Tom Davidson

I’ve ranted a couple of times already about how journopreneurs need to make smart, inexpensive choices – especially about technology. Over at the GrowthSpur blog, my colleague Dave Chase offers his thoughts (also live at OJR) about picking a good online content management system. Dave speaks from vast experience. He was on the launch team [...]

A snarky comment on Alan Mutter’s blog set me off the other day. Alan was reacting to Mark Potts’ excellent riff on the coming iSlate (not just a fanboi dream, but potentially a great leap forward). Predictably, some of the commenters were pining for 1994: “This smells a little like Google, which siphoned off $21 [...]

The gang at GrowthSpur, of which I proudly call myself a member, is having another of its introductory sessions for hyperlocal and niche site operators. We think journopreneurs – and people who just want to operate great local sites, whether or not they claim the “j” word – are one of the key parts of [...]

It happened again: I heard a tale of a laid-off journalist who spotted an unmet need – a community that was no longer being covered the way it should be. So she decided to launch a neighborhood blog. Terrific! Then came the thud: She’s already hired someone to take care of all the technology and [...]

I started reading a new blog today – one launched by a handful of writers to continue the work they were doing at a now-defunct trade magazine. I commend them. They’re gamely carrying on in the face of the implosion of their publication, and they’re doing it without getting paid. But I’m not linking to [...]

My older brother used to joke that when I wanted to learn to play baseball, I read a book. Mike’s style: Pick up the ball and throw it harder than seemed humanly possible. Hey, we all learn differently, right? So when friends – especially newsroom lifers – ask how they can catch up with the digital [...]

  Economist Robert Picard has always been one of the sharpest thinkers about the nexus of economics and media. Today, he nails a topic that has long vexed me (and others): the willingness of journalists to stay in their newsroom cocoons, woefully ignorant of the business workings that for so long provided bountiful resources for [...]