Tweetgeist: Net tromps print; mag study finds chaos; Atlantic bloggers rebel; Murdoch as Lear

Pew study: Net overtakes print

"The Internet has surpassed newspapers and radio in popularity as a news platform on a typical day and now ranks just behind TV." So says the latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "People's relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory."

The title of the report -- "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer" -- contradicted itself in a way that illustrates the complexity of the landscape it describes. If news "consumers" are now "participating" in the creation of the news, isn't calling them "consumers" a little behind the curve?

At GigaOm, Mathew Ingram noted that Pew's conclusions aren't exactly "earth-shattering" but that they confirm "what anyone who has been paying attention to the industry -- or even to the behavior of their friends and relatives -- instinctively knows: news consumption has become mobile, cross-platform and social."

CJR: Magazines' Web practices are all over the place

Another new study from the Columbia Journalism Review assesses the state of print magazines' websites.

The proprietors of these sites don’t, for the most part, know what one another is doing, that there are no generally accepted standards or practices, that each Web site is making it up as it goes along, that it is like the wild west out there.

It was against this background...that the Columbia Journalism Review undertook the first comprehensive study of online practices of print magazines. The survey had various goals: to identify some best (and worst) practices; clarify journalistic standards for new media; and guide journalists and media companies towards a business model that allow revenues not only to be allocated more efficiently, but also channeled back into the kind of news-gathering operations that are essential for democracy.

In her report on the study in the New York Times, Stephanie Clifford wrote, "The only thing standard about magazines’ Web sites is that there are no standards." But that wasn't quite right. The point of the study wasn't that there are no standards at all but that there are no industry-wide standards.

And why should that be any sort of surprise? In this, in fact, the magazine industry online is simply replicating the behavior of the magazine industry offline, where its products range from the most elevated and trustworthy news sources to the tawdriest and least reliable gossip rags.

Meanwhile, magazine publishers have launched a $90 million print advertising campaign touting the value of print: "“We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.”

Rafat Ali of PaidContent read this as "Mags to Their Digital Units: Drop Dead."

Atlantic redesign sparks blogger protest

Elsewhere in magazine-land, a redesign of the Atlantic's website ignited a small uprising among contributors. The Atlantic has achieved considerable success building a stable of high-profile bloggers -- but its redesign assigned much of these bloggers' output to new "channels."

You can read the outpouring of disgruntlement from bloggers Andrew Sullivan, James Fallows, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Ezra Klein saw two sides to the story:

@ezraklein On the new Atlantic homepage: As a blogger, I would hate it. But it's a bid to keep a magazine rather than just a bunch of bloggers.

But on on his own Washington Post blog Klein went on to say:

I'd hate to be at a publication that paved over my blog in order to bring more attention to content-specific "channels." I'd be even more furious if my employer adopted a template that prevented readers from reading the front page of the blog all at once. Forcing the audience to click on each post individually (which Time also does) might be good for advertising impressions, but it makes for a terrible reader experience, and that has consequences for your traffic.

Murdoch agonistes

Gabriel Sherman's New York magazine cover story on Rupert Murdoch, which hit the Web Sunday, painted an "Autumn of the Patriarch"-style portrait of the media baron.

@vincrosbie Reading New York magazine's story about Rupert Murdoch, all I could think about was the latter acts of 'King Lear' http://bit.ly/aQtscu

Over at his New York Times blog, Paul Krugman criticized increasing politicization of Wall Street Journal coverage under Murdoch's ownership:

There was a time when I thought the Journal was better on business/economic news than the Times. But no longer; and it’s not just things like referring to the estate tax as the “death tax” in news stories. Overall, coverage is getting cruder, with more tendency to report opinions as if they were news, and substitute prejudices for real analysis.