Tag Archives: norgs

A perfect lesson in what our acceptance of soundbites can cause

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Shelley Powers was outright slandered by taking a sentence out of context from a comment she made: link.

This is part of the game of modern politics and modern media. The lack of apology from those involved is pretty damning, because no one wants to admit they participate in it or are part of the larger problem. A larger problem that is leading all of us to be less informed about the world around us when there is so much media available.

We have a responsibility one another. When you write from a position of trust – don’t abuse it.

Questions regarding Inquirer and Daily News plans to charge readers of their websites

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I was contacted by someone who teaches journalism for my thoughts on Daily News and Inquirer plans to charge readers – how they might affect local bloggers who often link, comment, or refer to the news from those online publications. He asked three difficult questions.

  • Q: Do you plan to pay for your local Philadelphia online news?
    A: It counts upon how much it costs and what if offers. I hope they pursue a NPR-like membership model instead of putting up a paywall. In the end, it counts upon the value offered.
  • Q: Will you link to articles that your readers will have to pay to read?
    A: Not if behind a paywall. I will find free alternatives to link to (KYW1060, TV station websites,
    national news sources, and especially local independent sources).
  • Q: Any general reactions to how you think this will affect what you do and what other local bloggers do?
    A: Local blogging will not be effected all that much believe it or not. There are many free alternatives. What is of concern is that we are becoming less and less informed as a people. At a time when we need *more* exposure to the work of the the Inquirer and Daily News, there will be less. That’s tragic.

I have to add that my hopes are that the papers remain local and that the bankruptcy proceedings are favorable to the local ownership. While I may disagree on paywalls, I feel that the news organizations within the papers stand the best chance at survival that way.

How does news spread?

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Researchers at Cornell have published a paper titled “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle” that I need to dig into. They’ve published visualizations of their research at a NYTimes piece on the study says, “This is a landmark piece of work on the flow of news through the world… And the study shows how Web-scale analytics can serve as powerful sociological laboratories.”

Chris Anderson, who in May presented his own research into this to the International Communications Association (ICA) posted his reflections on that research and how it relates: Another Perspective on How “News” “Diffuses”: The Francisville 4 from Inside the Newsroom

Scott Rosenberg shares some criticisms in: “Newsies beat bloggers? Some caveats on memetracker study”.

Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward summarizes it up: In the news cycle, memes spread more like a heartbeat than a virus.

Challenging conventional wisdom about the direction of media

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New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell: Priced to Sell – a scathing review of Wired’s Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” and the concepts promoted within.

NYTimes: Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia – the NYTimes coordinated with Wikipedia staff to keep a factual event from appearing on the service.

Say Everything: Chapter One: Putting Everything Out There [Justin Hall]: a review of Justin Hall’s history and his efforts on the Web. How they laid the foundation for all that came later.

NiemanJournalismLab: Four crowdsourcing lessons from the Guardian’s (spectacular) expenses-scandal experiment

Scott Rosenberg: Salon.com IPO: It was ten years ago today

Chris Anderson (not Wired’s): We’ve Been Living Through a Twitter Revolution for the Last 10 Years

“Amusing Ourselves to Death” a comic by Stuart McMillen

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A clip of the Amusing ourselves to death comic 

Thought provoking, conversation starting, and probably controversial counting upon who you are, check out the whole single page comic.

Parenting, Education and Inspiration for Sunday May 17, 2009

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Inquirer: Bari Pepe, 46, Years of trauma behind her, now she wants to aid others – ex-addict acheives master’s in social work. Very inspiring story. Read it.

The Boston Globe: Inside the baby mind: It’s unfocused, random, and extremely good at what it does. How we can learn from a baby’s brain. – “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” – Metafilter thread.

New Yorker: The secret of self-control. – let your toddler’s imagination be free, encourage creativity, to try and try again, and understand that we have the power of choice.

Hacking Education – A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing

NYTimes: Marc C. Taylor: End the University as We Know It – straight up inspiration about tearing down the status quo to meet the needs of today and tomorrow.

CSMonitor: In tough times, graduates (and parents) assess the worth of a liberal arts education – just an opinion – I think liberal arts majors are well positioned for the economy of today and tomorrow.

Deseret News: Universities will be ‘irrelevant’ by 2020, Y. professor says

The Atlantic: Who Needs Harvard?: The pressure on smart kids to get into top schools has never been higher. But the differences between these schools and the next tier down have never been smaller

Chronicle: What Colleges Should Learn From Newspapers’ Decline – Newspapers are dying. Are universities next? The parallels between them are closer than they appear.

Tom Baker: Getting Involved in Higher Education – software engineers should seriously consider teaching, here’s why.

Slashdot.org: With a Computer Science Degree, an Old Man At 35?

Inquirer: Daniel Rubin: Grads, please note: It’s not about you

xkcd: 1000 Times – its all about context isn’t it?

Smart aggregation and API use in NPRbackstory

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NPRbackstory is an automated Twitter feed that attempts to add context to the news stories trending popular today according to Google’s Hot Trends. It leverages NPR’s archives (very smart, as Joshua Benton notes archives are underused assets), and Yahoo! Pipes to produce a RSS feed that is fed into the NPRbackstory account. It was developed by Keith Hopper of NPR’s Public Interactive group.

Read Joshua Benton’s piece at Nieman Journalism Lab

Read more about it at Keith Hopper’s blog.

Check out his other Twitter related project – Twitterstars – a tool to find local Twitter power tweeters.

Yesterday’s BarCamp NewsInnovation Philly

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Yesterday afternoon, encouraged by Roz, I found a way to attend BarCamp NewsInnovation Philly. I’m happy I listened to her. It was a great event.

I was late, but in time for four discussions, the biggest highglight of those was TechnicallyPhilly. They gave an enthusiastic, concise description of what they do, how central community and chosen niche were to it, and even had some hints on how to earn a living doing it. Other interesting discussions included Scott Karp’s presentation on Publish2 and collaborative news rooms, and the folks behind copress.org, who while working to solve problems commonly found in college online news organizations, are inadvertently addressing many of the problems found in large mainstream online news organizations. There is another presentation, on how to make money on the Internet, that was infuriating for how it looked down on people. As Chris Krewson ponintedly asked, “The take away seems to be that the public is stupid and so are your advertisers”.

Biggest highlight for me was getting to meet Amy Z. Quinn after all these years. Amy is someone I “met” online via Philly Future more than three years ago. As were meeting Howard Weaver and Scott Karp for the first time and getting a chance to hang out and catch up with Wendy Warren, Chris Krewson, Aaron Couch, and Chris Anderson.

BTW, if you want a terrific summary of how news gets chosen for Philly.com’s (and more than likely the majority of news orgs) home page, the tensions present in its production and what drives it, Chris’s research paper: “Web Production, News Judgment, and Emerging Categories of Online Newswork in Metropolitan Journalism” is where you want to go.

For Arpit – who is Clay Shirky?

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This is a backgrounder primarily for Arpit who discussed with a few thoughts on Clay Shirky’s latest piece on Newspapers.

I wrote an intro for readers of paradox1x, on Clay Shirky, back in September.

A few favorite pieces:

Help, the Price of Information Has Fallen, and It Can’t Get Up

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality

Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing

Communities, Audiences, and Scale