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On comments

December 1, 2011 in industry news

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The news industry has entered another round of comment concerns. The New York Times just implemented a new “Trusted Commenter” system that requires a connection to your Facebook account. Gannett announced last month that they’re switching their comments system to one that uses Facebook Connect.

And the college media listserv had a recent round of e-mails about the advantages of using Facebook log-ins for comments.

There are obvious arguments for going with the FB log-in. People are less likely to be nasty, brutish or mean when their “real” names are associated with what they say in a comment section. Facebook log-ins are an easy turn-key method of authenticating user names. And the FB log-in is becoming ubiquitous. Randy Lovely, senior vice president of news & audience development, doesn’t mention Gannett’s company-wide shift in an online chat about the new system, but admits that 81 percent of adults in their area have Facebook accounts.

I certainly understand the desire to have a community of commenters who are civil and reasonable in their comments about contentious issues of the day. And I can’t imagine the amount of time it takes a site like the New York Times to wade through comments every day.

But, as I’ve written before, I really don’t agree with the push to associate “authentic” real-world identities with comments on a web site.

First, these papers are outsourcing the “quality” of their site’s community to a third-party. And there are people who have legitimate issues with the entire Facebook platform, who don’t have accounts with FB and don’t want them. My parents, for instance, don’t have Facebook accounts. Should they be required to create such accounts to comment on a news site?

The second concern is a legitimate concern some people have about connecting their IRL (In Real Life) identity with comments they make online. I don’t have to go through all the hypothetical examples that have been hashed and rehashed in this arena, but suffice to say that there can be real implications for people if they say something negative about a controversial topic. So their voices will be effectively muzzled by “authenticity.”

You may think that’s a small price to pay for ridding comments sections of obvious trolls and boors who don’t know how to be polite. I’m not so sure. And I’m not so sure I’d be comfortable risking someone’s job because of something they said in a comment section.

There is a long history of pseudonymous commentary in American life. Some of it good, some of it bad. But I always thought the point was that we suffered the bad because the same rules protected the good.

In many ways, I keep coming back to what long-time blogger Anil Dash wrote earlier this year when this topic got hot again. Cultivating an online community of commenters is work, sometimes hard work. And Facebook Connect is a cop-out. And adopting the “authentic identity” paradigm just means the trolls have won.

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Redesigns 2011: WVU Daily Athenaeum

November 15, 2011 in Redesigns

The Daily Athenaeum at West Virginia University just updated the design of their web site, run on College Publisher. Here’s a screenshot of the new design.

And here’s a screenshot from Archive.org from February:

The most dramatic change appears to be the header, which is larger and uses more white space. They also seem to have made the choice to emphasize the web address as opposed to the newspaper name. Notice as well that they cut down the number of items in the nav bar from 10 to eight – features and blogs being eliminated.

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Six years and counting

November 14, 2011 in CICM shop talk

Photo by Flickr user Ryskiphoto, used by permission under Creative Commons license.

Saturday marked the 6th blogiversary of this here effort. Since nobody reads blogs on Saturdays, I’m marking the occasion today. According to the most official source known to humankind, the anniversary is usually celebrated by gifts of iron, sugar, or wood objects.

About 130 posts over the last year (of 1,930 since the beginning), all but a handful by yours truly.

As I wrote last year,

On a personal note, there have been numerous people I could and should thank for the assistance and support over the past five years. Foremost among them are Chris Carroll and Ralph Braseth, who set this blog in motion in late 2005 with an e-mail asking me to set up a web site for them. “I’ll set up the site, but you have to provide the content.” You can see how well that worked.

I should also thank the many advisers who read and contribute in even small ways to make this blog what it is, and to College Media Association, Inc., for keeping this thing alive.

I’d also thank the many industry experts, young journalists and wizened professionals whom I’ve bugged over the years for interviews or assistance.

And, as always, my colleagues in the Journalism Department at Eastern Illinois University for their continued support of a non-traditional publishing format.

Hard to believe that when we began, YouTube was just taking off, Facebook was still limited to colleges and high schools, and nobody had even heard of Twitter or the iPhone or iPad.

Maybe it’s vain to mark anniversaries like this, but blog years are like dog years – longer than human years. I’ve watched many start up, burn bright and then flame out over the years. So it’s worth remembering every once in a while – even if I have to do it myself.

I’ve got some new ideas for the new year, and the new template is part of that. Keep reading, and contributing, so we can keep pushing college media forward.

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Curated links for Friday, Nov. 11, 2011

November 11, 2011 in Links

Friday linkage, some fun and some deep, and lots to think about. Happy Veteran’s Day, and it’s also 11/11/11, which means something – I’m not sure.

First, this was the tempest in a teapot this week from Poynter: Romenesko resigns after 12 years at Poynter. Poynter has been hammered in the comments. I’ll leave it to you to decide the merits of whatever it was that caused his abrupt departure. But someone on Twitter had the audacity to call him journalism’s Joe Paterno. Someone needs to get a grip, a clue and some perspective.

Mixel for iPad: A social art collage app. Free, and one of the authors is Koi Vihn, whose design ideas I’ve appreciated.

Smart is the new sexy (NAA): This is an ad campaign by the Newspaper Association of America. I suppose it’s trying to make newspapers “hip” or something through the use of pastels and sans serif fonts. Maybe I’m just too old to see the effectiveness.

What is Photojournalism (Ed Kashi): “Ed was asked recently by Whitney Johnson at the New Yorker magazine how he defined photojournalism today. Below is his response, illustrated with examples that highlight the 3 distinct parts of Ed’s definition.”

Ten technical Twitter tips for journalists (journalism.co.uk): For those new to the platform, or some tips for the longtime user.

We Are Journalists (tumblr): “We are journalists. We are proud of what we do. We are tired of bad press about the press. We are trying to be “team players.” We are terrified of more layoffs and paycuts. We would like to produce quality work without ‘obamasux99’ posting some non-sequitur rant at the end of it. We complain because we want things to be better. We would like some respect, plz. We are journalists.”

Cameras Everywhere: The Promise and Peril for Human Rights (MediaShift): It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

The Social Graph is neither (Pinboard blog): “Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook.”

A Brief Rant On The Future of Interaction Design (Bret Victor): This is worth reading for its contrarian take on the future of interface design, and this paragraph: “Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It’s a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it’s the star player in every Vision Of The Future.” is pure gold.

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Redesigns 2011: UC News-Record

November 9, 2011 in Redesigns

The News-Record at the University of Cincinnati relaunched their website recently.

The new site runs on the Griphon system from Detroit SoftWorks:

The old site, from archive.org:

The new site has more color in the (thinner) nav bar and a bolder nameplate. It’s hard to judge the columns on the new site, since the dominant art focuses on an important election story. The interior pages do show a greater variety of stories and look more like traditional newspaper section fronts.

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Curated links for Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011

November 8, 2011 in Links

Time for some links!

Occupationalist: I found this site via Aram Zucker-Scharff (The storytelling of the 99 percent), and was mesmerized by the way it incorporates a ton of data from various social media sources into a single site. Worth checking out and filing away for ideas for future big event coverage. Apparently, the site was made by Boulder Digital Works, out of the University of Colorado.

John Robinson: “Find thinkers who will challenge you,” and more advice for newspaper editors (Nieman Journalism Lab): John Robinson has always been my go-to example of an editor who “gets it.” So it was a little shocking to hear he was stepping down as the editor of the News & Record. He says he’ll still be around on Twitter. I wish him well in whatever the future holds.

What we told current Journalism majors about working at startups (BitMethod Brick by Brick): In a similar vein, Scott Kubie and Amanda Morrow had some advice for Drake University students. The future will likely feature a lot of jobs for j-students outside the traditional career, and the skill set for landing those jobs will also change. (via @selfmadepsyche)

6 Tips to Support Digital News Through Advertising (MediaShift): One would think most of this advice is common sense by now. It’s not. Here it is in a list.

Confidence Game: The limited vision of the news gurus (CJR): Dean Starkman’s lengthy essay takes on some sacred cows in the Future of News discussion. (via @Chanders)

Data Analysis 101: Seven Simple Mistakes That Limit Your Salary (Occam’s Razor): This is written about web site marketing, but the principles apply for any kind of data presentation. Kaushik also has a handy Statistical Significance Calculator. (via @gmarkham)

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CMA now College Media Association

November 8, 2011 in CICM shop talk, College Media News

(This was just announced. You’ll note a change in the header, and the press release reproduced below)

College Media Advisers, the organization of professionals who train and support student-produced media on college campuses, has changed its name to College Media Association.

The change is intended to reflect the association’s broader mission, according to CMA President David Swartzlander, assistant professor of journalism at Doane College.

“The name College Media Advisers implied that we might not offer services, information or importance to someone who was not an adviser. That’s simply not the case,” Swartzlander said. “CMA strives to serve all who work with college media – professionals and educators in advertising and business, broadcast, digital and editorial.

“The new name will allow CMA to better define its role in the changing media world. Under the new name, we can become one voice for all college media professionals,” he said.

The association started in 1954 as the National Council of College Publications Advisers and in the early 1980s changed its name to College Media Advisers. CMA has more than 750 members representing colleges and universities in 50 states and Canada.

CMA offers training and support to its professional members and serves thousands of students annually at its national conferences and workshops. Details about the association’s events, services, code of ethics and more can be found at collegemedia.org.

“While CMA has changed its name, its mission remains clear – to provide services to all who advise college media,” Swartzlander said. “Those services members have known and used in the past will not disappear. And CMA plans to offer more services in the future. We’ll just do so with a revitalized, inclusive vision – and a new name.

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Currated links for Friday, Nov. 4, 2011

November 4, 2011 in Links

YouTube has really been pushing socially interactive storytelling lately. The image above is from (obviously) Project Imagination. Check out the submitted photographs.

It’s Friday, time for some more light reading for your weekend. Since this is the weekend Daylight Savings Time begins for most of the U.S., don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour.

New AP guidelines endorse misuse of Twitter (Daily Dot): The AP proves the adage that companies don’t understand social media – again.

ESPN’s new social media strategy prohibits talent and reporters from breaking news on Twitter (Interchange Project): See above.

Is Google helping journalists, or co-opting them? (GigaOm): Google seems intent on messing up its core product, which is search. Mathew Ingram explores some of the pitfalls of the company’s new integration of Google+ profiles with news search results.

Yahoo! Debuts a More Personal Web With Its Fall Collection of Mobile and Social Products (Yahoo!): I have enough “personal news” apps on my devices, but Yahoo! jumps on the bandwagon with another one.

32 Ways Of Looking At Unemployment, In One Chart (NPR Planet Money): Nifty chart from Jacob Goldstein, Alyson Hurt and Jess Jiang that lets you compare U.S. unemployment rates across the demographic spectrum.

Less Is More: Using Social Media to Inspire Concise Writing (NYT): “How can online media like Twitter posts, Facebook status updates and text messages be harnessed to inspire and guide concise writing? In this lesson, students read, respond to and write brief fiction and nonfiction stories, and reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of “writing short.””

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Abandoning print at a community college: an adviser’s progress report

November 2, 2011 in College Media, management, Websites

Editor’s note: Mark Plenke wrote a message on the College Media Adviser’s Listserv about the transition to an online-only publication at Normandale CC. I invited him to revise and expand his comments and share them with readers who don’t have access to the listserv. This is the result. – Bryan

By Mark Plenke
Adviser, The Lions’ Roar Online

Editors at the Lions’ Roar, the student paper at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minn., decided last spring to drop their print edition and go totally online. The decision was difficult because the paper had published continuously since the school opened in the late ‘60s and had a good reputation and a loyal audience among faculty and staff.

The editors had noticed, though, that there just weren’t enough reporters, editors and photographers to do a consistently good job of putting out both a print newspaper and a website. They’d also noticed that the number of newspapers they were recycling was getting bigger despite a dynamic redesign and stepped up efforts at social-media marketing.

So they pulled the plug.

Here’s what happened and what we’ve learned:

  • There were complaints, both during the informal public-comment period last spring when they made the decision and this fall when the news racks stayed empty as school started. But we didn’t hear from a single student; a few faculty said they missed the print paper.
  • The students and I did a good job of letting people know what was happening, including a campaign that used the empty racks (Can’t find a paper?–look online!) to promote the switch.
  • Readership went WAY up. The number of unique visitors to the site is triple what it was last May. The comparison I like the most: Lions’ Roar used to print 2,000 papers and close to half were recycled. In the first full month of school this fall, the website had 2,893 unique visitors and comparable numbers for October (2,821).
  • The key to success was giving up the student fee money that would have been used for printing (about $7,500 a year) to secure a promise of weekly access to the database of student email accounts. The webmaster now sends a weekly update of what’s on the website to every student email box, and we publish the same hyperlinked mini-home page to an employee portal so staff has one-click access to the site.
  • The biggest growing pain was getting students to understand that they weren’t putting out a paper every three weeks anymore, that news had to be covered, reported and posted in a hurry (still working on that one, but it’s gotten a lot better lately).
  • Many more slideshows and video stories are being produced now. It’s no longer a medium for feature stories only.
  • Writers are using more web-friendly forms, especially lists.
  • Blogs have replaced columnists, a really good change in terms of the writing. It’s much tighter and brighter.
  • Students are thinking more visually because it’s the best way to get a story promoted on the home page.
  • Happily, a few advertisers (but none of the national agencies, unfortunately) have decided to go online with the paper.
  • The one minus has been the loss of social time when layout night disappeared, but we’ve started scheduling staff events (a pizza-and-pop party in the office this week, for example) to help replace it.

I’m biased, but I think it’s fair to say the change was a big success. The site has three times as many visitors as it did last spring and at least a thousand more readers than the print paper had each month. I also think the staff is being served well because they’ve learned to report news when it’s still news and they’re broadening the professional skills they’ll need to find a job when they’re done with school.

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Curated links for Tuesday, Nov 1, 2011

November 1, 2011 in Links

Above, YouTube’s 90-minute documentary, free to view now. More details at ReadWriteWeb.

News developers worried about new cost to use Google Maps (Poynter): I can’t think of too many college outlets this would possibly effect, but it could be the start of new development in the mapping area, which has relied on GMaps to do a lot of heavy lifting.

17 Alternatives to Klout (ReadWriteWeb): If you don’t know what a Klout score is, you’re probably better off not reading this. If you do, you’ll want to check out this article. “…You might want to explore other alternatives that can help you measure your social media effectiveness. We have come up with 17 different services, some free, some fairly expensive. I have tried most of them and will give you my impressions so you can have a head start with your own explorations.”

Welcome to The Verge (The Verge): Former members of the Engadget team who’ve been writing at This is My Next, unveiled their new site today. “We’re focused on bringing you — our extremely savvy and frankly very handsome readers — the best and most comprehensive coverage of the consumer technology world. Not just the nuts and bolts, 24-hour news cycle stuff, but more in-depth coverage, bigger stories, and content that goes further.”

Google Reader Redesign Upsets A Lot Of People (webpronews): I’ve looked at the new Reader, and I wasn’t too miffed by the redesign. Of course, I haven’t really been looking at it much over the past few months. “Believe it or not, a lot of people are unhappy with the new design. This is fairly commonplace for redesigns in general, but users of Google products would probably do well to get used to it, if they’re not already, because I have a feeling we’ll be seeing plenty more Google+-related design changes for various products in the near future.”

Revealed: Why Techmeme links to them instead of you (Techmeme): “Over time, nearly every major tech news publisher has asked us a variant of “Why do you always post them and not us?” or “Why did you pick them over us for that story when we posted first?” So it’s probably time to address this issue in a general way.” If you write about technology, this is probably important to you.

Avería: The Average Font: This is pretty cool for type geeks, downloadable too. “This is the story of the creation of a new font, Avería: the average of all the fonts on my computer.”

WeVideo goes commercial with cloud-based video editing (GigaOm): There’s also a free version, but it’s pretty skimpy. “Video editing startup WeVideo is launching a new product that will enable organizations to use its collaborative editing products in the cloud. The WeVideo Commercial product is aimed at bloggers, journalists, marketers and other video creators who wish to easily edit, manage and publish videos from a single online platform.”

New website builds dossiers on journalists, hopes transparency will lead to trust (Poynter): NewsTransparency.com aims “to make it easier for the public “to find out about the individual human beings who produce the news — human beings with opinions, relationships, history, and agendas.” The site consists of journalist profile pages which, like Wikipedia, allow anyone to add information and, like Amazon, enable ratings and reviews. They also collect articles written about the journalist’s work.”

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