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NewspaperShift
How Niche Bloggers Fill Gaps Left by Local Newspapers, Alt-Weeklies
On December 11, Ben Tribbett checked his phone messages and found two waiting for him from Virginia gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe and Creigh Deeds. And when he opened his inbox that same day he had received an email sent by another candidate, Brian Moran. All three messages were to wish him a happy birthday. The fact that three high-level politicians...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
ProPublica Puts Spotlight on Tracking TARP Money
ProPublica's Show Me the TARP Money is a simple map and chart reflecting the recipients of money provided through TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), a federal program that authorizes the U.S. government to buy assets from struggling financial institutions in an effort to remedy the subprime mortgage crisis. The site shows institutions that have been approved for assistance and keeps a running total of the number of institutions, the amount committed, and the amount invested so far. There is an RSS feed and a widget for the site as well.
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Digging Deeper
Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business
You've probably heard how much the micro-blogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social networking site Facebook can boost your company's profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these startups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren't familiar with...
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Legal Drama
U.S. Supreme Court (Finally) Kills Online Age Verification Law
In 1998, the U.S. Congress enacted the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a law intended to control child access to sexually explicit material on the Internet. The law was immediately challenged on free speech and other grounds and its enforcement was delayed. After ten years of litigation, on January 22 the U.S. Supreme Court dealt the final blow to...
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AdvertisingShift
College Newspapers Finally Hit by Economic Downturn
As the newspaper industry has struggled with declining revenue, some analysts predicted that college newspapers would weather the storms of the changing media environment better than their peers in the wider industry. (See also this Chronicle of Higher Education article.) Now the national economy indicates that the future might not be quite so rosy: The widespread economic pains in the...
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PoliticalShift
Obama, Congress Enlist 'Direct to Constituent' Communications
Professional communicators are paying close attention to the rise of "direct to consumer" (DTC) communications. This is a phenomenon largely enabled by the rapid proliferation and adoption of online technologies, whereby organizations can communicate directly to the public without filters or mediation from the press. Corporate blogs or advocacy groups' online "action alerts" are just a couple examples. As a...
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Media Usage
How Forwarded Email Jokes, Hoaxes Evolved with Social Media
When I first ventured online in the late '90s, my in-box was constantly flooded with email forwards. Friends and co-workers alike tossed around lists of jokes, hoaxes and cautionary urban legends, pleas about a dying child in Idaho that needed your prayers or horror stories about human fingers discovered in fast food hamburgers. Today it seems that there are fewer...
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Embedded Report
The Big Video Debate: Rough or Slick?
Video is one of those new practices we have to get used to as newspaper journalists now working in a Web 2.0 world. One of the key issues is the quality of the video. Do we always need slick, television-style video, which require more specialized skills, or will our community accept "rougher" video, made by amateurs using less sophisticated cameras?...
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EducationShift
UBC Begins Study Program of New Media and Society
The young men and women entering university today are digital natives who have grown up in a world of Microsoft, Google and Apple. They have lived through a time when the Internet went from being a highly specialized system used by scientists to a ubiquitous utility that defines how they engage with the world. But while today's students may blog...
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Business
Live Blog: RJI TalkFest on Serving Entrepreneurial Journalists
I am virtually covering the all-day sessions at the RJI TalkFest today, held at the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute. I will be watching in via Adobe Connect, where I can hear and see what's going on and chat in the chat room. The agenda includes sessions on community-building, advertising and marketing, news and information and mobile. The live-blogging...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Innovation in Inauguration Coverage
This week, instead of focusing on one innovative journalism project, I'd like to highlight some of the many projects that came up covering Barack Obama's inauguration. The first question I asked myself as I started collecting links was, "Well, this is a cool way to cover the event, but is it journalism? For example, I saw a lot of "official"...
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Online Video
YouTube Helps Video Journalists Get a Start
When discussing the travails of major news outlets online, it's not uncommon for someone to mention the effect that companies like Google and Craigslist have had. But seemingly overlooked in this debate is Google's own YouTube, which has become a breeding ground for unknown and upcoming filmmakers and broadcast journalists. In what way could the online video giant use its...
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Education
Experimentation (Not Stagnation) Should Flourish at J-Schools
Some journalism academics may be even more scared of new technology and more resistant to change than the worst print "dinosaurs" working in media today. But Web 2.0 has made getting online so simple that there are no more excuses for being disconnected. While some reporters see journalism education as a potential refuge from the rapid pace of change in...
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Digging Deeper
Vodafone's Child Porn Filter Blocks Innocent Czech Tech Blogs
Last summer, the British cell phone carrier Vodafone announced it would be offering a new filtering service for its Czech customers. "Child pornography and promotion of racism [are] such socially dangerous content that we have access to it automatically blocked for all of our customers," said Philip Premysl, senior manager of corporate social responsibility of Vodafone in the press release....
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Embedded Report
More Time for Blogging! The Future Is Already Behind Us
At Mediafin, we started the year with some ambitious plans for our blogging activities. We want to create new blogs to involve more people, but we also want to become more active on our existing blogs. I'll tell you about what we're doing, the reasons behind it and how things seem to be working out at this early stage, as...
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Weblogs
Can Blog Awards Identify Quality Online Content?
I met the news that my blog, Bloggasm, had been nominated for a 2008 Weblog Award with a mixture of amusement and apathy. I had watched last year as my RSS feeds became clogged with the incestuous link trolling common with such contests. The Weblog Awards, like others of its kind, are based on a popular vote, guaranteeing that most...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
California Schools Guide: Database of Scores With News Hook
California Schools Guide from the Los Angeles Times is a comprehensive data-based guide to private, public and charter schools in California. The guide includes test scores, enrollment, student-teacher ratios, demographics, teacher experience and reader comments. Schools can be searched by county, city or name, and ranked by each indicator.
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Citizen Journalism
Ushahidi Platform Used to Document Congo, Gaza Crises
Bloggers have always been timely in their response to local, regional and international crises and Kenyan bloggers were no different when violence broke out following the December 2007 elections. Within nine days Ushahidi, "a platform that crowdsources crisis information," was born. But that open source platform is now being "localized" to cover conflicts in other global hotspots, including in the...
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Digging Deeper
GlobalPost Aims to Resuscitate Foreign Correspondents Online
Mr. Powers: How would you like to cover the biggest story in the world today?
Johnny Jones: Give me an expense account and I'll cover anything.
There has always been a touch of glamour associated with foreign correspondents, able to live in far-away lands and report on wars and strife, as in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Foreign Correspondent," quoted above. But today, Johnny Jones would likely be brought back from Europe in a round of cost-cutting at his newspaper.
MarketingShift
Transparency as a PR Principle, Not a Tactic
We used to say in my profession -- public relations -- that you shouldn't say or write anything that you wouldn't want to turn up on the front page of the New York Times. Now what I like to tell clients instead is: You shouldn't say or write anything that you wouldn't want to turn up in Google search results....
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PoliticalShift
Government 2.0: How Social Media Could Transform Gov PR
It's easy to see governments as nameless, faceless monoliths, something impersonal or, even worse, untrustworthy. Much of that is because government culture remains steeped in traditional ideas about public relations and outreach work, notions that have become archaic in an Internet-enabled, hyper-connected world. Just as private companies are learning to embrace social media to manage brand reputations, governments must adapt...
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