Tedium Highlight in Newspapers: Journalism’s odd, fleeting relationship with the fax machine. 

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Tag results: Newspapers

Caught In The Middle

The mess with Bezos and The Washington Post is reflective of a trend that keeps popping up this year: The powerful entity stepping in it without considering the collateral damage.

Gatekept

Thoughts on a bruise to the ol’ ego that hurt a little more than I thought it would. But hey, it gives me a chance to talk about gatekeeping.

A Dylanesque Negotiating Strategy

One of the news industry’s biggest, longest-standing problems is that they do not value the work they create at the level it deserves. They should take a cue from the music industry’s biggest stars.

Old Archives, New Controversy

The New York Times has the most robust online archives of any newspaper, but it’s proving difficult to square their handling of a recent controversy with the quality of those archives.

USA Yesterday

Looking back at a sports-themed online service the now-40-year-old USA Today launched way back in 1989. Not all disks were left unscathed.

Longform Brevity

Alt-form storytelling, a key magazine-and-newspaper design trend, hasn’t truly flourished on the modern internet. Axios could go way further than it does.

Cut-Up Culture

Pondering how coupons became the lingua franca of the grocery store, and why they might be important to the survival of the newspaper.

Dead on Archival

Considering the challenges that face shuttered newspapers with decades or even centuries of material to preserve.

Pushing Photos Through Wires

The technology used to distribute photos through news wire services inspired a whole bunch of innovations with use cases beyond newspapers. Like television.

How I Research Stuff

If you’re a longtime reader of Tedium, you might wonder how I manage to uncover so many strange stories. Well, let me tell you. Hopefully it’s inspiring.

Strip-Mined News

Local newspapers have already faced issues with outsourcing and an array of cuts for years. But the threat is changing—and you should know what it looks like.

News In Small Bytes

Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early '80s.

Just The Fax, Ma’am

Newspapers once saw fax machines as an opportunity to distribute breaking news to the masses—then they saw it as a way to reach the niches. Neither worked out.

The Free Ride’s Over

For decades, ad-supported free daily newspapers defined commuting. But the Washington Post Express’ demise shows the model is headed towards the history books.

Wiki-Fail

Looking with fresh eyes at the Wikitorial, the Los Angeles Times’ extremely misguided attempt to bring the wiki concept to the newspaper editorial page.

Rethinking the Funny Page

With the loss of one newspaper comics-page giant and the departure of another, now’s a good time to reflect on whether the whole model needs to be reworked.

Trimmed For Space

As the newspaper industry contracted, so too did the furniture and the newsprint. Let's check out the first victims of the digital revolution.

CMYK All The Way

How mass-production printing technology, starting with the lithograph, was pushed forward thanks to a growing interest in color.

Honey, I Shrunk The Page

Microfiche (or microfilm, depending on how you roll) is a library mainstay, but its history is wild, according to this note I got from a carrier pigeon.

The Invention Of News

The field of public relations is still built on a single foundational tool—the press release. Why do we still use them? Well, for the companies, they work.
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