July 2007
40 posts
3 tags
Facebook streamlining it all
Facebook might be hurting the already tiny circulation numbers of the campus weekly at my small liberal arts alma mater, but it sure did streamline one thing: getting in touch with people. Before Facebook (dark ages for colleges, I’m sure), contacting a source meant calling a dorm phone line that often wasn’t even hooked up to a phone or sending email to an email address that might not...
Five tips for journo grads →
Number four — get a swanky cell phone that does pictures, video and audio — is something that I’d never considered before. (But should, especially in context of the item below.)
In Africa, cell phones become the journalist's... →
Reporters are using high-tech phones to take pictures, make videos and type out stories. Then they upload their content to the Web over GPRS — no Internet connection required.
The Web changes the newsroom, with uneven results →
Technology changed both the NYT and Bloomberg’s newsrooms — but one did better than the other.
X-treme minimalist Web 2.0 journalism →
Here’s a difficult assignment:Cover a 6-mile run with 15,000 registered participants, including a few hundred elite runners looking to finish in the money, and do it as live as possible. And of course, if you want to keep up at all, you have to do it while running.Wow. Truly inspiring.
To be hyperlocal, forget about local politics →
For it to stick, papers must overcome institutional blocks within themselves:I’m not concerned that “hyperlocal” is the wrong strategy. I’m more worried about whether we can actually execute on it. Will our editors and reporters ever willingly forsake a few meetings at city hall in favor of a Eagle Scout promotion or volunteer fire department carnival?
Harry Potter and the Future of Print? →
Design Observer watches the latest Harry Potter movie and loves its newspapers:
It is The Daily Prophet which emerges in this film as a secondary character, performing interstitial cameos made all the more exhilarating because the camera sweeps in and out, ricocheting off the page, magnifying and dramatizing a typographic vocabulary that combines a slightly mottled, letterpress-like display face...
There's a new five-minute preview for The Golden... →
This movie is going to be so awesome.
6 tags
Newspaper Web sites can grow with calendars and...
Robin “Roblimo” Miller, of Slashdot fame, writes an article for USC Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review on how newspapers can use the internet to their advantage. Slashdot is nearing its tenth birthday — making it positively ancient in Web terms — and even predates the modern blog era, so it’s safe to say that Miller knows what he’s talking about. He has a great love...
New model for online newspaper ads →
Right now, ad sales are tied to the old-media model of limited space — but just like infinite column inches for stories, there is infinite space online for ads. The new media way? Sell the users to advertisers instead.
Oh no, the bloggers are coming! →
Fox News warns us about those “internet assassins” — the bloggers. They need to calm down. They’ll be obsolete in a few years, anyway.
Use caution when reading too much into latest Pew... →
I just don’t see how this question and response helps us understand: What type of video production actually appeals to an online audience?
Online tools for manipulating media →
Online media is exploding…and with it, a new class of creative people producing their own music, podcasts, professional-level photography and video shows. We’ve compiled the largest list so far of useful tools for self-made photographers, videobloggers, podcasters and musicians. List day continues. Mashable lists over 400 tools for online media. (Via News Videographer.)
When to know if a story works well with video →
A list of story types that match well with a video component, along with links to examples. It must be list day today. (Via Journerdism.)
Online journalism’s must-read blog posts →
I’m linking to this now, but I’ll need to go back and digest them later. Twelve “classic” blog posts re: online and what it means for journalism.
2 tags
Breaking news: old media doesn't understand new →
Few things to me are more vital than journalism practiced according to high standards. Simply put, Google could do much more to protect this public trust: Offer support to journalism education and professional groups dedicated to truth seeking and time-honored ethical values. And assist newspapers directly, just as I think it’s time for newspapers to band together to sue to protect...
Media critic says newspapers should give music... →
Newspapers don’t just need new readers, we need new ways to serve them. So why shouldn’t we use one of our core strengths — our entertainment coverage — as a way to transform our web site’s pop music page into a place where you wouldn’t just find us writing about music, but find the music itself? It not only makes the paper feel more relevant, but it would create a new income stream that might be...
Off the beat, former religion writer reinvents... →
Five years from now, the distinction between print and online won’t make any difference. Am I an online journalist? Of course. Am I an offline journalist? I’m that too. Are their differences? Yes, there are. The voice I use on the blog is different from the voice I use for the front page of the paper. At the beginning of this year, the Dallas Morning News dissolved its distinguished religion...
A textbook for online journalism →
I am so all over this. Could use a better cover, though. Also as a pdf. (Via Teaching Journalism Online.)
4 tags
Video and newspapers
If I’m going to succeed after j-school, I’ll need to know video; video online is the future. The CNN-YouTube debates are one sign of where things are headed, as is the Sacramento Bee’s decision to begin accepting video letters to the editor. Newspapers can do video better than TV can, because (as Jeff Jarvis observes) they’re not bogged down with the expensive and...
Eight historical mistakes the newspaper industry... →
Newspaper sites have long suffered from a lack of utility. Community calendars, if they exist at all, are too often incomplete and hard to navigate. There is also a lack of broad and rich community data. We don’t do a good enough job, even today, of turning our web sites into an information resource for our communities. About 8 years ago, newspaper companies got hot on the portal idea, but that...
The death of the newspaper is not the death of... →
The Web is an amazing format for journalism. It allows for continuous coverage, interaction and new ways of telling stories. The companies that aren’t beholden to quarterly profits will be the ones that make the biggest waves in the coming years. Pat Thornton links to an article in the NY Review of Books that asks, “Is journalism dead?” His answer is, basically, “No, not on the...
The CNN-YouTube debates will change politics →
My fondest hope is that viewers — and candidates and journalists — leave the debate impressed with at least a few of the questions. I hope they see that handing over control to us — or I should say, back to us — makes for a better discussion and, in the end, a better democracy. I hope they see that we do care, we are smart. I hope they learn to involve us in their process more often. I hope we all...
3 tags
YouTubing the editorial page
The Sacramento Bee’s public editor reports that, starting soon, the paper will be accepting video letters to the editor:
Holwerk said that, to his knowledge, no other large paper is accepting such videos, so there’s no one to learn from or “past practices” to follow. The idea is that by using YouTube or similar sites, readers would make their videos and e-mail them to...
CNN and YouTube take presidential debates into the... →
This summer and fall, YouTube, CNN and a few engaged and engaging citizens will make political history by having the presidential candidates answer questions submitted via YouTube videos. On NPR this morning, Cokie Roberts implied that, since the questions are coming from people on the internet!!!! they’re going to be much weirder than the questions that come from the, you know, normal...
3 tags
Harry Potter and the Spoilers of Doom →
The book’s been out for less than 24 hours and already Wikipedia knows everything. That’s citizen journalism at its best!
Well, I'd better get busy →
All j-school students need to know something beyond reporting. Maybe its video, maybe its Web design, maybe its Flash, but it better be something. As I finish up the summer and get ready to move off to j-school for the first time, I’m leaning more and more to focusing on the web design and development side of things. That’s where the future is headed.
3 tags
Madness continues over the NYT Harry "spoiler" →
Another Huffington Post blogger weighs in:
Rowling created this world that lives in our imaginations, and this is her final gift to her people. So no, it is not just about readers not wanting to know anything about the book in advance, it is about readers not wanting anybody else to know anything about the book in advance, so its arrival can be experienced by everyone all at once. It’s...
5 tags
Woe to those who know the ending
The New York Times got its hands on a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J.K. Rowling’s series, and posted a review on its Web site. And people are mad, MAD, that the ending might be spoiled by reports like this. Case in point:
With who knows what spoilers? That’s not rhetorical; I don’t know what spoilers because there WAS NO SPOILER WARNING EITHER...
Google moves into print with newspaper ads →
Google wants to build a complete advertising machine that lets you create a campaign and choose the mediums best adapted to your ad and budget (web, print, radio, TV, games, outdoor). Can Google’s ad operation prolong the newspaper’s demise? They might be able to help with the ad revenue slump in the short term, but ultimately the dailies need to throw in the towel and join...
What Posh Spice can teach us →
Beckham doesn’t attack Hilton, she simply asks him why he posted what he did. She’s respectful yet forceful, reasonable yet in charge, and Hilton responds.
From cat pictures to cold hard cash →
Software developer Eric Nakagawa took a piece of mindless internet humor and turned it into a full-time job. His secret? Community.Readers don’t just rate or comment on the posts. They create them. Cheezburger depends on its fans to submit pictures, write funny captions, and send them in. Nakagawa has built a tool to let readers select a ready-made photo or upload their own, add and position...
Newspaper slump slumps more steeply →
The newspaper industry has been suffering from slow growth for years, of course, after decades of declining readership. In the past couple of years, though, competition from the Internet — big portals as well as free-classified Web sites such as Craigslist — and other media has transformed anemic growth into slipping revenue. The next step to cutting costs is stopping those expensive...
2 tags
E-Prime →
Does removing all forms of “to be” from the English language improve writing or worsen it?
The Economist Style Guide →
Towns are hyperlocal social networks with data... →
Local is people. Our job is not to deliver content or a product. Our job is to help them make connections with information and each other.
A hipper crowd of shushers →
Inside the hipster-tinged world of the new public library.
Blogger, plus Jesus, hits the campaign trail →
In addition, Mr. Brody’s blog, the Brody File, which scours the conservative credentials of Republican candidates but also looks at Democrats on occasion, has become required reading for political insiders, and is frequently cited by mainstream news organizations and bloggers on both ends of the political spectrum. With its blend of reporting, jokey commentary and savvy explanations of the...
Journaling →
iPhone and the future of news →
So imagine that Wolf Blitzer on CNN is standing in front of a wall of screens showing our video from the scenes of news. Imagine that MSNBC sends us alerts when news happens live so we can tune into the internet to watch. Imagine if the BBC can assign viewers near any news event to start shooting and sharing. Imagine if CBS News prepares for an event — a storm — by asking the public to all be...