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Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Why I Left Print Media for Digital
In new media circles, one of the hottest topics of recent years has been the print-to-digital shift. People pundit about it, shout "print is dead" and wallow in the sadness sparked by nostalgia for a day when this wasn't a question. We've also begun speculating on whether a device like the Kindle will really ever take our attention away...
more »Digging Deeper
In Digital Age, Journalism Students Need Business, Entrepreneurial Skills
The traditional path of a journalism career has clearly shifted. In the past, a journalism student would learn about being a newspaper reporter, then take a job at a small-town paper, eventually moving up to a medium and then larger paper. Now, the reporter might launch a blog, an audio podcast or video reports as a one-person operation, handling editorial and business duties simultaneously.
more »Your Take Roundup
Facebook Has a Problem with Trust
In the not-too-distant past, I remember fondly getting an email notification from Facebook that one of my friends had sent me a message or "poked" me virtually. I happily clicked over to Facebook to see what someone had said or done, and responded in kind. Now, my reaction to getting the same kinds of notifications has changed, and I...
more »Your Take
What might entice you to use e-books or e-readers like Kindle?
It seems like every few years a new e-book device comes out that promises to revolutionize our reading experience, hoping we'll throw out our book collection and read everything electronically. Recently, the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle have been the contenders in e-books, but many people complain that they are not open enough for different types of books and that...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
How Google, Wikipedia Have Changed Our Lives -- For Better and Worse
A lecturer in the U.K. made headlines this month when she banned her students from using Wikipedia and Google for research assignments in her classes. The professor, Dr. Tara Brabazon, said that students "don't come to university to learn how to Google." I'm sure they don't, but I can imagine the fear that the ban struck in the hearts...
more »Digging Deeper
BusinessWeek.com Pushes into Aggregation, Video, Participation to Stand Out
Business news is often about numbers. And when you check the audience numbers on the various top financial news sites online, the portals such as Yahoo Finance and MSN Money come out on top, followed by a jumble of online magazines such as Forbes.com, wire services such as Reuters, and online-only pubs like TheStreet.com. As of last August, BusinessWeek.com...
more »Media Usage
The Efficiency (and Shame) of Long-Distance Reporting
My writer friend Marlene once had a dot-com job that seemed odd. She wrote for a travel site about various countries but never traveled to those countries. She simply aggregated information from other websites and did extensive online research before writing about them and putting together guides. But strange as it seemed at the time, I was destined to...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
The Benefits and Pitfalls of Using Social Media for Reporting
Because we live in an age when social media sites are our daily bread, it seems natural to turn to them as resources for writing a story. When I wrote a piece about the popularity of Facebook all over the world, I went straight to Facebook to get the user interviews I needed. And when I wrote about the...
more »Digging Deeper
Traditional Media Ready to Elevate the Conversation Online -- with Moderation
Major media sites have started to get the religion of audience participation, but there's been one big hitch: How do you harness the audience's knowledge and participation without the forums devolving into a messy online brawl that requires time-intensive moderation? Over the years, traditional media sites have tried forums, killed them, and tried them again, this time with more...
more »Weblogs
Blog Pundits Certain About Steve Jobs' Keynote
After the stunningly bad predictions by pollsters, pundits, commentators and anyone who graced a cable TV news studio before the New Hampshire Democratic primary, we decided to turn a fake news source, the fictional Online News Network (ONN), to tell us what Apple CEO Steve Jobs will tell everyone in his much anticipated speech tomorrow morning. The following is...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
5 Places to Watch Movies Online Legally -- and Free
The spread of broadband Internet access has made online video a much better experience, allowing movie fans to catch a flick on the Net without having to rent a DVD. Depending on the kind of system and monitor you have, watching films on a computer can become almost as enjoyable as watching them on your television. For instance, with...
more »Digging Deeper
Anti-Piracy Dragnet Could Hurt 'Fair Use' of Copyrighted Video
All the lawsuits and rhetoric around people uploading copyrighted material on video-sharing sites such as YouTube make it seem like a black-and-white situation: either you're shooting your own original video or stealing it from someone else. But what's lost in that simple either-or interpretation is the more gray area in copyright law known as fair use, which protects people...
more »Obama's Win Related to Online Prowess?
As a candidate for president, you can collect thousands upon thousands of Facebook supporters, MySpace friends, blog readers, online video viewers and more, and yet that doesn't guarantee you one vote in a real-world election. But perhaps the tide is turning now. With Barack Obama winning the Iowa caucuses and polling strongly for New Hampshire, there might be a...
more »Your Take
The social networking site Facebook started its life as a closed network for college and high school students. One of its big advantages was that people felt safe networking with their friends. But once the site opened up to everyone, things have changed. There have been phishing scams, a rise in "friend spam" (people ask to be your friend but...
more »PoliticalShift
Iowa Caucuses Blanketed by Twitter, Blogs, Video
If you were anywhere in Iowa yesterday, you might as well assume that anyone around you could report on what you were saying, even in what you thought was a private moment at a restaurant. That's the hard lesson learned by veteran GOP political strategist Ed Rollins, who was repeatedly flummoxed in a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace,...
more »DVR
The New Etiquette for Our Time-Shifted Culture
Do you remember the old days back when we sat around and watched a sports event or TV show with people in real time with commercials? You might have even called up a friend far away to share your thoughts on what was happening in the game or who had won which Academy Awards. But with time-shifting and DVRs...
more »Tags
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