September « 2012 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

September, 2012

This page will one day be replaced by interactive paper

The slides that accompanied the headlines lecture can be found over here.

I love Slideshare. It is free. You can find presentations about most anything there. You can always learn something or get a few great ideas over there. It isn’t quite the same because the person delivering the talk isn’t always there. Slideshare does let you upload audio or YouTube, though, so you can follow along easily. I didn’t have the need for that for a classroom, so I wrote a lot of words on a lot of slides. Hopefully even the student that tuned me out bothered to jot down a few of the words.

Later the students working on this week’s paper have this great idea of a cool way to do a great thing. But they can’t do this great thing in this cool way because it would be against the Rules and those are just there to force you to re-create things and find a solution to this problem in an entirely new way.

It took them about 20 minutes. Smart people.

The nice thing was that the problem came about because we had too many ads. Or so they thought. We have a full paper of ads this week, which we haven’t been able to say in a long time. Maybe this problem will happen again.

Things to read: PBS Mediashift is running a new series on new storytelling. Meanwhile Storify has storified items from ONA, curating a list of The latest online news tools and great connections.

Twitter is giving best practice advice to journalists, which would seem odd, but then you realize it is Mark Luckie, and you figure there’s probably something there.

Nola Media Group is buying iPads, among other things:

Nola Media Group announced it will fund a half-million dollars worth of initiatives to increase public access to digital media in New Orleans. New Orleans has one of the lowest rates of broadband access in the country.

Newsprint joins the internet of things, interactive paper:

The technology works with conductive inks that enable capacative touch, but full details are sketchy.

Project participants also say the technology can be used to print interactive advertisements. Interactive Newsprint collects click counts and engagement time for publishers and marketers to analyse.

Dundee University product design researcher Jon Rogers says: ”For pretty much the first time, in a scaleable and manufacturable way, we’re going to connect the internet to paper. When you start to connect that to news, we’re in a goldmine zone.”

So many applications. I want three of them, special delivered today.

Catember — Comments Off
25
Sep 12

Catember, Day 25

journalism / links / Monday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
24
Sep 12

The happy headlines

This shot is from standing just off the quad on the Samford campus, which is probably humming with people throwing frisbees whenever you read this. It doesn’t really matter when you read this. Frisbees are being thrown.

Anyway, I’m lucky enough to go in this building to work every day:

My office is on the third floor, and off the left side of the photograph.

Or, if you’re reading it at night, there is a small chance that some of the students are trying their luck wading through one of the fountains without getting caught. There are differing opinions on the challenge involved with that.

Samford is a great place, a happy place. I think I’ve met one person there who was not smiling. This is my fifth year on campus. That’s a pretty good ratio.

Oh, I’m sure some students have less than happy moments. Most people don’t like tests, or last minute projects.

Which is why I’m working long and hard on tomorrow’s lecture topic: Headlines. Everybody loves them, until they have to write them.

Occasionally I take a break from writing this stuff and pulling examples, surfing some of the best newspaper design across the country that landed on doorsteps this morning. (It is difficult to provide a good example on question marks in headlines, for example.) When I do push back from this PowerPoint there are two or three other tasks demanding attention.

Emails to write, letters to compose, numbers to crunch.

Living the Monday dream, friends.

Sad to learn of Paul Davis’ death. He was one of those strong regional voices of journalism. He helped launch a lot of careers. And those careers served communities and inspired others.

He knew the value and he taught a lot of us about it too.

It is too bad we only really contemplate that connectedness at the end. In the end that connectedness is what we hold on to.

The second most important headline of the day: AP promises members it won’t break news on social media. Everyone else will.

There are different audiences here, of course. AP sells news to media companies who sell the news to the general public. But the public, of course, have ways of seeking out the information they want. They’re often using Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter for their own wires.

And, sometimes, with poorly written, unhappy headlines.

Catember — Comments Off
24
Sep 12

Catember, Day 24

Auburn / football / weekend — Comments Off
23
Sep 12

Catching up

The all pictures Sunday feature, this time in a pleasing all football format.

When the second-ranked team in the country comes to town, and the home team has started their season 1-2, the tickets are easy to come by. And they are hard to sell. There were a lot of after-market opportunities on Saturday:

The ever popular crowd shots:

This guy can wear this as a team shirt, or as a bowling jersey. Nice to know LSU has the same priorities. Actually, when the LSU fans we were talking with asked everyone in our section to beat Bama, and all of the Auburn people asked for the same favor. That’s as good a way to say goodbye as any, I guess.

Aubie fills in on the drumline from time to time.

Nova in flight during the pregame ceremonies:

The game itself was energetic affair. LSU is not as good as their ranking would seem, it seems. Auburn is, perhaps, not as bad their start would suggest.

Michael Ford gained 42 yards on eight carries and added the only touchdown of the game for LSU:

You’d run far away, if you were Ford, and big Angelo Blackson was bearing down on you. He’s 6-foot-4, 308 pounds and can move. He’s just a sophomore:

Zach Mettenberger flips a ball out to Spencer Ware. Ware ran for 90 yards on 16 carries and caught two passes for 44 yards. That guy was almost the only productive part of the entire sputtering LSU offense. Mettenberger went 15 of 27 for 169 yards, not the road game debut he’d hoped for.

Kiehl Frazier was 13 of 22 for only 97 yards and two interceptions. Not the home game he was hoping for:

It doesn’t look like it here, but Gabe Wright, 90, just delivered a forearm to the LSU running back. And the running back bounced backward two yards. Can’t wait to see Wright play more, he’s a beast:

More crowd shots:

A member of the Tiger Paws:

Russell Shepard only had two carries for seven yards, but they came on the decisive drive as LSU moved down into field goal position.

Onterio McCalebb had a slow night, but despite that he moved into seventh place all time at Auburn in career yards. He also became the first Auburn player ever to earn 2,000 yards rushing, 1,000 yards on kick returns and 500 yards receiving. Not bad for a guy generously listed at 5 foot 11 and 173 pounds:

Tre Mason led Auburn in rushing, with 54 yards on nine carries:

Barkevious Mingo and Eric Reid combine on the tackle to bring down Mason after a gain of eight yards near midfield:

Kiehl Frazier surveys the field as he tries to move Auburn across midfield and into field goal range to try to win the game. He was unfortunately unsuccessful.

The Golden Band from Tigerland are always great performers: