I didn’t blog about the last time Richard Koci Hernandez’ Multimedia Shooter web site was hacked and taken down. It may have happened again, and this time, it looks like Richard’s throwing in the towel for good.

I’m walking away this time with my head held high. It’s been fun. I’m closing the blog doors for good this time. There’s not enough Jack Daniels or Red Bull to get me back this time. Sorry for on again off again nature of the blog lately.
Thanks for the support through the hacks. This is a great time for me to step away from the blogosphere. Good Night and Good Luck, see you in the real world.

This is sad news, indeed. I was actually using MMS this Tuesday to find some good multimedia to show to my advanced online reporting class. It’s a resource that will be sorely missed. Until Andrew DeVigal’s Interactive Narratives 2.0 is back up and running, it’ll be hit and miss on finding multimedia from around the country and the world.

h/t Mark Hamilton

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Taking a break from hardcore journalism/new media stuff …

For the past seven months, I’ve lived without a TV. I watch shows online, using hulu, thedailyshow (which has CONSTANT problems), and the various networks – MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, etc. Mostly, it hasn’t been a problem finding content – I should give props to the NCAA for livestreaming their basketball games. Yes, their blogging policy for working journalists is STUPID, but at least they get some of the Internets.

And now, South Park Studios has opened up an archive of online material (here’s a TechCrunch post about it). I guess this was news this week, although I watched at least one episode online last week. (I suppose this is where I should mention that these are uncensored episodes, so it might not appeal to all sensibilities).

Now if we could just convince the higher ups to let Law & Order episodes show up online.

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The editor of the Sacramento Bee is fending off criticism about the state employee salary database the Bee has put online. This is not the first time public employees have objected when their salary information has been put on display for all the world to see. But it’s instructive. “Public” information gains a whole new meaning when it’s “worldwide.”

FWIW, I think any newspaper or media outlet that is going to put the salary data about public employees online should be willing to put its own salary data online. How much does the editor of the Bee make? How much does a beginning reporter make? I imagine the beginning reporter salary would be a bit sobering.

But the newspaper is a private corporation! You say. So? The newspaper traffics in the language of public trust. We wrap ourselves in the First Amendment every chance we get. We’re supposed to be the watchdogs. Let’s act like watchdogs and be transparent about our own conflicts of interests, economic details, etc.

That goes for college media too. If you’re going to be outing the budget for the SGA, then you’d better be prepared to out the budget for student publications.

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Some things you might want to read:

Pep Talk – Robert Niles posts some positive news to counteract all the negativity out there in medialand. The market for good journalism — engaging, relevant, accurate and enduring information — lives. What the market is rejecting is the half-baked, lazy and boring reporting that doesn’t stand the test of time — the sort of reporting that understaffed and under-trained newsrooms too often have delivered over the past generation.

 Angry journalists can be a good thing – Maurreen Skowran posts a number of initiatives journalists are taking to help save the industry. Navigating between the past and the future deserves both experimentation and analysis. Newspaper readership has been studied for decades. But we also need to examine what factors make comparable newspapers sometimes perform vastly differently online.

Journalism may fade in NU name game – Eric Zorn highlights the name-game going on at Northwestern U.’s famed Medill school. Personally, I don’t find anything sacrosanct about the name “journalism,” but some of the alternatives are so vague as to be useless.

College High Five of the Week: Tennessee Journalist – Pat Thornton highlights the differences between two media products at the University of Tennessee. I’d rather see the current student media produce experimental projects. But if the student newspaper isn’t going to step forward, perhaps it’s time for more online media products. College is a time for experimentation, pushing the boundaries, discovering new things and not being afraid of failure (it’s a lot less costly to fail in college than it is after graduation). If there was ever a place for journalists to take risks and try things that may not work, it should be in college media. College is the perfect time for failure.

Mashup Fun – Jack Lail details how he put together a homicide map for Knox County using an XML file and Yahoo! Maps.

Exclusive: Charting 4-year circ decline at major papers – E&P posts some grisly numbers, but wouldn’t this be better in a chart?

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Angela Grant was one of our key presenters during the CICM workshop. Here’s what she had to say:

I ’m really impressed at how Bryan Murley, Chris Carroll and Ralph Braseth of the CICM planned and organized this conference. They decided they would create an experience where the students would actually learn by doing.

What this meant is that we taught them how to shoot video on Thursday, and then gave them story assignments and sent them out the door to actually shoot video. On Friday we taught them how to edit video and then allowed them to use their day to edit what they had shot. They finished up on Saturday and we critiqued their videos.

You know, in 20 years in journalism, I don’t think I’ve ever been as humbled as I have been to the response to the CICM workshop. Chris Carroll really organized an exceptional experience for the people who showed up.  Check out the video/audio stories here.

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Update: Danny Sanchez rightly points out that an editor at the Orlando Sentinel makes the “The Internet is a river” metaphor a year ago:

As Orlando Sentinel editor Charlotte Hall likes to say, online news is like a flowing river, while the newspaper is like a snapshot of the day

But he hasn’t sold me on the second part of the equation. Most news sites act like wells, where water (and readers) go to die. I don’t think Hall was talking in that frame of reference.

In Iowa, in Illinois, and again this weekend at the CICM workshop, I made the following comment:

The Internet is a river, it’s not a well. Don’t let your web site be a well where readers go to die.

I did a quick Google search, and couldn’t find where anyone had used that particular phrase before. If they have, let me know, and I’ll give them credit. If not, it’s mine.

The point of the metaphor is the importance of linking (something I’ve discussed quite a lot today), and sending people out to other web resources instead of trying to hold them on your site. I truly believe readers will appreciate your web site more if you point them to relevant external resources instead of trying to keep them in like caged animals.

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Yoni Greenbaum (editor on the verge) highlights an example of poor linking practices from the New York Times. The Times mentions YouTube videos that are viral efforts to promote the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s dreadful “Thriller” album (to each his/her own). Greenbaum notes:

The article has visible links to Sony, Kanye West and Fergie (artists who both appear on the a Thriller tribute album) and Tesco. And thanks to their partnership with Answer.com, you can double-click on any term or word for a definition. But nowhere were there any links to the videos on YouTube, nor did the Times decide to embed them.

I’ve written before about the confusing link habits of big newspapers, and try to spread the gospel of linking whenever I get the chance (as I did this past weekend at our CICM Workshop). It’s more than a little frustrating to see how ineffectual these big media outfits have been at linking outside their own properties. WaPo and NYT, I’m specifically looking at you.

Actually inserting links into stories takes work. There are tools being developed that will “scrape” some similar content to place alongside a story, but nothing beats the judgment of an editor or reporter who can find the links and insert them manually.

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