journalism
Postscript
Mass layoffs are a fact of life in journalism. Your favorite writers and editors have dealt with them. But they weren’t supposed to happen at The Post.
Big Opinion, Big Budget
The New York Times’ choice to publish a video op-ed by the CEO of Patreon points at why exec-produced video op-eds might be a bad idea.
A Moment For Independent Media
At a time when large companies are capitulating their content presence at the drop of a hat, a quick note on why a more-flexible independent media still matters.
Spanfelled
G/O Media, the company that tried to get Deadspin to stick to sports, bows out. They leave behind a scrappier media ecosystem with more business-savvy writers.
Where The Lede Gets Buried
At Tedium, we sometimes bury the lede intentionally, and it may seem strange, but sometimes it works.
Caught In The Middle
The mess with Bezos and The Washington Post is reflective of a trend that keeps popping up this year: The powerful entity stepping in it without considering the collateral damage.
Gatekept
Thoughts on a bruise to the ol’ ego that hurt a little more than I thought it would. But hey, it gives me a chance to talk about gatekeeping.
The Paywall’s Final Frontier
Word that CNN is getting a paywall feels like a sign that good information is more expensive than ever.
When Robots Aggregate
The mess between Forbes and Perplexity AI highlights how soulless and extractive aggregation can be in the wrong hands. It’s the wrong direction for LLMs.
Berliner Goes Tabloid
Considering the tale of the longtime NPR editor who decided to pull a Bulworth at the tail end of his long career.
The Post-SEO Era
What happens when a news site launches that basically ignores the SEO orthodoxy? Easy: They do fascinating stuff. Hence, Robinhood’s Sherwood.
Recapturing Real Time
A decade ago, real-time social news coverage was a machine that simply worked. With our recent social media disarray, it feels broken. Can it be fixed?
Spinning The Dead
I am so obsessed with trying to figure out who Deadspin’s new owners are that it led me to some late night spam-blog sleuthing.
Create For Yourself
With disruption hitting the media industry acutely in 2024, now is the time to lean into owning your creative work. Have a say in your creative destiny.
An Incomplete Picture
A recent scandal around a popular YouTuber’s nonprofit foundation has created a lot of drama, but what it’s missing are voices that understand the nonprofit sector.
Give ’Em Less Data
What if the problems with the news ecosystem could be solved by shutting off the data pipeline to the advertisers? After all, they’ve spent the last 30 years aggressively exploiting it—and us.
In The Age Of Culling
Discussing the dumb thing CNET did in an effort to please the Google Gods: Don’t cull old news content to improve your SEO ranking. That’s your history!
Old Archives, New Controversy
The New York Times has the most robust online archives of any newspaper, but it’s proving difficult to square their handling of a recent controversy with the quality of those archives.
When Newsletters Were Printed
What can modern newsletter authors learn about newslettering from an era when people actually mailed these things? A lot, it turns out, according to this book I bought.
Longform Brevity
Alt-form storytelling, a key magazine-and-newspaper design trend, hasn’t truly flourished on the modern internet. Axios could go way further than it does.
❝The Quote Issue❞
“We use a lot of quotes at Tedium, but we’ve never done an issue of Tedium ABOUT quotations,” Ernie said when writing this piece. “Let’s fix that.”
Dead on Archival
Considering the challenges that face shuttered newspapers with decades or even centuries of material to preserve.
Pushing Photos Through Wires
The technology used to distribute photos through news wire services inspired a whole bunch of innovations with use cases beyond newspapers. Like television.
Source Tags & Codes
The saga of the Missouri governor reflects a failure by the powerful to embrace curiosity—curiosity encouraged by the HTML language he fails to understand.
How I Research Stuff
If you’re a longtime reader of Tedium, you might wonder how I manage to uncover so many strange stories. Well, let me tell you. Hopefully it’s inspiring.
Strip-Mined News
Local newspapers have already faced issues with outsourcing and an array of cuts for years. But the threat is changing—and you should know what it looks like.
News In Small Bytes
Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early '80s.
Just The Fax, Ma’am
Newspapers once saw fax machines as an opportunity to distribute breaking news to the masses—then they saw it as a way to reach the niches. Neither worked out.
The Free Ride’s Over
For decades, ad-supported free daily newspapers defined commuting. But the Washington Post Express’ demise shows the model is headed towards the history books.
Channel None
For nearly 30 years, many schools aired a daily news show in exchange for free AV equipment. Channel One was a hit—but the ads drove seemingly everyone crazy.
Michael Wolff’s Internet Book Empire
The Trump administration tell-all scribe has a history with digital publishing that goes way back. In fact, he edited one of the first guides to the internet.
There’s Always Next Year
The state of our Tedium in 2018 looks kind of a lot like 2017, for better or worse. Let’s take a deep breath, everyone, and hope for the best.
Trimmed For Space
As the newspaper industry contracted, so too did the furniture and the newsprint. Let's check out the first victims of the digital revolution.
Shorthand For No
The incredibly frustrating tale of a college that tried to bar a Scottish student with cerebral palsy from getting a journalism certification—because rules.
They Stopped (Sorta)
The Associated Press finally allows the singular “they” in some limited instances—a big move in the world of copy-editing.
Tear Down This Paywall
Bloomberg thinks you should pay them tens of thousands of dollars a year and subscribe to its terminal to read its old stories. The public should push back.
A Finish Line In Sight
The state of our tedium in 2017 is a bit worrying, but there are just enough bright spots to make yet another year of drudgery worthwhile.
Bare-Metal Writing
Over the decades, word processors have continually gained new features that get in the way of the ultimate goal: writing. How do we get back to that goal?
When Robots Can Write
We're a long ways from a robot becoming the next great American novelist. But an Israeli startup hopes to get 'bots writing more than ever.
The Invention Of News
The field of public relations is still built on a single foundational tool—the press release. Why do we still use them? Well, for the companies, they work.