Fashion bloggers have begun to take the reigns from traditional media in the fashion industry.

The democratization of publishing that blogging platforms fueled a few years ago seems to be only an early chapter in a longer story about the move from curated content by the few to tailored content by the many. Piers Fawkes argues that in it’s current form, PSFK’s days could be numbered.

theblogpaper is a user-generated blog-newspaper hybrid that has recently appeared in London.

The Unknown Hipster, the alter ego of French illustrator Jean-Philippe Delhomme recently illustrated several blog entries in what appears to be colored pencil. In the era of facebook, myspace, and twitter it’s truly a breathe of fresh air to see someone post elegantly crafted art instead of the usual party pics.

Hugh MacLeod has an interesting thought piece on his site Gaping Void about why some blogs get more popular than others. He argues that blogs like BoingBoing are popular not just because of great content but also because of having “sociality” baked in. He says that BoingBoing’s content is fun to share – that the posts are social objects. MacLeod says:

Recent discussions about the future of publishing has made me think a lot about PSFK’s approach to publishing. As part of my pondering I put together a simple document with a comparison of an article that features on the Financial Times and PSFK. By looking at an article on the same subject, I wanted to compare and contrast the editorial and business approaches between a “traditional” publisher and a new one without making too much commentary about what is the right or wrong approach. I thought it might be of interest to share.
PDF: A comparison of FT and PSFK articles
Original [...]

Piers Fawkes writes an opinion piece in reaction to industry suggestions that mainstream media will return to charging online.

The School of Life, the social enterprise we’ve written about before that hopes to redefine the self-help industry, recently launched a new blog.  The release comes on the 150th anniversary of the first Self-Help book by Samuel Smiles. The School of Life strives to draw on the rich diversity of cultural histories to offer useful ways of overcoming common anxieties.
The blog follows this goal with bite sized posts on topics such as Finding the Right Career, Surviving Embarrassment and Trusting Other People.  Each article draws heavily from the history of thought on each topic and engage the reader without giving [...]

A quick report from the UK where I witnessed another example of the changing face of news gathering and news reporting The first time I heard the news of Michael Jackson’s death was through news reports on the Sky News cable channel here last night. Although they couldn’t confirm what had happened they were reading on-air reports about what was being reported directly on a Los Angeles based entertainment blog- not an official news service!

Having already repositioning Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag as a column of the Gawker website, Nick Denton’s blog network has folded their Hollywood focused site, Defamer, into the main site too. Denton says that the move will help boost a national readership to the site with New York beginnings.
Hollywood gossip site Defamer is being merged into Gawker, the company’s flagship gossip title. The four-year-old title will continue as Gawker’s entertainment column; the movie-industry stories will remain showcased on Defamer.com but the sites will be staffed and managed as one.
Gawker now draws more than 3m visitors a month — four times [...]

While the current trend sees print media downsizing in the face of a slowing economy, smaller ad revenues and increasing numbers of readers opting for online content, one Chicago-based startup is taking the opposite stance, viewing this moment as an opportunity to revolutionize the beleaguered industry.  The Printed Blog, founded in late 2008 by Joshua Karp, wants to upgrade the traditional model of the newspaper into a user-generated, hyper-localized, scalable version made specifically for the Internet generation, released in hundreds of unique editions across the country twice-daily.  
Hardly a short order, but one that Karp and his team feel is [...]

A year and a half ago, Jason Oberfest, who was then the head of Product Strategy and Business Development at the LA Times, told an audience at PSFK Conference Los Angeles about the major changes that the paper was making to address changes in publishing in order to become a leader in the new media space. It looks like those changes have taken effect: the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Stanton, has announced that the paper’s online advertising revenue is now sufficient to cover the cost of the LA Times’s editorial team – for both print and online. [...]

Blogs give ordinary citizens a platform for written expression (and occasional delusions of grandeur). Now comes the video version…

A couple of months ago there was a little bit of hoo-ha about Hill Holiday turning their website into a blog. If we look at the number of posts they’ve produced since that date (and compare the effort with other agency blogs), it looks like HH’s efforts was all talk and no trousers.