Scan-N-Land

An optimist about newspapers

2007-05-14T15:20:00.000-04:00

I sent away for a copy of the Charlie Rose interview with Anthony O'Reilly that I mentioned in my earlier post. Here is the relevant passage. Rose is asking O'Reilly, a former CEO of the Heinz company and now a prominent global financier, why he's willing to invest in deadtree publications at a time when the Internet is all the rage:

ANTHONY O'REILLY: My view is that with the
Internet and the proliferation and the ubiquity of the Internet,
newspapers, if they had not been invented, would have had to be invented
because of the Internet.
Because in my view, a newspaper, properly edited and presented
newspaper, is the ultimate browser. In a half an hour, you can get all the
news, all the views, all the sport, all the gossip, all the commentary from
people you trust or dislike or like, and you get it all for the price of a
cup of coffee.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you do your own search.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: Absolutely. Whereas, if you go on the
Internet, you have look for something. You`re looking for something.
CHARLIE ROSE: But why are American newspapers hurting?
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: Well, I think that certain events happened in
American newspapers over the past two or three years. There were some
scandals involved in relation to the ABC circulation.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: Most newspapers wanted to clean up the act and
to say this actually is a circulation that we have. And so many of the
fees that they gave away and many of the contortions that they used to
increase their circulation have been done away with.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: And so papers are now coming back to the
bedrock of their actual circulation.
But I would think that the actual circulation decline of the
newspapers has been relatively nominal, and worldwide, newspapers are
actually on the increase. In India, for example, we are showing a 25
percent increase in our newspaper...
CHARLIE ROSE: But I point out something you know. They`re developing
at a rapid rate an increased middle class in India.
SIR ANTHONY O`REILLY: That`s correct. And those people believe that
newspapers, to them, are, as I said, the ultimate browser.

Users more engaged with smaller communities

2007-03-23T10:12:00.000-04:00

A new report put out by Communispace states that the social networking sites of tomorrow will cater to smaller audiences.

Buh-bye, MySpace.

BizReport: Users are more engaged with smaller communities

Print Media Makes Its Transition to the Web-Video Age -- New York Magazine

2007-03-17T15:27:00.000-04:00

Print Media Makes Its Transition to the Web-Video Age -- New York Magazine:

"And this very moment, before anyone professes to know much more than anyone else, is probably the beginning of the new medium’s great golden age. Enjoy it while it lasts. "

I'm not really sure I get Anderson's kicker. Is he saying that there will come a time when all Web videos will have high production values? The Buchwald obit he mentions certainly does. But is it safe to say that all online vids will be like this? The low production values are part of the aesthetic, not just a question of necessity, right?

Everybody is doing it

2007-02-14T12:44:00.000-05:00

Reuters reporter Adam Pasick does it. CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman does it. Journalist James Wagner Au does it. Even Marco Cadioli, a photographer and college lecturer from Milan, Italy, does it.

It seems everyone does it.

What is it? "Second Life," the online virtual universe (or "metaverse") program. While one of our classmates is the perpetual pooh-pooher of Second Life, some pretty important people are taking note according this Feb. 13 "Shop Talk" column in Editor & Publisher.

About once a week, Terdiman's avatar GreeterDan Godel hosts interviews in CNET's virtual theater with prominent people from both the real world and within the program. Subjects have included Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, the program developer, and DigiBarn's Bruce Damer, who is a historian of virtual worlds. A recent interview featured the chief gaming officer of Fortune 500 company Sun Microsystems.

Legions of blogs and websites devoted to the metaverse have sprung up, including the leading blog New World Notes. The site is run by Au. He had spent three years serving as Linden's official "embedded" journalist within Second Life, but his site is now affiliated with Federated Media Publishing, which runs the popular site Boing Boing.

The program also has its own newspaper, The Second Life Herald. Within Second Life, users can click on a kiosk to bring up the publication's website, which is funded by advertising just like most other content websites. A would-be rival, The Democrat, which sought to provide in-world content through the program's "notecard" feature, folded in early November after a four-month run.

So like it or not, we may all be pulled into 3D journalism someday.

What Can We Expect?

2007-02-12T22:14:00.000-05:00

Hopefully we’ve all been keeping up with our Poynter readings from the “Writing for Convergent Media” course…I know I haven’t.

But, I’m trying to rectify that. In doing so, I came across this item from Sunday. It provides a good synthesis, in general, of what types of jobs in journalism that we might expect. I think that I like the “editor-host” model, though I’m not sure that I could sit behind a desk and computer all day—I do that already. :-)

Ken C.

Newspapers: The Ideal Browser?

2007-01-02T20:01:00.000-05:00

Channel surfing after getting home late from work the other night, I happened onto a Charlie Rose interview with Tony O'Reilly.

He an Irish-Brit who formerly headed an American company (Heinz) and who now is investing in the media, among other things. You can find out more about him and his company here.

Annoyingly, I can't find a copy of the video on the web or on Charlie Rose's website (a definite candidate for Vincent Flanders list.

What interested me was O'Reilly's rationale for investing in newspapers even in an Internet age. O'Reilly said something to the effect that some of the heaviest Internet usage is also in countries with the heaviest newspaper readership: Japan and one of the Scandinavian nations -- maybe Norway -- were two he mentioned.

This may be a commentary on those countries lack of entertainment options :-).

But O'Reilly thinks newspapers and the 'net go hand-in-hand. Internet users like papers because good old edited ink on paper turns out to be "the ideal browser." Or so says one megabucks investor.

Hope everyone had happy holidays!

Kathy K

Is Your Blog Exposing You to Legal Liability?

2006-12-27T23:16:00.000-05:00

That's the question posed in this Law.com article.

Author and lawyer Lawrence Savell looks at issues including defamation, copyright and trademark.

"Blog operators need to be alert for situations possibly raising liability issues. Use common sense, use appropriate disclaimers and, if you are not a lawyer, consider legal review. Check your insurance policies to determine if your risks may be covered," Savell recommends.

-- Mark H.

Citizen journalism

2006-12-18T09:44:00.000-05:00

Hi,
This article seems to support a future wave of cell phone reporting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/17/AR2006121700828.html

This person was paid for the photo he submitted - is this ethically sound?

I don't know about you but I'm paying alot of money to learn journalism and this seems like a slap in the face. I would hate to think that I can't get a job because "citizens" are keeping the world informed.

Trinay Blake

What's old news to you might be new to your readers

2006-12-16T11:09:00.000-05:00

It is important to make Web sites easy to use for readers.

"You don't know how readers use your site," Matthew Greenberg, former executive producer of AOL and now an account supervisor at Mindshare Interactive, told students in American University's Interactive Jouranalism class on Saturday.

"You can't control how people use your content," he said. "They're going to read what they want to. They're going to go where they want to."

Making it easy to use a Web site brings readers back, he said.

Tips that Greenberg gave the budding Web journalists included:

Content can have a long shelf-life, except when it doesn't.

What's old news to you might be new to your readers.

Archival cotent can be topical.

But some content starts out old and stays that way.

"Make your Web page one-stop shopping," Greenberg said.

It is also important to tell a story without words because readers don't read entire stories.

"To assume that they are going to read the whole thing is folly," he said. "Pull in content that will expalin the story, even if the reader doesn't 'read' beyond the headline."

Videos, photos or graphics are ways to tell a story without words, he said.

But words are important.

"People scan pages," Greenberg said. "And scanning and skimming are two different things."

Skimming is quickly reading through the whole story, although not every word, he said. Scanning is quickly looking over a page and reading what catches your eye.

To hook readers, words must be focused, concise and clean, Greenberg said. But it's about more than words, it's about formatting.

Other tips included:

Don't use italics, because they are hard to read online

Stay away from foreign words

Use bold type sparingly

Use explanation points sparingly

Think about how the text is going to look once you publish it.

Finally, he said to use the whole page to tell the story.

"That's the beauty of this medium -- you have so many ways to tell your story," he said.

-- Mark H.

I love journalism but I hate asking uncomfortable questions

2006-12-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

Many of you may have received the e-mail sent by Wendall Cochran about this article I love journalism but I hate asking uncomfortable questions

Talk about being honest. I thought it was very forthcoming and truthful. It was refreshing to read about somebody who is embarking on journalism as a new career but to realize that everyone has their own fears and insecurities-whether they are a veteran in the field or just starting out.

The article talks about his deep fear of-people. Or as he puts it “Of talking to them, of asking them nosy questions about their lives. He also said left to his own devices “I’d stay in my room, do nothing and never go out.

I would definitely have to agree that interviewing people and approaching them can be a difficult process-especially if you are shy. Is it possible to be a journalist and be extremely shy I wonder? Cary Tennis who wrote this article states it best “Journalism is irresistible. It is a way to participate in the world that is uniquely fascinating, lively, heroic, intense.” He also writes that he had difficulties and self-doubt through out his career and says to enter into a field or topic that you will enjoy.
“One of the first things that comes to mind, if you do want to write, is to try and find a field that does not involve the partisan antagonism of politics, the private tragedies of crime or the hotly tribal warfare of culture and religion,” Tennis said.

So bottom line-enjoy what you do, try and conquer you fears-however difficult and pain-staking a process this may be, and know that everyone in some way shape or form has their own insecurities and doubts no matter how good a journalist they are. Did anybody ever see "BARBARA WALTERS SPECIAL: 30 MISTAKES IN 30 YEARS" Part 2 that aired on Friday, November 17 at 10:00 p.m.????? Walters shared her interviews with world leaders, athletes, musicians and Hollywood icons, chronicling her mistakes and their mistakes. So if Barbara can make a few mistakes here and there, I think it’s safe to say I may make a few along the way, and hey that’s o.k.

---Vanessa C.

"Ambient Findability"

2006-12-16T08:03:00.000-05:00

A co-worker is reading Ambient Findability by information architect Peter Moreville.

It deals with rapidly changing technology and information overload.He takes a look at information-seeking behavior and the new landscape of "ubitquitous computing."

Questions he poses:

How do you know what to trust when there is so much data available in so many forms? How does all of this influence our decisions?

Does all of this information make us a more literate and informed society?

Does push-pull technology provide us targeted information or constant in-your-face annoyance?

What is the value in virtual realities?

How can we keep consuming device after device?

The book is published by our old friends at O'Reilly. I look forward to reading it.

- Jean

Sports multimedia presentations

2006-12-16T00:09:00.000-05:00

Here's a story about some multimedia packages that the Arizona Republic sports department put together to accentuate their coverage in print.

"It was a good opportunity to utilize more media than just the print sports section," sports editor Mark Faller said.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that I'd like to be able to do one day. Hopefully, after this program is over, I'll be able to.

-Quang

ARGH! Does blogging ruin grammar?

2006-12-15T22:50:00.000-05:00

Just spotted this subhed on one of the sites touted in the Rob Curley note that Amy recommended in her last email.

Below are links to comments by some of the Bloggers that Met With Gates:

Hello!? THAT is a pronoun that refers to THINGS. When we are talking about people, we in the English-speaking world use WHO or WHOM.

Why do so many professional writers make this basic mistake?

Aaaaah. Glad I got that off my chest. I feel better now.

--Kathy K

Moving towards change

2006-12-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

I believe that ink-on-paper publications are doomed. They cost too much to produce and distribute. The change in the newspaper industry will be driven by two things: cost and technology.

I believe that the newspaper of the future will be an interactive publication that will be delivered for free via broadband (possibly wireless) that will feed e-tablets that will become part of people’s lives in the future. As e-tablets and wireless broadband become more common, publishers will take advantage of the technology to deliver their product.

Instead of the local newsagent throwing the paper over the fence from a car, your e-tablet will upload the latest edition of the newspaper automatically while you are sleeping.

The reader will receive a free newspaper and the publisher will enjoy a huge increase in profit because they will no longer have to pay for ink, paper, printing and distribution.

The reader of the future will be able to select whatever newspaper or magazine they want from a menu, or they will be able to subscribe to daily, weekly or monthly uploads of the files every time that the publication is published. The combination of cost and technology, spurred on by the publishers’ never-ending drive for greater profit, will sign the death warrant of the ink-on-paper publication

I believe that they will be free, because the cover price of any printed publication covers only the distribution cost and in no way reflects the actual production cost.

Remove the entire distribution cost and most of the production cost; and it will be in the interests of both publishers and advertisers to give electronic newspapers and magazines away for free to increase circulation.

As e-tablets become cheaper and cheaper, I will not be surprised if newspaper publishers begin to give them away as part of a subscription package that has a once-only up-front fee to cover the cost of the e-tablet.

I believe that change is both inevitable and desirable. And that's what motivated me to become an Interactive Journalism student.

-- Rati Sud

Passion, expertise, humility, reliable numbers

2006-12-15T10:05:00.000-05:00

These are some of the things you need in order to succeed in online publishing, according to the Online Journalism Review. "Don't fall into the traps that have left too many other journalists muttering that 'no one can make money online, '" writes editor Robert Niles. Lots of good, fundamental info here. (via Mediabistro)

--Jeremy Egner

Do I have a future in journalism?

2006-12-15T02:26:00.000-05:00

I'm glad I opened the email that Wendell sent out the other day, because this article hit really close to home for me.

While my fear of asking questions of strangers doesn't run as deep as this guy's, I do have an extreme aversion to it. It's just who I am - I don't even really like to call and order pizza.

When Amy first sent out the class syllabus and I saw that we were going to have to interview people for an article, I got really bummed. I thought to myself - what the F am I doing in this program? Did I really think I was going to get a journalism degree without having to interview anyone?

The thing is, I do love journalism - I started reading the newspaper regularly when I was about ten years old - and I do think there's a place for me in it somewhere. I admire greatly what Kathy does - but I know I could never do it.

Maybe I'd be good at editing or something. I don't know. Hopefully I'll figure it out before we graduate...if I get that far.

- Max A.

Flickr Trick: Finding Free-to-Use Images

2006-12-15T01:01:00.000-05:00

[Newbie Notes: Free-to-use stock photos]

Hugo's Blog on iStockphoto.com pointed out how to use that service for low-price stock images.

Poynteronline explained how to use Flickr for free-to-use photos in their E-Media Tidbits of Monday, December 11.

Our class discussion on the use of photos and videos and copyright laws in the previous class hopefully has informed everyone about the possible consequences of using copyrighted works.

The Poynter Blog, posted by Amy Gahran, shows how to search for Flickr photos that are contributed under the Creative Commons licensing scheme.

Go to the Flickr advanced search page and check the "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos" box and then enter your search criteria.

Read the license restrictions carefully.

Most photos require attribution. Some cannot be modified. They cannot be used for commercial purposes.

There are also some pitfalls to watch out for. Several tips for using the photos are listed in the article.

If one is careful to adhere to the Creative Commons license restrictions this would be a good source for free stock photos.

--Michael H.

AT

2006-12-14T21:49:00.000-05:00

We’ve talked in class about how blogs are a good vehicle for breaking news.

But the mission of the blog I mentioned on the first day of class, apartmenttherapy.com, is “changing the world, one apartment at a time.”

“AT” has been called “quietly addicting” by The New York Times. Its founder, New York City interior designer Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan has been dubbed “part designer, part life coach.”

Fans of HGTV’s Mission: Organization can still catch him sometimes in reruns of the earlier episodes, riding to the rescue on his motor scooter. He is also a commentator on the network’s Small Space, Big Style.

Maxwell believes in analyzing how your home should work for you and how you can realistically achieve it. It's not merely about organizing or decorating.

Maxwell’s book, the eponymous Apartment Therapy, is the showcase for this ideology, carried out in The Eight-Step Cure.

The Web site has a special Cure blog with reader photos and comments.

Maxwell and his wife Sara Kate, a food writer, also blogged on AT the renovation of their 250 square foot West Village rental apartment in tandem with SKGR’s pregnancy this year. Title: The 9 Month Cure, complete with reader comments thoroughly analyzing MGR and SKGR's financial and family life.

AT shows me that there are real people like me who make things work in tight space with little cash, multiple kitties and no car to go to malls for shopping for the place (but good street pickings).

I've had the opportunity to look into other people's homes with the photos they submit and see how they organized, arranged, how they did things.

To start, there was one site only, for New York City.

The first contests were held. Then a new "sister" site: The Kitchen.

In time the Open Threads and other features with comments often got tense.

And things are now much more entrepeneurial, with sites in LA, San Francisco, and Chicago. T-shirts. More sites are planned.

The increasing volume of posts makes it hard to find specific subtopics under topical threads in the blog format. Many wonder if a forum-style format with user registration would serve the site better than the Open Threads.

AT's growing and changing so fast.

How is multimedia success impacting the core readers? What new markets and niches are still unplowed ground?

Nothing ever stays the same, even in a virtual neighborhood of friends and family. Maybe the expansion and branding will make this community last.

I really hope so -- I love what Maxwell has done for us! And I love looking at those photos and videos!

(Interview with Maxwell: http://www.podcasts2.com/podcasts/060330Ryan.mp3 -- from the WrittenVoices.com site)

---jg

News University

2006-12-14T19:02:00.001-05:00

For anyone interested in taking a quick crash course or two to supplement this program, you might try News University.

It's a Poynter Institute for Media Studies project, funded by the Knight Foundation, that offers interactive courses for journalists. You have to register for the site, but most of the courses are free and can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Here are a few good classes:

Anatomy of a Newspaper: explores every department of the newspaper, plus gets you acquainted with newsroom vocabulary
Get Me Rewrite: tips on how to improve your writing and rework awkward phrases
Color in News Design: how color complements the written word
Math for Journalists: extremely useful
Handling Race & Ethnicity: how to deal with race and ethnic descriptions in stories
Freedom of Information: how to use FOI laws
Language of the Image: how to tell a story with images

What might most interest people in this program is the 2-part Online Project Development that takes you through the multimedia production process using online projects that were finalists for the Online Journalism Awards.

-Janey Adams

iStockphoto.com

2006-12-14T19:02:00.000-05:00

I took a peak at iStockphoto.com recently and discovered that it’s quite the tool. There are a couple of things that I liked:

1 – Quick registration process
2 – Easy-to-use search function

Joining is free and the registration process only requires submitting a unique name and your e-mail address. Agree to their terms and conditions, and then click Sign Up. You’re in.

Searching is simple. To determine how much time a typical user might need to spend searching, I punched in a few random words—apple, door, phone, koala bear, mango.

The results displayed a second later, organized in groups of 10 to 20, with crisp, neat titles beneath them.

Purchasing and uploading photos
To purchase a photo, you must purchase a credit package. Each credit costs $1.00, and packages start at $10.00.

You can purchase a photo for one credit, lots of them, and there is a “free image of the week” section where you can actually download more than one royalty-free image.

If you are a photographer, you can upload a photo, which they will sell for you. There is an approval process that you must follow if you do submit one.

Throw away the clip art cds
As I got ready to log off, I noticed a banner on the site indicating that their repository has over 1,299,057 photos--I guess we won’t be reaching for the clip art cds any more.

-- Hugo

Mojos and Manslaughter

2006-12-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this up on the blog last week, as it certainly applies to everything we have been talking about in class. On December 4th, Washington Post Staff Writer Frank Ahrens wrote an article about the Fort Myers News-Press, and how they have been taking steps to become "hyper-local."

They are forgoing the traditional reporters and replacing them with mobile journalists, or what they dub, "mojos." These next generation journalists work out in the field seeking out the latest news and processing the information via a slew of techincal gadgets in the comfort of the front seat of their car.

Gannett is also incorporating searchable databases allowing the reader to do their own investigations. It is "crowdsourcing" techniques like this that are making it easier for citizens to uncover a scandal in the government or an inconsistancy in a company's business practices.

In his blog, he adds some additional changes that didn't make it into his article, but are just as innovative, intriguing and...a bit frightening:

Like some other Gannett papers, the News-Press has "citizen members" of the editorial board. These Regular Joes apply for a one-year term on the paper's editorial board. They do not write editorials, but they influence the paper's stand on issues and they vote on endorsements. The News-Press has three, one of which is a former inmate, four times imprisoned, once for manslaughter. The paper knew this when it appointed him to the board. Now, that's diversity.

Check out either of these articles to read more about the different things Gannett is experimenting with in their papers, making them more geared towards our fast paced lifestyles that come with rapidly changing technology. Ahrens wonders, however, if they are actually becoming to customized for the citizens.

Regardless of whether or not this is true, I think that once you grant the reader the power and the convenience of interactivity, it will be nearly impossible to back away from these new standards. The information flood gates are now open...for good.

-Chris Snyder

Photo by Flickr user roland

Don't end up on this list

2006-12-13T13:58:00.000-05:00

Regret the Error lists the biggest media gaffes of 2006 (via Romenesko). Sample scoop, courtesy of Reuters: Queen Elizabeth lays 2,000 eggs per day.

--Jeremy Egner

At the entrance, not the exit

2006-12-12T17:05:00.000-05:00

While driving through the Court House area in Arlington, Va, during lunch today, I saw a reporter and camera man at the Taco Bell waving down cars that were pulling out of the drive thru.

Of course, my immediate reaction was to stop and join them, and conduct my own interview on the E. coli outbreak that recently took place at some of the Taco Bells in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

It was exciting to see them out there doing their jobs. They were both carrying equipment, moving with both purpose and confidence. I was happy for them, and I hope they got a good story.

I am sure, among other things, that they were trying find out how concerned customers might (or might not) be about the quality of the food, considering the recent incident.

As I came to a stop at the next light signal, though, I couldn't help thinking: instead of standing at the exit, why not the entrance of the drive thru? I mean, come on, don't interview folks about the green onions after they have purchased the burrito meal.

-- Hugo

Trust and CitJ

2006-12-12T09:53:00.000-05:00

Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, posts on his blog a recent speech on trust in the age of citizen journalism. It is relevant for our upcoming discussion Saturday.

-- Amy

Inside joke

2006-12-12T08:11:00.000-05:00

--kathyk

(with special thanks to the Planters Co.)

Online Ethics

2006-12-11T15:58:00.000-05:00

We're talking ethics Saturday. Prep by reading the article on The Observer, Dec. 5, by Marissa Newhall.

-- Amy

Free art

2006-12-11T15:31:00.000-05:00

I'm collecting free art sites from colleagues. In the meantime:

-- Flickr -- go to creative commons button

-- morgueFile

-- Creativecommons.org

-- Google clip art

Amy

This just in: emedia tibits on poynteronline just covered this topic a moment ago. Look for headline: "Flickr Trick: Finding Free-to-Use Images"

I work with a star

2006-12-10T06:51:00.000-05:00

This is Paul Leavitt, my USA TODAY colleague and a star of one of the stories in our textbook (check out page 43, in the chapter on interviewing). Paul had no idea his exploits had been immortalized. But when I asked him about it, the story -- as Paul remembers it-- was even better than what was in the book.

Paul said he was frustrated that one of his reporters was unable to get an id on an arrested suspect for a small, three-paragraph, back of the book story. Despite the relative insignificance of the matter, he telephoned one of his own sources to find out why the police weren't giving up the name. "Oh, I don't know what the problem is, Paul," the source said. "I have been too busy with these meetings about the pope's visit."

Moral: It always pays to do the scutwork, no matter how lowly!

--kathy k

Free code for Web polls

2006-12-09T18:16:00.001-05:00

Scan-N-Land

It's at www.snappole.com

Click on the second link, and you'll go to a series of screens where you enter the title of the poll, the questions, etc. At the end, you click "finish" and there's your code!

Blogomania!

2006-12-07T22:26:00.000-05:00

The National Press Club sent out an email earlier this week advertising a class on "blogging basics" next week. Before mid-afternoon, the Dec. 12 class was fully booked; another has been laid on for Jan. 9. A sign of how many people in the biz are scrambling to keep their resumes up with the fast-changing times.
-kathy k

A star is born

2006-12-07T01:22:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Kathy K.

For those of you who don't read American Oberserver, check out her final project here.

-- Mark H.

Free session on Political Writing

2006-12-05T17:40:00.000-05:00

Another DCPubs repost

Date:
Thursday, December 14

Time:
1:00 p.m.

Location:
National Writers Union (DC Chapter)
1757 N Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Speaker Sarah Massey
Sarah will share her experiences and insights into the world of campaign writing.

Please RSVP to mail@holton.cc

Reprinted with permission from Rick Holton.

Trinay Blake

Blogs, blogs, everywhere a blog...

2006-12-05T13:58:00.000-05:00

In line with Quang's post of this hilarious video below, there's this thorough (a.k.a. lengthy) examination of the evolution of blogs in the newsroom over at the American Journalism Review.

The article mentions that some newspaper staffers have been "blogging so madly that they began to slack on their other responsibilities."

The thing I'm finding with blogs is that I don't want to read most of them. I suppose my standards for wanting to read a blog are the same as for any other writing. Is it informing me? Is it interesting? Is it well-written? Is it funny?

On a side note there was this article in the New York Times recently about a man up in New Brunswick, Canada who was given journalistic credentials by the courts even though he only writes a blog. You may need Times Select membership to read the article. (Yeah, I subscribe to Times Select...you got a problem with it???)

- Max A.

In praise of gatekeepers, part III

2006-12-05T13:41:00.000-05:00

Following up on Kathy's posts (Part I and Part II), the American Journalism Review looks at blogging and the issues it has raised for newspapers.

There are news-driven blogs, but other newspapers appear to have gone overboard. Is it really necessary to have bowling or fly-fishing blogs?

Spokesmanreview.com is a good example of blogging gone wild. They list 33 staff blogs in their "Blog Central" and links to more than I cared to count in a section called Inland Northwe s t Bloggers. One of those local blogs is The Unbearable Bobness of Being by Bob Salsbury (right) who enjoys carving evil little trolls out of bars of soap.

Right now, newspapers are grappling with blogs. Should they be edited? Should they be opened to readers or just for staff? Should non-staff blogs be held to the same standards as staff blogs?

While there is a rush now by newspapers to set up blogs, the real test will come when the first libel suit is filed.

But in the meantime, Dallas Morning News Editorial Page Editor Keven Ann Willey gave AJR 10 blogging tips including: Go for the quick hit, light touch, witty aside. Attitude required. Don't write anything you wouldn't want your mother to read. Her full list is in the AJR link.

-- Mark H.

Somebody must be reading online ads

2006-12-05T13:20:00.000-05:00

Does anyone really read the advertisements on news Web sites?

I don't, but someone must since many forecasters such as UBS, Fitch and Credit Suisse are predicting flat spending in tradional media advertising and double-digit increase in Internet advertising, according to the New York Times.

I guess the media shouldn't really be alarmed if they are still getting the revenue, just in a different category. But since most newspapers' news hole is based on advertising space, will that lead to smaller daily editions with more new content being produced for the Web?

I hope not. I guess I'm old fashioned and still like to hold my newspaper in my hands. The Web should be a place to get breaking news out or to update stories, but I still believe in the printed word.

-- Mark H.

News Sites Front Page Screen Shots

2006-12-04T21:32:00.000-05:00

This is a link to 29 full page screen shots of news sites.
Jason

Web Writing and Editing class -- Dec 13-14

2006-12-04T19:18:00.000-05:00

I'm a listmate on DCPUBs.com and thought some of you would be interested in this workshop.
Trinay Blake

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Web Writing and Editing
Dec.13-14, 2006
9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

WHERE:
National Press Club
529 14th Street NW, 13th Floor
Washington DC 20045

COSTS:
$575 per student ($550 for DCWW) for two full days.

REGISTER ONLINE

Questions--contact Merry Bruns at mbruns@nasw.org.
(posted with permission from Merry)

If Mark Cuban were a sports editor

2006-12-04T14:38:00.000-05:00

In this interview with Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, he discusses how he would improve today's sports sections.

Among his suggestions, he would "create gossip columnists for sports, but call them that rather than trying to pass them off as anything other than gossip columnists."

He thinks that readers want to read longer stories about their local teams. Short stories are perfect for online, but "sports sections is where you can go into the nuances of every game at a level the online sites don't."

"It's your job to find things your customers love and can't live without, but they don't know it yet. You never told anyone you needed a cellphone. Until they bought one, you had no idea. Give customers things they had no idea they wanted and couldn't live without."

He would also "do some negative advertising and create discussion and controversy."

My sources tell me he'll be at the Wizards game tonight, probably courtside cheering on his Mavericks. If I wasn't so damn busy blogging...

-Quang

Headline Question

2006-12-04T13:39:00.000-05:00

Since this class began, I've found myself reading news items, particularly how the articles are structured, more critically than in the past, I think, which is a good thing.

The main news section on AOL.com today had this main headline referring to the release of video showing terrorism suspect Jose Padilla:

"'Dirty Bomber' Seen on Video"

I suspect that they used the phrase "dirty bomber" because that's the context for which most people who know him. I also suspect that they used the quote marks to denote that it's what someone, at some point, called him. But is it a good idea to use this phrase in a headline, especially if he's never been tried for being a dirty bomber or, for that matter, is he any longer even being suspected as being a dirty bomber (at least officially)?

--Ken C.

Article on "Mojos" and Hyper-Local News

2006-12-04T11:12:00.000-05:00

There is an interesting article today in washingtonpost.com about Gannett's push toward hyper-local news, emphasis on the web first, and use of "mojos", "crowdsourcing" and other buzz-words we've covered in class.

The article also covers some ethical issues about reporters and "mojos" being used to pitch their news articles to possible sponsors (advertisers).

My thoughts about this article:

If I become a "mojo" I have to buy a bigger car. Typing on a laptop from the cockpit of a Mazda Miata "ain't gonna work".

I'm not sure I like the idea of becoming a marketer for my own news articles. Isn't that what free-lancers do?

I like the idea of expert "crowdsourcing". Using the experience of reader experts makes sense, as long as there is someone to evaluate their competency as "experts".

What do you guys think (especially lurking Gannetters)?

--Michael

I'm enjoying your posts. Here's more advice.

2006-12-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

For bloggers and future bloggers, some good tips.

-- Amy E.

Fort Myers News-Press

2006-12-04T09:17:00.000-05:00

Well, my earlier message of "will be completed shortly" has turned into almost eight hours. Boy the stress of working. Anyway.

When I read this article my first reaction was I'll be d...... I hate being in my car for extended periods of time unless I'm driving to a vacation spot. That being said, I probably wouldn't make a good mobile journalist (mojo).

I would prefer to get an assignment, go to it and return to the office to prepare it. Perhaps I'm old fashioned and don't fully understand the inner workings of a newsroom. I can only speak for what I know, I hate being a car for long periods of time. It's not like arriving early to school and studying for a few extra minutes.

I understand why this shift has occurred but having all of the latest and greatest technology has to cost more than someone having office space. Technology is not cheap and what about repairs to this equipment. What backup system is in place to keep mojos prepared? Not to mention the cost of gas.

News reporting is "footwork" no matter how you slice it. Reporting from behind the desk or in the car, ethical and standardization guidelines should be strictly followed. The reputation of the Fort Myers News-Press is on the line if mojos work requires constant updating because of incorrect information or improper grammar. I'm sure readers would wonder about the accuracy of other articles on the site.

By the way, Michael also has a post on this titled "Article on "Mojos" and Hyper-Local News"

Will this be us in a few years?

photo

Trinay Blake

Free open source software

2006-12-04T08:45:00.000-05:00

This is not explicitly journalism related, but perhaps of use for multimedia types. Here is a list of useful open source software for Windows.

And thanks for the plugs about the Dean blog, I should have previously posted a link to it. Glad to hear others had interesting assignments as well.

-Jeremy

Hyperlocal News

2006-12-04T01:23:00.000-05:00

Well, I don’t know if Amy was referring to me when she said “some gritted their teeth” and talked to strange shoppers. I didn’t grit my teeth (I do that when I’m asleep).

I didn’t get lost. I've been shopping this territory for 25 years. I scored myself a Perry Ellis scarf and a gold necklace. These portable purchases helped spark up the reportorial vest and allowed me to appear like I could credibly discuss shopping for clothes and accessories.

I hit the craft fair, the library book sale, the flea market, and the bakery. I got myself invited to a Christmas party, and I ran into my boy kitty’s former foster parents and loved on the pets up for adoption at the Humane Society’s adoption RV.

I also hit a bit of a crunch on my writing time after all of that Holiday Shopping Fun In My Neighborhood.

What I really hit on was the market for local data that Mike Mills told us about. My real interest in this tax-free bit is in the tax policy angle. How sound is this policy? What is the impact on the services that are funded by sales taxes? Isn’t it just a political ploy? Or is there a loss-leader effect of sorts where shoppers snap up taxed items they wouldn’t ordinarily buy?

The time crunch didn't allow for my usual over-exhaustive research in which I'd be waist-deep in the tax code and reading about local business models. But I would like to hear more angles on tax-free days, and I haven't seen much discussion in local popular press, so far.

What is the impact on the business owner? Linda at the consignment store sells only clothes, shoes, and accessories, but what about the merchants who have other products as well? How much do they gain in having to reset their computers to tax some things and not others? Why doesn't anyone report on the small business owner's side of tax-free days?

And, as a media person, I have an important question: why didn’t people know they could’ve bought (some) stuff on Seventh and Eighth Streets tax-free? I’m sure it was in the Hill Rag and The Voice of The Hill. “What about Shop Capitol Hill First”? (Although, I haven’t seen that slogan around lately…)

The Eighth Street/Barracks Row corridor is part of the National Main Street program and the Restore DC city government program. Restore DC’s home page links to the DC tax-free “Main Streets” individual pages were broken.

I had a good time and spent some money in my 'hood, but I'd like to see some analysis done and reported on. And if this IS sound tax policy (I doubt it), I'd like my friends and neighbors to shop the Hill first.

--Jean

My Day at the Dog Park

2006-12-03T17:21:00.000-05:00

Well, my day at the dog park was interesting. I, too, was unprepared for the crunch to write a good, compelling story by 5 p.m.! I learned you can not take notes, hold a tape recorder and tour a facility with barking dogs in one swell swoop. If I was a guy I would’ve had a shirt pocket for my tape recorder, but what’s a women to do?

I met dogs, lots of dogs. Big dogs, little dogs, cute dogs and big, 120 pound ugly dogs (the Rottweiler).

It was not a kennel, or animal hospital, it’s was a doggy daycare center. Imagine that. The dogs in regular daycare don’t participate in the Saturday Indoor Dog Park activities because 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. is their nap time. They come in the morning, play with their doggy friends, then eat before they are put down for their nap. Afterwards they get ready for afternoon activities. We’re still talking about dogs! It was fun. I learned a lot and may have become somewhat of a dog lover. Some, I’m sure are treated better then, say, us poor college students. Oh, it cost dog owners $33.00 a day for regular dog daycare.

-Wanda J

Saturday Assignment

2006-12-03T12:59:00.000-05:00

I covered the Humanities Council's Community Heritage Preservation Symposium on Saturday at McKinley High School.

Man did I feel green handling that assignment. It was a great experience for me not having done anything like it before and I fell into the role pretty quickly talking with people during breaks and trying to get background information from the participants.

If I had all the time in the world my final copy would have looked a lot different. But it was a lot of fun, even trying to get in a decent story by deadline.

Sounds like Michael et al had a pretty cool experience, and I agree with Milo that Kathy's blog was a great read on our site. You guys should check out Jeremy's blog of the event as well.

See you guys on Saturday.

-Jason Aldag

Newbie Notes: Saturday Assignment

2006-12-03T10:56:00.000-05:00

What I learned on my Saturday assignment.

• MapQuest is no substitute for good (ADC is my choice) mapbooks.

I got lost both going to the event and coming home. Hey, I might never have had the opportunity to see, or smell, the D.C. wastewater treatment facility otherwise.

• The truism “The early bird gets the worm” still works.

Two fledgling web journalists (Ken C. and myself) scooped Channel 4 by being there when the incoming police chief, who will make history as the first permanent female D.C chief of police, walked in the door unannounced.

The Channel 4 videographer arrived after the chief-to-be left, so he settled for a brief interview of Enrique Rivera, the coordinator of the event.(Sorry, couldn't find a link to their broadcast on Ch. 4's web site)

I learned two things here as well:

1. Know your subject. Without some help from one of the police officers I wouldn’t have had a clue about her as news of her appointment by Mayor-elect Fenty broke while I was in rural Louisiana (Third World and Proud of It!) far from Wi-Fi or newspaper stands (For more on the Louisiana escapade see my next post on this blog).

2. Keep your voice recorder handy. I wish that I had turned on my voice recorder while Ken and I had her all to ourselves instead of later, when she made her presentation (my notes of the interview with her are barely decipherable).

And, sorry if this is not PC or I’m showing my MCP tendencies but, I might have been flustered by the fact that she’s not bad looking.

• Some knowledge of the language helps if you’re covering a foreign-language event. Especially when the pocket-sized translation receiver you are given is chopping out every fifth word that is being said. At times I just took off the earpiece and mentally tuned into the Spanish, even though I am not fluent.

• Once you get over your innate fear of approaching strangers, most of them are very helpful. All of the police officers present were more than happy to talk about their community-policing efforts, the Mount Pleasant riots, etc., and are very proud of their roots “Soy Puerto Riqueño” (I’m Puerto Rican) – note tiny Puerto Rican flag on the butt of officer’s holstered automatic pistol.

All-in-all, great fun – except for the 5 pm deadline.

--- Michael H.

apologies from the class dinosaur!

2006-12-02T17:10:00.000-05:00

Hey gang,

I seem to have cluttered up our blog with entries I was supposed to post elsewhere...I had an assignment to blog a DNC event Saturday and assumed I should to this on the class blog.

This just proves how far I have to go to become a truly interactive journalist: It never, ever would have occurred to me to launch my very own blog!

Ignore those entries about Howard Dean! My apologies!!

--kathy k

Can voters get more than a few weeks to pick the next presidential nominees?

2006-12-02T15:45:00.000-05:00

That's essentially what's on the agenda at this afternoon's meeting of the national Democratic party's rules committee.

Party officials are talking about creating incentives for states to hold presidential primary elections and caucuses later in the calendar year. The plan would give states that hold their elections in April or later extra delegates at the 2008 Democratic presidential nominating convention.

Right now, a number of big states are talking about holding presidential eliminations sooner rather than later, so that their voters get a chance to have a say in picking the nominees.

"In California, by the time we get to the primary, there's nothing much going on," says Alice Huffman, one of the state's a national committee members. California held its 2004 primary in June, long after Sen. John Kerry wrapped up the party's presidential nomination.

The idea behind the Democrats' incentive system -- which the rules committee voted Saturday to recommend to the full national committee -- is to end a vicious cycle that is basically shrinking the process of selecting presidential nominees down to a few frantic weeks in the winter.

I remember being in Michigan during the 2004 presidential campaign and watching Democratic candidates essentially abandon the state -- the first state in the primary process with a significant industrial base and a significant black population -- because momentum for John Kerry was building so rapidly that Howard Dean decided to make a last stand in Wisconsin.

As a result, the Democratic presidential contest was wrapped up without the candidates ever being forced to debate the problems of Michigan, a state that has suffered huge losses of manufacturing jobs because of outsourcing.

--kkiely

more on the Democrats' use of technology

2006-12-02T12:27:00.000-05:00

Just got a download from Ben Self, the party's tech director.

In Montana, he said, the party made 10,000 calls into the state to find out who Tester's supporters were and used their consumer marketing criteria to extrapolate "what a Tester supporter looked like." That enabled them to identify the additional supporters they contacted in the Senate campaign.

Self also showed off the Democrats' "party builder," a new online tool that Dean believes is helping the party build support among younger voters.

It combines elements of party organization and facebook and is publicly available at www.democrats.org/partybuilder. Dean says that it's "going to transform how we do politics."

--kkiely

High Tech/Low Tech Campaigns: Back to the Future?

2006-12-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

There's an intriguing paradox in the presentation that's being delivered right now to members of the Democratic National Committee, meeting at Washington, DC's Omni Shoreham Hotel:

On the one hand, party strategists such as DNC technology director Ben Self are celebrating the computer and web-based technologies that enabled them to "micro-target" Democratic voters. On the other, successful congressional candidate Nancy Boyda is hailing the use of old fashioned, people to people tactics: like providing lunch for volunteers and buying 16 page newspaper inserts to advertise her views. Dead tree publications! Who knew??

What really seems to be going on is that politicos are figuring out ways to use high technology to make people-to-people contact. Self says that the DNC's microtargeting campaign identified "hundreds" of Democratic voters in Montana's Beaverhead County, a county where there are NO majority Democratic precincts. Statewide, Self estimates the program added more than 15,000 names to Democratic contact lists. Montana Sen.-elect Jon Tester's margin of victory over Republican incumbent Conrad Burns? 2,847.

--kkiely

Howard Dean's vindication

2006-12-02T11:35:00.000-05:00

I'm at the Democratic Executive Committee's executive meeting now and it's a showcase for Howard Dean's strategy of taking the campaign where Democrats have seldom gone before.

As Democratic chairman, Dean pressed to put precious campaign resources in some unlikely places -- a strategy that brought him into conflict with some other party leaders who thought the money should be concentrated in swing congressional districts and Senate seats.

Two candidates who won House districts where Democrats weren't given much of a chance enthusiastically endorsed the Dean strategy: newly elected House members Tim Walz of Minnesota and Nancy Boyd of Kansas.

"Thank you for a vision that I know has been somewhat controversial," said Tim Walz, a newly elected House member from Minnesota. "It was a great use of resources."

To get an idea of what a risky investment it might have seemed to some party strategists, consider this: Walz, a high school geography teacher with no previous political experience, knocked off an entrenched Republican incumbent, Gil Gutknecht. And he's says he's just the second Democrat elected from the district since 1893.

Boyda, who lost her congressional race in 2004 but was successful in this year's comeback bid, credited early help from the Democratic National Committee. She said a committee staff member began working on her campaign full time in August, 2005.

Another interesting note: Boyda says she refused to "go negative" in her ad campaign and -- in sharp contrast with the popular, TV driven sound-bite strategies -- relied on bulky newspaper inserts to get her campaign message across. She believes voters are ready for meatier, more content-rich campaigns. "I think we have reached a tipping point," she says.

--kkiely

Investigative Journalism Online

2006-12-01T09:39:00.000-05:00

Saw on cyberjournalist this series.

-- Amy Eisman

In praise of gatekeepers, part II

2006-12-01T08:33:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me that my last post didn't back up my title. I confess I was writing while at work, waiting for a story to be edited. Then had to bolt to meet a friend for dinner before finishing my thought.

One would think I'd have oceans of time to write and think extracurricularly this week with my boys and girls, aka the US Congress, out of town. But noooo! This being the holiday season, our papers are HUGE (more money for me, or more accurately, our shareholders!). Therefore, the editors are squeezing vast quantities of blood out of us turnips....

But I digress....

The point I want to make about the internet is this: While I am enthusiastic about its possibilities, I am also skeptical of my webbies' overenthusiasm. Not only do unedited streams of information pose many possibilities for mischief (some of which I alluded to in my earlier post), but they threaten to fall of their own weight.

Take our own situation as an example: As an interactive journalism student, I now regularly have to check: 1) my AU email account; 2) a blackboard account, and 3) a blog. This in addition to my work email account and a Yahoo account that I had to set up for reasons I won't bore you with here. Plus all the other reading I do as a semi-competent citizen of the world. And every now and then I like to sneak in an actual novel.

How many average people, who aren't information queers, who have lives to live and kids to raise, meals to prepare and jobs to do, have time for all this??

This is why I think there will ALWAYS be a place for gatekeepers in journalism, whether it be the dead-tree variety or the kind consumed in electrons. People want a place they can go for RELIABLE and CONCISE summaries of what's going on in their world. The internet will give them more choices, for which I say, bravo. But gatekeeping will remain a steady and necessary and honorable profession. That's my crotchety MSM prediction.

Kathy K

In praise of gatekeepers

2006-11-30T18:47:00.000-05:00

At the paper, we've been having a lot of debates about interactive journalism. The philosophical dilemmas are fascinating.

My paper is aggressively neutral and (ever since we ran into some problems with a former colleague a few years ago) scrupulous about accuracy. I would say one of our strengths in the market place is that readers see us as less biased than some of our competitors.

Will becoming a more interactive news portal jeopardize that reputation? In theory, it's great to allow readers to post comments to our stories and link to other relevant material. But what if they post information or link to stories that we know are WRONG? The dinosaurs in our debate argue we should intervene; web purists seem to believe that would be violating the freewheeling ethic of web communications.

I worry that, if we give readers wide-open access to our website, we will leave ourselves open to being manipulated by savvy political propagandists. there's lots about crowd sourcing that's inspiring -- how wonderful to get retired accountants involved in ferretting out corruption in a community, as one of my company's papers did! -- but there's lots of room for abuse too. The crowd didn't police itself too well in Bosnia, when milosevic started using the media to foment ethnic hate.

I honestly don't know what the right answer is. Basically I think the most intelligent response to change is to embrace it -- because it's damn hard to stop. But should we be setting some limits on how far we go? Or is that a futile exercise?

Kathy K

Best news sites for 25-to-34 year olds

2006-11-29T20:59:00.000-05:00

Here's some interesting information for Web designers, compiled by the American Society of Newspaper Editors:

A review of the best newspaper Web sites for 25-to-34 year olds found they:

Were simple to navigate.
Were local first.
Offered a news lineup hierarchy so readers could quickly find the top stories of the day. In many cases, front-page stories didn't automatically become home page top stories.
Included news updates early in the morning.
Clearly distinguished ad content from editorial content — one of the major challenges Web sites face. The 25-to-34 year olds say ad content is important to them in print and online, and for this reason it is important to be upfront with them about advertising vs. news.
Offered depth through archives and Web extra content.
Provided extensive and searchable entertainment listings.
Included special Web sections, photo galleries, multimedia.
Through content, photos and design, showed viewers where they were, what the community was about.

Janey Adams

Check out MSN Ombudsman

2006-11-29T14:14:00.000-05:00

All:

This column launched yesterday at MSN.

It is written by Jody Brannon. You may not know, but Jody is an AU alum and also an AU adjunct in the IJ program. She was previously executive producer at usatoday.com and at washingtonpost.com. She also chaired the Online News Association conference held in D.C. this fall; it was mentioned in the post about BBC. Way to go, Jody!

-- Amy Eisman

Open Source Journalism

2006-11-29T06:13:00.000-05:00

NYU Journalism Department Professor Jay Rosen (pictured) has started a new project where he's tapping the energy of hundreds of amateur journalists to do what he calls open-source investigative reporting.

Sound cool or what?

His project -- NewAssignment.net -- is still in beta, but Rosen's started a blog where you can watch the project blossom (or wilt).

He's published a lengthy post about open-source journalism in his blog, PressThink. It's a two-part Q & A with former Times-Picayune reporter John McQuaid, which drills down some of the key issues traditional reporting currently faces; McQuaid identifies 2 in particular:

more people have more access to information. According to McQuaid:

"When I started out, we got “the wires” on our office computers, and I thought that was pretty amazing back then — AP dispatches and updates in real time! [...] But of course, a great tool for us was equally great for everybody else. Readers now have access to almost all the information that journalists do, and they began sharing it, commenting on it and picking apart the stories. Hence many problems bloomed for the mainstream press, which declined in relevance and lost some credibility."

news consumers are choosing alternatives to 'top-down' traditional reporting. McQuaid again:

"I never much liked the “Voice of God” emanating from the NYT and other influential institutions. It was entertaining — and often useful — to see platoons of bloggers pick it apart and puree the pronouncements (sometimes fairly, sometimes not). Reading some of those critiques made me increasingly dissatisfied with newspaper conventions. In a highly partisan landscape, straight newspaper accounts of political fights that dutifully parroted “both sides” or interviewed a bunch of talking heads offering differing perspectives often did a bad job of capturing what was really happening. But a single blogger could often get to the nub of an issue in a single paragraph (usually, of course, by analyzing the journalism)."

McQuaid also discusses some the ways that journalists can tap into new online tools and communities to help them write their stories:

"communities of experts are especially valuable. The world is complex, and increasingly run by subcultures of people with very specialized knowledge. In most cases, they’re already wired together – fisheries specialists, scientists and engineers, federal regulators, political operatives. If you make an entree into these groups via listserv, blogging, website, and they’ll work with you in either an organized or ad hoc way, you’re halfway there."

Milo Sybrant

E&P: Newspaper Web efforts get a B-

2006-11-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

A columnist for Editor & Publisher, the trade journal covering the newspaper biz, surveyed papers' Web sites and gave the industry as a whole a B-minus (via Romenesko).

Among Steve Outing's specific complaints, he wonders why more newspapers aren't doing more audio and video, which remain "at stepchild status at best."

He also says newspapers too often remain stuck in "gather all the facts, then write the story" mode when it comes to breaking news. More papers should be blogging about breaking news as it develops, he says. "Some stories are important enough--are urgent enough--that they should be treated to a 'here's what we know now' and 'here's what else we just learned' an hour later treatment," he writes.

He also complained about boring online classified ads and a relative lack of true interactivity. "Too many sites remain stuck in one-way, we-tell-you mode," he writes.

One thing he doesn't target is something that continually bugs me on newspaper sites: presentation and ease of use.

Newspapers dedicate years and multiple staffers to redesigns of the physical product, but Web design still too often comes across as an afterthought.

Washingtonpost.com, for example, is full of good information but it looks cluttered and uninviting. The New York Times' site is better since its semi-recent redesign, with a more orderly appearance and plenty of variety high up on the page. Meanwhile, the site for a place like the Austin American-Statesman, where I used to work, hammers you with brutally large ads and makes you jump through registration hoops to access its articles.

Anyone else have examples of particularly inviting/uninviting newspaper sites?

--Jeremy Egner

Will Convergence Leave People Behind?

2006-11-26T20:12:00.000-05:00

At the Online News Association conference last month, the BBC’s Adrian Van Klaveren showed a video that depicts a fictional bombing in London in 2010 (download video; careful…it’s large). Specifically, it depicts a tight relationship between the BBC and individuals, who are both helping to report on the event (through pictures, video, etc.) and receiving news of such events in new ways, producing a compelling news story across a variety of platforms.

In one sense, I don’t know if this is particularly new. News organizations have always followed up on newsworthy story ideas from the public or sought out eyewitnesses to major events to interview. This technology just provides a more efficient way to do so than in the past.

But, as news organizations become increasingly reliant on “citizen journalism” and the citizens who have the means to contribute to such journalism, are these organizations incorporating efforts to ensure that people who don’t have the means or who aren’t otherwise a part of the “cyber” world aren’t left out?

Although the technology is spreading and becoming cheaper, there’s no guarantee that the technology will be accessible to people of all socio-economic levels. Even today, for example, more than a century after it was invented, roughly 7 percent of U.S. households still lack telephones, according to the U.S. Telecom Association.

--Ken C.

Manifesto for the Interactive Medium

2006-11-26T12:14:00.000-05:00

I believe that in a lot of ways, the industry is still grappling with the same fundamental question it was asking itself five years ago: Should our focus be on applying the best standards and values of the old medium – or should it be innovating and shaping a completely new medium? I have always argued that the answer should be “all of the above.” Standing for important things and being willing to embrace the new are not mutually exclusive.

What Google and Yahoo have recognized is that information and advertising are wedded. They are developing tools to deliver highly-individualized content (that is information) to people and then selling the information about those people to advertisers. They micro-target distribution of information in order to micro-target distribution of advertising.

But in the end the argument about paid online content leaves out a crucial factor. It doesn’t matter if we believe we need to be paid for our content in order to survive. What matters is if readers believe they need to pay for our content on the Internet.
--Rati Sud

Visual Storytelling

2006-11-25T22:10:00.000-05:00

I'd like to point you guys to a neat multimedia presentation at this MSNBC page.

It's by a great photogrpaher, Ed Kashi, who has done stories for National Geographic.

This is a digital flipbook produced by Mediastorm (another great website and company). It is a great way to present a story that will hold someone's attention but as a photographer, I'd like to see the very best shots from a tight edit of the work.

The video is a little snarky at MSNBC, but it should be posted soon on the Mediastorm website.

Also, there is some interesting background info on this project.

MSNBC actually bid for the work on an online auction at the Mediastorm site. Mediastorm received bids from news and lifestyle mags from around the world. That sounds very, very interesting to freelancers.

A place like Mediastorm might just be the new Gatekeepers of news and information.

Previously unfiltered information from bloggers or citizen journalists will be sent to online news auction houses where only the best content is distributed over the internet.

I guess this would be for those people looking to gain credibility, of course any Joe or Jane Blogger would be free to put up a site for whatever they want to talk about.

Jason Aldag

I hate the TVNewser kid...

2006-11-24T22:59:00.000-05:00

I'm sure some of you saw this article in the New York Times last week.

This is the kind of success story that just gets my goat, mainly because this kid didn't do anything except sit around eating potato chips and running a blog about the TV news business, and now he's some kind of boy wunder.

If you're not familiar with it, this guy started his TV Newser blog a couple years ago and he somehow got some notoriety for it. Then Mediabistro essentially bought the TVNewser brand, paying him to keep doing what he's doing and bringing his site into Mediabistro's brand.

I figured they were paying him something, but according to this article it's "enough to cover his tuition," which leads me to believe they're paying him $20k + a year.

And for what? To sit at his computer 18 hours a day, essentially compiling short email scoops he's been sent. I mean, he's not adding original commentary or analysis...a robot could do this.

If you think I just hate the TV Newser kid because he's getting paid to do this and I'm not, you're probably right. Still, I wish nothing but the worst for him.

- Max A.

Journalists must develop new skills to stay ahead of its overseas competitors

2006-11-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

Poynteronline.com recently ran an article, titled, “Offshoring: Coming Trend for Copy Desks?” that talks about many of the editing functions that are going overseas to countries like India and Singapore, where the work can be done at a lower cost.

This means that we will need to develop new skills to protect our jobs and remain “essential” in an industry that is changing quickly.

The article provides some advice to copy editors that touches on what they can do to secure their jobs, which got me thinking about what else a copy editor (or communications person in general) could do to stay in the game.

A few things that come to mind are as follow:

1 - Start a blog; update it everyday. Subscribe to a feed management service, such as FeedBurner, to increase readership.

2 - Identify the overseas companies that your organization is working with. Get to know them, learn their strengths and weakness, begin working with them directly if possible.

3 - As the article points out, proximity will give you an edge, so carve out a subject area that you can call your own. In other words, become an “untouchable,” as Thomas L. Friedman points out in his book “The World is Flat.”

4 - Learn to use new media technologies, including content management systems, which are now more popular than ever before.

As companies send more and more work overseas in an effort to save money, we should study the shift carefully, while identifying ways to improve our skills and learning to work with overseas staffs as well.

-- Hugo

Meetup.com A "Social" Website

2006-11-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

I thought this particular website Meetup.com was interesting because this website is using the Internet as a tool to get people involved to “meetup” in person. This site literally has hundreds of different topics of what you would like to meet up with other people in person. It could be about knitting, fashion, sports, travel, languages etc. You can see all the different topics at the Topics Menu

I found out about this website while doing research for my writing project. I was trying to find about people involved in the fashion industry in the Washington, DC area and interviewed a fashion designer/merchandiser. It was so easy to reach her through this website, you just have to create a log in and password and then you are connected and can network with others in your area.

The site was founded by Scott Heiferman, who recently appeared on Good Morning America as an Internet feature story This website is growing and can be a good way to bring people together in a community, it was initially started post September 11 as a way to bring people together in the community. “People are using the Internet as this tool to give them what they need,” said Heiferman.

These “meetups” are helping them to find connections in many ways. I thought this was interesting as well, based on the class discussion we had a few weeks ago talking about how in some ways the Internet is potentially isolating people because of the way they are being “social” in such an anti-social environment.

However, I think that this site is different in the way that it is simply using the Internet as a tool to create initial contact between people in a community and essentially linking them on-line in an effort to get them to meet up off-line.

---Vanessa Camozzi

Who will fill the investigative void online?

2006-11-22T12:20:00.000-05:00

Charles Lewis, founder and longtime director of the Center for Public Integrity, is an old hand at the sort of nonprofit investigative journalism that online outfits such as NewAssignment.net (see Jason’s earlier post) and the Sunlight Foundation are promoting/producing. (He’s also currently Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at American University.) CPI was promoting a form of "citizen journalism" before it became a buzz-concept (see the Center's 2000 book, "Citizen Muckrakers").

Lewis spoke with NewAssignment.net about his mixed feelings about the future of investigative journalism.

As an avowed muckraker, he’s worried about what will become of the practice as the big news orgs like the New York Times and the Washington Post face staff reductions (earlier post) and other challenges. “Newspapers will cease to exist on paper over time,” he says. “The question’s not, is it going to happen – it’s when.”

News investigations are time-consuming and costly, which makes them less appealing to corporate owners looking to reap fat profits from newspapers. Meanwhile, online sources such as Google News and Yahoo mostly serve as headline aggregators with little original journalism.

The good news is, the flagging focus on in-depth projects leaves plenty of engaging and important stories for enterprising online journalists to uncover, he says.

We have a very large global independent laboratory right now and everyone should be testing models, testing ideas, and testing means of distribution and ways to create more substantive journalism in the online context, because there’s clearly a need for it and it will evolve.

Lots of interesting stuff here.

--Jeremy Egner

Cell phone reporting: The next wave?

2006-11-21T22:49:00.000-05:00

Cell phone reporting: The next wave?

We’ve all seen it before. A news story submitted by a viewer from his or her cell phone. Many of these images show police beating a “helpless” suspect, climatic weather situations or even horrific car crashes. So if you have a camera phone, will you be the next Dan Rather or Katie Couric—I don’t think so.

Grant Burningham, web producer with The New York Times did just that. Armed with his camera phone and a great pair of running shoes, he reported from the front lines of the New York marathon. As only a true journalist could do, he made me feel as if I was a part of this marathon. Listen to his 5 one-minute or so newscasts.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/sports/20061106_MARATHON_AUDIOSS/blocker.html

Reporting is hard enough but think about the pressure to report, produce and place on the web your newscast. Choosing the correct words and maintaining journalistic integrity are key. The last newscast recorded at the finish should serves as a lesson for us.

Finish what you start, be diligent and ethical and use what you can to get the story.
http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=83&aid=113651

Trinay Blake

Another Reason to Be in the IJ Program

2006-11-21T22:23:00.000-05:00

From the Online News Association's Cyberjournalist site: Washington Post to reduce paper staff, increase web focus

I must say that I don't have too much to add to this, other than to note that I'm glad that I'm in a program through which I can learn skills to enable me to be successful in a rapidly changing industry.

--Ken C.

Journalists prepare Web media with Soundslides

2006-11-21T21:53:00.000-05:00

Soundslides 1.4 helps journalists and media enthusiasts create audio slide shows in a short period of time, as Chhayal Parikh demonstrated on November 11, 2006.

The application’s clean, simple interface lets users import their photos and audio files without having to work through multiple screens.

There are some popular applications that could be used to develop similar projects, such as DemoShield, Macromedia Flash or PowerPoint, but they are expensive and require some training.

This application will pay for itself the first time you use it. I tried it out last night, and it took only a few minutes to put together a short clip. Click here to watch and listen.

Many Internet sites stream video and audio, and I expect to see much more of it after Microsoft releases its next operating system, Windows Vista, which will ship with Media Center, Movie Maker, and Photo Gallery.

Although it will be a while before Soundslides is able to compete with Microsoft, it’s a product with legs and solid enough to stand on its own.

The biggest challenge that the makers will face is enriching the application without weighing it down with so much functionality that it becomes another complicated and difficult-to-use application.

But let’s not fuss over this now and instead enjoy what we have. It is perfect the way it is.

Soundslides runs on both OS X and Windows XP, and a licensed copy runs for $39.95.

-- Hugo

Book Signing Tonight!

2006-11-21T14:12:00.000-05:00

by Wanda Jenifer

I know this is last minute, but thought someone may be interested.

Steve Wozniak is discussing and signing "iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult
Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and
Had Fun Doing It."

7 p.m. tonight (November 21)
Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW.
202-364-1919
Free

Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs in 1976 and created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s.

He was a recent guest on Comedy Central's, The Colbert Report. Check out the video:

Woz Interview: The Colbert Report

Yahoo follows Google lead to team up with papers

2006-11-20T02:01:00.000-05:00

First Google announced a deal through which it would start selling advertising space in some newspapers.

Now Business Week Online reports that Yahoo has struck a deal with some newspapers including Hearst and Media News that would include classifieds, local news and content packages based on general themes, like travel.

This could drive more traffic to Yahoo’s help-wanted site HotJobs, which trails its key competitors including CareerBuilder.com that is co-owned by Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy (which got CarreerBuilder with its KnightRidder purchase).

Newspapers would supply content including help-wanted ads. In return, they would get a cut of the ads sold around search results of their content.

It definitely appears as if newspaper executives are embracing the Internet as not only a means to server their readers, but also as a way to bolster sagging advertising and circulation revenue.

--Mark H.

YouTube: A destination, a household word

2006-11-19T08:17:00.000-05:00

Many television networks across the country last week aired a YouTube video clip of two police officers arresting a man, and some people are concerned with the amount of physical force the officers used.

Regardless of how you might feel about the arrest, however, it is clear that YouTube has become more than a repository of video clips, and every now and then, a clip, like the one above, is going to make headlines.

Both citizens and law enforcement agencies have probably logged onto YouTube, watched the clip, and read through many of the comments and responses that appear on the site.

The video has sparked a lot of dialog and will have both the citizens and city police authorities in Los Angeles talking for quite some time about the arrest.

It's safe to say now that YouTube has its official spot on the Internet. And as long as there are video recorders, there will be citizens sharing their clips with the Internet community at large.

-- Hugo

Tools of the Trade

2006-11-17T18:11:00.000-05:00

The way we view information may be changing, but basic writing skills still stand strong at the base of the convergent media monster. They are what seperate a respectable writer from the mass of novice bloggers. They are the signals telling a reader that this information is professional, quality, and in the case of journalism, trustworthy.

At the National Press Club's annual book fair on Wednesday night, I met the vice president of the Poynter Institute, Roy Peter Clark. He was standing behind the row of tables among the other authors and his new book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer." Mr. Clark wished me luck on my career as a journalist and handed me a signed copy. Since then, I have yet to put it down.

I highly recommend this book to everyone in the class. It's a clear, concise and powerful guide to writing, divided up into 50 short sections. Clark uses entertaining anecdotes and clever examples explaining both when and how to use these writing "tools". Even now, as I write this blog entry I've been thinking through the ones I have read thus far (I'm about halfway through the book). Some of these include:

Tool #4- Be passive-aggressive.
Use passive verbs to showcase the "victim" of action.

Tool #14- Get the name of the dog.
Dig for the concrete and specific, details that appeal to the senses.

Tool #22- Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction.
Learn when to show, when to tell, and when to do both.

There is also a handy list in the back of the book, displaying all 50 tools, which Clark suggests the reader copy and place either in their wallet or by their desk as reference. It's definitely, in my opinion, a good investment for any aspiring writer.

-Chris Snyder

The Digital Future Is Here: Now What?

2006-11-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

The National Press Club is sponsoring a discussion by three experienced Web journalists on convergent media at 7 p.m. on Monday, November 27.

Managing Editor Ju-Don Roberts of washingtonpost.com will discuss how to craft multimedia stories for the local audience.

Video Director Steve Elfers of USAToday.com will talk about how to leverage traditional skills into a very visual medium.

Senior Editor Jody Brannon of MSN.com will provide an overview of opportunities at large-scale sites, including portals.

Moderator will be Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner.

The event is free, but you must make reservations by calling (202) 662-7501.

-- Mark H

New due date for Project Draft

2006-11-17T09:22:00.000-05:00

Judging by our progress so far, I've decided most of you need a little more time to put together a good first draft. This will shorten the time available for the final project, but it will let you get some more reporting under your belts. The NEW DRAFT DUE DATE IS TUESDAY, Nov. 28. We will go over this on Saturday.

Amy Eisman

Wikipedia Founder Lukewarm on Citizen Journalism?

2006-11-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

Nov. 16

Poynter Online E-Media Tidbits has an interesting blog today questioning whether Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who spoke at the annual Hearst Changing Media Landscape panel discussion Tuesday night, is less enthusiastic about citizen journalism than a traditional news editor.

The event, hosted by the Columbia School of Journalism was moderated by Sree Sreenivasan and included new media luminaries Bill Grueskin of WSJ.com and Kevin Sites of Yahoo. However, the author of the blog, A. Adam Glenn, contrasted the presentations of Wales and Albany (N.Y.)Times-Union editor Rex Smith, who also pens an online column.

Although Wales' WikiMedia Foundation includes Wikinews, a citizen journalism site, the Wiki founder seemed troubled by citizen journalists propensity to cover only stories that they are personally interested in while professional journalists provide the "work-horse reporting".

In other words, citizen journalists tend to provide commentary or analysis, with sometimes questionable objectivity, while mainstream journalists write the stories they are assigned in an environment that provides "mechanisms to ensure reporters are not just pushing an agenda", according to Wales.

Smith fondly recalled his early days in journalism at a small Indiana newspaper where one of the top reads was a column by a local elderly woman on the social "goings-on" in a nearby community. "That column 'captured the marrow' of the community in a way that most newspapers today fail to", said Smith, whose paper plans to embrace citizen journalism.

This, I believe, is that middle ground in crowdsourcing - the concept of hyperlocal reporting.

Mike Mills, who spoke at our class last Saturday, mentioned Rob Curley, VP of Product Development at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, as being one of the early digital journalism gurus emerging from the ljworld.com and lawrence.com interactive journalism crucible.

Mills said of Curley, "he is actually an old-school journalist" who once stated "The problem with newspapers is that they forgot how to cover the prom."

This chestnut holds the key to the value of crowdsourcing: there aren't enough professional journalists to cover your block in your neighborhood, not to mention providing online video of your kid hitting the homerun in his little league game. All of the videocams and cellphone cams are in the hands of the people who can cover hyperlocal news.

Adrian Holovaty, self-proclaimed "mad scientist" at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and another Lawrence.com alumnus, named Rob Curley as the innovator in rapid web development for online journalism and serving up local interest stories as quickly as major events.

Speaking of Lawrence.com to a programmer's conference, Holovaty says: "Rob Curly - he was our boss there, and he really encouraged this really really rapid web development. It's essentially web development - computer programming - with journalism deadlines. It's a fusion of those two concepts."

"So, one of these trials by fire was when Rob came up to us and he said 'Hey, it's summer, that means it's time for little league.' and he had this wacky idea - why don't we take local little league, which is about a hundred... more than two hundred teams or something like that, and treat these teams like they're the New York Yankees."

Curley identified the raison d'etre of citizen journalists by covering a hyperlocal event in equal stature to a major-league event, thereby generating local reader interest.

-Michael Hamner

Top 50 people shaping Britian's online journalism

2006-11-15T12:02:00.000-05:00

London's Press Gazzette has named the top 50 people shaping Britian's online journalism.

No. 1 on the list was Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. His "digital immigrant" speech at the American Society of Newspaper Editors may come to be seen as a turning point of online journalism, the paper said.

Among the other's that I recognized are Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist who was No. 3; Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, founders of MySpace who were No. 12 and 13; and Matt Drudge, publisher of The Drudge Report who was No. 27.

-- Mark H

Conversational Blogging

2006-11-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

What is a blog? Most newspapers, when they don’t have too much time to elaborate, define a blog as a ‘personal online journal’. That analogy is not completely wrong nor is it entirely right. Where they differ is that conventional journals start and finish in a chronological order, whereas blogs are displayed in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry on top. Of more importance is the fact that the definition above completely misses the main point about blogs. Conventionally, journals were private or even secret affairs, and were never linked to other journals. Blogs, by contrast, are social by nature, whether they are open to the public as a whole or only to a small select group.

The word “blog” was first used in 1997, when one of the few practitioners at the time, Jorn Barger, called his site a “weblog”. In 1999, another user, Peter Merholz, lightheartedly broke the word into “we blog”, and that was the beginning of the new term-blog-which stuck as both a verb and noun. Technically, it means a web page to which the owner regularly adds new entries, or “posts”, which are inclined to be (but need not be) short and frequently contain hyperlinks to other blogs or websites. Besides text and hypertext, posts can also contain pictures (“photoblogs”) and video (“vlogs”). Each post is stored on its own distinct archive page, the so-called perma-link, where it can always be found. On average, Technorati, a search engine for blogs, tracks some 50,000 new posts an hour.

Blogs usually have a raw, unpolished authenticity and individuality. This wouldn’t include a lot of blogs that firms and newspapers set up in this day and age. Thus the initial appeal of blogging is as an outlet for pure self-expression. Thus expressing an opinion is only the start. Many adolescents and teenagers consider e-mail as belonging to their grand-daddy’s age and instead are using either instant messaging (IM) or blogging for communicating with one another.

We, as students, are both bloggers and creators. We are each other’s audience, so that distinctions between the two disappear. We comment on each other’s blogs just as creators and audiences congregate ad hoc in meandering conversations, in a common space of shared imagination and interests.

I would like to conclude by stating the fact that in democratic societies, everybody does have the right to hold opinions, and that the urge to connect and converse with others is so basic that it might as well be added to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Sabeer Bhatia, the creator of Hotmail, adds, “Just as everbody has an email account today, everybody will have a blog in five years. This means, Mr Bhatia adds, that, “Journalism won’t be a sermon any more, it will be a conversation.”

---Rati Sud

Brands can't save newspapers

2006-11-15T05:42:00.000-05:00

The Independent published an in-depth look at news industry leaders' views on the future of news media. While most (if not all) of those interviewed for the story were based in the United Kingdom, many of the lessons also apply to U.S. media.

The prognosis is grim: they all seem to agree that newspapers are in trouble unless they can find A) a better revenue model than selling ad space and B) a means of retaining a readership in an Internet environment bursting at the seams with highly-specialized news producers.

With regard to the latter, several of the commentators said effective branding could save them. Jon Gisby from Yahoo! Europe sums up this perspective:

Do [newspapers] have a future? Absolutely, but it's a future that looks quite different from the one they've been used to. When you are putting content online, you need to use the brands that newspapers have around authentic news and quality journalism in a medium that's more democratic and interactive and slightly less tablets of stone.

If the industry's hanging its hopes on effective brands, then journalist James Surowiecki has news for them:

A study by retail-industry tracking firm NPD Group found that nearly half of those who described themselves as highly loyal to a brand were no longer loyal a year later. Even seemingly strong names rarely translate into much power at the cash register. Another remarkable study found that just 4 percent of consumers would be willing to stick with a brand if its competitors offered better value for the same price. Consumers are continually looking for a better deal, opening the door for companies to introduce a raft of new products.

"Brand equity" -- the value of a brand -- ultimately rests on the quality of the product. Newspapers have to make sure that they're doing quality reporting and commentary because that's what's going to distinguish them from all the rest of the news producers in the blogosphere and elsewhere online.

- Milo Sybrant

Case study in convergence

2006-11-14T19:14:00.000-05:00

I searched the web for convergence related articles and found a site called http://www.mediacenter.org/. Access the convergence tracking database (http://www.mediacenter.org/convergencetracker/) to see who has converged and if it's successful.

I clicked on a few of the converged sites and found many have not been updated since 2004. I don't think the information is not factual, but it does not provide accurate insight into how successful its convergence is currently. Perhaps one of us could follow-up and prepare as our final story.

Professor James Gentry of the University of Kansas http://www.journalism.ku.edu/ and Senior Fellow at The Media Center has prepared 3 case studies on the convergence phenomenon, click here http://www.mediacenter.org/convergencetracker/ to read them. I point out that these case studies were published April 2003 therefore some of the information and/or processes may have changed.

Seems as though convergence has worked for these conglomerates, but problems have occurred. "Lawrence Journal-World" was challenged to make sure all newspaper and television staff received story ideas, updates and coverage plans. At the time this case study was prepared, the implementation of new software was in the works to make this process much smoother.

One of the most important things that I think we could take away from these studies is the keys to making the partnership work. In this section, Gentry detailed what and how communication should occur, necessary training among print, media and online staff, unselfishness—not being concerned with who broke the news first and the buy-in—recognizing all staff as contributors.

Trinay Blake

Discussing the future...from the future.

2006-11-14T18:21:00.000-05:00

On October 21st, approximately 1000 digital natives gathered together in Second Life for a presentation by author of "Smart Mobs" and professor of Digital Journalism at Stanford, Howard Rheingold. "The Pedagogy Of Civic Participation", a discussion on participatory media, was conducted entirely online on the campus of NMC (New Media Consortium), a virtual university.

I consider myself a digital native, in that I was born in the early 80s, but grew up along with technology. For a few years at least, I knew a non web-centric life of knocking on doors, land line phones, and snail mail. That quickly changed, and I embraced the new trend with instant messenger, emails, streaming media and blogs. That being said, I still find myself almost overwhelmed at times with the constant wave of ever increasing media and information that has become available. While mind boggling, it also seems very appropriate that a seminar on new media should be held in a digital landscape. What are the benefits of incorporating information sharing and learning in a world like Second Life? A summary of Rheingold's response:

The important question about 3D immersive environments is 'What's the appropriate use? What can we do here that we couldn't do elsewhere?". It's possible to stand in front of a classroom, talk and project slides - but not possible to walk you through a cathedral standing in the classroom, or rotate a protein molecule and enable people to move around it in a standard classroom. What can we do in 3D worlds that's uniquely attractive and appropriate to this medium that has some pedagogical purpose to it?

A summary of the event was posted today, and includes screencaps, sound clips, and main bullet points from the talk. The issues he brings up are very timely to our in class discussions, and it's unfortunate that we couldn't participate. Maybe next year, IJ Cohort 10 will exist entirely in virtual reality. Although this brings up a whole new issue in and of itself, as I can't imagine what sorts of effects sitting in class next to a wolf, a pixie, or a ninja might have on my education (see screen shots from article).

-Chris Snyder

C-SPAN Launch New Video Site

2006-11-14T13:57:00.000-05:00

C-SPAN goes YouTube. Well, not quite. C-SPAN has bought into the user-generated video concept and plan to launch its own version of YouTube next month. Their site will be called Viewfinder.

Last year C-SPAN ordered YouTube to pull copyrighted, user-posted material from its site now they want to be like YouTube.

Viewfinder will be incorporated into C-SPAN’s current programming. Along with the call-in and email-in portion of their shows, users will now be able to video-in campaign and political content. Users will be asked to submit a 2-minute or shorter video to a “Question of the Week” question.

C-SPAN is not alone in this latest trend of old media trying to incorporate new media into their operations. CNN launched Exchange, its user-generated version, in July. CNN ask users to send in street-level, action report videos and also not so compelling video, like how you plan to handle your holiday travel plans.

The good thing for new media students is someone has to go through and view the submitted videos then decide which ones to publish.

No one knows how interested anyone will be in a video of your holiday travel plans, or if the political pundits will embrace the video submitted idea, but if this becomes a model for old media to get into new media there will be another job title to consider as a career option: Online Video Editor.

--Wanda Jenifer

Should newspapers embargo content from the Web?

2006-11-13T18:04:00.000-05:00

Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition thinks so.

In an editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle, Scheer says the business model newspapers are currently using online (giving away content for free, selling ads that target people who like free content) isn't working.

In order to give the news its "true value," he argues that newspapers and wire services should figure out a way to deprive the Web of "free, trustworthy news in real-time." Sites like Yahoo and Google would have to rely on dubiously accurate content from bloggers.

Scheer's idea goes against the grain. Before Knight Ridder went belly-up, it ordered its newspapers to update their Web sites more often with fresh content. Newspapers that contribute to my wire service often post stories on their Web sites before they send them to us - they view that, rightly, as a service to their readers.

For breaking news, the Web is a great tool. But I deal mostly with embargoed stories, some of which are exclusives that have been in the works for months.

The fear of being scooped on your own story isn't new for papers that contribute to wire services. Until a couple of years ago, the biggest concern I dealt with would be a Daily Telegraph story appearing in the Kalamazoo Times a day before it appears in the Daily Telegraph. While that's never a good thing, the stakes are higher now - a story I send on the wire could pop up on Google News or Yahoo within minutes.

A big part of my job is trying to get projects and investigations editors at contributing newspapers to tell me what they're working on and send me their stories well in advance of publication. When exclusives and embargoed stories that I move on the wire appear on Web sites before they're published in print, I get angry calls.

But those angry editors don't stop sending stories to the wire because, not surprisingly, they want people to read their work. Some of them would just like a little more control over the how and when.

Scheer is right when he says newspapers need to figure out a better way to make money on the Internet. And, for the sake of competition, figuring out a way to temporarily block certain stories from appearing on the Web would be great.

I don't have any answers, but I do know that one industry controlling the free flow of information is a dangerous proposition.

-Janey Adams

Gannett first of many to restructure news and information

2006-11-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

I read the following article: Gannett To Change Its Papers' Approach on www.washingtonpost.com and thought it was an interesting article to share.

Prior to this course and reading this article, I have to be honest that I never really knew what the term “citizen journalist” was or rather what sort of a role a citizen journalist had and what that meant for journalists in general. However, I have seen this term repeatedly, whether it is has been in our class book, referenced in class, and now through several articles I have read.

This article basically talks about the “attempt to grab some of the Internet mojo of blogs, community e-mail groups and other ground-up news sources to bring back and fundamentally change the idea of what newspapers have been for more than a century.”

Gannett wants to merge their newspaper and online operations into single units and will also be drawing on non-journalists or “citizen journalists” in the process. Gannett has been testing its new system in several of its newspapers since July, and now the company’s newspapers are being urged to make the transition quickly. The article did mention that USA Today would not undergo the overhaul, though it has merged its newspaper and online staffs.

“It’s pretty big,” said Michael Maness, Gannett’s vice president of strategic planning. “It’s a fairly fundamental restructuring of how we go about news and information on a daily basis.

I also found it interesting how they have restructured their departments to contain an “Information Center” that is divided into 7 areas including: public service, digital, data, community conversation, local, custom content and multimedia.

This “movement” so to speak is really just demonstrating how the media is absolutely changing into a true converged medium. No longer are the days of a reporter just using a notepad and pencil. Now journalist are really faced with the challenge of being able to adapt and learn this new technology that has arrived and will continue to develop.

This makes me happy knowing that I am getting a head start in the game and am taking the time and effort to be “trained” in this new developing medium. I think this program in Interactive Journalism will give us the tools and preparation we need to know in order to achieve our professional goals.

---Vanessa Camozzi

Blogs add video to become diavlogs

2006-11-13T13:27:00.000-05:00

Are Web logs cutting edge journalism or are they really today's pennysavers?

According to a story in today's New York Sun, two bloggers have set up a Web site called bloggingheads.tv where they and other bloggers get together to hold diavlogs (video dialogs).

Apparently some Web users want to see bloggers and not just read what they have to say without commercials that limit debates on the Sunday morning news shows.

But the technology of the diavlog is still lacking. The article compared watching the blogging heads to watching slow moving NASA video at times.

This leads me back to my original question. Will blogs someday be the newspapers of today with some other medium threatening to pull their plugs (Good evening, this is Larry Gillick with the Second Life Evening News) and diavlogs replacing Face the Nation?

I hope not. I for one believe that journalists have ethics and training so they don't inject their own opinion into reporting. I can't say that for citizen journalists. If someone writes that President Bush has offered Saddam asylum if he marries Jenna, I know I wouldn't believe it and would question the motive behind the blogger's writing. While each may have their place, I don't think blogs replace legitimate journalism.

But in another story Monday morning, Reuters carried a report that an Ipsos MORI poll found that Internet journals are a more trusted source of information in Europe than TV advertising or e-mail marketing. Apparently, blogs are replacing word of mouth for endorsing or condemning a product or service.

The survey found that 24 percent of Europeans trust blogs, 17 percent trust TV advertising and 14 percent trust e-mail marketing. Newspapers hold on to a narrow lead with 30 percent trusting print ads.

As the blogs become more popular, could they overtake trust in newspaper advertising? That would force advertisers to divert their ad budgets from newspapers and shrink news hole even more or possibly put some smaller, less-profitable newspapers out of business.

And instead of requiring the IJ students in Cohort 10 to write articles that get graded, will Amy make them blog and diavlog for grades?

-- Mark H

more tips

2006-11-11T22:07:00.000-05:00

I found this while browsing in one of the forums on the soundslides.com site that Chhayal told us about. There's some excellent ideas/info in here:

http://www.visualedge.org/lessons/SoundStory.pdf

kathy kiely

An encouraging word (or 2, or 3, or...) and some tips

2006-11-11T20:50:00.000-05:00

Amy seems to think there are too many furrowed brows in the classroom. I thought it might help iron a few out if I pointed out the following fact: It took the old veteran who gets paid to do this sort of thing just as long as the rest of you to complete today's assignment.

I was there just as long as anyone else and (though you may have been too polite to notice) exuding just as much flop sweat as the most rookie among you.

Writing is hard. It gets easier but it never gets easy. The good news: You can spend decades pushing pencils for a living and never get bored. Every assignment is a challenge.

The challenge in this one: There's no natural drama in most lectures, which means the burden of creating the interest is on the writer. Moreover, the topic of Mills' talk (internet and database journalism) was somewhat technical. It's always a challenge to translate techno-talk into plain English.

Here's how I generally go about writing a story on deadline:

I go through my notes and type the best stuff into my file. This gives me a handy list of the quotes and other elements that struck me as interesting. I start writing. I try to come up with a good lede (opening sentence) first, but if one doesn't come, I start writing other bits. They might be full paragraphs; they might be fragments of sentences. This helps me get my mind going. Other people might find it useful to rough out an outline; I just don't seem to have a linear thought process.

Eventually, the sentences start to come together and pretty soon, voila, you have a story! But you've got to get the fingers going. Otherwise, it's easy to get blocked.

The other big tip for deadline writing: Keep it simple. There's a time and a place for elegant, narrative style writing but when you are "right on the nut," as one of my mentors used to say, it NOT one of them. Sure, go ahead and try to push the envelope if you have a great idea. But if it doesn't start to flow after the first couple of minutes, scrap it and head back to the safety of the 5Ws formula. It's a great safety net when time is short. Bottom line: When in doubt, hit it straight up the middle.

For those of you who are facing your first interviews, here's a couple of techniques that work for me.

Start out with a few pleasantries. You might even confide your uneasiness with the whole process by telling the subject that this is your first interview, or that you haven't done this very often. It will create some rapport.

Don't be afraid to ask your subject to repeat a quote, or to walk you through an explanation again if you didn't get it the first time. It's perfectly legitimate and it will put you more at ease in your questioning and your note-taking.

Get a phone number or email address so you can contact the person with follow-up questions. Almost inevitably, there will be one you forget...or one your editor dreams up that you didn't think of. Sometimes, a piece will take an unexpected turn -- either because of an epiphany you have during reporting or writing -- and you will want to ask a source about a new development or a new angle. Again, knowing that you can get back to a source if need by will put you more at ease in your interview.

The Woodward & Bernstein experience is the exception, not the norm, in journalism. Most interviews are NOT hostile interviews. In most situations, this rule will serve you well: If you ask people to help you out, most of them will.

Most interviews are fun. You get to meet interesting people and find out what makes them tick. And that ain't a half-bad way to spend a day.

Happy trails!
Kathy Kiely

Tyros and Pros Together Forever?

2006-11-09T06:57:00.000-05:00

At the Web 2.0 conference in Seattle they have highlighted the 13 most promising Web 2.0 startups and it’s amazing what these sites have to offer. OK. So, Web 2.0 is pretty cool. It allows your average Joe and Jane to connect with the world and do some really interesting things. You can practice with professional musicians, publish your photo essays and even be a real life journalist. Some of these sites will even pay you for your services.

At NewAssignment.net, citizen journalists are collaborating with professional journalists to produce content that has gone under the radar or is too local or niche for larger markets to pick up. It sounds like a great idea and a real convergence of citizen journalists and professionals. The problems or debates rather, occur with funding. The site will not necessarily generate money through advertisers but donations, micro-payments, traditional fundraising and syndication rights. The argument is that once people or groups start funding these projects you have a conflict of interest. There will be an agenda to support and the investigative journalism team of pros and citizens becomes a PR firm.

Now, with a potentially huge pool of editors and journalists, there will be a very good and critical oversight committee. I think the citizen journalists will be more attune to this since many blogs have taken on the role of watchdog.

Lots of interesting questions about this site have been asked here.

Now, I don’t think this is the future of the newsroom but one direction the online media landscape is heading.

-Jason Aldag

My name is Max and I'm a citizen journalist for the New York Times

2006-11-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

According to this article in Techworld I may one day soon be able to say just that. One aspect of the so-called "Web 2.0" is that much of the content will be user-driven.

I've got mixed feelings about that aspect. As Ken mentioned in a post below about journalists being paid extra for blogs which prove popular, I fear that if journalism starts to gear too much towards what people want to know vs. what they need to know that we're going to have a dumber society and not a more well-informed one.

I'm of the school of thought that often times people need to be told what's important. Some people see that philosophy as condescending but I see it as reality. I think that many, if not most, people are inclined to grab the US Weekly instead of the Washington Post off the rack next to the checkout at the grocery store. I think that they should get a minor electrical shock when they pick up a tabloid and a little fairy should come down and lay a New York Times in their basket and say, "My dear, read this paper, these are things you need to know."

So, if reporters start writing fewer stories about government corruption and more stories about K-Fed and Britney because that's what people want to read, I think we're in trouble. I'm not even a big fan of tabloids like the NY Post and Boston Herald because I feel like they play to the lowest common denominator and place a higher value on sensationalism than on accuracy and thoroughness. I am a big fan of alt-weeklies like the Washington City Paper and the Boston Phoenix however, as even though they're a bit sensational by nature they often offer in-depth reporting on subjects that don't get explored in mainstream media.

Anyhow as far as citizen journalism, I think user-generated content can be useful, especially in spot news reporting, but I think it needs to be tempered with the strong hand of a traditional paper's editors. After all if I wanted to get the news from just any schmuck I could just check the million blogs run by wanna-be journalist schmucks out there.

- Max Ashburn

The Internet - A World Which All Teens Own

2006-11-08T14:17:00.000-05:00

One of the videos shown in class on Saturday, November 4, 2006 about how the internet is a ‘world of its own’ for teenagers started off a train of thought in my mind:

I have observed that parents have become more and more concerned about who their kids are socializing with online, and no wonder. Teens are spending increasingly more time communicating online with friends, and some of those friends are people they’ve never seen. They are becoming more and more reliant on the internet and other new media to communicate with their peers, and many say that they feel they can reveal more about themselves through this type of communication than telling in person.

It is possible that multiple modes of communication allow for expressing and connecting at a deeper level. Many teens report that some of their closest friendships are nurtured online and it’s easier to show their true selves online. They may hesitate to make statements to another teen in person but may feel more comfortable making the same statements in an online fashion. Because an online outlet for communication is available, the communication continues where it might not in its absence.

Social networking sites are a vital part of youth communication. Three in four teens have an online profile in a community or social networking sites. On average teens with social networking sites have 75 friends posted on that site.

Friendships are easily cultivated online because this is where youth are communicating with each other: 81 per cent have an IM buddy list, 85 per cent have an email contact list, 75 per cent have an online profile, and 77 per cent have cell phones that can have internet access.

I strongly believe that parents should be cognizant of the online world their children are socializing in and give them similar tools necessary to evaluate on-ground relationships. There are plenty of groups that parents can investigate to learn about online safety – ikeepsafe.org, blogsafety.com, wiredsafety.com and getnetwise.org.

(Source of statistics: Study released early November, 2006 by Harris Interactive and Alloy Media + Marketing).

-Rati Sud

Bigger numbers, more niches

2006-11-08T07:03:00.000-05:00

Harken back to the early days of the Internet: users were few and content with any real reach had to have mass appeal. Not anymore, says Wired's Clay Shirky:

That was when 36 million people were online. Now that more than a billion people have access to the Web, there is no longer a trade-off between size and specificity. The basic math is simple: A tiny piece of an immense pie is huge.

The huge number of Web users now means that niche Web sites on narrow topics net impressive Web traffic. Shirky calls these audiences "meganiches" and says they will have enormous impacts on business and culture.

Common characteristics among meganiche sites are their use of user-generated content and penchant for focusing in on the arcana of otherwise mundane topics. Through Gaia Online, users create customizable anime-style avatars, chat in forums and interact with others in a multi-user role-playing game all in an environment inspired by Japanese animation.

Loyalty is another defining aspect of meganiche sites. Gaia’s 5 million registered users – “Gaians” – are responsible for a substantive portion of the site’s more than 200 million daily page views.

Shirky echoes arguments made by fellow Wired writer (and Editor-in-Chief) Chris Anderson in his book, "The Long Tail." Anderson argues (read his Wired article to get a synopsis of the key points he lays out in his book) that the Web lowers barriers that until now required distributors to create lowest-common-denominator content. Gaia Online’s creators can match their supply to the demand created by a global community of Japanese animation fanatics.

Shirky raises an important caveat for those of you inspired to go out and create the Web’s next spontaneous hit: Internet traffic won’t continue to grow at the pace it has over the past decade, so site creators will have to compete with one another more and more for page views.
- Milo Sybrant

Google teams up with newspapers

2006-11-06T19:28:00.000-05:00

While pundits have been predicting the demise of traditional print newspapers in the face of online news, Google’s announcement on Sunday that its advertisers will now be able to purchase advertising space in print newspapers via its Web site. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/06/business/main2154538.shtml

Newspapers owned by The New York Times Co., Gannett, the Washington Post Co., the Tribune Co. and Hearst are among the 50 initial newspapers in the Google Print Ad program. So far, 100 advertisers including Netflix have already signed up for the program.

Advertisers will be able to bid on quarter-page ads and the newspapers will decide whether to accept the bid or pass, similar to the way Priceline.com sells airplane tickets or hotel rooms.

Google isn’t the first – Mediabids.com, which was started by a former publisher in 2003, auctions ad space in 3,500 newspapers. Mediabids takes an 8.5% cut of successful bids. During the three-month trial, Google won’t charge a commission. But if the program proves successful, Google would take a cut starting next year.

Google executives say they see big opportunity in the service. So initially, I guess, that means that they don’t foresee the demise of print newspapers.

But others see it as an attempt to lure more newspaper advertisers – especially smaller advertisers to whom the less expensive ads would appeal – to the Internet.

"These days all newspapers have a Web presence, so offering advertising by means of Internet and offline ads means Google has the opportunity to use print customers and its huge networks of offline advertising customers, and monopolize advertising as we know it," consultant Jacqueline Hole told Forbes.com.

With advertising revenues slipping – the Newspaper Association of America says it is still a $49-billion business – the program can only help the newspapers’ bottom line.

-- Mark H

Blogging for Dollars

2006-11-05T21:47:00.001-05:00

I heard this story on NPR on the way home from class last night: http://www.onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm110306d.mp3

Other people in the class are probably in a better position than me to comment on it from a professional standpoint. But my gut feeling is that it’s a little disturbing, to say the least.

The magazine, Business 2.0, will be paying their reporters extra to provide blog commentary. The extra pay won’t be at a flat rate. Instead, the reporters’ pay will be based on the popularity of their commentary. The more people read a blog entry, the more the writer of that entry will be paid from ad revenue generated from that page.

In the story, the interviewer brings up several points with the magazine’s editor, who differentiates between the world of print media and a “world of commentary and instant analysis.”

Hopefully I’m not being naïve about this, but should reporters in their role as journalists be providing commentary on anything? The editor seems to make the argument that in this new world, his reporters need to participate in the “blog” medium to stay current. If what he’s referring to is maybe analyses of issues, that’s one thing. But if it’s the reporters’ own views on the issues, even in a blog, it would seem to negate their objectivity, at least in the magazine’s readers’ minds.

Separately, because reporters would have an incentive to write to the broadest audience, wouldn’t this also lead to stories that may grab visitors’ attention, but not necessarily have great import to society, at the expense of otherwise dull stories that might be more important? The editor said the reporters will have an incentive to write only articles that would be of interest to Business 2.0 readers, but this seems to be a rather large loophole.

Not really addressed in this six-minute story are two additional issues. Because the reporters are blogging as employees of Business 2.0, would the magazine be liable for any non-factual statements made by reporters on their blogs? Similarly, what happens if a reporter makes a statement contrary to the editorial stance of the magazine?

I’d be interested in hearing what other people think. Thanks!

--Ken C.

Welcome

2006-10-28T17:10:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Scan-N-Land, a blog for Interactive Journalism students in American University's weekend master's program. Here's the place to share thoughts/links on good (and bad) Web presentation and writing.
-- Professor Eisman