Journalism of the Web

Over and out

2006-12-12T10:52:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the final wrapup of class blogs for "Beat Reporting: The Journalism of the Web." Many of you have done a terrific job this semester. Although I won't post here again, I do hope you'll keep blogging. It's a great way to hone your writing, to stay connected to the news and to show prospective employers what you've been doing.

I've enjoyed reading your work, and will continue to check in on what you're writing about.

"Fauxtography" smackdown. Celia Soudry shares some examples of anti-Israel bias in the media as presented by HonestReporting.com. She also shares her frustration with Blogger.com: "Unfortunately, blogger.com is not allowing me to upload any photos at this time, which is very frustrating — and takes so much away from this entry." Yes, indeed. That's why Media Nation is considering a possible move to WordPress.

The year in pictures. It may only be mid-December, but Boston.com has already uploaded its 2006 compilation of "The Year in Photos." Set aside some time — there are 91 pictures here. "So long, 2006," writes Chelsea Petersen. Wait a minute — I'm not ready.

Fluffer off his nutter. Chris Estrada concedes he might be losing it in blogging about the confluence of citizen journalism and fluff. In one of his more lucid moments, he writes, "There's always gonna be some sort of 'soft news,' but as citizen journalism and hyper-local coverage become bigger, the newspapers are going to have to put a serious check on things to keep their legitimate reputations intact."

Keeping an eye on Albany. Jessica Harding checks in on a blog devoted to what's going on in Albany, N.Y. Albany Eye, Jessica writes, is sometimes funny, sometimes mean — and could definitely be improved by opening itself up to comments from its readers.

Educational blogging. Michael Naughton discovers that the Scituate Public Schools have joined the Boston school system in starting a blog to keep students and parents informed. He also notices that Facebook has started a blog, which he sees as "yet another step toward world domination."

Politics as conversation. Rachel Slajda erupts in profane delight at former Washington Post reporter John Harris' interview with Jay Rosen about his new Web-based venture. Harris: "we’ll try to loosen the style and in the process tell readers more about what we know, what we think, and why we think it." Rachel: "@#!*$# fantastic!"

Mandatory advertising. This is insane. Ricky Thompson reports on a lawsuit filed by a newspaper publisher in Florida against a community college that pulled its advertising because of what college officials described as unfair coverage. Can advertiser boycotts really be outlawed?

Future sports podcaster. Thomas Chen reflects on his experience as a blogger this semester, and outlines plans for a sports-related blog/podcast that he hopes to unveil in the near future. "I think I have a co-host lined up and now it's just a matter of acquiring some audio tools and software and learning the ins and outs of podcasting," Tom says. "That's going to be my project during Christmas vacation and hopefully, I'll be able to launch in early January."

Fake site gets real. Adam Marschilok says that a Conan O'Brien joke about a non-existent Web site devoted to the love lives of lonely manatees is now actually up and running. He also observes that "60 Minutes" recently saved some graphic footage of Mixed Martial Arts fighting for the Web, and worries (as do I) that the Red Sox aren't going to sign Dice-K.

A streaming podcast. Not a contradiction in terms, writes Amy Costa, who says that Mercora is an innovative breakthrough. Amy also offers some advice on where to find underground music online, and is pleased that the Internet is wreaking havoc with the commercial media's marketing plans.

The Daily Me, rebooted

2006-12-08T12:12:00.000-05:00

In our weekly blog roundup, Chris Estrada and Rachel Slajda take a look at new sites that specialize in personalized news of one sort or another.

On a national and worldwide level, Chris examines a site called NewsVine, which he says is a little bit like Digg, only it remembers what you like and pushes more of it at you. "I'd definitely recommend for you to partake of the grapes from this Vine and see what you think," Chris writes.

Rachel goes local, checking out a site serving the Dallas-Fort Worth area called Pegasusnews.com. Her verdict: Tastes great, less filling. "Pegasus is lovely. The site uses bright colors and big buttons on the top for each section," she writes. "But the news content itself is a lot of fluff."

Elsewhere this week:

Paid citizen journalism. Rajashree Joshi reports that Yahoo and Reuters have embraced citizen photojournalism and video journalism — and, unlike the situation at YouTube, contributors can actually make money. Sounds interesting — but, in my limited experiment, I couldn't get the video to play.

A rival low-cost laptop. Ricky Thompson finds that Intel is working on an alternative to the celebrated $150 laptop, and that Brazil is interested. He also checks in on the new CNBC.com as well as the Yahoo-Reuters citizen-journalism collaboration.

Multimedia ICA. Glenn Yoder is hugely impressed with Boston.com's multimedia package on the opening of the Institute of Contemporary Art. Among other things, the package includes the debut of Globe arts writer/blogger Geoff Edgers as a television correspondent.

The BBC's conversation-starter. Chelsea Petersen likes the BBC's "School Day 24," which gets students together from around the world to talk about everything from terrorism to marriage. She also praises a Los Angeles Times slideshow on "AIDS in Africa."

The never-ending season. Thomas Chen wraps up the Major League Baseball winter meetings, and how they're being covered online, from blogs to a photo gallery. "Oh, the Winter Meetings are every blogger's dream," Chen writes.

Media ups and downs. Evan Brunell points to recent stories that show television and online revenues are rising, whereas print revenues continue to fall. Still, he's dubious about an experiment at the Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press to play down print and pump up the Web.

Shop till you drop. Mike Naughton notes that BJ's Wholesale Club has finally embraced online shopping. And he's less than impressed with the new Boston School Department blog, saying it "reads very much like a stack of press releases abandoned on a newsroom fax machine."

Sunday blog roundup

2006-12-03T17:55:00.000-05:00

I'm late in posting the weekly blog roundup — I've been editing the first drafts of your final projects. The good news is that I had a chance to go through all of them, so you'll be getting them back on Monday rather than Wednesday. With that, here is what you've been writing about online during the past week.

Third World laptops. Adam Marschilok is taken with a New York Times story on a project to provide laptop computers to children in the Third World at a cost of just $150 apiece. Adam also notes that the Times discussion board allows readers to react to the story immediately. Indeed, as of Sunday at 4:45 p.m., there were already 350 comments.

Free speech isn't free. Celia Sourdy observes that expressing yourself on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook can get you fired. She also asks whether Muslims are being unfairly singled out, finds an odd report about a high-school fight triggered by MySpace, and offers a disturbing example of Craigslist-fueled child abuse.

But sometimes it is free. Chelsea Petersen is a lukewarm supporter of a court ruling that Web sites cannot be sued for libel successfully for material placed on their sites by third parties. "This, to me, is both good and bad news," Petersen writes — good for free speech, not so good for people wondering if what they read online is reliable.

Pulitzer Prizes 2.0. Chris Estrada reports that the Pulitzer Prize folks will now allow newspapers to submit various multimedia packages, including blogs, slideshows and videos. Chris also takes a look at an article that claims the New York Times Co. has flatly refused to sell the Boston Globe to a group headed by former GE chairman Jack Welch.

Press those words. Evan Brunell sets up a WordPress blog and finds it's incredibly easy. "Everyone who's on Blogger should just basically move over," he writes. (I know, I know, I just have to find the time.) Evan also recounts an unpleasant run-in he had with a contributor to his sports site, Most Valuable Network, over the abuse of a press pass.

Mitt and Mormonism. Glenn Yoder notes that Time magazine is taking a close look at how Gov. Mitt Romney's Mormon religion could affect his presidential campaign, a subject that has been explored locally for some time. (Here is the definitive piece, by the Phoenix's Adam Reilly.) Glenn is also a little unnerved by a CIA recruiting campaign and psyched over the new, tech-savvy Congress.

The Doctor is right on. Jane Mackay digs up some wisdom from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson that is as pertinent today as when he wrote it. Also, Jane loves a recent New Yorker profile of O.J. Simpson ghostwriter Pablo Fenjves, who appears to combine cheerful amorality with an acute awareness of his limitations.

From Swarthmore to Baghdad. And speaking of the New Yorker, Lisa Panora is impressed with a piece about "War News Radio," a student-radio production featuring telephone interviews with residents of Baghdad. Lisa also shares the joy of an ear-piercing teenager repellant that she is still young enough to hear.

HSTV on Boston.com. Mike Naughton tells us that the Boston Globe's Web site, Boston.com, has begun to solicit user-submitted videos of high-school football games — an interesting citizen-journalism twist on an old standby. "Are home movies of little Billy's high-school football games just the beginning?" asks Naughton.

Podcasting politician. Rachel Slajda writes that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has begun to record three-minute video podcasts, and they've proved quite popular — except with the news media, which do not like the idea of a politician communicating directly with her constituents. Rachel also notes that two of the Washington Post's top political reporters are Web-bound.

The Little Red Wiki. Rajashree Joshi observes with some consternation that the Wikipedia entry for Mao Zedong differs considerably depending on whether you're reading it in Chinese or English. "It is hard to say whether this is deliberate because after all, Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia where viewers edit the information," she says.

Targeting informants. Thomas Chen views the notorious Web site Who's a Rat, reported on most recently by the Associated Press, and wonders about a site that endangers the lives of police informants. Still, he notes, "The documents and information that the site posts are of public record and no one's challenged the idea that the site is not protected by free speech."

Live from Central Ave

2006-11-25T16:13:00.000-05:00

I'm blogging from the Barnes & Noble in Colonie, N.Y., right off Central Avenue — which just happens to be the subject of this Adam Marschilok post.

Adam recently demonstrated a multimedia feature for us from the Times Union Web site called "Central Ave: Broken Dreams, Second Chances." It traces Central Ave from the mean streets of downtown Albany to the malls of Colonie. If you've ever been to the Capital Region, it's worth checking out.

Also around the blogs this week:

The $100 trolley ride. Thomas Chen offers Thanksgiving greetings with the tale of a man who got lucky after overpaying just a bit for his ride on the Green Line. Tom also thinks Boston.com could have done a better job with a video of sports writer Nick Cafardo on such burning issues as whether the Red Sox will be able to unload Manny Ramírez this winter.

Sordid tales from the SGA. Ricky Thompson shares a new blog he found, the NU Governator, that purports to offer the inside dirt on Northeastern's Student Government Association. But Ricky is skeptical of how believable any of this stuff is, citing the "middle school" tone of the proceedings.

Citizen journalism in India. Rajashree Joshi discovers a site called Instablogs, which appears to be a citizen-journalism project based in North India that's focused more on news than it is on opinion-mongering. "On the whole," she writes, "I felt that although the quality of the reports was not all that great, the variety was good. It is definitely a good start."

Digg-ing trivia. Lisa Panora points to a story in Dow Jones MarketWatch, which reports that Digg's system of allowing users to rank stories by popularity could wind up further trivializing the mediascape. She also finds a strange tale of a lost mushroom-picker who was saved because rescue workers saw the glow of his iPod. Good thing it was charged up.

Save the Internet. Jane Mackay catches up with "net neutrality," the term favored by those who oppose an attempt by large corporations to turn the Internet into a multi-tiered system favoring — well, large corporations. She also discovers that the celebrated recent New York Times article on "Web 3.0" was actually 11 months late.

The F-word. That would be "finished," which is what Glenn Yoder says Michael "Kramer" Richards is following his racist, N-word-laden tirade at a comedy club. Glenn asks, "Didn't he learn anything from the decline of George Allen?" Apparently not. The lesson would be that, in the age of the Internet, everything you say can and will be recorded, uploaded and used against you.

Cable news crack-up. Chris Estrada says the debut of Al-Jazeera's new English-language channel and the upcoming launch of France 24 mark the further fragmentation of cable news into smaller and smaller niches. He also gives props to the Houston Chronicle for embracing YouTube rather than fearing it.

Has Yahoo got game? Chelsea Petersen wonders if Yahoo may have gotten back into the game against Google with its recently announced advertising partnership with seven newspaper chains. She also shares her thoughts on the explosion in Danvers, across the harbor from where she was staying that night (thanks for your concern, Chelsea; the Kennedys are fine), as well as on some fine photos by citizen journalists posted on Boston.com (which seem to have moved).

Don't call him a "graphic novelist." Celia Soudry catches an appearance by comic illustrator and writer Joe Sacco at the recent Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism. She also offers some observations on the college student behind TVNewser and weighs in on "the date from hell" — chronicled on the Web for your voyeuristic amusement.

TGIF

2006-11-17T22:10:00.000-05:00

Time once again for the weekly update from our student bloggers.

No toons for Trillin. Celia Soudry blogs an appearance by Calvin Trillin at the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism, and learns that the New Yorker writer isn't too keen on Wikipedia. Why? Someone wrote that Trillin likes comic books. He doesn't. But the current Wikipedia entry on Trillin seems to get it right.

You get what you pay for. Chelsea Petersen writes about Jay Rosen's talk at the Berkman Center earlier this week on NewAssignment.Net, his experiment in open-source journalism. Petersen's wondering how much of a contribution volunteer activists can make to journalism, writing that "it's my own personal belief that nothing really comes for free."

A podcast in defense of print. Chris Estrada likes Ted Landphair's Voice of America commentary on the threat posed to newspapers by technology. But he also thinks it pretty amusing that you can listen to Landphair's lament as streaming audio, or download it in two different formats. Et tu, Ted?

The definition of futility. Like many bloggers, Evan Brunell can't believe that journalist/lawyer Peter Scheer was serious when he suggested that news organizations withhold their content from free portals such as Yahoo News and AOL for 24 hours. "Look around," Brunell writes. "You're in 2006. You're way out of your element as a newspaper dinosaur."

Bidding for ad revenue. Glenn Yoder points to an Editor & Publisher article about a new way for newspapers to sell advertising that sounds an awful lot like an auction — except that "it's not really an auction," according to the guy who started it. Yoder's encouraged, though he'd prefer the days when "big bosses puffed cigars lit by flaming $100 bills pulled from the piles of money forklifted in from advertising profits." Hmm. When was that?

Cell-phone documentary. Jane Mackay reports on a cell-phone video on YouTube, made in the Powell Library at UCLA, that shows an Iranian-American getting repeatedly shocked with a Taser gun. It's hard to tell what the young man did wrong other than not having an ID and not leaving quickly enough to suit the campus police. Just one piece of the story, obviously, but powerful.

Censorship renewed. Calvin Trillin might not mind, but Lisa Panora does: It seems that the Chinese government's decision to stop censoring Wikipedia, celebrated in the media earlier this week, lasted for about a day before the shackles were put on once again. "It is hard to say how long the so-called Great Firewall of China can last in a world that thrives on communication," Panora writes.

Craft over code. Mike Naughton is pleased to learn that editors in online newsrooms are more interested in journalism-school graduates who can write stories than in those who have mastered the arcana of cascading style sheets. "It's hard to deny that the findings are a relief for those of us spending time and a lot of money in journalism schools learning the basics of the craft," Naughton says.

Facebook goes Globe-al. Rachel Slajda notices that the Boston Globe's Web site, Boston.com, now offers the option of letting you share stories you like through Facebook. I tried it with a Globe story, and it now appears on my Facebook "Profile" page. If I wanted to, I could also e-mail it to Facebook friends. I've got to say, though, that this doesn't strike me as the most compelling use of technology.

The Matsuzaka watch. Thomas Chen shows us Boston.com's "Scott Boras countdown clock," an up-to-the-second meter of how long the Red Sox have to sign Japanese pitching phenom Daisuke Matsuzaka, whose agent is the notoriously difficult Boras. Chen also shares some video of a Japanese batter swinging and missing at a Matsuzaka delivery.

Jay Rosen on Media Nation

2006-11-14T09:30:00.000-05:00

I've posted my report on Jay Rosen's appearance at the Berkman Center. I hope that those of you who were able to attend thought it was worthwhile. If you couldn't make it, please watch the video. It hasn't been uploaded yet, but it should be here later in the week.

Web 2.0 is so 2006

2006-11-12T09:51:00.000-05:00

Look out: At a time when we're all still trying to wrap our minds around the participatory Internet that's come to be known as Web 2.0, heading straight toward us is Web 3.0. John Markoff writes about it today in the New York Times.

Markoff's article is pretty interesting, but a little short on explaining exactly what Web 3.0 is. Apparently there is some, uh, disagreement. Look it up in Wikipedia and you get this: "This page has been deleted, and protected to prevent re-creation."

Essentially, though, Web 3.0 is about thinking of the Web as a giant database, and being able to use it to get answers to highly specific questions that are asked in plain English. Given that online journalism is becoming increasingly database-driven, Web 3.0 is a development worth watching.

Saturday morning with the blogs

2006-11-11T12:03:00.000-05:00

From Gannett's move into citizen journalism to the latest attempt at censoring the Dixie Chicks, student blogs at Journalism of the Web are hopping. Here is the latest roundup.

Gannett takes the plunge. Chris Estrada is psyched about the giant newspaper chain's "Information Center" initiative, by which Gannett papers will embrace hyperlocalism, citizen journalism and a 24/7 news ethos. Rachel Slajda also writes about Gannett's experiment, and voices some skepticism about the language being used to describe it: "Nothing like nonsensical corporate jargon to save newspapers."

High-altitude annoyance. Celia Soudry is less than thrilled with plans to allow folks to yap on their cell phones while flying. Even though the service will cost $3.50 a minute, Soudry believes our tech-obsessed society will embrace it.

Speeding from the scene. Chelsea Petersen is amazed at how quickly the news media moved on following Deval Patrick's big win. By the next morning, she writes, Boston.com was treating it as old news.

Most valuable logo. Evan Brunell continues to update us on the redesign of his sports Web site, Most Valuable Network. Ever coy, Brunell writes, "I won't be showing the logo here, but rest assured that it's an edgy logo ..."

A world without paper. Jane Mackay covers a talk by one of our fabulous guest speakers, William Powers of the National Journal. Powers, who's spending a semester at Harvard's Shorenstein Center, is thinking about what we'll miss when paper is gone.

Marketing by censorship. Lisa Panora reports on the Dixie Chicks' latest marketing breakthrough: NBC's decision to ban an ad for their documentary "Shut Up and Sing." Like any good netizen, Panora provides us with a link to the trailer.

Microsoft's domain. Rajashree Joshi ponders Microsoft's decision to give away Internet domain names for free as part of its Office Live product for businesses, and thinks it's mostly a good idea.

Candid camera. Thomas Chen issues a warning to professors: when you see a student aiming his cell phone at you, he might be taking a picture so that he can upload it to RateMyProfessor.com. Good grief.

Around the blogs

2006-11-02T17:57:00.000-05:00

Some notable posts from Journalism of the Web student blogs this week:

Feel the hate. Celia Soudry links to an anti-Israel rant posted on YouTube. The most remarkable moment comes near the end.
Garbage in, garbage out. Chelsea Petersen discovers that a New York Times interactive political map has some outdated information about the Massachusetts governor's race.
Pro-am conundrum. Chris Estrada finds an Associated Press story on the difficulties of incorporating citizen journalism into the mainstream media.
The e-Hot Stove League. Evan Brunell likes the Boston Globe's online guide to the Red Sox' off-season moves, complete with interactive multimedia features.
Share this story. Jane Mackay takes a look at how the Boston Globe and other papers are using social-networking sites such as Facebook and del.icio.us.
Nine-figure milestone. Mike Naughton notes that there are now 100 million Web sites online. That's one for every three Americans.
Work-friendly networking. Rajashree Joshi wonders if the rise of business-oriented social-networking sites will be more accepted in the workplace than MySpace.com.
Giving it away. Thomas Chen asks why he pays for Baseball America when it's now offering a podcast for free.

Friday night live

2006-10-27T19:26:00.000-04:00

JOW students have been blogging away — all links at right. Check out these new or newish posts:

Evan Brunell moves toward unveiling his redesigned sports Web site.
Thomas Chen can't resist rubbing Game Six in our faces 20 years later.
Chris Estrada chomps down on some birthday cake to celebrate the iPod.
Rajashree Joshi attends a talk on how Google News is put together.
Jane Mackay plugs an FCC public hearing being held in Oakland, Calif.
Adam Marschilok scratches his head over real blogs by fictional characters.
Lisa Panora ponders the advent of virtual journalists reporting on virtual reality.
Chelsea Petersen calls our attention videos more serious than the usual YouTube fare.
Celia Soudry wonders about the reality behind those happy military homecomings.
Glenn Yoder's not wild about Rupert Murdoch, but respects his smarts.

Web-powered downsizing

2006-10-26T16:17:00.000-04:00

This past Monday, Slate media columnist Jack Shafer wrote a provocative piece arguing that cuts in the newspaper business are not quite the disaster for democracy that they're often portrayed as. Last night he wrote a follow-up in response to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times, both of whom had taken umbrage.

What caught my eye was Shafer's contention that the Web has made journalists far more efficient than they used to be — so much so, he thinks, that it's ridiculous to believe newsrooms need to be as richly staffed as they were a generation ago. Shafer writes:

A middle-school student sitting at a Web terminal has more raw reportorial power at his fingertips than the best reporter working at the New York Times had in, say, 1975. The teenager can't command an undersecretary of defense to return his phone call as the Times guy can, but thanks to Google he can harvest news stories and background information that would take the 1975 model journalist days to collect.

The young amateur can also tap hundreds of free databases serving up scientific, legislative, regulatory, and business information in an afternoon that a team of 1975 reporters couldn't assemble in a week. Give him access to JSTOR, PubMed, Edgar, Nexis, Factiva, and other important sites and he'll write three stories in the time the '70s veteran reports one. Naturally, the kid might not have as good an idea of what to do with the information he's collected, but you get my point: Technology has made today's reporter more productive and more accurate than his forebears. So, if the Los Angeles Times peaked at 1,200 reporters and it's down to about 940 now and Tribune wants to cut it further, it's hardly proof that the corporate meanies are defunding the newsroom.

I want to disagree with Shafer, but at the moment I have to confess that I'm not sure on what grounds. Maybe he's right if his reference point is 1975. But his argument doesn't hold up so well if you look at how much richer many newspapers were in 1999, or 2002.

Still, his basic point is sound. If the Web has made journalists more efficient than they were a generation ago, then it only makes sense that news executives will conclude that they don't need as many of them.

Shafer also makes an observation that we've discussed in class — that not every midsize metro needs a large national and international staff when the New York Times and the Washington Post are just a click away.

On point with Casey Parks

2006-10-26T16:09:00.000-04:00

We recently took a look at Casey Parks, the University of Missouri graduate journalism student who won a trip with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to cover Africa for two weeks.

Earlier this week, Parks — and, briefly, Kristof — was interviewed for an hour on the WBUR/NPR program "On Point." You can listen to the stream in Real or WMP; there's a podcast option as well.

Worthwhile listening.

Live from the Peabody Barnes & Noble

2006-10-20T21:37:00.000-04:00

It's time for the Friday night blog roundup, a recurring feature of Journalism of the Web. Links are listed on your right, so I won't repeat them here. Your guide to recent posts:

Adam Marschilok shows how ESPN combines convergence journalism, bowling and Monday-night football.
Celia Soudry wonders whether federal agents might have had something better to do than to pull an eighth-grader out of class because of her MySpace page.
Chelsea Petersen reports that Apple has found an innovative way of tweaking Microsoft: using iPods to transmit a Windows-crashing virus.
Chris Estrada ponders former Des Moines Register editor Geneva Overholser's just-released manifesto on the future of journalism.
Evan Brunell shares the difficulties of digital entrepreneurship in an update on the redesign of his sports Web site.
Glenn Yoder says the NBA's latest online venture is characterized mainly by contempt for hometown fans.
Jane Mackay checks in from New York, where a new mashup can help you when you really need to go, and from Boston, where the Net is tracking a boozy debate.
Lisa Panora writes about the virtual reporter Reuters has assigned to the online simulation game Second Life, whose appeal escapes me entirely.
Mike Naughton is smitten by the interactive, customizable political map that's available at NYTimes.com. Check out the view by population.
Rajashree Joshi's reaction to Second Life is exactly the same as mine: "[W]ho would want to do something like this?"
Thomas Chen has thought about George W. Bush's MySpace page and decided that the president probably doesn't eat kittens. That's a relief.

Kirtz on new media

2006-10-19T10:55:00.000-04:00

Northeastern University journalism professor Bill Kirtz covered a new media conference last weekend at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School. The theme was how old media is adapting to the emerging technological landscape.

The key quote is from Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations at the New York Times Co.: "Technology is [just] a tool. It's the content, stupid. We use technology to create content in new ways."

As Kimberly Atkins told us yesterday, technology is becoming increasingly easy to use. What really matters are reporting and writing skills (and, increasingly, the ability to juggle audio and video as well).

Trouble is, as we all know, news organizations can do a great job with their Web sites and still have a hard time making enough money to support journalism. The Wall Street Journal today has a piece on the Boston Globe that's a little dispiriting: despite its skyrocketing online presence, it's on track to suffering its first unprofitable year in a very long time.

Watch those links

2006-10-12T21:44:00.000-04:00

I've been spending the last 45 minutes reading your blogs. There's a lot of terrific stuff, and, increasingly, I'm pilfering some of your posts for Media Nation. (Thanks!)

Watch your links — I'm finding a few malformed links every time I visit your blogs. If you copy and paste from the address window, you should be fine.

Let me leave you with a trio of visual items that you should take a look at:

From Lisa Panora: the Google Image Labeler, an online contest in which you're paired with another user to provide 90 seconds' worth of free labor for Google. I tried it and didn't get too far — I guess I'm just not quick enough.
From Thomas Chen: An interactive graphic on Boston.com illustrating a Boston Globe story on population growth.
From Rachel Slajda: "The Nietzsche Family Circus." Thus sprach Billy.

Newspaper innovation, U.K.-style

2006-10-04T10:08:00.000-04:00

The American Journalism Review has a terrific essay on the greater willingness of British newspaper moguls to experiment in comparison to their American counterparts. I urge all of you to read it.

The writer, Frances Stead Sellers, takes a look at two papers, The Independent and The Guardian. By far the more interesting of her case studies is The Guardian, which has embraced a number of Web 2.0 innovations — blogging, user content and the like — in order to establish itself as a go-to site across the English-speaking world. The Independent, by contrast, has reinvented itself as a "viewspaper," a European-style journal of opinion.

One thing that struck me was how the Brits are focusing their experimentation efforts on customers who actually care about news. By contrast, a report put out last week by the Newspaper Next project comes across as timid.

The report, "Blueprint for Transformation" — which, as of this writing, is not yet online, although I've got a copy — devotes most of its time to looking at ways that newspaper companies might make money from non-readers and non-advertisers without necessarily removing the "non-."

According to the report, newspaper publishers should concentrate on developing a "portfolio" of products ranging from online resources for working mothers to specialized advertising programs for tiny neighborhood businesses. The ideas are not unworthy, but they're certainly not sexy.

You can request a copy of "Blueprint for Transformation" here. And here's a fairly brutal takedown of the report by media consultant Vin Crosbie.

Midterm story guidelines

2006-10-02T10:38:00.000-04:00

I've posted an MS Word document explaining the midterm-story assignment on our class Web site. Please download it and give it a close look.

Friday update

2006-09-29T15:03:00.000-04:00

Most of you have been doing a good job of updating your blogs. You should make an extra effort to get people's names spelled properly, and to adhere to the tenets of AP style. Please note that the word "Internet" should begin with a capital "I." You may have noticed that British publications tend to lowercase it.

I've updated our class Web site a bit, building in a link to this blog and adding some of the sites we talked about in our discussion of Web-based computer-assisted reporting. You should give yourself 15 minutes or so to play with TheyRule.net, which demonstrates the power of social-network analysis. Imagine what a student newspaper could do if college or university trustees could be analyzed in such a way.

I've also "subscribed" to all of your blogs with an RSS aggregator called NewsFire. It's Mac-only, but there are many similar programs for Windows-based machines. Now, every time you post, I hear a "ding" go off on my iBook and I can instantly read what you've written.

If you're not sure what RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") is all about, I recommend this article, published in Slate. If you'd like to give RSS a whirl, try Bloglines, a free, Web-based aggregator. Updating with Bloglines tends to be slower than it should be, but it's easy to use and reliable, and the price is right.

Please check out what your classmates are doing. Here are a few highlights from my reading today (links to all blogs at right):

Adam Marschilok notes that ESPN is giving up on a tech idea it had introduced with great fanfare not too long ago.
Blythe Simmons looks at free, online magazines for college students.
Celia Soudry has some thoughts on Cardinal Seán O'Malley's blog, and posits a relationship between amateur media and amateur porn.
Chelsea Petersen ponders the rise of MySpace and the decline of Friendster.
Chris Estrada analyzes several different flavors of citizen journalism.
Evan Brunell hails the Web for making pajama-clad sportswriting possible.
Glenn Yoder writes about blogging in Africa, and how network television is discovering services such as YouTube.
Jane Mackay tracks Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and his growing interest in citizen journalism.
Jessica Harding is less than thrilled with a fee-based Web service that will help you find new friends.
Lisa Panora is dubious about a prediction that English will become the only language left on the Internet.
Mike Naughton wonders whether the explosion of blogs in China can be controlled by that country's repressive government.
Rachel Slajda notes that you don't necessarily need the Internet to practice citizen journalism.
Rajashree Joshi thinks Google's problems in Belgium raise some troubling issues about content and copyright.
Ricky Thompson points to a story on how Newsweek is using the Internet to offer college degrees online.
Thomas Chen offers some examples of how sports can ease the pain of a collective tragedy such as 9/11 or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The roots of digital culture

2006-09-25T08:25:00.000-04:00

The connections between digital culture and the counterculture that preceded it have always struck me as pretty obvious. Maybe it's because one of the first computer books I read was "The Whole Earth Software Catalog," which was distinctly countercultural in tone and approach.

So I'm surprised by how surprised Edward Rothstein of the New York Times seems to be in his review of Fred Turner's book "From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism." But never mind. Rothstein gets it right, even if his eyes are a little wider than they ought to be.

Here is an excerpt from Turner's book.

Better than the Web?

2006-09-21T21:00:00.000-04:00

Slate's Jack Shafer takes a look at the New York Times Reader, which he thinks might be the first truly readable online newspaper. Why? It resides on your hard drive, not on the Web, and is displayed via new software from Microsoft that providers sharper resolution than what is available on the Web. I'm not going to bother with links; Jack's got them all.

At the moment, the Times Reader is available for Windows only, but is eventually supposed to migrate to the Mac as well. As Shafer describes it, the Times Reader sounds very much like the vision that people such as Roger Fidler had for electronic newspapers pre-Web: You'd download content that you'd already paid for (the Times Reader is currently free, but that will probably change) and then take it with you, with no online connection needed.

Online newspapers are still too difficult to read and use, so this bears watching.

Friday-night blog roundup

2006-09-15T20:54:00.000-04:00

What are Journalism of the Web students blogging about this week? Check it out:

Evan Brunell has been following the latest about two Web celebrities: Jay Rosen and lonelygirl15.
Thomas Chen tried a podcast of the Boston Globe's front-page stories and decides he'd rather read the paper online. (Is that old-fashioned or new-fashioned?)
Chris Estrada observes that, in sports media, podcasting is giving a louder voice to the ordinary fan.
Rajashree Joshi points to an article at Zmag.org and asks whether the proliferation of blogs will bring us any closer to the truth.
Jane Mackay offers some thoughts on Jay Rosen's celebrated new pro-am journalism project, NewAssignment.Net.
Mike Naughton tells us that the Globe is starting to emulate its corporate cousin the New York Times by offering some of tomorrow's stories (well, at least a few paragraphs) tonight.
Lisa Panora says that the media aren't the only institutions moving online -- so are J-schools.
Chelsea Petersen offers evidence that U.K. newsrooms are moving ahead of their American counterparts when it comes to technology.
Donna Roberson ponders Google's new for-profit venture into philanthropy.
Blythe Simmons tracks teen magazines that are moving from print to the Web.
Rachel Slajda wonders if newspapers could fight back against Craigslist by giving away their classified ads, and selling display ads on each screen of classifieds.
Celia Soudry looks at the Facebook stalker controversy and finds the company's now-dropped plans to be "downright creepy."
Glenn Yoder notes that the Web enabled Bruce Springsteen to respond to the gossip-mongerers unfiltered.

And, finally, one from the editor's desk. Mark Glaser reports that MSNBC.com will drop its reliance on Microsoft's Windows Media Player/Internet Explorer platform and move to Flash, which has been embraced by sites ranging from YouTube to the New York Times.

In fact, the rollout seems to be taking place even faster than Glaser was told. I was watching Brian Williams on my iBook with Firefox and Flash just a little while ago. It's about time. And it's one less reason for us loyal Mac users to consider switching to Windows.

A long wait to watch a movie

2006-09-13T15:37:00.000-04:00

The media today are abuzz over an announcement by Apple's Steve Jobs that the company will soon start selling full-length movies through its iTunes Music Store. John Markoff and Laura M. Holson of the Times write:

Film executives have long been skeptical of Mr. Jobs’s move into the entertainment business, although music and TV executives have embraced the idea. The music industry was in the doldrums when Apple’s store was introduced in 2003, and executives saw it as an answer to the problems it faced with online piracy.

That sounds all well and good, but how long are people supposed to sit around waiting for the latest movie to download to their hard drives? Get this: "The movies ... will take several hours to download at standard broadband data rates."

Sounds like you could make five trips to Blockbuster during the time it takes you to buy one movie from Apple.

Apple's official announcement is posted on its "Hot News" page.

New York Times parties like it's 1994

2006-09-13T12:23:00.000-04:00

This is the kind of electronic newspaper that smart people were talking about in the early 1990s -- a downloadable analogue of the print product that you would load onto a portable digital tablet and take with you. Now, according to Wired News, the New York Times and Microsoft have teamed up to create the finest e-paper that 1994 has to offer. But will anyone want it?

HTML-toting journalists

2006-09-12T15:04:00.000-04:00

Scott LaPierre and T.S. Amarasiriwardena are journalists, but their tools are very different from those of notebook-toting reporters or even high-tech TV crews. LaPierre and Amarasiriwardena are producers for Boston.com, and what they've done with Charles Sennott's reporting from Pakistan and Afghanistan has to be seen.

Using Sennott's narration, sound from the field, and still photos, LaPierre and Amarasiriwardena have put together a multimedia sidebar to Sennott's story that stands in its own right.

Does Facebook now equal MySpace?

2006-09-12T14:45:00.000-04:00

This past May, the New Yorker published a story on Facebook, the burgeoning social-networking site that was originally just for college students. Among other things, reporter John Cassidy observed that the college crowd was mighty unhappy when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg invited high-school kids to join in.

Well, now that Zuckerman is opening Facebook to everyone, how, exactly, is it going to be any different from MySpace?

Here is my Facebook profile (log-in req.). Sorry there's not much to look at.

Pro-am journalism

2006-09-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

One of the more interesting journalism-of-the-Web projects now under way is NewAssignment.Net, the brainchild of New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen. Rosen, who's the author of the weblog Press Think, envisions professional journalists -- editors and reporters -- working with citizen journalists to engage in the kind of investigative reporting that not even the largest newsrooms can undertake.

Rosen talked about his idea last week with NPR's "On the Media." You can listen to the clip or, after tomorrow, read the transcript. His introductory essay is here. And checking out the "Exposing Earmarks" project for an idea of how a collaboration between professional and amateur journalists can work in the real world.

Welcome to Journalism of the Web

2006-09-11T15:30:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Beat Reporting: Journalism of the Web, a class at Northeastern University's School of Journalism that will explore the intersection of traditional news organizations and new media. Our students are setting up blogs, and you will find links to them in the very near future. Thank you for stopping by.

In this photo, you can see some of our students setting up their blogs.