February 2012
1 post
January 2012
6 posts
WaPo Cracks Down on Bad Comments →
This kind of thoughtful yet aggressive approach to story commenting is coming way late in the business, but, hell, I’m giving it props. I especially like the Post’s attempts to not just ban the idiots but reward the inspired.
You go, girl.
Public Insight Network Launches Reporting Unit →
So much love for this growing conversational news initiative. Best quote from PIN Director Linda Fantin: ”PIN is full of “unstructured data,” as Fantin calls it, “that’s never seen the light of day, because most traditional story forms are about quoting three or four people and getting a lot of context, and the rest of it is kind of buried in the reporter’s notebook.” What if, instead of...
“I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill,” he said. “And you can take the...”
– Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via infoneer-pulse) Kind of loving this guy — frankly, anyone who bucks the system.
Shirky: Paywalls Will Change What Users Want from... →
Great prognosis on how paywalls might change news sites. Now that online news consumers are paying for content, they may well demand less-intrusive advertising and higher-quality news as conversation. Already happens in public broadcasting. Way over due in other mainstream newsrooms.
December 2011
7 posts
Christmas tree
Sweets: […] I would've sawed it off myself, but you won't let me touch the weapons!
Me: [beat] And that's why. They're not weapons. They're *tools*.
He's obviously led a sheltered life ...
Virginia Tech Student Editor No Longer In News... →
Great interview with Amie Steele, who supervised coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre for the student newspaper. Breaks my heart that she left the news business after the economic downturn (or you might argue the business left her), though her gig at the U.S. Government Accountability Office doesn’t sound too shabby.
I’m most struck by the way coverage of the massacre inspired...
Ads: The Death of the User Experience
Today brings a terrific post from The Next Web on one of my all-time pet peeves: ads that block news content.
Rather than creating an environment of solicitation and respect for your audience — essential to conversational journalism in my book — such sites demean. And they are everywhere.
Pictured above is possibly the worst example I’ve seen in recent years, from my beloved hometown...
Proud Digital Furry Mammal Living in the Trees →
brizzyc:
Someone was just asking me about this, so I’m publishing this amusing exchange I had on the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Newspaper Division list serv about one year ago, when the division was debating changing its name to something a bit more digital friendly,…
This kind of thing, more than anything, gives me pause about staying in academia....
Props for Study Abroad →
Given many of you are students, perhaps soon to be graduates, you might be interested in this Tumblr blog student Chelsea Paulsen developed for her final project in my social media class.
Good stuff on a wide range of topics related to study abroad, from what programs are best to how to acclimate to your home culture once you return.
November 2011
6 posts
Spot.Us merges with Public Insight Network →
Love this merger. Combines crowdsourcing (the PIN part) with crowdfunding (the Spot.Us part) of stories. Public broadcasting has long shown citizens are willing to fund great journalism via pledge drives and other means. Why not this?
2 tags
The Social Graph is Neither →
jimray:
Perfect.
Love this hard.
October 2011
8 posts
Facebook-Only News Site Bids Farewell
I’ve been teaching my social media students about professional uses of Facebook in recent weeks, including Rockville Central, the Maryland news site that made news this spring when it moved all publishing to Facebook.
Imagine my surprise last Friday when I read its farewell note to readers, just as I was heading in to class to discuss Rockville’s success. As full-time, unpaid volunteers, Rockville...
The new gig
seoulbrother:
Have I told you all about my exciting new job? It’s at a newspaper, and I report up through the IT department.
I know what you’re thinking: IT is dead! … [But] I want executive editors to go back to doing journalism full time rather than studying analytics and SEO-backed business models. I want advertising execs to stop junking up their websites and develop products that...
1 tag
SeoulBrother: Thursday 6/28/2007 →
seoulbrother:
I saw Steve in person several times when I worked at Apple. There were the events, both public and private, the “fireside chats” broadcast to other auditoriums scattered around the company and the last time, I scored a 5th row, aisle in Town Hall. It was late 2008.
You could say Apple brought Albert and I together. He worked in IT at The (Tacoma) News Tribune while I was an...
5 tags
WatchSNL Sketch: Commenting trolls get their comeuppance
Ah snap …
(h/t @hooveree)
"Twitter-is-not-journalism" rants
Few comments convey a kind of blithe ignorance about social media these days than rants about Twitter not being the equivalent of journalism/news reporting. Duh. But they persist, often from lofty heights: professors and senior managers in newsrooms.
The latest remark came from a man I adore and whose work I’ve promoted on this blog, The (London) Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger, a staunch...
September 2011
4 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Watch“All the President’s Men” + Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” mash-up = I AM SO IN LOVE (And I am so showing this in class).
August 2011
18 posts
My 2012 SXSW Interactive Panel Picks
Journalism/technology pitches for 2012 SXSW Interactive abound, and amen for that. Continuing with my experimental research on conversational news, I’ve proposed a panel offering hard, empirical data on the journalistic value, if any, of online story commenting. This stuff is too tricky to figure out without hard data.
I’m also particularly keen on several other panels, feeling a...
7 tags
Crowdsourcing "the Quake" →
Great that mainstream media quickly sought to crowdsource this week’s East Coast quake with eyewitness accounts. But they’ve been doing that pretty handily for years. Way overdue is crowdsourcing non-breaking news, such as deeper public-policy issues that affect us all.
The day that happens represents a seismic (sorry) shift toward thinking about the audience as co-collaborator in...
What is journalism worth? →
What is journalism worth? That’s the question journalism managers and entrepreneurs have been trying to figure out ever since it became clear, years ago, that the Internet was disrupting local publishing monopolies.
And so we’ve endured years of conference panels, email exchanges, and blog posts about paywalls and paid content strategies, as publishers try to figure out exactly how much people...
6 tags
Missouri teachers group sues over social... →
infoneer-pulse:
A Missouri teachers’ union said Friday that it is challenging a new measure that restricts teachers’ use of social networking sites and their contact with students, saying it violates their constitutional rights.
The Missouri State Teachers Association said it is seeking an injunction to block enforcement of part of a law that takes effect Aug. 28. The union and several public...
2 tags
"Jeggings," "sexting" enter Oxford English... →
Aw-fully awesome.*
* File under “sign o’ the Apocalypse.”
American Drink: Get Your (Drink) T-shirt On →
americandrink:
Raise a glass. We’ve sold out.
Yep, after over a year of living the “Just doing it for fun!” lie, your pals at American Drinkcorp, LLC have managed to shake the integrity bug and muscle our way up to the corporate teat for a big ol’ mugfulla Sellout Punch. …
Well hello, daddy …
2 tags
Online Commenting: Conversation Friend of Foe?
SXSW 2012 Interactive Panel Proposal
Not long after I figured out a way to empirically measure the somewhat squishy phenomenon of conversational journalism, I started getting questions from people about whether story commenting was an example of it (see this post and this post for discussions). I couldn’t say definitively because I didn’t test story commenting in any of my controlled experiments....
What happened to Obama? →
A painful but important read. Sigh.
