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| (L-R) Democratic strategist James Carville and his wife Republican strategist Mary Matalin burst into tears during a taping of “Meet the Press” in memory of the late moderator Tim Russert. (Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press) |
While I think MSNBC is going a bit overboard with their coverage and engaging in a fair amount of navel gazing, this is a powerful picture.
Paul Bradshaw over at the Online Journalism Blog has written an excruciatingly long, yet incredibly informative, post about RSS, social media and what he calls ‘Passive-Agressive Newsgathering.’ In it, he breaks down RSS (syndicated content) and compares and contrasts it to its social networking equivalent. He even broke it down into a diagram:
He breaks down each element and what they mean for a journalist. The post is full of links, both outside OJB and within, and is a good primer for those not yet familiar with how all of these new tools can help a journalist. It is also a good read for the seasoned online journo as a refresher course.
Check it out, get comfortable and be ready to feel like you haven’t been using all of the pieces of your toolbox. Nice work Paul.
Gizmodo has an excellent review of four, entry-level DSLR cameras that are hitting the market soon. The four models are from Sony, Canon, Nikon and Olympus, the current digital camera heavyweights. Having at least a modicum of camera skills is essential for an online journalist, so these sub-$1000 cameras are a great addition to any arsenal.
I currently use a Canon Digital Rebel-XT, which is about as entry level as it gets, though I do need to upgrade my lens. If I ever get to the point where I need go bigger I’ll probably go with one of the upper-level Canon EOS cameras or one in the Nikon D-series. Regardless, none of that matters if you don’t know what you’re doing looking through the viewfinder.
Also recommended, the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1000 for quick, high-quality video. They recently started issuing these to the reporters at the Orlando Sentinel and it has worked out well. The cameras are easy to use, have a long battery life, start up very quickly and shoot very good quality video.
I used one recently to shoot a post-game press conference at UCF. The only problem is MPEG4-only format and the $700 price tag. If, however, you want to be the next Kevin Sites (one of my personal idols), having something like this is also an essential.
What’s in your bag?
Via Boing Boing:
The first days of the mobile journalist, courtesy of RCA.
This battery-operated RCA back-pack weighs 53 pounds, including batteries. Antennas for transmitting picture signals and receiving orders from a base station extend from top of pack. Range is about one mile. At rear of camera case is an electronic finder and a microphone for the narrator.
Boy am I glad Al Gore created the Internet.
Everything I just said, I take it back. We’re all doomed.*
Other reads for today:
“Ensuring that the essential values of journalism are carried forward into the unsettling but enormously promising new world of media is a challenge that all of us in the craft, the journalism academy and the concerned public share. USC Annenberg is blessed with extraordinary resources, from its setting in Los Angeles, to its exceptional faculty and students, to the innovative leadership of Dean Wilson. I can’t wait to begin.”
*I’m only half joking, half.
The National Press Photographers Association has announced its winners for the Best of Photojournalism contest. The winners in the online categories were quite impressive this year. Steve Myers over at Poynter weighs in on some of the notables and trends.
Here are some that I liked a lot:
I really liked the video on this last one so I included it. It’s short and simple, but it easily gets the point across. Along with a story, talking about the video system, cost, etc., this makes a nice complete little feature package. As an aside, that system would not go over well at the University of Central Florida. Cars would be getting towed left and right.
Check out all of the winners at the NPAA site.
D’oh!
Nice cover from the Clinton aide. Not unlike Romney’s memory of his father “meeting” Martin Luther King Jr.
Here’s another video for a little more context.
Interesting, to say the least. Kind of makes you wonder what other things she remembers.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released the State of the Media 2008, its annual report of, well, the state of the news media. Duh.
As usual, the report is incredibly dense and has a wealth of information sectioned off by industry. If you are at all involved in the news media or have an interest on the scrutiny that it is willing to put itself under, check it out.
If not, move along. I’m sure there will be some movie trailers along soon or a random YouTube video.
Through the first 10 months of the year, the portrait of Iraq that Americans have received from the news media has in considerable measure been a grim one. Roughly half of the reporting has consisted of accounts of daily violence. And stories that explicitly assessed the direction of the war have tended toward pessimism, according to a new study of press coverage of events on the ground in Iraq from January through October of 2007.The Portrait from Iraq: Percent of Stories
They bulleted out some key points which you can read in the full story, but two points stood out to me:
As with all wars, people are being presented with coverage of this war from a mostly ethnocentric viewpoint. The only perspective we get is that of Americans, how the war affects us and how successful we are. Far less coverage occurs of how the war affects the Iraqis, how it is affecting the rest of the world and how we are complicit in some of the more negative aspects of the war.
I’m not saying we need to focus on one more than the other, but in order to paint a broader picture of the war and give people a more accurate perspective, it needs to be covered thoroughly.
BusinessWeek media critic Jon Fine recently listed his 2008 media predictions with the disclaimer he’s been severely wrong in the past. However, his list seems a little more sound this year:
Read the full list and detailed descriptions here.
OK, I’ll bite. The one that concerns me most is the “daily newspapers” thing. Knowing what I know now, I think people would flip if you cut out the Saturday edition. People were incensed when our local paper stopped putting the TV Time in the non-subscription editions. Management figured most people use TV-based or DVR provided TV guides, apparently not. Cutting out the Saturday edition would severely cripple papers, regardless of how thin it usually is.
I could easily, and probably am, wrong about that. I’m no media analyst, I just write stuff and play on the intarwebs. I’ll leave that up to the scholars.
Well, that didn’t take long.
T-shirts from dumbledorepride.com. This definitely gets “most ridiculous news item of the day” two days in a row.
Plan Would Ease Limits on Media Owners
The head of the Federal Communications Commission has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the commission, wants to repeal the rule in the next two months — a plan that, if successful, would be a big victory for some executives of media conglomerates.
Among them are Samuel Zell, the Chicago investor who is seeking to complete a buyout of the Tribune Company, and Rupert Murdoch, who has lobbied against the rule for years so that he can continue controlling both The New York Post and a Fox television station in New York.
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Again, this would be an awful, awful turn of events for the state of the media. Media conglomerates try and play the victim in this scenario and call the rules “antiquated.” The rules are there to keep the media in the hands of many instead of just a few. Sorry if it hurts your pocketbook a little, but some people want a little variety in their news and the comfort of knowing that someone hasn’t cornered the market on every piece of media in an area.
Don’t let this happen. Call your congressman, write a letter or send a carrier pigeon. I don’t think it will happen though, people will protest again just like when Michael Powell tried to do the same thing. Sorry Zell, Murdoch and the rest, you’re just going to have to settle with billions in profits instead of hundreds of billions. Excuse me if i don’t weep for you.
