Ethan Zuckerman: AP’s ethnography of news consumption

Filed under: Media — Ethan @ 9:29 pm A media group in continuous operation since 1846 may not be the company you should look to for advice on the future of media. Or maybe they should: the Associated Press is both doing well in a digital age (when they’re not making boneheaded moves like pretending that fair use doesn’t exist) and looking towards the future, trying to figure out its role in the media ecosystem. And they’re carrying out some very interesting research to determine just what their role is going forwards. The transformation of newspapers into 24/7 digital newsrooms has been something of a boon for AP. The fact that the newswires constantly churn out new content means that they’ve become one of the main sources for news on newspaper websites. Denis Wu of Boston University did a close study of news coverage on the... [read full story]