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(Random #) things that summon my inner curmudgeon

10:34 am in blogging, General Media

I’m putting these things together because I see them all the time, and I just don’t have the energy to spend vast amounts of time crafting lengthy essays debating sloppy reporting, overly glowing predictions, and stupid social media strategies.

1. X is the most revolutionary thing since Y. 

Exhibit A: Why Vine will be as revolutionary as Twitter

I am always skeptical of these types of articles. The truth is, nobody knows what will be as revolutionary as what came before it. There are people who have an evangelical belief that something is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But the Internet is littered with “Revolutionary product X” startups that quietly faded out, got bought out, or just never took off.

Twitter was fortunate because it was in the right place at the right time, among other things. So was Instagram. So was Facebook. Vine isn’t the first 6-second video app to come along. It just happens to be the one Twitter owns.

Of course, nobody gets called on the carpet when their predictions prove wrong, so it’s easy to make these hyperbolic claims.

2. I talked to three people, therefore I can make broad statements about a group of similar people.

Exhibit A: Journalism students still see value in print newspapers

Setting aside the fact that there are NO NON-PRINT newsPAPERS, the article references two journalism students and an authority (I suppose) from the University of Southern California. No statistics, no surveys – nothing but anecdotes, and thin anecdotes at that. The amount of pixels spilled on the “Future of Journalism” is voluminous. This type of fly-by article adds less than nothing to the available information.

3. Exhibit 3,235,234,234,o24 of the Streisand Effect, or why big companies are still not aware of all Internet traditions

Exhibit A: Applebee’s Overnight Social Media Meltdown

While it shouldn’t be a surprise that major corporations don’t understand The Streisand Effect – although they doubtless have teams of people who are supposed to “get” social media – it’s always instructive to see when one has a meltdown in the face of Internet commenters.

What’s so hard about “We screwed up, we admit it, and we’re moving forward trying to do our best”? And don’t argue your point with the combined outrage of thousands of Internet commenters. You won’t win, and you’re losing more customers by the comment.

4. You mean people use an app devoted to sharing about themselves to … share about their world? Welcome to the Internet!

Exhibit A: #Me: Instagram Narcissism and the Scourge of the Selfie

I have fun making jokes about Instagram and selfies as much as the next person. And I loved the Instagram/Nickelback parody (warning: auto-play video). But I’m a little tired of serious tone complaints about people being self-absorbed on social media. Here’s a clue: Most people are self-centered. That’s only a problem when their self-centeredness interrupts your own self-centeredness. Instagram selfies, photos of food and faux artistic filters are harmless. If you don’t like looking at them, use that finger to scroll on past, or unfollow the offending narcissist.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, message boards, what have you, it’s all about communicating with other people. And most of that communication has a self-centered aspect. Human expression is, by definition, an attempt to express yourself.

Get over it or move to an island.

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(Updated) Instagram’s new terms of service should trouble media outlets, photojournalists

12:11 pm in General Media, social media

UPDATE (5 pm CST 12-18-12): Instagram has posted a blog post declaring that they are going to be revising the revised TOS. “Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.”


Yesterday, Instagram announced some new terms of service, and the social media/journalism commentariat is abuzz with some of the changes. Among the changes that should trouble student media outlets is this one which has professional photographers and privacy rights activists alike worried:

“You agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you,”

This even applies to minors:

If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to this provision (and the use of your name, likeness, username, and/or photos (along with any associated metadata)) on your behalf.

Seriously, every 14-year-old’s parents reads the TOS on every app on his/her iPod Touch. /eyeroll.

I am not a lawyer, but I don’t think anyone should be comfortable with signing over a blanket personal model release to a company to sell your image or personal photographs. Wil Wheaton outlined some of the troubling aspects of this in a blog post: regarding instagram’s new Terms of Service.

Here’s what I’m wondering: if Kaley Cuoco uses Instagram to share a photo of her and Melissa Rauch doing something silly, does that mean that Instagram can take that photo and use it to advertise for something silly without compensating them for what becomes a use of their likeness for commercial purposes? I can see that being a pretty serious shitstorm if it happens. I’m not a big enough celebrity for it to personally affect me, but I know a lot of people who are. If someone Instagrams a photo of Seth Green walking through an Urban Outfitters, does that mean Urban Outfitters can take that image and use it to create an implied endorsement by Seth? What if the picture is taken by a complete stranger? Who gets final say in how the image is used? The subject, the photographer, or Instagram?

For college media outlets, the problem is different. Your photographers are out covering events, taking photographs that are important to your news operation and your brand. Do you want some company using your photographs without permission or payment to promote their products? I don’t.

In the past, I’ve recommended that college media outlets get on the social network of Instagram to share breaking news photos and other images within the network (I’ve recommended similar things about Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.), but I’m reconsidering that recommendation until more and better information about this change is forthcoming.

I’m not sure how this will play out. Facebook (who owns Instagram) has a history of trying stupid stuff with their privacy policies only to walk them back when users pushed back. Maybe that will be the case with Instagram as well. For now, the new TOS go into effect Jan. 16, 2013. If you use the service after that, you’re agreeing to those terms.

For those who are concerned about this, here’s a post at Wired about how to download your photos from Instagram and cancel your account. Also, I’d suggest taking another look at Flickr. They just released a new iOS app with filters that are pretty comparable to Instagram’s, and more importantly, they give you a way to control how your content is used. Here’s a post from 2011 where the company (owned by Yahoo!) reiterated their policy: At Flickr, your photos are always yours.

See below for some of the media coverage of this change.

Related articles
  • Will Instagram’s New Advertising Policy Yield an Exodus of Celebs? (betabeat.com)
  • Instagram Isn’t a Public Utility (theindustry.cc)
  • Don’t Like Instagram’s New Terms Of Service & Privacy Policy? Quitting Is The Only Way Out (consumerist.com)
  • Facebook Destroys Instagram (ritholtz.com)
  • How Flickr can eat Instagram’s table scraps. I’m Instagram’s table scraps. And so are you. (cdevroe.com)
  • Instagram demands right to sell users’ photos to advertisers (theweek.co.uk)
  • Instagram Privacy Policy Changes: What you need to know (savvyblogging.net)
  • Did Facebook buy Instagram just to destroy it? (siliconrepublic.com)
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Tags: Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Terms of service
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As a journalist, you should search outside Google

7:43 am in industry news

There are no “regular results” on Google anymore. from DuckDuckGo on Vimeo.

Fascinating study by DuckDuckGo, a search engine company. One wonders whether it’s time for a reformation in search. It’s worthwhile also to check out the comments on the DuckDuckGo Vimeo page for the video linked above. The company has also created a web site – dontbubble.us – with more information about how Google is customizing your search results.

I admit that I have gotten into the habit of just typing words into the URL bar of Chrome or Safari (Firefox still has a separate search input in my version) and hitting the return button with the default setting to Google. But that needs to change. And for working journalists, that should definitely not be the default behavior.

As a journalist, there are definitely times when I want an impersonal search result. Sure, there are also times when I want a personalized search experience. If I’m looking for a cat grooming service, I certainly don’t want a service in Boca Raton, Fla. On the other hand, if I’m searching topics related to my beat, or a story I’m researching, I want a more “unbiased” sample of results so I can find what I want.

I’ve been trusting Google to give me those types of results. But that was a misplaced trust.

It would be nice if you could just flip a switch and turn off personalized search results, but apparently, that’s not possible, even if you’re signed out of your Google account. And I doubt Google will do anything to make such a thing possible.

Instead, I imagine what will happen is the result of the lemming effect, call it the ignorance of crowds. Google has become so synonymous with search that even if a minority complains, they will be powerless to change Google’s mind. “We have X billion happy customers,” Google might say. No, you have X billion customers who have little choice because you are the 900-pound gorilla of search and you’ve tried to invest yourselves into every nook and cranny of our lives. Facebook is the same way.

Which is fine in the marketplace of business. But this could have troubling implications for a journalists.

At a recent workshop, Mark Horvit of Investigative Reporters and Editors recommended always cross-checking searches across at least three different search engines. I’d recommend at least using Bing and Google and one other one. Try DuckDuckGo and see if that gives you other results. If not, there are other search engines to try.

I don’t have any personal interest in DDG, other than having a competitive market in the actual search itself.

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Numbers without context mean nothing

10:56 am in General Media, social media

Sometimes it takes humor to get a point across. Here, Stephen Colbert skewers the talk about how many Tweets were flying during First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

This is something I’d call the “Wordle Effect.” Wordle makes pretty word clouds based on how often a word is used in a text. The most used words are not placed in any sort of order, or their relevance to other words noted. The graphic has no greater meaning than that, really. The same could be said for statistics about how many Tweets (or Facebook posts) were flying during a political speech. It’s interesting trivia, but nothing more.

Via AdAge Campaign Trail Blog

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BackToBasics: Linking

2:11 pm in Back to Basics

Editor’s note: As a new school year ramps up, I’m starting a series of posts highlighting some basic online journalism practices that reporters and editors should be adopting. This is the first in the series.

The most fundamental “thing” that makes the web what it is is not video, audio, fancy responsive design, or animated gifs. It’s the hyperlink. The hyperlink is what ties the web together. And yet this most basic element is something that news media have struggled with since the web was invented way back in the 1990s. They still struggle with it today.

So here are some basics of linking adapted from a presentation I gave to student journalists of the Daily Eastern News during staff training this week.

What is a link?

A hyperlink is a highlighted text in a web document that takes the user to another page or document located somewhere on the Internet. Links are frequently (although not always) denoted by blue underlined text, like this (not a link). What makes a link a link is a bit of HTML code behind those words.

Why do you link?

As a journalist on the web, there are several reasons why you should link to other web pages in your online stories. The most basic reason is this: You’re writing for the web, on the web. This is not paper. It’s a different medium.

Other reasons:

  • Continuity – Rarely does an issue or event arise ex nihilo. Chances are great that this issue or event has been covered before, in some detail, in your publication. Your online readers will benefit from easy access to some of the previous coverage of similar topics within your publication.
  • Context – As stories don’t arise from nothing, they also don’t occur in a vacuum. Linking allows a reporter to show what others are saying about the issue without adding meaningless additional verbiage to the story.
  • Credibility – Linking is a more advanced form of citing your sources. As an example, you can say “The university increased the budget by 3 percent” and actually provide readers with a place to find the source for that figure. Any time you are citing a document (a government report, budget, memo, tweet, press release, etc.), linking to a version of the actual document adds to your credibility. Theoretically, linking to these source documents will also help you avoid misquoting, mischaracterizing, or misconstruing these documents.
  • Community – In most communities, the newspaper isn’t the only source of information. When you read about something happening via someone’s Facebook page or blog or Twitter status, it’s the neighborly thing to do to mention where you got that information. There have been far too many instances where “real” journalists have lifted story ideas and stories from bloggers and community members without giving any credit to those sources. This builds bad blood with your audience. Nobody expects you to find out everything yourself. Share the credit when it’s deserved.

What should you link?

  • Past articles from your own web site
  • Government documents ( or any source source documents)
  • Web sites for artists, musicians, etc.
  • Explanatory background about hard to understand or obscure topics (science, economics, arts movements, etc.)
  • Similar articles around the web (other news outlets, blogs that might have broken news)
  • Controversial statements (source documents, like twitter, facebook, etc.)

How do you link?

  • Inline: This is the most familiar to web users. Linking with actual text within the story, so that “These Words” would take you to another page on the web.
  • Parenthetical: Some sites use this format, although it breaks the flow of the sentence a bit more. It is useful especially for non-html documents or files that might take a while to load (think PDFs or mp3s).
  • More info box: This takes links out of the stream of the article and puts them in a box, like an info box on a print story. Again, the problem here is that people on the web are used to ignoring content that isn’t in the flow of the content they’re consuming, so they might never notice your nice box of links.
  • End of article: This is the lazy way of adding links to a story. Copy and paste some URLs at the bottom of the story and add “For more information:” at the top of the list. I mention that it’s lazy, because a writer doesn’t really have to think about *how* the links fit with the rest of the article. But it’s also bad because most people are never going to reach the end of your article.
What you should not do:
I realize there are well-known – even highly respected – journalistic outlets that do this, but it’s bad practice. Don’t EVER link to a company or individual’s name and have that link lead to a collection of articles on your own web site. It’s dishonest linking. As a web user, when I see Google (notice, that’s a link), I expect that if I click on that link, I’m going to be taken to Google’s home page, not your internally computer-generated page of content. That’s the way the web is supposed to work. If you want to link to other articles about a company that your outlet has written, then that’s a good place for a parenthetical. For instance, I’ve written about WordPress numerous times. If I want to link to previous articles, I might write WordPress [link] (previous coverage) [internal link]. It’s not rocket science.

 

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Detroit Softworks closes shop; SNworks takes over Gryphon

9:37 am in Content Management Systems, Gryphon, industry news, Media Companies - College Related, Websites

 

UPDATED AT 10:41 AM (CDT) WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONDetroit Softworks, provider of the Gryphon CMS and hosted news platform, has shut down. The message above is all that remains of their website. They had approximately 15 client college news outlets for the hosted platform. However, the demise of DSW doesn’t mean the end of the Gryphon CMS. In fact, Gryphon is poised to be something of a phoenix this fall.

Omar Sofradzija, editorial adviser/permissions manager of The State News at Michigan State said Friday that the State News would be launching a new marketing effort for Gryphon in the next few weeks. The State News originally developed the CMS and licensed its use through DWS.

“With the end of Detroit Softworks, we feel like we have a product worth sharing with our peers,” he said. “We are looking this fall to offer (Gryphon) to additional clients.”

Sofradzija said the new home for the Gryphon CMS will be called SNworks. There’s no web site (or logo) at the moment, but you can follow them on Twitter, or check their Facebook Page for updates. Anyone interested in the platform can also contact Sofradzija at omars@getsnworks.com.

The company plans to have booths at ACP/CMA, CNBAM and WAUPM conferences coming up this fall.

In the meantime, this changes the calculus for CMS providers for college newspapers, and I’ll be updating my list soon.

 

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Guest Post: Lessons from Obama’s visit

12:33 pm in College Media, management, Newsrooms, Politics

By Erica Perel, newsroom adviser, The Daily Tar Heel

President Obama visited the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus Tuesday afternoon to give a policy speech on student loans and “slow-jam the news” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

The big events happened early in the traditional  daily news cycle: students lined up to get into Obama’s speech starting at 5 a.m. before filing through security. The policy speech happened about 1 p.m., with the Jimmy Fallon taping immediately after. The presidential motorcade left Chapel Hill by late afternoon. Because of the timing — and because political junkies and the vast UNC alumni network would be following events from afar — the student editors at The Daily Tar Heel, the independent student newspaper, knew this story had to be covered online in real time.

Staff posted stories, videos, photographs and blog posts to present the sites and sounds of the day. They used the social networking aggregator Storify to present what people were tweeting. And then used Facebook and Twitter to promote our work and help drive up traffic to about double normal levels.

And it all happened on the last production day of the school year.

Here are lessons from the day. Not everyone will get a chance to cover a presidential visit, though if your school is in swing state, this could be your year. Even so, these lessons apply to almost any big news.

Make a plan, then plan some more

Big stories don’t always give notice. But elections, big sporting events and protests usually do. For the Obama visit, the editors started planning for the day’s online coverage at least two days ahead. There was a staffer in charge of writing blog posts. Someone in charge of getting press credentials. Someone to monitor social media. Etc. The night before, photo editors held a meeting with photographers to make sure they knew exactly what was expected of them in terms of sending photos. Photo Editor Allison Russell said her instructions were simple: She told them their photo coverage had to be the best thing they had ever shot. No pressure.

Make sure someone is back at the office coordinating the effort

We’ve made the mistake before of creating an online coverage plan and expecting it to just happen. But it won’t without one or two people in charge of corralling that effort and taking care of details. That job includes:

  • Communicating with folks in the field.
  • Making sure all content is tagged and weighted correctly so the home page displays well.
  • Editing stories for content and accuracy.
  • Editing pictures.
  • Using social media to promote new content. Twitter is great, of course, but don’t forget Facebook. In the analytics screenshot below, see that much more traffic comes from Facebook.

 Use as many different storytelling avenues as possible, but remember that they have to go up quickly

Stories and photos are easy to post, but videos often lag behind because of the lengthy editing process. In a big news situation, the video needs to go up fast.

On Tuesday, for this video, Multimedia Editor Zach Evans posted what he had early, then re-edited and reposted when another videographer’s footage from Air Force One was ready.

Online Editor Sarah Glen has played around with Storify for big-story coverage before, so she was in a great position to post what was the definitive collection of tweets from Obama’s speech with lightning speed. Sarah worked to collect the tweets through the speech, so it was able to go live immediately. Other lessons from Sarah’s Storify:

  • Search the official hashtag for the event, but do other searches to make sure you aren’t missing good tweets from people who aren’t using it.
  • Include as many picture tweets from people using Instagram or other photo apps as you can.
  • Include a mix of student journalists’ more serious tweets and tweets from non-journalists. Look for people using funny hashtags or otherwise tweeting with personality.

Promote your work and pay attention to analytics to learn what works

Use the obvious avenues to promote content — Twitter, Facebook, email blasts and Google-optimized headlines — as well as any non-obvious tools. But make sure to pay attention to analytics to see how they’re working and pay attention to where traffic is coming from.

At the DTH, staffers use Google analytics as well as Chartbeat Publishing real-time analytics. The real-time analytics are more valuable in this situation, because they can watch traffic go up or down based on the promotional work they’re doing.

The DTH has had Chartbeat, and then the more advanced Chartbeat Publishing, for about 13 months, and have found it to be a tremendous teaching tool. Watching the numbers go up and down helps students understand what drives online traffic. It also encourages them to post more frequently online when they can see how many people are reading it.

Here are Chartbeat screenshots from this morning – a more typical weekday, and from Tuesday afternoon.

 

According to Google analytics, the site had 51,474 page views Tuesday. The previous Tuesday, there were 27,014.

Have fun

Journalists live for these days. Enjoy the ride.

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Tags: college newspapers, Daily Tar Heel, future of journalism
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Expectations are there for new hires and social media

1:07 pm in career talk, social media

I know you’ve probably heard it here plenty of times, but the drumbeat for online journalism skills continues to grow louder from every professional journalist I’ve spoken to or listened to at a conference or workshop this year.

When I was at the Mid-America Press Institute’s “Managing Change” workshop recently, one quote brought this back to mind. It was from Alan Herzberger, digital managing editor of The Oklahoman.

Here’s what I tweeted at the time:

Herzberger said the Oklahoman expects new hires to be active on Facebook and Twitter, and to have some followers (for more on the Oklahoman’s social media strategy, read the story at mpinews.org, along with others from the workshop).

That dovetails with something Steve Yelvington wrote recently that I though deserved some attention: The new baseline skill set, which includes this skill:

Be prepared to use social networking to further your job goals. This includes listening, engaging and promoting your work.

There are a lot of web sites out there that will give you advice about how to achieve success in social media these days. My only advice is this: Get to it!

If you’re not using social media to connect with other journalists, with potential readers, with industry sources, you’re flailing at your journalistic responsibility.

When we started this blog, one of the things we talked about early on was that news is now a conversation (that’s not my terminology, but it describes the way news has evolved). It’s more true now than ever.

 

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Tags: career talk, future of journalism, social media
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The information sherpa: role for journalists on the web

3:50 pm in General Media, ideas

(Image by Flickr user Sistak, used under Creative Commons license)

Following up on my post yesterday about information overload, I wanted to expand a little bit on a term I used: information sherpa. I first used a similar term “video sherpa” in a post for a Carnival of Journalism about the future of online video. I wrote:

Perhaps a new form of journalistic curator will arise – the video sherpa, a journalist who guides others through the mazes of videos on various platforms like YouTube andVimeo to find the nuggets of related content that are worthwhile, a la Andy Carvin‘sNPR tweets about the Middle East.

I should specify that I’m using the term “sherpa” in a specific sense. Wikipedia captures that essence here:

Sherpas were immeasurably valuable to early explorers of the Himalayan region, serving as guides at the extreme altitudes of the peaks and passes in the region. Today, the term is used casually to refer to almost any guide or porter hired for mountaineering expeditions in the Himalayas. Sherpas are renowned in the international climbing and mountaineering community for their hardiness, expertise, and experience at high altitudes.

Another way of looking at our age instead of as “information overload” is to look at it as a mountain of information. News consumers who want to be informed, to stay on top of events that are important to them, need to find a way to scale that mountain. And they don’t always have the tools or experience to do so. That’s where a modern journalist can carve out an important role. The journalist as sherpa guides the info-mountaineer through the dizzying peaks and passes of the mountain of information, finding and presenting just the right information to help reach and stay on top of the mountain.

But I want to be clear about some things that are happening that are not what I mean by an information sherpa. The sherpa is not the mountaineer. The sherpa is not the mountain. The sherpa is not the treacherous weather that attacks the mountain suddenly. I’ll explain what I mean:

The sherpa is not the mountain: As I mentioned yesterday, there are too many sites on the internet that aren’t really providing high quality information. They’re posting intriguing photos and blurbs, or they’re posting barely disguised press releases, or hastily re-written information provided by quality news sources to juice page clicks. Those people are part of the mountain of information. They keep piling up the heights before the information consumer.

The sherpa is not the mountaineer: This is not the first time the sherpa has climbed the mountain. The sherpa knows a path through the mountain of B.S. masquerading as information, and is guiding the person who’s trying to make it up the mountain. More than ever, a journalist can’t be a generalist. Generalists get taken in by misinformation, slant, faux controversies and technical jargon meant to obscure rather than illuminate. A journalist needs to do everything possible to become fluent in whatever topic she is covering, learning who’s got an agenda, and when that agenda is shading the information she’s receiving. A sherpa doesn’t take the easiest path, but the best path.

The sherpa is not the weather: One of the most dangerous aspects of the ascent of Mt. Everest is the extreme and quickly changing weather, which can include high winds and sudden storms. In climbing a mountain of information, an info-mountaineer can experience frequent wild swings of information that can knock one off the path – useless information, sudden Twitter storms and Facebook outrages, breathless reporting about silly products and gossip about famous people. A true sherpa isn’t the weather. A journalist worth his salt doesn’t traffic in such chasing the weather. A sherpa stays the course, is aware of the weather, and knows to avoid its traps.

Many others have focused on the analogy of journalist as curator. But I think I prefer this analogy more. I would love to know what others think. I also think this new paradigm should influence how we train college journalists for the future.

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Currated Links for Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011

9:41 am in Links

Wow, this semester is flying by. Here are a few of the articles I’ve come across recently that are worth a read. You can also see recommended reading in the CICM Twitter feed.

Ars Technica’s 2011 holiday gift guide extravaganza (Ars Technica): This is really a comprehensive list of geekery.

Censorship, Curse Words, and a Dodgeball Championship: Student Press Trouble at Pacific Lutheran University (College Media Matters): A really dumb action by university administrators in a censorship controversy, and a good reason to host a college website off-campus.

Dicing onions like a pro (Craft): Filed away for future reference.

The inevitable collision of journalism and everything else(Sean Blanda): “You shouldn’t be worried about pageviews, Facebook likes or what Poynter is saying about you. You should worry about the trust of your customers and the strength of your product.”

New journalism platforms call for new journalism rules (John Robinson): Yes, the rules are changing.

The art of the interview (and journalism students who don’t practice it!) (Mario Garcia): “It’s a recurring theme, and its frequency disturbs me: journalism students who ask for an interview, to which I agree, then they show a total lack of preparation with the most essential facts and details. There was never any excuse for the unprepared reporter, but, in the era of Google, the list of excuses just got shorter.” I think every journalism student should be required to read this.

LETTER OF INQUIRY TEMPLATE (Ian Bogost): As a semi-funny chaser for the above.

Tool of the Day: Cuttings.me (10,000 Words): “Enter Cuttings.me, a new service that provides journalists with a free, online platform to showcase their work. The site launched in October and was created by travel journalist Nicholas Holmes to fill the void he found when he tried to share and upload his work online.”

The aggregator’s dilemma: How do you fairly serve your readers & the sources you rely on? (Poynter): “a lot of news sites have developed strategies for aggregating but are still figuring out how to serve readers without undermining original content providers. I talked about this challenge with several aggregators and asked for their thoughts on how voice, analysis and editorial judgment factor into aggregation.”

Writing with authority: When to drop the “he said, she said” (UPIU blog): Really good explanation of a difficult concept to get across.

The Future of Computing (NYT Bits Blog): A big report by the Times that ranges across a number of topics, many touching upon journalism.

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