The Breakfast Meeting: Journalism\'s Big Tent, and Google vs. Amazon on Search

September 10, 2012, 9:40 am

By NOAM COHEN

An experiment in journalism education at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., will also inject life and resources into the professional journalism in the city, Christine Haughney writes. Backed by a $4.6 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Mercer's Center for Collaborative Journalism will be home to reporters and editors of the city's 186-year-old paper, The Telegraph, and the local public radio station. Students will do reporting legwork, with guidance from professors and working journalists, in what the university's president compares to the way medical schools use hospitals to train their students.

The journalism start-up Homicide Watch D.C. has a clear mission statement - “Mark every death. Remember every victim. Follow every case” - but until this weekend, it's fate was anything but clear, David Carr writes. The idea would seem to be exactly the kind of journalism that the Web can uniquely nurture, he writes, “part database, part news site, it also serves as a kind of digital memorial for homicide victims in Washington.” And, as it turns out, after failing to win funding from granting organizations, Homicide Watch was saved in a uniquely Web way - a Kickstarter campaign that raised $40,000.

The commercial Web site Wikitravel has a neat business model - volunteers create the content and readers visit the site and click on the advertising. There were some catches, however, when Internet Brands bought Wikitravel in 2005, as described in the Link by Link column: the material lives under a license that means it can be copied and used by another site, and, since the site's volunteers do not expect a paycheck, they might find it easier to le ave. The news that the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the Wikipedia site among others, is creating a travel guide site that will use the Wikitravel material has led both sides to go to court.

Joseph Hayden, 71, has been a familiar figure in Harlem, training his video camera on police officers when they stop and question and frisk residents, Kia Gregory writes. In December, Mr. Hayden himself was stopped and arrested while he was driving. He described it as punishment for his aggressive journalism, which he posts to his Web site, All Things Harlem; the police said the stop was prompted by a broken taillight and ultimately led to a weapons possession charge. (A grand jury will meet on the case on Thursday.) Mr. Hayden, who has a long criminal record, including 12 years in prison on a manslaughter conviction, quoted what he believed was a line of Malcolm X's: “There's nothing wrong with being a criminal - it's staying a criminal.”

Google is revamping its shopp ing site, for the first time charging online stores to appear there, which will put pressure on smaller e-commerce outlets, Claire Cain Miller and Stephanie Clifford report. The changes reflect Google's concern that it is losing out to Amazon in its area of strength, search, as shoppers increasingly turn to Amazon to look for products. Charging to appear, Google says, will make its results better because retailers will be motivated to include up-to-date listings.