things to read « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

things to read

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.

journalism / links / things to read / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
30
Aug 11

Things to read

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.

journalism / links / Monday / photo / site / things to read / Twitter — Comments Off
29
Aug 11

Things to read

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.

journalism / links / photo / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
25
Aug 11

Things to read

Martin Belam, on the future over the past:

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.

Robust tools get stronger all the time.

Big names in journalism links: How Steve Jobs changed journalism. A study on Rupert Murdoch’s troubles. The semi-retirement of Jim Romenesko and his impact on journalism.

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.