Just wanted to pass along a cool multimedia piece I came across. This is the producer's first multimedia project and I think it is very well done. There's a stretch of silence about 3/4 of the way through that is very powerful. The producer is a graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, which is where I also studied creative nonfiction and radio product… Continue
So amid plenty of news about newspaper woes (I'm not bothering to link anything--news of this is ubiquitous), I see this tutorial about how to make a broadsheet paper easier to read on the bus.
It doesn't take much to draw some sort of connection: why make it hard to read the paper on the train, bus, whatever. Why make readers hack the paper? Besides, they're not the only ones who dislike broadsheet.
My fa… Continue
What is your newspaper's policy on staff blogging? Are staff bloggers compensated? How about time management? Do you have to work it into your current schedule, or do you get a break on other work to make time for blogging? How about beat blogging vs. personal-interest blogs? Can you tell we're having time-management issues with our staff bloggers!?! Anyway, let me know how your paper does it, so I can get an idea of how to work this out. Thanks! Continue
I'm looking for beat reporters pushing the practice of beat reporting on the Web.
Reporters using online tools like blogging, social networking, Wikis, Google Groups, Google Sites, databases, etc to make their reporting better, more modern and more efficient. The kinds of reporters who embrace two-way communication.
If you know of beat reporters that fit this description, please let me know. In fact, we can use the comments section of this post to discuss beat reporters who are pushing the pra… Continue
Posted by Patrick Thornton on July 6, 2008 at 8:19am —
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I'm the editor of my Georgetown student newspaper's blog, Vox Populi. The blog started two years ago, so I give my older editors credit for getting a blog so early. Unfortunately, it hasn't had runaway success--about 100-150 hits a day. I want to change that, big time.
My editor-in-chief said that if I can get the blog up to 3000 hits each day for two days in a week, she'll throw a party in the blog's honor, replete with three crowns f… Continue
We are currently in a hot debate about posting copy to the web without any editing.
We're not talking full stories, we're not talking on a daily basis, we're talking every so often, when there's breaking news, posting up a short on it right away, while someone edits the full story, when there's only one reporter in the newsroom.
We're an afternoon paper, so at night there are very few people around. We do schedule at least two folks in the newsroom most nights, but sometimes (like during vacat… Continue
Life isn’t always easy. Some say life is a struggle, a challenge. We often hear the saying “up a creek without a paddle.” Life can be a test, you’re either prepared or unprepared. Who we become as adults is greatly influenced by the way we are raised as children. The abilities and skills to survive and excel in this test of life are forever ingrained in us by our parents and educators. In this fast-paced ever evolving world, the prepared are able to rise to the challenges of life and fortune of… Continue
An off duty Fireman saved two 13-year-old Dorningham boys from drowning in the Queen Victoria Lake yesterday when their canoe capsized.
Mark Smith and George Eliot got into difficulties when their canoe was pulled over the weir by a strong current.
Neither of the boys is a good swimmer or had been canoeing before. They borrowed the canoe from a school friend.
The fireman who chose to remain anonymous, saw the boys floundering in the water and he jump and spared them from drowning.
He pulled… Continue
Posted by Treasure on July 1, 2008 at 7:33am —
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Amid rising water, sandbags and calls to evacuate, the staff at the Cedar Rapids Gazette did a heroic job of bringing readers a stream of breaking news and multimedia in early June powered by generators and with floodwaters just a few feet away. Most impressive was the degree to which the paper responded to the call, answering readers' needs and their feedback on the fly and with a brand new editor at the helm. Reader resources continue in the paper's… Continue
Posted by Matt Neznanski on June 30, 2008 at 11:30am —
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posted this text on my blog a few days ago but thought it would made sense to post it here as well.
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i always thought that internet and globalisation will eventually empower local media. it’s easy to get the latest about the major events on the other side of the world but the easiest it is to access that information, the bigger it is the need for people to get information about their own community (and this doesn’t only apply to a certain geographic area, but rather to any group that shares… Continue
Posted by Vera Alves on June 29, 2008 at 5:02am —
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WiredJournalists.com keeps running Google ads for the Pulse Smartpen, and frankly I've seen ads for it all over the journo blogosphere to the point of annoyance.
But I do keep noticing them, and for the first time ever, I clicked on a Google ad for pure curiosity about the product.
OH. MY. GOD. I am drooling.
My inner gadget nerd screams I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE!!
My inner journalist says "Hold on, let's research this first, you were lured in by… Continue
It's been a few days since I set up my website, but I finally posted the first blog. Or, is it blogged the first post?
Anyways, it's a bit purple prose at the moment, but I'll get into the swing of things as the blog grows. Would very much appreciate your feedback! Continue
I've recently become fascinated by Wordonistas and Grammar Nazis who professionally edit grammar and punctuation. I've always been interested in the subtleties of language, but only recently have I become aware that you can edit socially (as opposed to editing in a cold dark classroom alone). See my list of journalists' blogs on the right? Fully half of those are editors' blogs - and the list is far from c… Continue
Posted by Lacey Waymire on June 25, 2008 at 2:03pm —
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In light of newly-christened flip-flopper Sen. Barack Obama's announcement that he'll not be taking public campaign funds, I thought it might be helpful to pass along a link originally given to me by one of my college professors.
OpenSecrets.org's Presidential page has a nice little tool that keeps track of who's been giving how m… Continue
Posted by Paul Balcerak on June 25, 2008 at 1:36pm —
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I lost all my bookmarks, and I'm Googling like there was no tomorrow to find a couple of incredibly valuable pages I lost.
For example, there was one web site that had several incredible research links in one place. It was kind of like this: http://www.journalistexpress.com/public, but I don't think that was it per se.
Do you know of any sites like that? Please please list them here! Continue
Shame on me for reading it first somewhere else, but my eyes were glued to Web coverage of Iowa flooding by the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
My friend Jason Kristufek heads up the paper's Web efforts, and he's been doing them proud.
From a map-enabled display of stories as they were breaking (sorry, no link) early on and wall-to-wall coverage during the event to reader-drive… Continue
Posted by Matt Neznanski on June 24, 2008 at 11:18am —
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A seasoned reporter here in the newsroom just redefined "beating the competition" for the online age: He was delighted because he posted a breaking news item to our blog before the subject's wikipedia article was updated!
Oh, what hath Web 2.0 wrought?
(The item concerns Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling probably retiring.) Continue
I just started a discussion in the video group in which I ask what are the best tools to produce video lectures? Here at the FU Berlin I'm in the exciting position to set up a production team to do just that - alas I don't know which camera to use. PLease help me out! Kolja Continue
Posted by Kolja on June 20, 2008 at 4:49am —
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Congrats to former Sonic Ray Allen, who, along with his Boston counterparts, destroyed the L.A. Lakers last night to capture his first and the team's 17th NBA title.
In the meantime, the city of Seattle's fight to keep carpetbagging Sonics owner Clay Bennett from moving the team to Oklahoma City continues to go almost completely unnoticed…Continue
Posted by Paul Balcerak on June 18, 2008 at 10:30am —
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I've had a couple experiences in the past couple weeks that have made me think hard about the consequences, intended and not, of how technology-- particularly search -- and news interact.
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The first came a couple of weeks ago when I was set upon at a conference by a fairly prominent broadcast journalism producer. See, three years…
Two months ago you may have seen this story about a Journalism grad student who twittered his way out of jail. He was covering protests in Egypt when police tossed him and his translator in jail. Because he still had his cell phone, James Karl Buck was able to use Twitter, a text-messaging network, to let his teacher and colleagues know he had been arrested. From there, his friends hire… Continue
Posted by Lacey Waymire on June 14, 2008 at 12:39pm —
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... I will take those remarks and tuck them away, away in a tiny "lock-box", where all bad thoughts go.--Darrell Hammond playing Al Gore on SNL, 2000
One thing I love about good old-fashioned journalism is the practice of recognizing a mistake when one is made, correcting it and moving on.
Recently, both the L.A. Times and… Continue
Posted by Paul Balcerak on June 13, 2008 at 12:35pm —
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Received a crash course in photoshop, soundtrack pro, finalcut pro and flash in the last three days. Dreamweaver is on deck for this afternoon. My head is about to explode, but this stuff is great. Now how to utilize these skills back in the news room? Hmm... Continue
It's been a prolonged absence from the blogosphere for me — and more on that in a later post — but I'm back with an interesting link to an article on the New York Times' Web site. The gist: some legal experts think the U.S. should consider breaking with Supreme Court precedent and banning hate speech.
Here's a snippet:
Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position…Continue
Posted by Paul Balcerak on June 11, 2008 at 11:30am —
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We had a talk this morning from Richard Koci Hernandez, deputy director of photography at the San Jose Mercury News. He's a very talented artist and a very inspiring speaker. He considers himself a storyteller, works as a journalist, but creates videos and multimedia projects that are pure art. Check out his site and tell me what you think. Continue
Posted by Whit Richardson on June 10, 2008 at 8:00pm —
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"As the redesign and revamp of the MediaShift site continues apace, I am looking for a few good folks to serve as correspondents for MediaShift, so I can get better insight into industries or worlds that I cover only occasionally. My hope is that with a group of 10 to 15 correspondents, I’ll be able to give my community of readers and contributors more food for thought…
I recently did a write up to the tune of: today is the 10th Televersary of my career in yeah, you guessed it, TV. It was just interesting to see how I got here, what I've learned along the way - and trying to figure out where I'm going with "all this social media" stuff. Feel free to check it out over at www.scottstead.com. I realized today that I need to check in here more often to see what's going on with my Wired compatriot journalists. Thanks for sucking me back in.
Cheers,
Scott Stead
CNN… Continue
Posted by scott stead on June 9, 2008 at 4:06pm —
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A couple of multimedia guys from the Las Vegas Sun spoke with us yesterday about what they've done with that paper's site in the last eight months. Here's some cool examples of multimedia projects they've done.
This is story on construction deaths on the strip is a good example of how to tackle webcentric journalism.
This is a cool… Continue
It's my first full day at a week-long multimedia training at the Knight Digital Media Center at UC-Berkeley. We're going over storyboarding this morning, and what mediums to use for what type of stories. Yesterday, we had an introduction to webcentric journalism and a couple multimedia journalists from the Las Vegas Sun. If you haven't checked out the cool multimedia stuff the Las Vegas Sun has been doing, check it out. Her… Continue
Posted by Whit Richardson on June 9, 2008 at 10:00am —
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A frequently asked question I take from newsrooms is "So can I just use any music I want to go with my slideshow (or video)?"
(Putting aside, for the moment, the question of whether or not you *need* any music to go with those 22 photos of local high school graduations.)
What are your favorite sources for free, OK-for-commercial-use music?
My first and only choice on my list is ccmixter.org, if for no other reason than because the tracks are clearly la… Continue
It's the risk of building around a free, Web-based product that something would change and break what you have built, right?
Mlive.com/twitter served as an inspiration for me to work up a similar (much smaller) group. But with recent efforts by twitter to address scalability - and who knows what all else in their guts - I have issues now posting live feeds from twitter on my sites unless we post just the original feed, friends not allowed.
Is anyone else running into this? Continue
Sweden: Student journalists report in video from the first day of the World Editors Forum featured three roundtable discussions, one about freedom of the press, new digital platforms and perhaps the biggest challenge for newspapers these days, how can newspapers attract young readers. The 15th World Editors Forum and congress has gathered 1,800 participan…
Yesterday, CBS News published two versions of Katie Couric's interview with Scott McClellan regarding his new book "What Happened" on YouTube.
One video is edited (6:19):
Continue
Posted by Jack Olmsted on May 31, 2008 at 6:02am —
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I'm currently working on my first big GoogleMaps project. I've done of bunch of small mymaps things but this will be my first full-on, database-driven, xml-running monstrosity.
The idea is to map all of the golf courses in our area, hole by hole. I finished one course last week and demoed it for the membership director and he seemed to like it.
Having almost zero java script experience coming into this I've spent most of my time trying to figure out what all of that gibberish in the "Page Sour… Continue
Posted by Chris Hagan on May 29, 2008 at 5:25pm —
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I wrote the following post yesterday to run on our site after an unpleasant incident with a prospective vendor.Before I posted, I got a just-satisfactory-enough apology and explanation from the president of the company involved to hold my digital tongue. But, there are some points in here worth sharing with this group. Names have been removed to protect the acquitted.
As our regular readers know, our user comments which are (at least compared to a lot of local sites) active, vibrant, mos… Continue
Hello again, Wired Journalists.
I haven't been as active as I should be on this and other social networking sites for the past couple months, so I hope you'll indulge me just a bit.
Back in January and February, I posted a couple times about the commitment I have made to become more wired in 2008, inspired by a post by Howard Owens.
Well, I'm getting there.
My biggest accomplishment so far is this: www.jenniferthornberry.com
Yes… Continue
Thanks to a recent conversation with a local economic development expert and programmer/web guru, I finally have a two line explanation of Web 2.0:
User-centric
Open data
Obviously, there's a bunch to unpack there, which gives an aspiring new media strategist some hope for a prosperous future of innovation.
Friday, mediabistro… Continue
We are currently looking for a community producer for MySA.com the website of the San Antonio Express-News and KENS5 TV. Please let me know if you saw this on Wire Journalists. I'm looking for a journalist who loves social media.
Here's the job description:
MySanAntonio.com, an award-winning, dynamic online media company serving the San Antonio and South Texas market, needs a Community Producer to join our team. The successful candidate must have a passion for building community through the la… Continue
Posted by Eric Braun on May 27, 2008 at 8:48am —
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I blog consistently about our desire as media and PR pros to change and adapt to social media. An inspiring example is that of David Cohn and his new venture Spot.us- community funded reporting.
Here's a synopsis from C… Continue
Posted by Jason Kintzler on May 24, 2008 at 4:09pm —
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Kevin Dugan from The Bad Pitch Blog shared this link with PitchEngine over on FriendFeed: http://www.spot.us/
Here's the premise, according to their site:
1) An individual or journalist creates a pitch that outlines an untold story in a local community.
2) Members of your community vote, with their money, on what stories are most important to them.
3) A journalist… Continue
Quick Friday post: Fox News just cranked out Part III of a great three-part series on the three remaining presidential candidates. Reporters for the site sorted out quotes from the three candidates and dug around to figure out what they've said versus what they've said in the past or what's actually true.
Too bad there isn't just a sub-site of Fox News or an independent site that does this kind of thing all… Continue
Memorial to fallen Lima Company soldiers gets rare honor: spot in Statehouse rotunda
By DWAYNE STEWARD
Advocate Reporter
May 23, 2008
COLUMBUS -- A memorial had been built; a two-hour A&E documentary had been made.
But when central Ohio artist Anita Miller made plans to immo… Continue
Posted by Dwayne Steward on May 23, 2008 at 10:00am —
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Well, fellow photogs, it's that time again. Some folks up on Capitol Hill are once again trying to redefine copyright and orphan work law, and intentionally or not are putting the screws to photographers.
A collection of information about the bill can be found here at OpenCongress.org.
It passed the judiciary committee and will be moving to the floor for open vote.
If you also think this is a… Continue
Posted by Will Seberger on May 21, 2008 at 5:16pm —
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We've been working hard push a tagging strategies for our News sites. What strategies are you using? Do you have a set list. Do you make them up as you go? Do you have any strategy at all? Are those strategies different for your personal blog vs. your news sites? Continue
I caught a little flak the other week for a blog post in which I suggested that an ad agency-owned online paper was perhaps cause for some concern among mainstream journalists. Call me old-fashioned, but I still feel that the best news sources out there are the ones whose heart and soul revolve around a traditional and independent newsroom.
Perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough in my blog, but I thin… Continue
Posted by Paul Balcerak on May 21, 2008 at 12:06pm —
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Twitter is a great way to crowd-source your network. In my case, and in many of the Wired Journalists I follow, this network is filled with like-minded journalists. The benefit of this is you can quickly find some compelling ideas and examples of something you'd like to do.
So, while this morning I was on a campaign to find, follow and promote to more locals the twitter account of my newspaper, others in my network were also thinking about how to utilize twitter.
This call went out by… Continue
I might be the only person with a TV in America thinking the following: "I feel like the only thing missing from my life is a really good hourlong drama about a newspaper."
I've been thinking this for a while. I fell in love with "The West Wing" while I was a college journalist and I could never figure out why they didn't try and spin Washington Post White House correspondent Danny Concannon off into his own show.
Before anyone jumps on me, let me assure you that I'm aware that Season 5 of "Th… Continue
Aaron Swartz piles on the praise for a This American Life show focused on the U.S. housing market meltdown. Swartz starts off by drawing lessons to fix the news: declining… Continue
Posted by Matt Neznanski on May 20, 2008 at 11:51am —
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To allow commenting on a newspaper website or not. I hate that I can see all sides of this issue. As a longtime internet user, I love the ability to comment right away on a news story I read. I know my 2 cents don't add up to much, but I feel better if I can voice my reactions to something. News sites that don't allow commenting are one sure way to prevent me from coming back.
On the flip side, it only takes one or two trolls hiding behind anonymity to ruin it for everyone else. And when those… Continue
At PitchEngine we're constantly trying to improve and implement social media tools into our PR efforts. One of the topics we're discussing is the new press release format - we'll call it "social media release" as that's been our working title to this point.
With 140 word Tweets, IM applications and new social media release templates calling for narrow, bulleted points it's no wonder the journalism and PR communities are so vocal about social media these days. If I were a veteran newsie, I'd be a little dismayed too.
…Continue
Posted by Jason Kintzler on May 18, 2008 at 7:14pm —
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