While you were away: Journalism news from the holiday break

After planning my new course on Peace and Conflict Journalism last spring and summer, racing through fall with the students, through the haze of final project and exams — and the void of a holiday break — I am now trying to rapidly synthesize my syllabus with some of the most recent developments across the industry and institutions of journalism.

To begin, the state of the old industry doesn’t look good, with a new report from USC Annenberg predicting that most newspapers will be gone in five years and a leading newspaper analyst concurring that print advertising is in a death spiral. 

(To be fair, I should point out that I just Googled “newspaper death spiral” to find the above article — which I read last month — but other results led me to predictions going back to 2007.)

Back in October, the Knight Foundation examined “How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability” — with a rich and comprehensive report examining many of the leading projects launched in recent years.

Next, A Columbia Journalism Review article took note of another impediment in “Nonprofit News and the Taxman: The IRS questions whether journalism startups qualify for tax-exempt status.”

Later, Tom Stites at the Nieman Journalism Lab published “Taking Stock of the State of Web Journalism,” arguing in Part I that “we’re still a long way from a sustainable model” and reminding us of the previous Knight Commission “Informing Communities” report which praised “lots of interesting efforts but found no business models that are both self-sustaining and replicable from community to community.”

On the bright side, yesterday’s LA Times profile of Digital First Media CEO John Paton pointed out that their Pennsylvania-based Journal Register chain “has increased digital revenue from $6 million to over $32 million over two years.”

Meanwhile, Digital First’s Steve Buttry literally wrote the book on “digital-first” journalism in a series of blog posts near the end of 2011, which he soon  – and generously — made available as a downloadable PDF.

More recently, hyperlocal journalism pioneer Howard Owens updated his popular 2007 post with a new version called “Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list. Concerns with engagement, transparency, and redefining objectivity endure — but with a little more clarity now.

In December, CJR’s Dean Starkman penned a smack-down of what he called the “future-of-news (FON) consensus” among popular digital news gurus — but the blowback got a lot more traction. Clay Shirky responded directly and Starkman followed up.

At the very least, Starkman had written an outstanding primer on the status quo and led me to set up a feed folder just for Jarvis, Paton  Rosen and Shirky. 

Fact-checking got the spotlight when Politifact.com‘s disputed “Lie of the Year 2011” met the wrath of Krugman and more.

More recently, New York Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane ignited a firestorm with a short post asking” “Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante,” — in a way that is objective and fair. Shirky summed up the situation and the fallout for the Guardian.

Yesterday on CNN’s Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz briefly brought up journalists as referees and pointed to “The Fact Checker” blog at the Washington Post — which measures untruths in “Pinocchios.”

Next, Craig Newmark jumped in to advocate for fact-checking with a nice roundup of resources and recent articles.

Closing out my roundup, I can’t ignore GigaOm’s “News as Process: How Journalism Works in the Age of Twitter” or “Nick Kristof on Occupy and the Rise of Citizen Journalism.” BuzzMachine’s “Journalism via Jokes” may just be my latest must-read but don’t miss Poynter’s “Three Trends from 2011 that will reshape digital news in 2012.”

Finally, there’s SOPA/PIPA debacle, which may have just collapsed  or died but a Wikipedia and other sites still have plans to shut down in protest on Wednesday.

Did I miss anything?