions in order to produce a higher volume of meaningful content.
Now an assistant professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, Kennedy said journalism students today need to think of themselves as the tech workers of the past two decades — nomadic between startups, ready for frequent failures and adaptable to an increasingly niche-oriented landscape.
In an interview with NetNewsCheck, he explored those students’ prospects in the field, along with the challenges facing the alternative newsweekly world from which he came to prominence through a longtime stint at The Boston Phoenix.
