Yesterday was a big one for newspaper companies

The Journal Register Company, which is running a forward thinking project focusing on newspaper production, reached an important landmark yesterday, and published their newspapers using open source tools.

Read about it from Jeff Jarvis and on the Journal Register’s blog about the project they have appropriately titled, “The Ben Franklin Project”. The work that The Journal Register Company is putting into this will provide a template for others to build upon.

More from Steve Earley and John Paton.

A shocking source of TV news coverage of the oil leak?

G4 and Kevin Pereira: “BP Oil Spill Effect on Wildlife”.

G4, the games channel. Yes, the games channel!

This makes sense in a world where the most informative pieces of national news journalism are coming from a music magazine and nightly comedy show doesn’t it?

hacks/hackers teaming up with Mozilla on a course

This sounds like a fantastic opportunity for programmers who want to become familiar with journalism, and journalists to become familiar with programming.

Recent Journalist-Programmer reads

O’Reilly Radar: Mike Loukides: “What is Data Science?”

Media Shift: Marc Glaser: “Why Journalists Should Learn Computer Programming”

Rafe Colburn: “Why journalists should learn to program” – with a suggestion on what really to be digging into – and I agree.

Resource: Hacks/Hackers

Google News adding human editors to promote serendipity

Good move on Google’s part. Nieman Journalism Lab: “Google News experiments with human control, promotes a new serendipity with Editors’ Picks”

Mashable: “Google News and Why Human Editors Still Matter”

Previously: Techmeme: “Guess what? Automated news doesn’t quite work.”

Parenting while plugged in – don’t do it

I am guilty as charged and with Richelle’s help, changing my ways: NYTimes: “The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In”:

…children in higher socioeconomic homes hear an average of 2,153 words an hour, whereas those in working-class households hear only about 1,251; children in the study whose parents were on welfare heard an average of 616 words an hour.

Part of the reason the children in affluent homes she studied developed larger vocabularies by the time they were 3 is that “parents are holding kids, the kids are on their lap while the parent is reading a book,” Dr. Hart said. “It is important for parents to know when they’re talking to kids, they’re transferring affection as well as words. When you talk to people, there’s always an implicit message, ‘I like you,’ or ‘I don’t like you.’ “

Maureen Johnson – “I am not a brand.”

Maureen Johnson: “Manifesto”:

The internet is made of people. People matter. This includes you. Stop trying to sell everything about yourself to everyone. Don’t just hammer away and repeat and talk at people–talk TO people. It’s organic. Make stuff for the internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important. Put up more cat pictures. Make more songs. Show your doodles. Give things away and take things that are free. Look at what other people are doing, not to compete, imitate, or compare . . . but because you enjoy looking at the things other people make. Don’t shove yourself into that tiny, airless box called a brand–tiny, airless boxes are for trinkets and dead people.

Read the whole thing

NPR covers Mark Horvath’s Invisiblepeople.tv

I try and spend some time each week serving lunch at Project H.O.M.E.’s “Women of Change” with other fellow CIM Volunteers. I’m engaging some of the folks who work at Women of Change into possibly trying a project along these lines. I think Mark Horvath is onto something by sharing these stories as raw as he does.

NPR.org: “Former Homeless Man’s Videos Profile Life On Street”

Reference Links:

Invisible people.tv

Mark Horvath: haRdLy NOrMal

Sean Blanda on Remixing the News

eMedia: Remix the News: “Remix the News: what news can learn from Last.fm and Pandora”: “there is no service that adequately customizes content to my tastes based on previous reading”

A good read with some important ideas. The only thing close I can think of is Google Reader’s recommendations which are based upon my clicking activity in Google Reader.

One of the commenters in Sean’s post added some thoughts about ‘intelligent serendipity’. ‘Intelligent Serendipity’ will be all important if we intend to help people get the news they need to hear, but might not be aware of it.

Some links on ‘intelligent serendipity’:

Jeff Jarvis: “Serendipity is unexpected relevance”

Chis Anderson: “What would it take to build a true “serendipity-maker”?”

Mathew Ingram: “In defence of newspapers and serendipity”

Inside Guardian.com: “The Random Guardian”

Somewhere in here is the news experience of the future. Helping people connect with what they are interested in, and helping them connect with what they would (should?) be interested in, but just aren’t aware of it yet. Isn’t that the essence of ‘news’?