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Information overload: RSS reader edition

January 31, 2012 in blogging, career talk, General Media, industry news

UPDATE: via Jason Kottke (and my RSS reader) this related, lengthy piece from journalist Brian Lam, whose site I’ve never read.

Last week, my intro to multimedia classes discussed RSS feeds, and why they were a good thing. I love RSS feeds for keeping up to date on matters at the intersection of technology, journalism and college media. A lot of people have started using Twitter as an alternative to RSS readers, but I don’t find that a good thing, necessarily. The real problem for me is the amount of information that come through the RSS reader in a day. I was amazed at how much content some of the blogs I follow was pumping out in a day, so I decided to try an experiment. I “bankrupted” my Google Reader yesterday (Monday, Jan. 30, 2012) at 4 p.m. Central Standard Time. There were no unread items.

It’s now 2:30 CST on Tuesday, and I just went in to see how many items were in the unread RSS inbox. As you can see, there are 276 unread items. And I don’t follow any traditional media outlets (NYT, Washington Post, etc.).

The main contributors to this RSS glut?

Five sites, 170 new items in less than 24 hours!

Now, granted there’s probably a lot of good information in some of those blog posts, but who can keep up? I’m sure most people don’t read all these firehoses of niche information, preferring to focus on one or two. But if you’re trying to stay up-to-date on the latest happenings in a certain area, it’s not always an option.
It’s no wonder one of the more recent tech terms to become a buzzword is information overload.

I’m sure someone has a workable situation for this conundrum. I think one of the things we’ve created with the fast pace of the Internet is the need for constant content, some of which is little more than a picture and a blurb from another blog or a press release. And that’s not helping us get quality information, much less act upon the information we’re getting.

This isn’t specifically a college-media-related issue. But as journalists of the future, one of our college students’ key functions will still be to serve as trusted curators or information sherpas for people who don’t have time to follow all this content. And that means they will have to find strategies and tools to go where the information is and discover what’s important without having to spend hours in front of a screen sifting through stories.

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Curated links 1-30-2012

January 30, 2012 in industry news, Links

Lots of interesting information that you may have missed over the last week:

Can a Good Journalist Be a Good Capitalist (Carnival of Journalism): Good discussion this month on whether journalists can put aside their proletarian sensibilities and use the tools of the entrepreneur to ascend to the bourgeoisie.

Student Press Version of ‘Lazy Higher Ed Journalism’ (College Media Matters): “There are simply some stories that on a scroll through the archives of any student media outlet pop up again and again and again, sometimes with a fresh spin (although many times, not so much), but always with the same core issue or topic intact.” Man, have we all been there or what?

What’s your problem with the internet? A crib sheet for news exec speeches (Online Journalism Blog): This is actually a couple of years old, but it’s been updated, and, really, the content is evergreen.

10 Inspiring Social Networks for Writers (Mashable): Social networks aren’t just for posting photos of your family and cats. If you’re a writer, these might be sites to explore.

New York Times releases code to help journalists collaborate on WordPress, other platforms (Poynter): The plug-in has a “track changes” feature that looks promising. Here’s hoping it receives further development.

The Death of the Editor and the Rise of the Circulation Manager (Brain Pickings): Brain Pickings is a site that’s found it’s way into my regular RSS rounds because of posts like this. And she finds an essay that points out that everything old is new again. She writes, ”so long as we have a monetization model of information that prioritizes the wrong stakeholders — advertisers over readers — we will always cater to the business interests of the former, not the intellectual interests of the latter.” Yep.

Google already knows you’re a 24-year old woman who loves wombats (Ars Technica) I never looked at my Google Profile until I read this article. It was pretty close. You can see your own Google profile here.

 

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On comments

December 1, 2011 in industry news

Image representing New York Times as depicted ...

Image via CrunchBase

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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#ncmc11 Orlando

October 26, 2011 in industry news

This is a stream of tweets from the National College Media Convention happening this weekend in Orlando. This stream will be sticky at the top of the page here through the weekend.

The stream is in Flash, by the way, so it’s not going to work on your iDevice. Sorry.



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Three things to keep an eye on in iOS5

October 14, 2011 in industry news

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JUNE 06: Attendees walk b...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Apple just released the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS5, which introduced over 200 new features and enhancements.  The past 3 months I’ve had iOS5 running on my personal device as a developer.  During that time I have noticed three key features to keep an eye on over the next year.

One of the biggest features is the introduction to the “cloud.”  Certainly, the concept of the cloud is nothing new as users have been figuring out ways to use other services like Dropbox to sync files and even their iTunes libraries between computers.  As with most things Apple, it isn’t so much the groundbreaking idea as it is the implementation.  iCloud, Apple’s version of Dropbox, is tightly integrated and provides a unified experience across not just the operating system but also across devices – mobile and desktop.

With Apple creating an app “space” in the new version of OSX Lion, this means users can have an app on their phone and their desktop which sync data and information.

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ICM Interview: Brad Arendt on mobile app development promise and pitfalls

October 12, 2011 in industry news

Editor’s note: Brad Arendt, director of student media at Boise State, is a contributor to the blog and a colleague of long standing. This is structured as an interview because Brad wants to offer a service to other members of the college media community. The interview audio is below, and a transcript below the fold.

Boise State Student Media launched version 2.0 of their mobile app Bronco Mobile (iTunes link)  this August. Student Media Director Brad Arendt shared some of the experience of building a college media mobile app from the ground up, and what he hopes to give back to the community, in this interview. The audio is about 30 minutes long. A transcript is below the fold.

If, after reading or listening, you’re interested in more details of Arendt’s future efforts, contact Brad at barendt@boisestate.edu. He will also be at the Fall National College Media Convention in Orlando Oct. 28-30 and will be available to answer questions there.

Click on the mp3 player below to listen. If you’re on an iDevice and it doesn’t work, click this link to listen to the mp3.

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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.

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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.

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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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