25 May 08 Headlines matter even online
So, did the girl in intensive care shoot the mom? She’s a fighter!
Guilty paper shall remain nameless.
Related LinksTags: headlines, online journalism
24 May 08 Quotable
Dean Nicholas Lemann, Columbia School of Journalism
Related LinksOur job was to improve on the old model. Your job is to create a new model. You shouldn’t be daunted by this: newspapers in particular, and news in general, have been changing in non-incremental ways for three centuries. Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (the profits from which endowed this school) had almost nothing in common except that they were printed on cheap paper and distributed in cities, and neither had much in common with a big-city newspaper today. On your watch, newspapers will be primarily digital, but the primary task for you is not to switch delivery media, it’s to invent a new social compact with a community around the gathering and presentation of information.
Tags: journalism, quotes
13 May 08 ‘Negative Ghostrider, pattern is full.’
I’m putting this blog in a holding pattern until next week or so while I handle some post-graduation duties, personal time and an all-around break.
Be back in a week, give or take.
p.s. Great online uses of Twitter and Facebook on multiple ongoing stories, most notably the Myanmar aftermath, the earthquake in China and the wildfires in Central Florida. Check them out.
Related LinksTags: personal
06 May 08 ‘Battle at Kruger’ best animal video ever
If you haven’t seen the ‘Battle of Kruger’ yet take the eight minutes to watch it. It’s quite possibly the best act of nature caught on video.
The eyewitness video was so vivid and full of drama that National Geographic made an entire documentary about it. You have to watch the full thing to understand how amazing it is but simply put, it is a Disney movie brought to life.
Off topic yes, but this was too cool not to share.
Related LinksTags: video
06 May 08 NY Times puts out the call for help on Myanmar cyclone disaster
With the death toll in Myanmar rising following the cyclone that devastated the area, the NY Times used its blog, ‘The Lede’, to put out the call for help covering the disaster. They asked for first-hand accounts, photos and even have a submission form for video.
Twelve hours later they had vivid descriptions of the devastation and pictures to accentuate those descriptions. Below is an account from Henry Webb, a lawyer from the U.S. that teaches in Vietnam:
About 3 a.m., when we were about 40 or 50 miles outside of Yangon, we started seeing the first trees and signs that had been blown down. (I did not sleep during the taxi ride — the Spanish couple slept off and on and I was afraid that if I went to sleep the driver might fall asleep as well — despite the fact that he was chugging Red Bull and coffee throughout the night.)
It took about two hours to cover those remaining 40 or 50 miles to the airport, and it was only in those last two hours — between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. — that we began to appreciate the amount of devastation wrought by the cyclone. There were long stretches where nearly every tree along both sides of the road had been blown down, split into, uprooted, etc.
Almost all of the billboards were shredded, and most other signs had been either torn apart or blown down, and I saw several street signs — like stop signs or yield signs (the writing was in Burmese script so I don’t know what they actually said) — that had literally had their metal poles bent in half by the force of the winds. Many streetlights were also blown down. Many of the buildings had been damaged, and there was wind-blown debris everywhere.
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This is the sort of “open-source” journalism that I think is going to push online content into the future. On the smaller scale news organizations could cover everything from city council meetings to softball games in the same manner, by allowing citizens to watch, report and file small pieces about what they see.
The eroding of the sense of community newspapers are supposed to build could perhaps be saved by again allowing citizens to be a part of the news process. No longer should they feel they are just being fed the news but that they are contributing to the overall process of distributing the news and spreading information.
This doesn’t meant that journalists have to feel like they are obsolete or that citizens are going to take over their paper. It simply means that by allowing the people to have an avenue to contribute then we have more eyes and ears on the streets. We still act as the filterers, the organizers and the distributors of the news.
We’ll have to wait and see how the NY Times and other organizations continue to cover this story and what they do with the content they get.
Related LinksTags: nytimes, online journalism, social networking
05 May 08 The Monday-morning awesome
As if the last few days could not get any better, what with graduation, good times with family and friends, checks from the IRS and few other pieces of greatness that I am not allowed to mention just yet, I woke up to check this out.
I am officially the #1 ‘Steve Mullis’ according to Google. Oh yeah, it just got real.
Related Links01 May 08 Today is RSS awareness day
You know the geek demographic is taking over when they are starting to make holidays out of Web technologies. I for one welcome our new geeky overlords and look forward to toiling away in their underground server rooms. But I digress.
According to Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips today is indeed RSS Awareness Day. So if you or your newsroom are totally clueless about this RSS thing, what better day than today to hold a quick boot camp or primer on one of the most useful and simple Web technologies available.
Don’t feel like explaining it all, just send this video from RSSDay.org around to your team (it’s a little hokey but it gets the point across):
Then have them read Shawn Smith’s post from yesterday and they’ll be all set. Create a Feedburner account for your news organization, burn some feeds and start syndicating. With the final assimilation of Feedburner by Google it is no doubt going to become a more robust and useful tool over the next few months.
So there you have it, spread the word!
Tags: new media, online journalism, Web2.0
01 May 08 Headline(s) of the week
Via Valleywag. File this under Freudian oof.
Related LinksTags: headlines
01 May 08 The tale of the Cougar Ace, the perfect storm
The Cougar Ace was a car transport ship that was en route from Japan to Vancouver, British Columbia, Tacoma, Washington, and Port Hueneme, California, with a cargo of 4,812 Mazda vehicles. On the way a malfunction caused ballast water to dump out and the ship listed 60 degrees putting both crew and cargo in danger.
Since the story was first reported it has been followed by journalists of all stripes. The entire tale, from the initial accident to the salvaging of the ship to the final fate of the close to 5,000 vehicles, is a multi-layered and fascinating story.
Wired contributor Joshua Davis wrote a brilliant story that focused on the salvaging effort of the Cougar Ace. His vibrant descriptions and literary format make the salvage team, a rogues gallery of hardened characters that makes the hardened seaman of ‘The Deadliest Catch’ look like a bunch of Long Johns Silver employees, come to life. Take the time to read it, it’s worth it.
Related LinksTags: article, online journalism, wired
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