Media Monday

Media Monday

The latest journalism obit, this time from Mother Jones which posits the NPR pledge drive model:

Many Mother Jones readers already help by writing checks beyond the price of a subscription; it's those checks­ that pay for our reporters and earn the attention of the Times and others who have spotlighted our reader-supported model as one promising avenue for journalism.

What it's going to take is for many more Americans to decide that quality reporting—be it on local school boards or Iraq or climate negotiations—is as vital to their lives as box scores and celebrity spats.

With print paper readers getting older and older, serhaps expanding the obituaries would be a good, if only stop-gap, move for newspapers. Of course, it has its limits; I used to work for a radio station that read obits on the noon news and the joke around town was that we were losing listeners as they died of old age.

While we're on the subject of obits, the Old Gray Lady looks at the Obama haters and the age gap.

Meanwhile, the mostly free craigslist is thriving and here's a look under the hood.

And has Facebook jumped the shark? Seriously, I'm not interested in your Farmville score...