February 2008
61 posts
Prologue — a distributed Twitter? →
I certainly hope so. Twitter’s outages over the past two days have been driving me crazy.
January 2008
133 posts
The New York Times has a fantastic interactive... →
Watch the debate on one side while a transcript scrolls by on the left in sync with the video. You can also jump to specific questions or parts of the debate. This is very handy for catching up on the debate or referencing a specific point — when a specific point of the transcript is clicked, the video automatically cues up so that you can watch it.
Then a second tab opens a transcript analyzer:...
“Before I build my argument that there is a public bias against the press, I will...”
– Poynter Online - The Public Bias against the Press (via friends)
Twitter Down For the Debates; Twitter Forces My... →
Twitter’s useful for keeping tabs on breaking news — everyone can liveblog at once. So why does it always go down at the worst time?
The problem here is that every time Twitter is about to be at its most useful, it disappears on me. I’m starting to understand what it must be like to be friends with Clark Kent - except there is no Superman swooping in to save Twitter in times of disaster.
...
CUNY Journalism School Launches Web Site to Help... →
Via Will Sullivan.
Twitter as news delivery system →
Matthew Ingram talks about the ways Twitter has become, in the words of another blogger, “a platform for serious discourse”:
The volume of Twitter posts during the debates and the voting was incredible, and it was like a front-row seat to the action. Some people were watching CNN, some watching other shows, some were at actual events; it was quite a sea of information and opinion all blended...
Funding Restored to NJ College Paper →
At least temporarily — the newspaper and the student government have 30 days to work out their differences.
In memory of chicagocrime.org →
Adrian Holovaty, EveryBlock’s developer, takes a look back on the shuttering of his first hyperlocal mashup more than two years after it launched.
This is one the purest examples of journalism in the service of the public interest. People need the information and then they can come to get it. There’s still a place for big-picture analysis, but as far as giving information to people goes you...
TIME’s Swampland liveblogs the Republican debate,... →
XML and data in Flash for smooth updates →
Clearly I need to be learning a few more skills than the j-school’s teaching me right now.
A breaking news Google Map →
Great idea for using a Google Map to help readers contribute to a breaking story.
What’s an online developer to do when faced with a breaking news event that’s spread out over a large region? If you’re Ryan Pitts, online director with my newspaper’s website Spokesmanreview.com, you whip up a Google Map and solicit viewers to send in their snow stories and photos.
“Smooth move. Use Youtube to immediately respond to the State of the Union....”
– Will Sullivan on Barack Obama’s YouTube response to the State of the Union
Is journalism a good career choice for most of... →
This is fun to read. I’m graduating in seven months — surely that’s enough time to learn a few other skills?
Where LAX is not an airport
doree:
Tom Scocca argues that the Baltimore Sun died the day its editors assumed that people in Maryland might not know what lacrosse was.
Comment on “A lot of the best young journalists... →
Pat says:
Comment of the year. Wow. A must read.
Student Dispute Threatens Montclair State’s Paper →
The student government was shutting reporters out of meetings, so the student paper — paid for by student funds — retained a lawyer to advise them on their rights. The student president fired the lawyer, and has now told the paper’s printer not to print any more issue. This is all very serious, of course, with a big bunch of press freedom and public access issues tangled together.
But then take...
Funding journalism →
New Tumblr Features →
bnelson:
For those of you that aren’t aware of the new features or want a detailed list of what’s new, nostrich gives a great overview of them here.
Know what the camera guy thinks
Yes, the State of the Union will be starting any minute now, but I wanted to point everyone to Jim Long’s twitter feed. I’ve been following him for a while now and the last few days have been really interesting. This is one of those things that you would never get before the Web — minute-by-minute updates from one of the media’s cameramen. It’s awesome.
Readers owe nothing to publishers →
Newspapers’ Web ads suck. This is probably the most truth I have read in one place in a while.
If I register with the LA Times website, the Times insists on spamming me with commercial e-mails for products about which I do not care. If I opt-out of the e-mails, the Times cancels my website registration. (Which is why I don’t have a Times website registration anymore, and read the site...
Tumblr has added a ton of new custom theme tags →
I can now ditch CSS tricks to get a different footer to display on permalink pages. Also, you can finally do cool things with reblogs!
Team Obama Is Courting Everybody But the Press →
Well — thanks to the Internet, he doesn’t need to.
J-Schools: Don’t waste precious time on... →
YES. It’s so frustrating that I signed up for a computer-aided design course and we’re learning Dreamweaver instead of something more useful. Thankfully I spoke with my professor about it and he’s going to let me do something on my own. Because seriously: it’s the CMS that makes a media Web site work.
Photographers’ Rights →
A journalist is accosted for taking photographs of a federal building for an article on green architecture.
When I got to to the building, I stood across the street with my wide angle (to fit the huge structure in the frame) and put the camera to my face. And after a few clicks of the shutter, I hear this man yelling at me, “Ma’am! Ma’am! You can’t photos here!!!” It was the security guard,...
Watch for it →
Few people buy wristwatches anymore — because of cell phones.
“Packages that contain “books” go out at the Media Mail rate, but packages that...”
– Derek Powazek - Fray Issue 1 Ships!
The decentralized, unpackaged media world →
You no longer need to check the news to get the news.
“There is a fundamental lack of innovation at newspapers. It’s a huge reason why...”
– The Journalism Iconoclast » Innovation is the path to salvation
Former New Republic Writer Charges Social Web... →
Episode #576 of “Old media doesn’t understand new.”
Anatomy of a local breaking news story →
Rob Curley examines how the internet has changed the way some newspapers cover breaking news like yesterday’s Las Vegas hotel fire, and outlines how they can be prepared for situations like the one the Las Vegas Sun faced.
Stop Smiling Magazine: The magazine for... →
On Tumblelogs →
Richard Dunlop-Walters explains why tumbelogs are the future of blogging.
Even the most studious of persons needs a break. In between all this bettering ourselves, our lives are punctuated by advertisements, off-the-cuff quips with friends, and the funny pages in your favourite newspaper. And that’s what tumblelogs do — or will do — provide the in-between.
It seems like we are headed for a...
“As “audience” transmutes to “community,” and the level of communication and...”
– Six roles for the modern journalist
Good video should connect emotionally to your... →
More things journalism can learn from porn →
Old media aren’t the only ones facing a wave of disruptive amateurs:
Guccione’s Penthouse empire fell into bankruptcy. Hefner’s very smart daughter Christie — who was a keynote speaker at a Newspaper Association of America conference several years ago — has effectively preserved the company by aggressively moving into new media and launching many new non-Playboy brands....
The Reuters mobile journalism toolkit →
I want one! (Via Jack Lail.)
EveryBlock and the Definition of News →
To me, the main differences between EveryBlock and some of the efforts at presenting data that newspapers have developed are these: First, EB aggregates in a way that others don’t, both in terms of number and variety of sources. Second, unlike most newspaper products, it seems to be designed to let the consumer make the judgment of what’s news.
You know, you don’t have to do video →
No video can be a lot better than a bad video.
It was shot on a cheap camera with an internal mic and without a tripod. The video doesn’t sound good, doesn’t look that good and — this is rich — someone walks in front of the camera at some point.
The New York Times Delivers News and Opinion... →
This is awesome. See below re Twitter and iPhones. Who needs a physical paper anymore?
Fire news spreads faster than ever →
Here in Indiana, thousands of miles away, I might have caught this news blip on tonight’s news. (Except I only watch when I’m at work, and I’m off today.) If I was a 24-hour-TV-news junkie, which I used to be and am still recovering from, I may have caught it on CNN. (But my TV’s in my living room down the hall collecting dust. No, really, it’s been about a month since I turned it on.)
I...
Lately I’m amazed by how much Scientology resembles the cosmology of early 90s Power Rangers.
Helvetica, the movie →
Technically, it’s just a documentary about a typeface, but I think it’s far more interesting than that. I highly recommend this movie, if only to get a sense of the impact Helvetica has had on the world.
Note: this is a Google Video link, so watch the movie before it gets taken down.
— cubicle17
EveryBlock launches, brings local back →
I want one of these for my neighborhood.
EveryBlock is doing what newspapers used to do by bringing local back.
The premise of the site is simple. Like Twitter’s “What are you doing?”, EveryBlock asks “What’s happening in my neighborhood?”