Online Journalism Blog

2006-12-08T15:10:00.000-08:00

A COINCIDENCE, I'M SURE

Our last class with Mr. Kennedy came and passed on Wednesday with the topic hinging on the hyper-local stories that Gannett's News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla. is now pushing. Naturally, localized journalism is definitely going to be a handy tool if newspapers wanna stay relevant in a digital age. However, it also opens the paper up to putting on a lot of fluff - especially if the managing editor's chewing out the newsroom for not putting something on the web in about three hours. Enter 'The Hunks of North Fort Myers' and other stuff that, for all intents and purposes, should probably stay in the weeklies and the bigger papers' community blotters.

But back to fluff. It's a nice word, isn't it. Fluff. Ha-ha, I'll say it again. Fluff.

Flufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluffflufffluff. Fluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuff!

Annoyed yet? You should be. And so am I (and that's not just because I typed that word in the double-digits). 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. If you MUST have fluff, why not set up a website like WickedLocal, but not fully integrated with the paper? Something like what ESPN.com's done with Page 2 for several years now. Good journalism should not have to be outnumbered by pap. Set some standards.

And don't be like Channel 7, who apparently don't mind making full-blown pieces on Christmas 'porn-aments' for the middle of an 11:00 p.m. newscast.

Oh wait...the internet video arm of Norfolk/Hampton Roads, Va.'s The Virginian-Pilot just did a piece on the same ornaments...you know what, frag this. I'll let you decide about fluff. I think I've lost my head here. Excuse me. I have a hankering for a sandwich with peanut butter and some marshmallow goop whose name I can't say for some reason anymore.

2006-12-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

A DIGG CLONE OR A NEW BEING?

One of my news feeds brought me upon a journalism site known as Newsvine. Keeping in line with the growing wave of citizen journalism, Newsvine combines reader output with traditional news stories from regular sources such as the Associated Press. And like digg.com, it allows readers to comment on and rank stories to show what this piece calls "community interest and individual preference."

But it appears that site founder Calvin Tang's got an even bigger idea in mind. By analyzing a user's IP address to see what kind of news stories he or she is interested in or has voted on, Tang's focused on turning Newsvine toward the direction of individually customized news, giving specific users articles on those topics and other pieces with similar subjects involved (i.e. a secondary element in the story). The aforementioned piece also contains an interview with Tang that was conducted by the Online Journalism Review's Sandeep Junnarkar that should explain his motives and his opinions better than I can.

I decided to try out this 'daily me' concept for myself. After clicking on an article in Newsvine's sports section that detailed Ferrari's current lead in Formula 1 testing at Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, I noted that it had a bit of a social networking look in that the post was done by one 'Chris Forte', who had tags for his articles as well as his 'friends' on Newsvine. Click on one of the tags and you get a whole cadre of articles from the wires and from Newsvine members. The site also contains a merit system of sorts known as Vineacity. Everyone gets a 'vine' and as you do more and more things on the site (comment, vote, contributing links), you get 'stems'. Each stem means something, giving you an incentive - or at least a reputation. Overall, this definitely covers the citizen journalism part of the site and I have to guess that this is what they mean by the 'daily me' concept. Just click on one of the tags and BANG! - instant coverage from experts and amateurs.

It's definitely a very-well done site and has very good intentions. Citizen media is going to play a role in what the future holds for journalism and sites like these will have their say. But with all honesty, I was expecting something else entirely for this 'analyzing behavior' style of news...I mean, don't we already have this at the bottom of articles in Yahoo! News? Or maybe I've missed the point entirely. Either way, I'd definitely recommend for you to partake of the grapes from this Vine and see what you think.

2006-12-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

MULTIMEDIA CONTENT EMBRACED BY PULITZER PRIZE

Online content such as databases, interactive graphics and streaming video are now allowed to be submitted in all non-photography award categories in the Pulitzer Prize competitions.

According to this piece on Journalism.co.uk, the online content must remain part of a single presentation. The content also includes blogs, slide shows and video presentations.

Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler feels that in a "rapidly changing media world," it was imperative for the organization to embrace multimedia in news content. He also said that the new rule puts the decision on what to submit in the hands of the newspaper.

"In effect, a newspaper must call out which online element it wants to be considered," Gissler mentioned in the piece. "If an element has multiple parts, such as a graphic with various entry points, the conceptual logic linking the parts must be clear."

The AP wire story details that while online content was allowed in all non-photography categories, they were restricted to written stories or still images. Still, it didn't stop New York Times multimedia reporter Nicholas Kristof from grabbing the commentary prize in 2006 for his columns on the Darfur saga and other topics.

2006-11-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

NY TIMES CO. TO WELCH: NO GLOBE FOR YOU!

Not exactly based in online journalism, but it's another chapter in the ongoing saga at the Boston Globe. According to a report, it appears that the New York Times Co. has rejected all potential bidders for the Morrissey Boulevard broadsheet, including the proposal of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch to buy the Globe for $600 million -- half as much as the NYTC paid to get 'The Pulse of Boston' back in 1993.

It appears that, for now, the wave of high-profile newspaper acquisitions by local entities has ebbed. As alluded to in the article, the Philadelphia Enquirer and Daily News got bought from McClatchy's clutches by a local group around the same time that Welch began to show his cards to the Times Co.

I notice that a Globe reporter was shown the letter from NYTC CEO Janet Robinson and I wonder if this will open up a story that will pin down why exactly that the parents decided to keep the Globe around their house. Here's the full report, you can check it out for yourself.

2006-11-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

The world of journalism has been fragmented and cut into niche pieces for awhile. So with the genesis of Al-Jazeera English and the upcoming launch of the French government-backed France 24, cable TV news is only going with the flow with these new channels. Every place in the world deserves its own voice in my opinion. Through them, we as Americans can kinda pop the bubble that Americans sometimes create around our country and have a better idea of what is truly going on in the world without any chance of alleged 'pro-Western' bias.

However, we can't really be assured of a truly non-biased news channel. There will always be biases of sort - conservative or liberal, Arabic or Israeli, and so on. We can all try to mitigate it as much as we can, but what if AJE and France 'Vinght-Quatre' are foreshadows of a bigger wave? Even if stations like these cut their bias to miniscule levels, it can add up if there's more involved. And that can have adverse side effects, including among other things, omitting information to fit the story or a lack in accuracy in the story.

I think that soon, there will be more cable news channels in other far-flung places, even more so that Al-Jazeera's home base of Doha, Qatar. And as the wave grows, journalists from all over the world will have to stick to their guns even more when it comes to ethics and not letting personal views get in the way for the sake of crowd-pleasing and ratings. They will be tempted to do so as it often meets with major success (see Fox News or, if you choose to believe, Al-Jazeera classic). I just hope AJE and France 24 can stay above the fray and eventually evolve into top-flight news organizations.

2006-11-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

Well, how about this. A big newspaper isn't afraid of YouTube after all.

I was mucking around there yesterday and as I watching this clip, I noticed over on the 'Director Videos' section that the Houston Chronicle has set up an account - or if you wanna be technical, the paper's web site.

There's fifteen videos on the account and I have to assume that they're correlating with stories in the print edition. These clips are very diverse - clips of Houston Dynamo fans celebrating their Major League Soccer championship (beating the Revolution to do it), clips en Espanol on how Houston families celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and even a clip that goes with this interactive feature on street dancing. You can also find a local high school football clip with reporter commentary and graphics. It's all top-flight and should serve as a blueprint for how newspapers can embrace and use the online video giant as a tool to reach new online viewers. I'm still stunned at the seamlessness of this. Online multimedia content have evolved into potent pieces in themselves. And via YouTube, clips like the street dance one can become the next generation of 'hooks' for online readers.

2006-11-16T20:43:00.000-08:00

Ted Landphair of the Voice of America hits it right on the head with his latest piece.

The funny part about this piece, however, is that while it talks about the problems facing traditional print journalism, it ends up delivering another tiny papercut of sorts to the 'regal lion'. The report is available at the top of the page as a downloadable RealPlayer file and MP3 report for the iPod/Zune crowd.

Oops.

2006-11-09T20:59:00.000-08:00

Oh yes. One more thing. It's off-topic to the course, but Mr. Kennedy allows some 'OT's' every now and then. Plus, it's on-topic to me and probably a lot of college students who use public transportation to get to class and work during the day and into the city at night.

As a perpetually broke student that constantly must look for deals on everything to save money, I must voice my displeasure at general manager Daniel Grabauskas and the folks at the MBTA for their latest adventure. I just love having the cost of my commuter rail ticket home to Rhode Island jacked up by 22 percent. And I'm sure Boston loves getting their subway fee raised from $1.25 to $1.70 and their bus fee from ninety cents to $1.25.

And what's more, I just love it when Mr. Grabauskas says that these new rates, which will drive nearly seventeen million customers away from the tracks, may not be the way to get his company out of eight billion dollars in debt. Heck, they may have to contend with $22 million dollars more to pay off if the gas prices go up or the revenue drops.

I believe that the T has gone through three fare increases since 2000 (please correct me if I'm wrong). Not to mention the onset of the tedious and maddening CharlieCard system. Now they're going to force people who don't pony up for a 'LinkPass' to pay an extra surcharge on top of the new increases.

And Mr. Grabauskas says that despite all of these attempts to get their debt under control, this rate increase and pass infrastructure may not be the key to doing it?

I'm afraid that if I continue on this topic, I will have to resort to using very bad words. So instead of doing that myself, I'll let the citizens of Boston.com do that for me. I'll end with this. When I came here to Northeastern, I thought the T was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Three years later, that is no longer the case.

Down with Charlie.

2006-11-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned yesterday, Gannett is going to start emphasizing a user-based, multi-platform focus on local news with the onset of its jump into citizen journalism.

However, something else has also arisen and I just found it this evening. I completely missed the link on the NewAssignment.net piece to a memo released by Gannett CEO Steve Dubow. With this new focus, the newsrooms of Gannett-owned papers are going to morph into "Information Centers" after getting trial runs at the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D., and Florida Today of Brevard County, Fla. I'll let Mr. Dubow explain the concept.

"The Information Center is, frankly, the newsroom of the future. It will fulfill today's needs for a more flexible, broader-based approach to the information gathering process. And it will be platform agnostic: News and information will be delivered to the right media - be it newspapers, online, mobile, video or ones not yet invented - at the right time. Our customers will decide which they prefer."

The memo further explains how Gannett's research found that by getting the locals involved, it "delivers the newspaper into the heart of community conversations once again" as well as drives readers to the Web and the paper through breaking news on the digital side and updates on the print side. Naturally.

The Center is apparently going to be based around seven areas: digital, public service, community conversation, local, custom content, data and multimedia. Details on how each area will work can be found in the memo, but 'crowdsourcing' and most of the citizen journalism will focus on the public service area.

After reading up on this, I have to say that this is a very ambitious project and I feel that, if executed correctly, this can be a major element that turns newspapers' fortunes around. There will have to be a system of checks and balances for the citizen journalists and there will probably be serious growing pains (I wonder how the smaller papers in Gannett's body will deal with this monster project). But by putting emphasis on hyper-local content in an age where anyone can learn national and world news through the click of a mouse, the newspaper stands a chance at maintaining its relevancy AND embraces the digital age.

I'll have to keep an eye on Gannett's lone paper in New England, the Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin, to see if the 'Information Center' concept will translate into a better print and online edition for them. As one of the smaller papers in the Gannett network, it will definitely be a prime testing ground for this new concept.

2006-11-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Gannett wants in.

The largest newspaper chain in America is ready to take the plunge into the sea of citizen journalism after experimenting with the concept earlier this year through its affiliate in Fort Myers, Fla., the News-Press.

You can check out some of the details on that 'pilot' run in this release from United Press International. NewAssignment.net goes a bit more in-depth with Gannett's plans for the future. Apparently, it's out with the 'silo' newsroom model and in with 'crowdsourcing' and a four-part strategy that'll put local news and the online editions at priority one. Not to mention one massive restructuring.

I'll take a better look at this tomorrow. Citizen journalism just got a major shot in the arm.

2006-11-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

It's only natural that a newspaper created by an online generation has a home on the Internet. But for Jonesboro, Arkansas' Nettleton High School and a chunk of about 470 middle and high schools across the country, their student newspapers have gone fully digital with no print editions.

Nettleton's The Chieftain is one of those 470 hosted on the online repository, www.myhighschooljournalism.org, which is offered through the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Having gone totally online since September 2006, the Chieftain may end up accelerating its usual monthly publishing. According to this piece from eSchool News, the comparison of the production costs of making a print edition and the Chieftain's online hosting - with no additional charges beyond a $50 sign-up fee - is no contest. What's more, the original Associated Press story (via Little Rock's FOX affiliate, KLRT-TV) reports ad money from the online edition is now being used for other things like conferences, according to the paper's advisor Dinah McClurg.

From the looks of these pieces, it appears that the folks at Nettleton High are acclimating very well to their paper going online. It certainly makes for much more exposure and they weren't selling a whole lot of print copies anyway. While I'm still not convinced that mainstream newspapers should jettison the paper and go for broke on the Internet (I don't know if many people are), I think that high school and college journalism can be a breeding ground for a movement of that nature. If it is successful, it won't be surprising for people our age. But it will only compound the problems facing the printed press.

2006-11-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

I think I may have found a kindred spirit in one Chansin Bird. She writes for InkTank, an online blog from the Washington Journalism Center, part of a coalition of Christian colleges. And in her latest post, she writes about her recent revelation to online journalism, something that I have undergone in the past few months as well.

From the looks of her post, it appears that she too was set in her ways as a print journalist. But faced with the facts, she has a more positive attitude. "Perhaps I shouldn't look at the glass as half-empty by being depressed that I'll rarely get to hold my articles in my hand," Ms. Byrd says. "Instead, I can look at the glass as half full by getting excited over the fact that via the Internet countless people have access to my work."

While I'm still a bit wary of what my future job will be - a writer or a writer/podcaster/multimedia guy/cell phone photographer? - I'm trying to adopt a better attitude about it. I still believe there will be a place for the paper edition, but the digital world has gone too far into the industry to die off now. Online is where our "fights will be won", so to speak.

2006-10-29T19:13:00.000-08:00

A panel discussion on citizen journalism at this weekend's gathering of the Associated Press Managing Editors revealed that while there are many pros for editors in choosing to create user-created content, there are also several obstacles that the industry will have to deal with.

According to this AP story via the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the main obstacle for editors will be trying to find some way to hold on to these citizen reporters and a way to not let them have too much freedom with their stories. Other questions brought up included whether or not to allow "unvetted forum postings, whether an online-citizen paper would consider being added to a mainstream paper's Web site, and why an editor of a traditional paper...would share content freely with a citizen site."

One of the sites mentioned in the article is that of The Forum of Deerfield, New Hampshire. The site focuses on local politics and news throughout the community and keeps a nearly exclusive online presence (the paper does go print for a few times each year). Armed with a group of volunteer reporters with press badges and business cards, the Forum has a hyper-local style is something that many regional papers may take on in an attempt to keep their print versions relevant and to enhance their online pages.

But you also wonder how much time do these volunteers have? A look at the AP piece makes you believe that the main reason that most volunteer reporters eventually stop is because of their day jobs. What kind of incentives can online-citizen sites give to their writers to keep them from bolting?

In this case, a partnership with a bigger, more mainstream paper may be good in terms of providing monetary incentives to the writers and resource support for both them and the 'front office'. It could also help the editors with the administrative side and determining how much leeway the citizen reporters can have. Of course, the citizen reporters' local slants can provide the big-city reporters invaluable tips and town events for feature stories and to break big ones. As long as the locals are able to keep the ability to stay relatively independent, a partnership like that would be a successful symbiosis.

2006-10-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

As Christopher Null of Yahoo Tech points out here, it seems that we've missed out on celebrating a very important birthday for something that has altered personal and journalistic media. As it evolves, it continues to spawn innovations such as internet video-to-television as well as becoming a source for on-the-go information. Newspapers look at it with both hateful and opportunistic eyes. Either way they look at it, they know that it will be a key for the survival of their print-based content in a digital world.

And of course, it's probably the only place where dance kings Jamiroquai and a Brazilian samba-funk man named Curumin can rub shoulders with the broody Nine Inch Nails and everyone's favorite trigger-happy rapper, 50 Cent. Can't do that nowadays with the Clear Channels and Infinitys of the world running around, you know.

Happy (belated) birthday, iPod.

2006-10-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

Funny how 'tomorrow' becomes four days. Anyways, on to my opinions about Geneva Overholser's new study on the newspaper business that was detailed in my previous blog.

Overholser definitely put a lot of effort into this study and it shows that she took a year to get the job done. This is a highly detailed piece that pretty much comes to the result of 'journalism as we know it is over.'

Naturally, Overholser urges the traditional press to embrace new digital possibilities. On page 18 of the study, we find several journalists that already have through creating their own marks on new media from ex-newspaperman David Talbot's Salon to Newspaper Next, the brainchild of former Christian Science Monitor managing publisher Stephen Gray. To Overholser, journalists of the new generation must not only focus on their jobs, but also keep a keen eye out for opportunities to fuse the two elements of digital and print together. Such tactics are necessary since newsrooms, according to her, continue to be stymied in their quest for integration by cost-control measures needed "to support the old business model."

Money. It's always money. And it opens up a double-edge sword. Do we need already massive news companies to grow even further so they can inject the cash flow needed to fund this new technology? If so, the paper also risks becoming a mere appendage and becoming unpositioned as a service to the public good.

As much as I hate to see such hegemony, I'm afraid that the bigger the media company, the bigger they will play a role in integration. We're going to have to take that aforementioned risk. The traditional journalist is changing into a multi-platform player (print, online, podcasting, mobile phones). The old guard is dying and as much as print journalists wish to cling to the values that has brought them to this point - and I count myself amongst them - they must realize that journalism cannot survive as it stands today. As journalists, we must honor our service to the public and find every way not to become organs to agendas or stockholders. If we can do this, journalism will have a better chance to convert to this new world.

2006-10-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

Geneva Overholser of the Missouri School Of Journalism lets loose on today's journalists that are clinging to the ways of the past in her latest column at Poynter Online.

To her, choosing only the principles of the past that are 'essential to democracy' and combining them with new innovations that the media have tried to be 'above' doing will allow journalism to stay relevant in the new century. The online component and all its arms from podcasting to multimedia are swiftly becoming required skills for journalists of today and tomorrow.

"And we will most assuredly have to get it through our heads (and hearts) just how exciting and full of possibility for journalism's future are today's new venues -- all these new digital platforms that so many have simply wished go away," she writes. "What could be worse than having journalism on iPods? How about NOT having it there?"

The Poynter piece is also timed with the release of her own study dubbed "On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto For Change." Released by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the study took about a year's worth of research and interviews to create. It also features a group of 'Action Steps' for newspapers to follow in order to keep pace from the top (more responsibility to corporate governance of media companies) to the bottom (training of print reporters on online media and vice-versa). You can view the study as a PDF here.

She also took part in a question-and-answer session with the APPC, which can be viewed here.

Because of family commitments, I will have to hold off my editorial opinion on the study until tomorrow. However, from the little I have seen, this might rattle a few cages.

2006-10-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

It is official: Search engine Google has bought online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion according to the Associated Press.

It also looks like that the search engine's ascent to a premier element in online video might put some heat on its No. 2 rival to execute a purchase of social networking site Facebook.

"Google's YouTube coup may intensify the pressure on Yahoo to make its own splash by buying facebook.com, the Internet's second most popular social networking site,' the article says. 'Yahoo has reportedly offered as much as $1 BILLION for Palo Alto (Calif.)-based Facebook during months of sporadic talks."

I guess you aren't gonna find the independence of new media at its summit, that's for sure.

2006-10-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

The world of new media may be set to change again as search engine Google is in talks with Youtube to buy the online video outlet for $1.6 billion, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. This piece from the Associated Press says that the two sides are still in a 'sensitive' stage however.

One thing still puzzles me. Both YouTube and Google have online video sites that allows users to upload their films (here's a link to the latter). But only the Google sets prices on some of the videos. Will the free YouTube become a thing of the past and force web surfers to pony up some dough if the mighty engine takes over?

2006-10-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

The World Editors Forum, part of the World Association of Newspapers, keeps a blog on its website that is updated with the latest news inside the industry and, of course, plenty of editorial opinion. Their latest post, taken on October 4, warns newspapers of integrating into the online world too quickly and rattles off a few points for media outlets to follow in order to achieve a 'measured' integration of its print and online elements.

I read this and quickly became interested. I do not think that the first point - resisting huge job cuts during the integration - can be helped. In many ways, integration will go off like a corporate merger fraught with good hope and bad turns. As the WEF piece said, the integration of both elements inside the UK's Daily Telegraph went off with 133 jobs biting the dust. When any business is streamlined, there is bound to be some that cannot get out of the way of the knife. When editors are in a mad dash to fuse print and online together, that number who cannot survive is going to go up. While I do believe that editors should do a better job of keeping that in mind, which hopefully will keep the number of lost jobs down, I think that a seamless integration without loss of talent cannot be executed.

The second point is something I am much more keen on and that may have a bias to it since I'm a print guy. But I have to think that a print editor, battle-hardened as he or she is, could deal with more heat than an online editor. The blog speaks of online news having to go forward with 'the same rigor and journalistic integrity' of a newspaper outlet. New media is going to expand this business but with every innovation, there lies a chance for the reporter to get lazy. The new enterprise will need someone to lead it with something that isn't an iron fist, but something that won't flinch either.

Finally, the blog contends that both sides need to be taught about the traits and tactics of the other. In other words, the print journalists must be made comfortable with grappling the online element while the Web guys need to be able to adapt to print work. In the end, the differences must be respected but bridged as well. This is exactly what I hope to get out of future course work. As said above, I am a print guy and quite frankly, I'm a bit weirded out at all the advancements in online journalism and how they seemingly change every day. If collegiate teachers can push this line of thinking hard in their classes, the next generation of journalists will have a much better time of flipping between the two worlds.

2006-10-04T07:36:00.000-07:00

I don't often read the London Times' print editions that are on hand in Snell Library. To me, I find the look and read of the text to be rather staid. But I am a fan of their online arm, TimesOnline, which is much less intimidating for the average reader than their hard copy.

TimesOnline has enlisted the help of Sky News, one of Britain's top television news channels, in order to keep up with the pace of online journalism. According to this piece, Sky, whose parent company is chaired by Rupert Murdoch and has a 'sister channel' relationship with America's Fox News Channel, will have its news packages run on 'TimesOnline TV', which also uses video from Fox and Reuters.

2006-09-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Times has begun a recurring series on how new technology is affecting the media landscape. Kim Peterson's first piece in this project talks about how the citizens of the 'Emerald City' and other places across the U.S. have taken to citizen journalism. While innovations such as camera phones, blogs, podcasts and digital cameras have helped regular people break major stories (ex. the London bombings of July 7, 2005 ), the movement is still decidedly in its genesis stages. News sites that pull stories from other publications and allow users to throw in their two cents are doing well according to the article, but as for more ambitious projects, like doing original journalism with the feel of a local paper...well...we'll let Nick Hanauer of Seattle venture firm Second Avenue Partners handle that one.

"I can't think of a reason to invest in a company that wanted to be a local, sort of traditionally structured news organization, but with online content," Hanauer says in the article. "There's almost no way to build enough revenue to cover the expenses. The economics just won't work."

I feel that will probably be the case for some time. To start up a paper is an absolutely massive job and requires oodles of cash. On top of that, why would you try to emulate the newspaper, even if your focus would be local? The online journalism world is one in which the traditional rules are blown to bits, rebuilt, and then promptly blown to bits again. A local, online job such as what Hanauer is talking about has to think outside the box in order to gain attention. It cannot be held to traditional rules in an online content, lest it be put down within six months of its birth.

Of course, citizen journalism's growth can be accelerated if it can become integrated with the traditional media itself. An example of this can be found at YourHub, a service operated by the Denver Newspaper Agency, which is comprised of the city's two major papers, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. YourHub allows members to share stories and photos, add events to their community's calendar and start their own localized blogs. While this is primarily a Denver-based project, YourHub has still spread to six states and communities as diverse as Ventura County, Calif. to Wichita Falls, Tex. Checking the most recent stories section in the Denver section brings up stories about what one Allison Reedy thinks about the city's bar scene. Wichita Falls' Callie Worley has become one of her hub's top 'reporters,' with several stories on local organizations and happenings at nearby Sheppard Air Force Base.

I have to thank Ms. Peterson for the tipoff on this site. From what I've seen, YourHub creates a harmony between the public element and the journalism element. And as the citizen journalism movement evolves, so will the writers' style, which will make for better contributions that will rival a normal paper's beat guys/gals. Perhaps someone can tip off Boston.com and see what kind of thing they can cook up in terms of giving the public a voice beyond the typical message boards?

2006-09-27T21:40:00.001-07:00

A new study from the Future of the First Amendment finds that half of all high school students get their news from online on a weekly basis. No surprise there as our generation has acquired some technological savvy.

However, those youngsters aren't pointing their browsers toward online newspaper sites. Two-thirds of them grab their news from search engines such as Google, MSN, AOL and Yahoo, while the online papers are only claiming twenty-one percent. You can find more results from the study in this article from the Detroit Free Press.

Even though the search engines and the newspapers pretty much run the same stories, the engines have the kids' eyeballs locked on them. Is it really as simple as 'ease of use' to explain why this is so? I think there's something more, something simple.

I feel that this is a generational preference. The print newspaper is something that, for better or worse, is linked to our fathers, our mothers and the generations that came before our own. This new age of digital journalism - search engines, podcasting, online features, et al - belongs to us. I'm not sure whether to feel good about this or not, because I feel that the best stories can be told straight from on-scene reporters and not by wire copy, which is often used on the search engines' news portals.

Perhaps these kids will indeed eventually gravitate to online paper sites like Jeffrey Cole states in the Free Press piece. But in my opinion, that will only occur if these journalism groups on the Web can constantly improve their technological firepower to do two things: Compete against engines that will surely improve by quantum leaps in the future and not have the new 'gee-whiz' element take away the focus from the actual story itself. Sadly, this is no longer just a battle over which entity does news right. It's also about presentation and the transparency that goes with it.

2006-09-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a combination of online and print journalism that tells a memorable story.

ESPN.com has something called the 'E-Ticket', a partnership between the site and their 'ESPN The Magazine' arm. The E-Ticket is, essentially, a feature piece on steroids, and has covered the gamut as far as sports is concerned. Unlike it's television counterpart who seems too busy swallowing everything (ESPN on ABC, anyone?) to care about core sports news, the internet arm of 'The Mothership' has been something that journalists-in-training can emulate. Well, mostly.

This week's E-Ticket comes from Wright Thompson in New Orleans. Three nights from now, the Louisiana Superdome will play host to its hometown Saints for the first time since the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina turned what was once dubbed "the most usable public building ever designed in the history of man" into a place of death and chaos. Reggie Bush and the Black and Gold will face off against Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons in front of a national television audience on ESPN's Monday Night Football.

In his piece, 'To Hell and Back,' Thompson intertwines the stories of two groups of people. One of them is the Zacharies clan, a proud, God-loving bunch who had to survive inside the Dome during Katrina, only to be broken apart and reunited again. The stress caused by trying to find the family patriarch, a man whose legs and body had been deteriorating rapidly, eventually claimed his and his wife's lives. Told through the eyes of their son, Billy, and his own wife Pamela, this part of the story is a stunning account of what they faced.

The other side of the story is that of the Louisiana Superdome staff and National Guard soldiers attempting to keep law and order inside the structure as well as trying to ward off even more disasters in the wake of the hurricane. It also lets us have a glimpse into the lives of those that have been rebuilding the Superdome in time for Monday night, from draining the toxic sea that was inside to repairing sheetrock and carpeting. As Thompson's piece details, these people are considered heroes in the Crescent City. With good reason.

Monday night will be more than just a game to the city of New Orleans. It will be a major milestone in their attempt to resurrect their home. You have to believe every seat will be filled with fans that will be jacked-up beyond belief, people ready to show that the Big Easy is still alive and will not fade away.

Good luck, guys.

2006-09-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

In the early stages of this course with Mr. Kennedy, the class was treated to a showing of Epic 2015, an online piece created by two Poynter Institute products that told of the history of new media. It also showed a fictional account of the future of media, which was marked by a Google-Amazon.com alliance that would use among other things, the former's ability to edit separate news stories via computer, to drive the traditional Fourth Estate into the ground.

The massive search engine and journalism outlets have sparred on several occasions. One of those battles ended last Monday as a group of Belgian publishers won their court case against Google after the search engine linked French and German-language news reports published in Belgium without prior consent. The Belgian Court of First Instance has decreed that if Google fails to remove those links from their Google News site, the engine will be fined one million euros ($1.27 million US) daily. The article details that an appeal is forthcoming.

It's probably safe to say that there will be more fights like this in the near-future. But while those take place, a consortium of print media groups are readying a project that can teach Google's "bots" - or the "bots" from any other search engine - the policies on how to use their work. ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) is the brainchild of four major newspaper organizations: The World Association of Newspapers, the European Publishers Council, the International Publishers Association and the European Newspapers Association. According to this press release from the WAN, the project will be previewed in October at Frankfurt, Germany, then launched at the end of the year.

All parties involved in the project seem to be looking forward to spending less time fighting in courts and dealing with the Googles and Yahoos of the world on a more friendly basis. Gavin O'Reilly, president of the WAN, is keen on creating relationships "in which the interests of both parties can be properly balanced" while Francisco Balsemao, EPC Chairman, feels that ACAP will "facilitate greater access to our published content, making it more, not less available...whilst avoiding copyright infringment and protecting search engines from future litigation.

If any more details about ACAP emerge from Frankfurt in October, I'll be sure to post it here. ACAP looks to be very ambitious and also, something that the traditional media can use to keep online sites in check. Let's face it: At this critical juncture in journalism's history, the print side can use all the advantages it can get. A framework like this that is constantly updated should keep the engines honest.

2006-09-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

Add another $100,000 for Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net. News outlet Reuters has handed over the six-figure grant to the New York University professor's online initiative, which will attempt to get the reader more involved in reporting through several ways that are detailed in this Huffington Post article.

Chris Ahearn, author of the piece and head of Reuters' media division feels that the Internet's emerging role in journalism can be "the perfect vehicle" for changing the minds of a readership with a growing distrust for the media. "While the Internet is rapidly transforming the world of journalistic media, it also presents amazing new possibilities in terms of strengthening the investigative arm of journalism," he writes.

Perhaps we could take a lesson from Mr. Ahearn and think of the good things that print journalists can create by harnessing the Internet, instead of thinking like it's out to take our future jobs.

2006-09-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

Deep breath...you can do this Chris...it's just a blog...

An interesting piece I found on Poynter's Romanesko blog is that of the future metamorphosis of the Dallas Morning News from a paper with national clout to a hyper-local presence. The DMN recently bought out the contracts of 111 members of their newsroom, including that of sports columnist and ESPN Around The Horn regular Kevin Blackistone. To editor Robert Mong, the buyouts represent the first step in shifting the focus of arguably the Southwest's most storied paper: "Our competitive advantage rests in doing what even the newest of new media are struggling to figure out - creating local news and information that readers and viewers can't find anywhere else," he said in an editorial last Sunday. "A more local focus does not mean less sophistication or ambitiousness. We will do what it takes to get to the bottom of important local issues - online and in the paper." Feel free to read Mong's manifesto here.

New media has created a lot of opportunities for papers to expand their stories from mere text to aural and visual creations using podcasting, multimedia presentations, and other tricks. Of course, new media has also been a pain in the neck for the traditional newspaper as it has mighty print outlets on the ropes while giving them all an ultimatum: Submit or die.

It is a strange thing to witness. In most cases, corporation-controlled newspapers (the DMN is owned by Belo Corporation) in big markets often evolve into papers with a national and international scope once they become appendages of big groups. One only has to look at the Boston Globe over the past few years as an arm of The New York Times Co. to see such evolution. What the Dallas Morning News is doing flies in the face of that philosophy. It is now willing to sacrifice that aforementioned scope in order to hit new media where it hurts.

It is a major gamble and print enthusiasts may shudder to see the eventual result. The DMN is one of the top-ten largest papers in this country and as such, it's practically obliged to provide a national and international section with stories from their own writers that can stand up with its local news. Will this paper become a local magazine boosted by wire stories from AP, Reuters and the rest of the bunch?

Sadly, I'm afraid that may be the case. It would be a shame if new media - a collection of ideas that can help the current press - drove such a major paper into the bubble of the Metroplex, never to go beyond it again. It is always good to bolster local presence, but when you're a Dallas Morning News or a New York Times, it's a trickier game to play when there's bigger stories involved. Many print readers still value the showing of worldwide news stories through the eyes of a local.

What Mong is doing is a survival tactic and should be seen and commended as such. But if he is willing to take out multiple legs from his 'table,' his plan may very well backfire. I'll be keeping an eye on this.

2006-09-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

Since the advent of iPods and other portable media players, podcasting has thrived as a tool for journalism outlets as they continue to take their battles for survival and the bottom line into cyberspace. It has also given regular people the ability to voice their opinions on a variety of topics.

The sports podcasting world is no different. While media juggernauts such as ESPN use podcasting as a way to advance their television brands and personalities, normal fans are also getting in on the action. MySportsRadio allows fans with the software and a mic to create specialty shows tailored to whichever team they feel like. Jumping back to the media for a minute, the localized levels are also doing some interesting stuff. Check out what the sportswriters of the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World and '6News' have done to keep Kansas Jayhawk fans up to date.

In two or three years' time, podcasting has become a part of the sports fan's vocabulary. None of the above is revolutionary. With that, where will the next step be in podcasting? This is new media, a place where technology is constantly evolving, so naturally, there must be one. Sports sites often split recap podcasts by game and while some of those game recaps are comprehensive, they can miss several moments that the fan/listener may see as key to the game. How about putting the game up with a sidebar full of game notes linked with video? The fan could cut up the notes, pick out the highlights HE or SHE thinks were important and create their own customized podcast for themselves. That big three-point play - the one that starts a 15-0 run that turns the game in the home team's favor - can get its glory.

It's just a thought.

2006-09-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

My name is Christopher Estrada. I am 20 years old and I am a third-year student at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass. I have created this blog for a journalism class called Beat Reporting: Journalism of the Web, a course taught by Mr. Dan Kennedy. The plan is to post 3-4 times per week with topics pertaining to online journalism and specific new media topics. I figure this will be an interesting experience as I am more into the print side of journalism. But considering all that has happened in recent years to the physical newspaper itself, I also figure that here, online, is where all of us future journalists will end up.

I admit to being a little weirded out by the specter of internet journalism. I may be just 20, but I'm a traditionalist at heart in some spots, such as the newspaper. I've been reading papers since I learned how to read. But time goes on and so does technology. Media is a constantly changing beast and it will continue to evolve. I will evolve along with it. I don't have a choice.

Enjoy the blog!