Eubie's notes

E-Media Tidbits; How to Turn Away Users Over 40. “So many sites I saw specify font size that’s too small for my middle-aged eyes to read easily. Alas, many of them use CSS to specify such things, which means that the Text Size feature in my browser (Internet Explorer) doesn’t work. I can’t easily increase the font size to make reading less painful.”

Major study released The State of the New Media 2004 Sunday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism takes a critical view of the trends in journalism including:

* a shrinking audience for news
* new investment focuses on distributing the news not collecting it.
* less effort is spent on synthesis or ordering of news.
* standards are changing with organizations not keeping the same standards with their organizations, such as what is acceptable for web sites compared with print.
* the audience loss will grow because little is spent building new audiences.
* the manipulators of the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists.

The report is 500 pages. The overview is more manageable today.

Coverage from NY Times: Study Finds a Waning Appetite for News; Romenesko: Report: News biz is in middle of “epochal transformation”; Washington Post: In a Deluge of Scandal, An Erosion of Trust; and USA Today: This just in: The future of news.

This report should keep lots of blogging journalists busy. Here are comments I’ve read by Dan Gillmor, Vin Crosby, Terry Heaton and Jeff Jarvis.

Dallas Business Journal: Report IDs traits of a ‘rainmaker’

There’s interesting reading about the reaction to Martha Stewart’s conviction, thanks to Rex Hammock’s weblog: Short memory-span theater and What he said.

I wonder if there will be as much reaction about WorldCom’s restatment of $74 billion in profits over the last two years?

GlennLog: More Realistic Report on Laptops in Schools

He writes: This report from Pennsylvania shows that laptops in schools are a mixed blessing in a more realistic analysis than the constantly glowing but entirely anecdotal stream of news from Maine. In PA, computers are tools, but they also require care and feeding which takes time. And students forget to bring laptops 50 percent of the time when they’re actually needed to projects in class. (This would argue that students don’t need the laptops at home all the time and perhaps they don’t all individually need laptops — more of a pooled system could be better.)

Interesting difference compared with Wired New’s stories about Maine’s experiment with laptops in schools.

Los Angeles Business from bizjournals: Broadband share. San Diego is tops on list with 52 percent share.

A slide show of some spectacular shots from the Hubble Space Telescope, from Australia’s news.com. Works better with faster access.

Scientific American.com: Hubble’s Most Penetrating View Yet of the Early Universe

Also Wired News reported Friday that U.S. Senators are asking NASA to re-think plans to not repair the telescope and let it fail in a few years.

Ad Age Factpack: A Quick Reference Synopsis of the Year’s Marketing and Advertising Data. Answer questions such as: Which marketer spends the most on advertising in the U.S.? How much does a TV ad cost? What is the total spent on advertising in different media? Which are the top 25 largest U.S. magazines and newspapers by circulation? Factpack is a 60-page PDF. Tip from Rex Hammock’s Weblog

This is becoming a story with predictable results. Go ask county and state officials for the records that state law says anyone is entitled to see and then see all the ways they deny access and try to intimidate you.

Reporters usually get what they request. If you’re thought to be a regular citizen, you don’t. Here’s what happened in Florida and Texas. Tip from Boing Boing Blog and Tim Porter.

Denver Business Journal: Denver-based matchmaking service Kris Kenny Connections is flirting with nearly $1 million in revenues this year.