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Meet Andrew Beaujon, the New Romenesko

Kat Stoeffel — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:44:55 -0400

Mr. Beaujon (Image via TBD.com)

Beginning next month, Andrew Beaujon will join the Poynter Institute as a media reporter, filling out the void left when Jim Romenesko quit late last year. Mr. Beaujon is currently the arts and entertainment editor at TBD.com, a Washington D.C. news site.

Prior to TBD, Mr. Beaujon worked at Washington City Paper, Martha Stewart Living and SPIN. He is the author of Body Piercing Saved My Life, a nonfiction book about Christian rock.

Reached by phone this afternoon, Mr. Beaujon told the Observer that "just trying to live through" the changes in the industry fueled his interest in the media beat. Recently, he's written about Dan Snyder's legal battle with the Washington City Paper, staff buyouts at the Washington Post, and the local media ecosystem of Alexandria.

Mr. Beaujon said he pitched Poynter editors a blog/column that wouldn't look much like Mr. Romenesko's eponymous vertical. In between aggregated links, it will be a reported blog that "tells the stories of media." It will also define "media" more broadly.

"I'm interested in community media, ethnic media, overseas media, blogs and online publications," Mr. Beaujon said. "I try to cast a pretty wide net."

He will work out of Washington, D.C., where he lives with his wife and two children.

"Unless I can get a space in Jeff Sonderman's apartment," he joked.

Brokaw Balks: You Won’t Get a Tweet Out of Technophobic Tom!

Nate Freeman — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:08:38 -0400

On April 15, 2009, the @tombrokaw account sent out the following tweet: "White House says Obama 'unaware' of tea parties! LOL!"

This contains vital information, yes, but @tombrokaw has nothing to do with the real Tom Brokaw, the NBC news lifer. The real Tom Brokaw, it turns out, has no Twitter account and no Facebook account, he tells the Poynter Institute in an interview. The real Tom Brokaw is holding tight to the bygone age when we still cherished our privacy. The real Tom Brokaw is really scared of this social networking stuff.

"I have too many invasions of my privacy as it is," he told Poynter. "I'm thinking about just signing up so I can share things with my granddaughters a little more, but I worry I'll read things on their Facebook that will unnerve me."

Yes, Tom, those terrible pictures of us that we can't remove from Facebook are unnerving! Take those awful things down, "friends." But his thoughts on this crazy "Twitter" thing that's got the kids in a tizzy makes him seem, well, a bit out of touch.

As for Twitter? He doesn't believe it's taken form yet journalistically. "I don't get Twitter," Brokaw said. "I know that it's very popular and that it's a quick way of getting a text blast out, so to speak, but an awful lot of it seems to be... just stuff that fills air."

Ah, so that's what all those things on my Twitter feed are: "text blasts, so to speak." We can't wait to get on Twitter and go fill the air with some texts blasts, so to speak — even if Tom Brokaw won't see them.

Well, at least @tombrokaw will. Whoever that dude is.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Nip/Tuck For Romenesko; Beta Launch of New Poynter Site

Matt Haber — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:11:36 -0400

This weekend, The New York Times' 'Social Q's' columnist Philip Galanes received the following question:

An acquaintance had her breasts enhanced. She never announced the fact or discussed it. Should I have commented on her new look the first time I saw her? She hasn’t sought my opinion, so I’ve said nothing. But it seems odd to me.

A tough question for sure, and the lawyer-novelist-interior design consultant -turned-advice columnist has some choice advice ("I’d avoid a direct reference to her chest and make a general-purpose compliment instead, like 'You’re looking awfully well today.' She’ll understand the coded message..."). But what if a Web site you're acquainted with has some work done? What are you to do then?

Journalists who click on Jim Romenesko's Poynter Institute-hosted media news blog may notice that site has undergone a dramatic redesign. This weekend, Gawker's Hamilton Nolan noted the new look and wrote:

Romenesko, the quintessential journalism news site, has redesigned itself from a green-and-muted brown palette to a green-and-black palette. Is this the end of our hero? Eh.

Bill Mitchell, the Poynter Institute's director, explained via email that the site's facelift is far from an overnight change. As far back as December 14, 2007, the Institute's been floating design concepts and soliciting user comments.

"Among the 38 comments posted to that item and sent via e-mail was the suggestion that we make it easier to find Romenesko from elsewhere on the site," Mr. Mitchell told Media Mob. "We paid attention. We made Jim part of the main navigation of the site. Since then, about 1,100 people have joined our alpha group, many of them chiming in with suggestions."

Why redesign now? "We were overdue. We've added a lot of content to the site since we last did a significant redesign nearly six years ago. We've been hearing from people for a long time that there's a lot of valuable stuff on the site, but they have a lot of trouble actually finding it. We've tried to address that with a cleaner, clearer design and navigation. We've also introduced advertising—both help-wanted ads for journalists and display ads—and needed to do a better job incorporating those ads in our pages."

As with any redesign, the Institute risks alienating its core readers. In 2002, Mr. Romenesko's blog underwent a redesign that offended many longtime readers. As Mr. Romenesko told Media Mob, "This is the third major redesign of my page and it's safe to say that all of them were heavily criticized when launched. Many readers loved this version of my site and screamed when it was updated, which is hard to believe now." (Remember how upset readers were when Salon redesigned in 2005? Of course you don't.)

"We hope readers/users will appreciate the improvements, and feedback so far indicates that a lot of them do," Mr. Mitchell wrote. "We know we can't please everybody, though, and will do our best to listen to critics, especially critics with specific issues or suggestions."

Even if they just say, "You’re looking awfully well today."

iChatting With Jim Romenesko

Matt Haber — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:57:41 -0400

As you may know if you read half a dozen media news and gossip sites, Howell Raines profiled the Poynter Institute's Jim Romenesko in this month's Portfolio. Mr. Raines calls Mr. Romenesko's media news site, "a high-tech tom-tom for angst-ridden members of a dying tribe" and calls the man himself "both the medium and the message." (Mr. Romenesko linked to the story himself, pulling one of the least flattering statements, "From guru to geezer in cyberspace," as befits what all media writers are contractually-bound to refer to as his modest Midwestern demeanor.)

Since Portfolio is a general interest business magazine, Mr. Raines offers a one paragraph history of journalism, perfect for our blog-addled Google-dummed age:

In little more than a century, journalism has been conducted under a variety of short-lived labels. Yellow journalism begat objective journalism, which begat investigative journalism, which begat advocacy journalism. To some of us, the New Journalism looked like a destination, but that was before the passage through gossip journalism to our next stop: fact-free journalism.

The closest Mr. Raines got to Mr. Romenesko was an iChat window, "Since he inhabits a virtual world, it was a virtual interview." Eight years ago, New York's Simon Dumenco actually spent some time in Mr. Romenesko's presence, back when Mr. Romenesko was still hosting his media news site independently. Here's how Mr. Dumenco described Mr. Romenesko's operation circa the turn of the Century:

The world headquarters of MediaNews.org—the white-hot nerve center of the media world, the Website that industry types scan obsessively to see what media writers and gossip columnists everywhere know that they don't know—is a 500-square-foot one-room condo.

Cream-colored walls, light-beige carpeting. No bookshelves, a few stark black-and-white photographs on the walls (an albino, a cemetery, that sort of thing). A black leather chair and ottoman in front of a 36-inch RCA projection TV. An L-shaped desk with two computers, an iMac DV and a G3, connected to the Net via DSL and a 56K modem.

We understand he's since moved and upgraded to Wifi.