This looks pretty great.
Life in a Day
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Category Archives: journalism
Weekend lunch
L.A. Noire
I’ve only recently gotten back into console games, and even so kept it limited to games either me and the Mrs. can play together or games that just have a little more depth in general and replay value; Red Dead Redemption, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Mario Kart Wii for example (Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is the exception and is just pure beat-em-up fun). I usually don’t get all that excited about a game that I feel like I want to get it as soon as it is released, but this new release from Rockstar Games looks to be amazing.
L.A. Noire takes the style of the GTA series of games and Red Dead Redemption and kicks it up a further notch with a ’40s-era police detective theme. Needless to say, I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve see so far and look forward to the hard work being put in to this one. It’s really amazing how far games have come, and I’ve been playing since the 2600 days.
I’ll let these videos speak for themselves.
Investigation & Interrogation
Technology
Orientation
Following the Firearms
I am pretty proud of this project I contributed to for MPR News. It’s called Following the Firearms: Gun Violence In Minneapolis. Reporters Brandt Williams and Laura Yuen, as well as photographer Jeff Thompson did the real work, but I’m really glad at how it all came together.
My contribution was coordinating the online package, mapping the data, doing the final web edits of the stories, edits of the photos and galleries and putting the entire puzzle together into a cohesive package. It was a wonderful project and a great batch of stories. Check it out, share some thoughts.
Readings
JOURNALISM
- FAQ: Journalism vs blogging
- Do online readers notice editing?
- The Newsonomics of The New York Times’ pay fence
- CJR: WaPo’s New Opinion Tabs Miss the Mark
- New York Times receives ethical journalism award for WikiLeaks coverage
- House cuts to NPR funding likely to die in hands of Senate
OTHER STUFF
- NPR: Early Radiation Data From Near Plant Ease Health Fears
- A Brief History of Title Design(video)
- Lifehacker: 10 Things You Need To Do If You Were Just Fired
- FP Passport: The other African war we were supposed to stop
- PopSci – After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet
- In Focus – Japan Earthquake: The Struggle to Recover (photos)
The future of breaking news coverage
Today we had a natural gas explosion in south Minneapolis that caused a large fireball and was a breaking news event we covered. However, what was unique about this event was a video we were sent (as were several other media outlets) that was the first video available of the fireball.
The video was shot and sent by Robert Stephens (@rstephens), who just happened to be driving by at the time of the explosion. Stephens is the founder of Geek Squad, and full disclosure, is also on the MPR board. However, he did not give the video or his pictures only to us. He shared it via social media and gave permission to all organizations to use via those channels. What was most interesting was his followup tweet:
He did all of this, on the move, with tools anyone can easily obtain for less than $1,000. If our breaking news journalists would have had these tools, they too could have transmitted similar high-quality material back to the mothership for immediate posting. Now of course this isn’t news that these tools can aid in breaking news coverage, this was simply another example, albeit a relatively high-quality one. I was just amazed at how quickly it was put together, edited and distributed via social media channels.
You can see more photos from our team.
Hmm, perhaps I’ll rethink getting an iPad2.
Japan: Before & After
If you haven’t seen the before and after satellite photos of Japan over at the NY Times, please check it out. They are jaw dropping and give you some perspective on just how destructive this disaster has been.
TDS on NPR
Schiller
But the network’s overreaction to this manufactured semi-scandal might end up doing it more harm than good. Ron Schiller was not a journalist, or a program executive, or someone who had anything at all to do with NPR’s editorial operations. He was a professional glad-hander tasked with wining and dining and nodding in agreement with rich people so that they would give him money. And Schiller was good at his job by all accounts—his team racked up $2.5 billion over four years in his time at the University of Chicago. Fundraisers generally have minimal influence over the editorial side,* and the uproar over Schiller’s comments smacks of willful ignorance of how fundraising works on the part of people who know exactly how fundraising works.
It’s also a willful ignorance of how basic human interactions work. Most folks, when stuck in a conversational setting with strangers—particularly powerful, check-dangling strangers with strong opinions—will choose the path of least conversational resistance. They’ll smile, and agree, and try to mirror their interlocutor’s feelings—in part because it is awkward to do otherwise, in part because doing otherwise might imperil their chances at bringing home a five million dollar check. If you’ve spent time as a human being, or even as a journalist, you know this. This is why the Buffalo Beast’s gotcha tape of Scott Walker didn’t really “prove” much else aside from the fact that Walker will be polite and agreeable when talking to a very rich and opinionated man who might one day stuff his pockets or contribute to future campaigns. And this is why, even though Ron Schiller said a bunch of stupid things about Tea Partiers and veered from the NPR line on government funding, his lunchtime comments don’t serve to invalidate the entire organization. There is no reason for intelligent people—at NPR and writing about them—to pretend otherwise, or to claim the kinds of things we say in transactional, often awkward social settings should be used as proof positive of institutional malevolence. Unless, of course, the goal is to gin up politically motivated outrage for a cause like defunding a public broadcaster.
Good read. Ironically, I sort of have to recuse myself from weighing in too heavily here because of where I work. The whole event is interesting though.
Twitter marketing
Last night, I got in a car accident on the slushy highways of St. Paul. Luckily, I was unscathed and the car only has some minor damage. When I got home, like all people today, I tweeted about it and moved on.
Today, I received this.
Looks like someone has been reading Gary Vaynerchuk. Now, I’m not going to call of course, but this is another example of a business leveraging Twitter in a very savvy way. Looking at their tweet history, that’s not a bot. There’s someone sitting there, mining and searching tweets, and trying to reach out to potential customers. Nice work.
Andrew W.K.
Andrew W.K. – I Love NYC (Click to play)
This has been running through my head and iPod a lot lately.
Best Quote Ever
“I am on a drug, it’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off, and your children will weep over your exploded body.”
- Charlie Sheen
Should Lara Logan have been in Egypt?
Lara Logan, the CBS news correspondent, in Tahrir Square in Cairo moments before she was assaulted on Feb. 11.
If it were anyone but Logan, that would be my first question. But she’s their chief foreign correspondent, so technically it’s her job to go there. Should they have weighed the dangers more carefully (and who knows, maybe they did)? Probably.
If you are unfamiliar with what happened with Logan in Egypt, you can read about it here and here.
Logan is a very smart journalist and knows a lot about being in high-risk zones. I have no doubt she knew exactly the dangers she was putting herself in to and chose to do it because of the story. If you’ve ever seen her or read about her, she is incredibly self aware. She’s a great, passionate journalist that, yes, happens to be very attractive. But should she compromise her job because of that?
It’s unfortunate that her incident, as horrific as it no doubt was, didn’t get told when it was the most relevant. Her singular incident might have helped sum up the sentiment on the ground: a mixture of chaos, happiness and an uncontrollable mob. I’m wondering if, in the end, Logan will be disappointed in CBS because the story that her assault could have told at the time is now lost.
If Anderson Cooper had also been sexually assaulted instead of just punched in the head, would CBS have reported it? Would CNN have as much as they did?
Regardless of the answer, I’m sure anyone can agree that it’s a terrible thing that happened to Logan and one just hopes she makes a full physical and emotional recovery.
There’s more to say, but I’ll let the rest of journalism world take it on.
Undercity
UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo.
Crazy cool video of urban explorer Steve Duncan. Funny though, the whole time I’m watching this I’m thinking “I wonder what that was shot with?”
Read and hear more about Duncan:
Royal pain
I realize it’s the type of rubber-necking news the world likes, but seriously, do we really need to go wall-to-wall at every detail of the stupid royal engagement?
I mean the news is relevant in the UK, and they are right for shoving tons of people at it. But why here in the U.S.? It’s sad and slightly sickening to watch America gush over what, in my opinion, is a non-event.