Taught my first class of the semester today. It is a two-hour, one day a week experience. Today we met for about 90 minutes.
I gave them a quiz.
Oh, we did the getting-to-know you portion of the class and they received the syllabus. There were some slides and lots of words and pictures. We rushed headlong into Associated Press style.
And then I gave them homework.
Too much for the first day?
Here was there assignment. Feel free to play along, if you like. Ernest Hemingway is said to have written a six word story that was among his best work. (Even Snopes isn’t sure if this is true or apocryphal, but it works for an exercise in conciseness.)
The story:
For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.
Beginning, middle and end. So I asked the class to bring back their six word stories next week. The only rules were that it had to be six words, and death could not be the theme.
Now I have to come up with one, too. Feel free to leave yours in the comments below.
And now a pretty picture of a tiny part of our lovely campus:
Samford is a beautiful place.
Speaking of photos, the August photo gallery is now online. Also, you’ll notice a new piece of art across the top of the page, that’s on Cannon Beach, in Oregon. I’d like to go back there soon. Care to donate to the cause?
Naturally when one banner comes off the blog it remains on the Former Blog Banners page. Not sure why I even maintain that page, other than it is neat to see the places I’ve gone all together. Some are more interesting than others, but all of them passed muster to make it here. There’s at least a half-baked story behind each of them.
The piece I wrote here on Saturday was re-published on The War Eagle Reader. It is getting some nice comments, too. Seems everyone is ready for football.
Finally, there’s this, the latest wonderful piece of medical science:
Where did you have breakfast this morning? Was it on a table like this?
It’s based on Microsoft’s Surface technology, modified by the R&D Lab to create a Times-oriented user experience that reimagines the old “around the breakfast table” reading of the paper. You’ll notice that, in the demo, news is both highly personal and highly social — and that the line between “consumer” and “news consumer” is a thin one. Ads look pretty much the way we’re used to them looking, but they’re also integrated into the tabletop flow of information.
And news itself, in the same way, collapses into the broader universe of information.
Who has time for reading with breakfast? I suspect the biggest opponent will be the television, which may be hard to uproot in the short term.
The ad integration is nice. The curation, either human or algorithm, is even more important in this model.
The first time Bill Gates demoed this premise it was incredible to conceive. Now the interface just looks more and more like an Apple screen. Odd how that happens.
You could be reading about a Twitter libel case on your breakfast infonewstainment table one day. They’re popping up. Be aware of what you say, and of how libel laws work.
Journalists who manage to get that addition to their breakfast nook may be spending a lot of bagel time over LinkedIn.
A new survey from Arketi Group found that the percent of journalists on LinkedIn has increased from 85 percent in 2009. Why?
LinkedIn provides an easy way for reporters to connect with sources.
“It comes as no surprise more BtoB journalists are participating in social media sites, especially LinkedIn,” Mike Neumeier, principal of Arketi Group, says, “LinkedIn provides an online outlet for them to connect with industry sources, find story leads and build their professional networks.”
While more journalists are on LinkedIn than any other social network, they have increased their presence on other networks, too. The survey found that 85 percent of journalists are on Facebook and 84 percent use Twitter. Only 55 percent of journalists used Facebook in 2009, and 24 percent were on Twitter.
Google+ should be included in there too, because it will work very well once it gets passed the early adoption stage. Also, as one commenter under that report notes, there is a difference between having an account and using it. I personally use LinkedIn only sparingly. And yet I get more mail from them than anyone.
Quick hits: Kentucky athletics cracks down on student reporters. (Now with an update.) There’s a bit of muscle flexing from the SIDs and a big reaction from the student-journalists (and the APSE and SPJ). The first in a big wave of 10th anniversary stories coming up, this one examining how we’ve changed since Sept. 11th. Answer: Far more than we’d like. One hundred story ideas, nice feature idea for when you’re reaching for copy. And Forbes personalizes the Washington Post’s infographics designer.
Finally, the Associated Collegiate Press’ multimedia story of the year finalists. All of them are worth checking out. Many are worth studying for inspiration. Great work by busy student-journalists in there.
It was vital before the weekend, even as it is dated now, but here’s a bit of specialty reporting worth your attention. What do you do with prisoners during a hurricane? Nothing, apparently, if you’re New York City:
“We are not evacuating Rikers Island,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a news conference this afternoon. Bloomberg annouced a host of extreme measures being taken by New York City in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, including a shutdown of the public transit system and the unprecedented mandatory evacuation of some 250,000 people from low-lying areas. But in response to a reporter’s question, the mayor stated in no uncertain terms (and with more than a hint of annoyance) that one group of New Yorkers on vulnerable ground will be staying put.
New York City is surrounded by small islands and barrier beaches, and a glance at the city’s evacuation map reveals all of them to be in Zone A (already under a mandatory evacuation order) or Zone B–all, that is, save one. Rikers Island, which lies in the waters between Queens and the Bronx, is not highlighted at all, meaning it is not to be evacuated under any circumstances.
Speaking of the storm, FEMA asked people to use Twitter and Facebook during the bad weather, for fear of otherwise overloading the cell phone system. How many stories are in that sentence, do you think? Meanwhile, the New York Times says Twitter was a playground.
Was Irene much ado about nothing? As of this writing there are 24 deaths and a great deal of flooding, but was the media too panicked? Did the system get too much hype? You could argue both sides. On one hand you never know about hurricanes until they make landfall, and by then it is too late for the media and government to caution and evacuate people. On the other hand, there’s Howard Kurtz:
Someone has to say it: cable news was utterly swept away by the notion that Irene would turn out to be Armageddon. National news organizations morphed into local eyewitness-news operations, going wall to wall for days with dire warnings about what would turn out to be a Category 1 hurricane, the lowest possible ranking. “Cable news is scaring the crap out of me, and I WORK in cable news,” Bloomberg correspondent Lizzie O’Leary tweeted.
[…]
But the tsunami of hype on this story was relentless, a Category 5 performance that was driven in large measure by ratings. Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even briefly—say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya—was to risk driving viewers elsewhere. Websites, too, were running dramatic headlines even as it became apparent that the storm wasn’t as powerful as advertised.
Copy editing extends to television graphics. Look at what Irene did to some of our nation’s finest cities:
That’s from MSNBC, and probably a layer or software glitch. “That’s live television” some may say, but remember, in times of crisis it is information people need. Be sure you have it right.
Quick hits: We are all members of the media now. I’ve been saying it in classes and presentations for years now. Some of our peers disagree, but the New York Times sees it. How can Google+ be used in journalism education? Here’s a primer from Bryan Murley. Half of U.S. adults use social media, says a new Pew study. The publishing end run on Apple. Publishers want their control, but Apple’s closed model insists they have control; publishers were only going to give for so long.
There’s a saying in broadcasting that every mic is a hot mic, which means be careful what you say around every microphone, because you might be broadcasting without realizing it. ESPN is telling their employees to consider Twitter a hot mic. Agree or disagree? Internet use is on the rise for farmers. The 9/11 archives, raw footage from a wide variety of TV stations and networks during 9/11/01, and the days that followed, is now online.
Finally, typos are bad (says the guy who leaves a lot of them on his own site). Big typos on signs at school, signos, are embarrassing.
What concerns me is that there are a whole generation of students who are being encouraged to pay for qualifications that will equip them to work in a 90s newsroom, because the people designing the courses and the industry input they receive are all from people who cut their teeth in a 90s newsroom.
A piece worth reading in its entirety.
Five curation tools you should know about. Pearltrees is a new one to me. I’ll check it out this weekend. The others are variations on one another, reminding you that you don’t have to be in every space. At some point these things are competing with one another. You want to be doing your work on the one that is the winner, which is to say has an ease of use, flexibility to do what you need and the place where your audience is willing to follow (or is already building a community). Otherwise you just build up platform fatigue.
What’s more, curation is a function, not your every solution. All of these things, all of them, are options, tools and components at your disposal. As a journalist your job is to amass large amounts of information, filter, screen and select. Your job here, with these many platforms, tools and doodads, is similar.
Copy editors: read the story before writing the headline.
Also, beware of sneaky copy in those pull out boxes.
Everyone knows of Twitter, and the wise ones are using it to their advantage in their professional life. But now comes Pinq Sheets:
Unlike Klout and other similar services, Pinq Sheets is keyword- and campaign-based, as opposed to user-based. And because Pinq Sheets uses Twitter’s streaming API (instead of the search API), Pinq Sheets subscribers can pull down entire Tweets, rather than just numbers.
Pinq Sheets also does the dirty work for you, compiling the data in readable graphs (see below) that can easily be distributed to your clients. This is pretty stellar. When we do reporting for our clients, we find they love graphs and infographics. When we can make them pretty AND useful, so much the better. Seeing information and insights, for some, is often more valuable than reading a report.
[…]
Additional features include showing users which individuals talk about a particular hashtag or search term the most, giving you valuable insights about either your brand or the brand advocates/influencers.
“If you’re trying to market to a niche, this is the tool that’s going to tell you how to do it and who to talk to,” Jen says.
Was Twitter a vehicle for riots in England? A Guardian study:
Analysis of more than 2.5m Twitter messages relating to the riots in England has cast doubt on the rationale behind government proposals to ban people from social networks or shut down their websites in times of civil unrest.
A preliminary study of a database of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian, appears to show Twitter was mainly used to react to riots and looting.
Timing trends drawn from the data question the assumption that Twitter played a widespread role in inciting the violence in advance, an accusation also levelled at the rival social networks Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger.
That’s part of a quality series from the Guardian, Reading the Riots.
When Kathy Johnson was raising her rambunctious teen son just a few years ago, she never dreamed Sgt. William David Johnson would become the 571st soldier to have the honor.
Johnson, a 2006 graduate of Rehobeth High School, will make his last walk as a Tomb Sentinel on Sept. 9, in front of a proud family and grateful nation.
[…]
“The Walk” itself is one of the most celebrated and viewed ceremonies in the U.S. military. Sentinels, dressed in ceremonial blues, carry an M-14 rifle and walk in front of the tomb. He walks 21 steps in one direction in front of the tomb, then turns and faces the tomb for 21 seconds. Then, he turns to face back down the mat, changes his weapon to the outside shoulder, counts 21 seconds, then steps off for another 21-step walk down the mat. He faces the Tomb at each end of the 21 step walk for 21 seconds. The sentinel then repeats this over and over until he is relieved at the Guard Change.
Sentinels guard the tomb through all weather at all times. The ceremony is often witnessed by large crowds during good weather. Often, however, the sentinel guards the tomb alone.
Speaking of natural disasters, the 59. magnitude earthquake in Virginia. Arizona State’s Professor Thornton said “J-students: If tweets from people you follow didn’t include earthquake tweets, you need to follow more people, more news.” And that point is true, especially when Twitter was out in front of cable news in the first few minutes. One must also be tempered by the knowledge that there’s an echo chamber effect. Panic on Twitter gave way to business as usual shots from most places that felt the tremblor. As in all things in life, balance is the key.
Here’s the U.S. Geological Survey data, posted immediately after the quake. The intensity map and the shake map which is one of the first examples of online crowd sourcing? “Did you feel it? Tell us?” There’s an organic and realtime feel to that map. They also say “If you felt the 5.9 quake, let us know…help us improve the data.”
Sky News has done a great job with Alex Crawford in Libya, earning praise for the network while their BBC colleagues have been a bit behind.
She’s done a fine job throughout, and this piece is a bit more personal, with more personal pronouns than you might expect, but the tech they are using is ingenious. “Sky News sources told The Daily Telegraph that the astonishing footage from the streets of Tripoli was produced using an Apple Mac Pro laptop computer connected to a mini-satellite dish that was charged by a car cigarette lighter socket.”
I like to tell students that the world they work in will be different than the working world we know today. How you do the job by the time you’re getting ready for retirement could be almost unrecognizable. Consider, a woman working in a newsroom today, and what she had to work with when she started in the 1960s. But even before that, there’s a slightly more contemporary question. What devices will you carry in a decade?
Futurist and author Kevin Kelly posits that in 10 years time, each of us will carry 2 computing devices on us: “one general purpose combination device, and one specialized device (per your major interests and style).” He also predicts that we will wear on average 10 computing things: “We’ll have devices built into belts, wristbands, necklaces, clothes, or more immediately into glasses or worn on our ears, etc.”
The piece touches on form factors, but doesn’t mention motility, which will remain a pertinent point.
The comments are great, and even includes a few links of possibilities, like this one:
Still looking for a story idea? Alabama is one of just six states that have lost jobs within the last year. There are plenty of stories waiting for you to discover.
