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Steve Jobs is dead

October 5, 2011 in industry news

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The technology world was abuzz tonight over the death of one of the leaders of the consumer electronics industry. Steve Jobs died just a day after the latest Apple product announcement.

I never met Steve Jobs, but the technology he helped shape have had a profound impact on my life in many ways, from the Mac Classic I used at a small-town newspaper in 1996 to the MacBook Pro I’m typing this on.

I do want to say this: Apple products have had a tremendous impact on college media over the years since the introduction of the Macintosh.

I hope the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak continues to produce cool stuff that pushes technology forward.

Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs.

Meeting in St. Louis

September 29, 2011 in Conferences, industry news

I’m traveling today to St. Louis for the Mid-America Press Institute to participate covering the RJI Tablet/Mobile Strategies and Vision for News Organizations workshop and participate on a panel at SND’s conference. I’ll be tweeting throughout my time there, and you can follow along with the goings on for the full convention with the Twitter hashtag #sndstl. The session I’m involved in is at 10 a.m. on Friday morning, about educators keeping up in a fast-paced digital world.

See you on the tubes.

Facebook’s changes and college media: appification on the way?

September 23, 2011 in College Media, industry news, social media

Some of the biggest news in social media the past two days has been the announcement by Facebook of a whole passel of new features, changes to their interface, and ways for news media to interact with the Facebook mob of users (now around 700 million).

There’s more coverage in the tech blogging/press universe than I could possibly link to, although I’m including some links at the bottom of this post if you’re interested.

photo via GigaOm

The big change for users will be the Timeline. But for media operations, the big change is in the application space. Several large media outlets – Washington Post and the Guardian UK among them – debuted new “social reading” applications. These applications allow you to read articles within the Facebook interface and then notify your Facebook acquaintances as to what you’ve been reading.

Now why do I think this is going to be important for college media? Perhaps an illustration is in order. I’ll pick on a large media outlet like The State News at Michigan State.

Let’s say they develop a Facebook app like the ones listed above. Facebook users can then allow that app to hop into their newsfeed (or whatever they’re calling it this week at Facebook). When one of The State News’ readers reads an article in Facebook, a link to that article will be shared with that user’s friends, which may push more readers into The State News app, and bring in a wider connection to the paper’s online content.

From what I’ve read, the media outlets are able to sell advertising in the app outside Facebook’s advertising platform (from the Guardian story above), so there’s added value for online advertisers.

And as much as I talk about developing web sites, it’s pretty obvious that a huge number of college students spend a lot of time in Facebook. And getting content in front of college students’ eyes (especially online) is always a challenge when college newspaper readership remains committed to the print edition.

Will college media outlets do this? It’s too early to tell. I’m aware of some outlets that have been using Facebook pages for a social media presence. This is a slightly different paradigm, and totally new on the radar. But I’ve already seen information on my FB page about what articles people are reading on the Washington Post Social Reader. It’s worth experimenting with, at least, as a way to expand the reach of your digital footprint.

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Friday miscellany

September 23, 2011 in industry news, Links

It’s Friday, and here are some curated links to things I’ve been reading lately:

A Chance in Hell: EIU journalism alum David Putney was on campus this week as a visiting professional, and talked about this multimedia piece: A Chance in Hell. It’s a really compelling story, and a good package of multimedia that puts a face on some of the struggles of the war in Afghanistan. He also talks about some of the ethical issues with the photographs that were used in the piece, which would be a great discussion for a photojournalism class.

Facebook Changes: Mashable has a good round-up of the changes to Facebook announced yesterday at “f8,” their developer conference. Mathew Ingram at GigaOm says that this looks a lot like the old days of the walled garden Internet.

News organizations should build apps that solve problems, not just republish content: Jeff Sonderman at Poynter reminds us that an “app” is something that should solve a problem. Too many news organizations are falling back into the shovelware trap with their app efforts.

Better late than never, the Washington Post informs staff that linking is vital: “Top editors at the Washington Post sent a memo this week instructing staffers it is ‘vital that we link both internally and externally to other content in our stories, on blogs and even in captions.’” This really shouldn’t be news at this point in the life of the Internet, but news orgs continue to struggle with linking. Washington Post is only the most prominent example, I think.

Also, this isn’t a post, but a lot of info coming out of the Online News Association this weekend which you can follow with the Twitter Search #ONA11

 

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Dead links and the dirty ground

September 15, 2011 in blogging, Blogroll, CICM shop talk, industry news, Links

Working through some blog housekeeping over the past few days, I noticed that there were some people whose blogs I respected that I wanted to add to the blogroll on the right side of the page.

As I started looking through the list, I realized there were a few of the sites on the list that are no longer updating. In fact, one: College Rag (which I wrote about in 2008), appears to have ceased to exist altogether. I didn’t link to their name, because it appears to have gone dormant, replaced by an ad site.

I don’t have so much of a problem with people who stop updating their personal web sites or blogs. People get new jobs, they decide they don’t have as much to say, or they want a break. That happens to all of us. But I do regret when sites go totally dark. It’s a classic case of link rot.

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Links to Check Out 09/15/2011

September 14, 2011 in industry news

  • “Taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right – and that includes federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties. Unfortunately, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs from public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply.”

    tags: photographer Law rights

  • “I’m most interested in how BostonGlobe.com fits into the newspaper industry’s larger thinking about paywalls and how its digital and print products differ. And I think there’s a lot that’s really interesting about what they’ve done, in terms of technology, in terms of design, and in terms of their business model. So, after having played around with the site for a while and talked with Globe leaders in the lead up to launch, here are a few thoughts on what I think works, what I think doesn’t, and what questions we’ll be looking to answer in the months ahead.”

    tags: boston globe journalism businessmodelsforjournalism

  • “EBooks are content. They’re the work of content companies that create words and narratives for people who want information. Any special section, extended report or beloved series of 20,000 words or more than you create or have created for your newspaper or website can become an eBook. If you’re covering a geographic community, you should have an eBook guide to that community that you’re selling to travelers or people relocating to the area. If there’s a special event or sports team in your community that brings in visitors, you should publish a fresh edition of an eBook covering them each year. If you’re creating content, then why not leverage that content through the eBook market, as you do through the Web and other media?”

    tags: apps ebooks journalists

  • “YouTube is rolling out the new feature in the form of a simple “Edit Video” button on your My Videos page. It’s a little like if they just took their cloud-based editor and sucked it back into the site. All you have to do is select one of your videos, and it’ll let you trim away excess footage, rotate, stabilize to get rid of shake, and changes the attributes to make things brighter, warmer, or more saturated. You can also add Instagram-style filters to make things look old-timey.”

    tags: videos youtube online

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links to Check Out 09/02/2011

September 1, 2011 in industry news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links to Check Out 09/01/2011

August 31, 2011 in industry news

  • ““This is an increasingly sophisticated and hazardous media world,” said Mr. Tapper, who as a rising media star often found his career and even his personal life the subject of interest by blogs and media critics. “Undermining a 27-year-old reporter — if it is in the interest of a campaign or a party that wants to discredit a news organization — it’s impossible for me to believe that’s not going to happen.” “

    tags: NYTimes.com journalism politics

  • “Visiting an error page is not a pleasurable experience for a visitor but web designers can make it pleasurable by designing beautiful and creative error pages. All it needs is a little bit of creativity and some quality time, and your error pages will stand out. Here is a list of some creatively designed error pages that will inspire you.”

    tags: fun inspiration

  • “As it turns out, we have a way to prevent gangs of humans from acting like savage packs of animals. In fact, we’ve developed entire disciplines based around this goal over thousands of years. We just ignore most of the lessons that have been learned when we create our communities online. But, by simply learning from disciplines like urban planning, zoning regulations, crowd control, effective and humane policing, and the simple practices it takes to stage an effective public event, we can come up with a set of principles to prevent the overwhelming majority of the worst behaviors on the Internet.

    If you run a website, you need to follow these steps. if you don’t, you’re making the web, and the world, a worse place. And it’s your fault. Put another way, take some goddamn responsibility for what you unleash on the world.”

    tags: socialmedia blogging comments community

  • “Moving online? Start here. We’ve compiled the most helpful articles to ease the transition. And if there are any topics you’d like to see addressed that aren’t, or any sections expanded, please contact us at info@JEADigitalMedia.org.”

    tags: jeadigitalmedia.org journalism onlinejournalism

  • “Internships. Portfolio. Real work (not work assigned in a class). Not necessarily paid work — but journalism work that some respectable organization saw fit to publish, with your name on it.

    Lacking these, a new journalism graduate is behind the curve. There are not so many jobs out there that you can afford to make excuses for why you didn’t get it done.”

    tags: journalism interviews jobs

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links to Check Out 08/31/2011

August 30, 2011 in industry news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links to Check Out 08/30/2011

August 29, 2011 in industry news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.