Author Archives: Howard Owens

It’s time to move legal notices online

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Howard Owens

There are important reform bills in California and New York, and perhaps elsewhere, that would allow online-only publication of legal notices. Newspaper publishers are predictably fighting the bills, one of the last reliable revenue streams for print newspapers. But what … Continue reading →

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Why Patch will never be profitable

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Howard Owens

Patch faces to huge obstacles on its path to profitability: The first is expenses; the second is revenue. Expenses: Tim Armstrong is absolutely right that a great deal of the expense of a print publication can be wrung out of … Continue reading →

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Paywalls create opportunities for local news entrepreneurs

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Howard Owens

It seems like paywalls are popping up all over the place these days.  In recent months Lee, GateHouse and Gannett, for example, have all announced or are implementing paid subscriptions for digital content. Nobody is rooting for these newspapers to … Continue reading →

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Advocates of pay walls should consider the fate of the New York World

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Howard Owens

First, let me remind you of a post November, 2009, in which I quote Walter Lippmann: We expect the newspaper to serve us with truth however unprofitable the truth may be. For this difficult and often dangerous service, which we … Continue reading →

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Photo: A snowy night in my back yard

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Howard Owens

To me, a night like tonight is a perfect winter night. Such nights are rare enough in winters when much snow falls. They are rarer still on mild winters, such as the one we’ve had to endure so far in … Continue reading →

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Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Howard Owens

For no particular reason, I found myself looking at Google Analytics and decided to open the calendar all the way back to 2007. I discovered that the most popular post I’ve written in that time (and probably since I started … Continue reading →

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Twelve Photos from 2011

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Howard Owens

These are what I consider my 12 best pictures from 2011.

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A prescriptive look at the news business

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Howard Owens

The clip above came to mind while scrolling through comments on Dean Starkman’s CJR piece, Confidence Game: The limited vision of the news gurus. As Starkman points out, there’s two camps in the game of predicting where the news game … Continue reading →

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First Roll with Nikon F

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Howard Owens

To go with my purchase of a Nikon F4 (paid for with my sales of some used mobile phones), I also bought a Nikon F. The Nikon F was introduced in 1959 and remained in production until 1973. While it … Continue reading →

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The practicalities of shooting film

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Howard Owens

Reader Scott Atkinson left a comment a few days ago asking that I do a post on the “practicalities of shooting film.” This post will answer his specific questions, plus a couple of others. Why film? The best place to … Continue reading →

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