links for 2010-01-13

The study examined 53 different local news outlets (including City Paper), ranging from newspapers to radio stations to blogs, during the course of one week in July 2009. Researchers followed six major storylines—including Gov. Martin O'Malley's announcement of budget cuts, the auctioning of the Senator Theatre, and the shooting of two city police officers—and tracked which outlets broke the story as well as which provided ongoing reporting. The conclusion? While Twitter, local bloggers, and other outlets helped spread the word, fully 95 percent of the stories that contained new information came from traditional media, especially newspapers.

No one is going to be able to craft a paid content model that elicits significant payment from more than a handful of readers for commodity news. And, despite what "proud parents" in the newsroom might think about their work, almost everything produced by all U.S. newspapers and broadcast newsrooms falls into that category.