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journalism

journalism / memories / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Sep 11

But do you remember the very best fish you ever had?

Campus is back on the grid. Things returned to normal at around 3 p.m. yesterday. In the middle of restoring power to something like 200,000 people the hardworking folks at Alabama Power determined the problem. A sprocket burned out at a sub-switching point somewhere off campus. They moved a few patch cords and the place sprang back to life.

We’ve all returned to campus. Many folks have their power back, but some have been tricked by the automated messaging system “Congratulations! You may blow dry your hair!”

The customer happily returns home to find out they’ve been duped. They still flip the switches, fully expecting the magic to happen, but nothing.

I had lunch with one of those gentlemen today. He’s very much the dapper, put-together sort. You’d never know he hasn’t had power for two days if he hadn’t said anything about it.

Lunch was at the famed Rotunda Club. (Shouldn’t we modify our understanding of fame? First page of Google returns? That surely makes you famous, right?) This is an annual lunch the university’s Office of Communication hosts for the newspaper’s editorial staff. One of the few perks they receive for the job. The company is pleasant, the food is delicious. We should meet there every week.

I was telling one of my table-mates today that the best fried chicken I’ve ever had was in that very room. It was my first time to eat at The Rotunda Club. I’d been on campus for about a week. That was four years ago. It was a feat never to be equalled.

We can all speak of memorable meals, expensive bills and tasty, sinful special plates. But a four-year-old memory of friend chicken? Those nice ladies are doing something right up there.

And then I had four meetings in a row. One of them on the newspaper, another on the Digital Video Center, another on the newspaper and so on.

I wrote emails, I composed the things to read post you see below. (I’m cross posting those on my Samford Crimson blog, if I haven’t mentioned that before.) I prepared for my class tomorrow, the workshop session I’m delivering tomorrow.

The students are working on their paper and we’ve been troubleshooting every issue under the sun. The first edition each year is always like this. It is exciting; I get to sit back and watch it grow. I have a sense of how the staff may grow around their yearlong project and that is a thrill to see happen. But this first night is always a long effort.

And there will be changes this year. We will discuss them tomorrow.

journalism / links / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Sep 11

Things to read

I don’t try to add to what Frank LoMonte writes at SPLC, because it is great, thorough and an even handed analysis by a First Amendment expert. I do commend you his piece on the unfunny joke of the disappearing rights of student journalists. One of these cases stems from a university in Alabama:

In Case 1, graduate student Judith Heenan complained on multiple occasions about the unfairness of the grading and disciplinary systems in her nursing program. In response, she alleged, college officials retaliated by issuing her unwarranted disciplinary “strikes” and then ultimately expelling her from the school.

[…]

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama was uninterested in letting Heenan’s case go as far as a trial, and summarily dismissed all of the student’s claims. The judge simply assumed that Heenan was lying, under oath, about her disciplinary strikes being undeserved and retaliatory.

Read the whole article.

The newest brain tickler, via ONA:

”’What Matters Now? Proposals for a New Front Page‘ is a 10-day collaborative effort not only to fill the walls with the Web sites, photos, videos, multimedia pieces, drawings and articles that our guests and visitors recommend, but also to explain why this material is important.

Ten years after the attacks of Sept. 11, we thought we would propose newer ways of knowing, relying on insider perspectives as well as the foreign eyewitnesses who make up much of the conventional press.

Follow the links. You can participate in this panel discussion, thought project from the comfort of your computer.

Tips on investigative reporting, follow the trail says Drew Sullivan:

And, finally, an easy visualization of the series of recent Texas wildfires.

Find the size, draw a radius and drop it over a Google Map. You’ll be amazed at how this changes your reader’s (and your) perspective on the story.

journalism / links / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
6
Sep 11

Things to read

What comes next for journalism in the social media? David Cohn has assembled a list of sites you need. He ends with a caution:

If you ignore these sites, you will fail to understand how a growing portion of the population deals with the flow of information, and inevitably how more people will deal with this flow in the future. The best journalists will be problem solvers on the social web.

If you are a journalist your JOB is to understand and insert yourself into the flow of information. That’s what Google+ represents, the flow of information.

Meanwhile as to the branding of a journalist, here’s one successful case study, by Jennifer Gaie Hellum:

It takes extra effort to maintain an online presence as a journalist. And I admitted I couldn’t tell him which tweet would be the one that got him retweeted 25 times, which blog post would be shared around the world or which skill listed on his LinkedIn profile would make him rise to the top of a search.

Nonetheless, I assured him all that extra effort was worth it because each tweet, each blog post and each online profile defined his brand and provided a virtual trail for potential employers to find him. I told him I knew this personally because I’d sent tweets that got dozens of retweets, written a blog post that someone translated into Spanish and shared from Peru to Spain and been contacted for jobs via LinkedIn, all while I was still a grad student. And I said there was no reason he and his classmates couldn’t do the same.

Today’s j-school students have everything they need to start mapping out their careers. They can write niche blogs, create simple portfolios, connect with others doing the work they aspire to do and develop professional networks across the country before they’ve even begun their job searches.

The task is clear, then.

Statistics for journalists. Great primer, there. Ten rules for visual storytelling, from Professor Mindy McAdams at Florida. It starts with this:

“I want to know more. I always want to know who, when, and where. Always! For me this is part of authentication, which is part of what makes it journalism and not interpretive art. A photo without a caption is not journalism.”

A photo without a caption is far short of adequate reporting.

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks, of course. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal, headquartered across the street from the World Trade Center, published their Pulitzer Prize-winning Sept. 12, 2001 edition.

Here’s an image of their rare six-column headline. They hadn’t ran that style since Pearl Harbor was attacked. The headlines — how do you cover a story that everyone knows about? — are instructive.

Meanwhile, our shared experience is becoming history. Here a teacher tells of his students with no memory of Sept. 11th. Too young. That changes things, doesn’t it? If you’re in college today you were probably 8- to 12-years-old. How does your generation perceive Sept. 11th? How has that perception changed in the last decade?

You’re welcome for free the story idea.

Quick hits: TV in the cloud, which gets to the heart of something mentioned here previously. This, too, will become a stratified industry as executives retrenches online. Here’s a bit more on the shifts in television distribution.

Finally, Professor Dan Gillmor said two interesting things on Twitter yesterday:

Journalists stopped being gatekeepers when they became stenographers, a long time ago.

The gatekeeper of the future is you. You will designate the people (and orgs) you trust to tell you what is going on.

That second statement is of great interest, both for you as a journalist and as a consumer. Which noun form do you suspect “you” takes there?

journalism / links / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
1
Sep 11

Things to read

Who is a member of the media? Terry Heaton argues that an appeals court has set the parameters, in a case on witnesses with cameras:

The issue advanced significantly on Friday with a stunning Federal Appeals Court ruling affirming the First Amendment right of citizens to photograph or create videos of police while they’re on duty. Police agencies in some communities were using an odd interpretation of wiretap laws to confiscate the camera phones of bystanders, and the court rightly found that to be unconstitutional.

The decision has far-reaching implications that go beyond the mere taking of pictures at crime, disturbance and accident scenes. By granting everyone this “right,” this ruling redefines “the press” in this country by shattering the myth of privilege associated with working for a so-called “legitimate” news organization. Some will cry that it opens Pandora’s Box, because a clearly defined “press” helps the machine of modernity function. This decision is potential chaotic, for example, to those cultural institutions who have a vested interest in keeping their “news” in the hands of a professional class (that can be manipulated). Think of an agency holding a press conference, for example. If press freedom applies to everybody, then that agency cannot restrict access to only those who work for a news organization.

The decision should make anybody in a traditional newsroom shutter. As we’ve been saying for years, the personal media revolution — what Jay Rosen calls “the Great Horizontal” — IS the second Gutenberg moment in Western civilization.

The full piece is worth a read.

Meanwhile, there’s great empirical evidence that public relations is doing more than coming of age. A New York Times reporter is quoted there, saying “the muscles of public relations are bulking up—as if they were on steroids.”

One of the buzzwords in the business is engagement. Old fashioned engagement still works, as this Canadian example demonstrates:

Not long ago, the Winnipeg Free Press’s social media editor hosted an online chat from her desk at the paper’s downtown news cafe. She had done it many times in recent months but something unexpected happened.

People had taken up the paper’s social media invitation to “join us” in a chat about Google+ with guests including GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram. But audience members started showing up at the cafe in person saying, “I’m here for the chat!”

“I looked at them and thought, ‘Oh…okay. That’s my mistake there. I didn’t promote this the right way,’ said Lindsey Wiebe. “But that’s also a good sign,” she added. “They’re thinking of this cafe as a hub where our events are held.”

Two speeches: This one by a Cronkite School of Journalism professor and news veteran, Tim McGuire, to the Society of Features Editors. He’s calling for a change of mindset in the industry. Baltimore Sun editor and Loyola professor discusses his first day of class speech. It’s a great read.

The Washington Post is closing all but two of their local bureaus. This is almost always a series of unfortunate events. Less coverage is never a good thing. The reasons why might surprise you.

journalism / links / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
31
Aug 11

Things to read

Paul Wallen, design director at The Huntsville Times, points out the handsome and stirring Assignment Afghanistan. It is an incredible example of bring all the tools and techniques available to tell a more complete story. There are great stories, amazing photographs, maps, flash timelines, video, the works. I encourage you to spend some time, learning about what’s happening in Afghanistan and being inspired by a wonderful project.

I mentioned Mircosoft’s breakfast media table concept in this space yesterday. I tossed out a little flip line about competing against television. And now, today, there’s Google’s CEO:

“History shows that in the face of new technology, those who adapt their business models don’t just survive, they prosper. Technology advances, and no laws can preserve markets that have been passed by.” Google chairman Eric Schmidt may not have intended those remarks as a verbal grenade, but many in his audience of 2,000 television industry members took them that way.

Schmidt was speaking at the 2011 MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, where he gave the prestigious annual MacTaggart Lecture. The festival is attended by over 2,000 people with a business interest in television, including on-air talent, broadcasters, distributors, support services and digital innovators.

Schmidt was the first person invited to give the MacTaggart Lecture who was not in the television industry. His remarks therefore were tailored to address the interests of his audience, many of whom believe Google has a destructive effect on their business and a cavalier attitude toward copyright.

Viewing will shift, he predicts, and location will become a critically important contextual signal. There’s a lot in that story worth chewing on.

Howard Owens writes:

Every time a small town n’paper publisher puts up a paywall, a potential local indie publisher should hear cash registers ringing.

He should now. Who is Howard Owens? He’s publisher of The Batavian.

There’s a simple principle of economics at play here. Scarcity creates value. But. If you hide behind a paywall you make yourself scarce, at the risk of losing an audience willing to find their information elsewhere. As you might have noticed, information is often plentiful.

Remember, yesterday, when I mentioned either human or algorithm curation? Steffen Konrath found a story that quotes a prediction of 40% of large companies using context-aware computing projects in the next few years. Context motives content and interactivity. That engagement gets results. Forbes picks it up from there:

It’s often said that “content is king.” The ability to create high-quality content that attracts, engages, retains and converts visitors is still an important objective for every website. Content is indeed still the heart and soul of every site. But if content is king, context is its queen; and together they will rule the kingdom of audience engagement and of the corporate Web site experience.

Context is the key to providing Web experiences that deliver business results. Context shortens sales cycles and grows revenue. It increases customer engagement and loyalty. Gartner describes as “Context-Aware Computing,” and defines it as “the concept of leveraging information about the end user to improve the quality of the interaction.” Gartner goes on to note, “Emerging context-enriched services will use location, presence, social attributes and other environmental information to anticipate an end user’s immediate needs, offering more-sophisticated, situation-aware and usable functions.”

[…]

There is no excuse for ignoring context on the Web. Context is just as pervasive and just as available online as it is in the physical world. It comes in as many forms including preferences, behavior, location and social networks, there to be used by savvy marketers if they only would.

There’s that word again, location.

Quick hits: Mindy McAdams on getting that first job in journalism. Great advice. Another Apple employee, another bar, another lost iPhone. I’m beginning to think this is the soft-pedal link technique of choice at Cupertino. The Iron Bowl version of Stranger in a Strange Land. GQ comes down to try to figure it all out. (Hint: Fans can be overzealous.)

Finally, the finalists for the 2011 Online Journalism Awards are publicized. Tons of great material to examine there.