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.

Print Friendly

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.

Print Friendly

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)

Print Friendly

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.””

Print Friendly

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.”

Print Friendly

Time for some curated links I’ve come across this week:

FUN

Instant Pie Chart: See abo.d. Enter values, a title and colors for each segment, click the buttons and you’ve got yourself a pie chart. Sure, it’s not Excel, but what do you expect from “Instant”?

Home: A Ghost Story: “An immersive story that uses your personal network – the web, email, video and your phone.” You can also opt for a “lite” version that only uses your computer.

7 ways to avoid scary web design (Mintleaf Studio): Most of the advice is actually standard fare these days, but certainly worth a Halloween-themed reminder.

Social Media: Love It or Hate It? Video Contest (iContact): Winner gets $10K, which is a pretty nice payday for producing a short video. Click the link above for details. via ReadWriteWeb

J-INDUSTRY

Why Not Occupy Newsrooms? (New York Times): CEO excess isn’t only a Wall Street phenomenon. If you haven’t read this column from Monday, you should do so now.

Will Social Media Make Us Anti-Social? A Talk With Gary Shteyngart (The Atlantic): “I know professors who can’t read an entire book–professors of English literature, mind you. So everyone’s attention span has been shot. We’re no longer used to processing long strings of information. When a book is no longer a book but yet another text file, it’s very hard to say, “OK, I’m gonna devote myself to the 300 pages of text on my screen” when I have all this other stuff that I need to do.” (The 1920s called. They want their complaint about that new-fangled “radio” back)

#ASNE chat, Oct. 25, 2011 (American Society of News Editors): This week’s chat dealt specifically with internships, so lots of stuff there for students and advisers. This is a Storify of the chat session.

Seven things you should know if you’re starting out programming (The Guardian): Jonathan Richards made the leap from a print journalist to the world of programming. This is his advice.

TECH AND TOOLS

Wanted: The unfollowemator (Ryan Sholin): “As a Twitter user, I want a way to automatically unfollow users who mention specific terms with a certain sentiment, so that I can easily filter out people with which you just can’t argue.”

Codify: Elegant, Creative Coding Directly on the iPad – No (other) Computer Needed: Codify is a lightweight coding environment that allows you to work directly on the iPad. That is, you don’t have to use the full-blown iOS API, and you don’t have to connect a computer or fire up Xcode. You just start the app and begin coding, in a way that ought to be very friendly to users of Processing. via @darthcheeta on Twitter

The Guardian launches n0tice, an open community news platform (Nieman Journalism Lab): _Today, a major paper is getting into the community messaging game: The Guardian is launching n0tice, a social news platform that draws a little from Craigslist, a little from Foursquare, a little from Ning.

“It’s a place where you can share news, post details about forthcoming events or let people know you have something to sell or share,” the project’s FAQ puts it. Just like IRL message boards, “everyone else in your locality will be able to see what you’ve posted and also take part.”

New Storify Editor Interface Rolls Out – With StoryPad Tool For Gathering And Sharing Media: “One new tool we think users will really enjoy using is a revised bookmarklet and all-new Storypad that lets you collect and save media from all over the web and add it to your story. You can easily share what you’ve gathered with other Storify users, and you can use media from anyone’s Storypad in any story. So whatever you find online can become part of your story.”

Print Friendly

Students Beware, Facebook Changes and Privacy: Karl Hughes digs into some of the changes to the new Facebook interface. I’m curious if students will really notice how much of their privacy is being given away by the new features, or if they’ll care?

The Ultimate WordPress Cheat Sheet: This is for the guts of WordPress programming, not CSS or HTML.

Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality: “I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate augmented reality.”

Figment (Found via someone on Twitter): “Figment is a community where you can share your writing, connect with other readers, and discover new stories and authors. Whatever you’re into, from sonnets to mysteries, from sci-fi stories to cell phone novels, you can find it all here.”

Google introduces “Infinite Digital Bootcase,” acts as virtual librarian: “Google introduced the newest form of bookcase to your browsers today — what it calls an “Infinite Digital Bookcase,” and damn does it look cool.” Certainly an interesting move as more publishers move into the tablet market. More info on the official Google blog.

Hollywood unions, networks and studios mount anti-piracy offensive: “A broad coalition of film studios, TV networks and entertainment industry labor groups has launched an education campaign to teach the public about the evils of piracy and prod their employees and union members to support an anti-piracy bill in Washington.

“Through internal videos, newsletters, emails and booths set up in company commissaries , media giants such as NBCUniversal, CBS, Viacom, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. are encouraging their employees to join a newly formed group called Creative America, a grass-roots organization launched this summer to muster support in the creative community for tougher anti-piracy legislation.”

I wish people would stop using the word “grass-roots” to describe industry-backed efforts to influence policy. Also, the PROTECT IP Act will have some impact on students if its passed, so might be something to write about.

Internet links not libel, top court rules (CBC): Via @Hermida on Twitter, what should be obvious is recognized by the Canadian Supreme Court.

Print Friendly