March 2008 Blog Posts (49)

Follow Wired Journalists on Twitter

Follow wiredj on Twitter for a few updates from the 'latest activity' feed every 30 minutes or so.

Added by Ryan Sholin on March 16, 2008 at 9:16pm — No Comments

Domain now properly working as wiredjournalists.com

Mainly because of my own lameness at following through, we haven't had the domain wiredjournalists.com working for this site as originally intended.

After the appropriate exchange of e-mails with the hosting company where I parked the domain, wiredjournalists.com is now working as the domain for this site.

If you re-bookmark this site to work under that domain (instead of mediageeks.ning.com), you'll be asked for your login information again, but after that all the URLs… Continue

Added by Howard Owens on March 16, 2008 at 5:59pm — No Comments

AAJA Career Workshop: Sacramento pros advise students

Last Saturday I went to an Asian American Journalists Association career workshop for students, organized by Judy Lin of the Sacramento Bee. We were asked to bring our portfolios and resumes for critiques, and more professional journalists than I can name were there ready to critique.

The panelists, led by Pamela Wu, all had unique insights to the industry. The main take-home message of the day: intern, intern, intern! Every panelist except one started their career through an… Continue

Added by Lacey Waymire on March 16, 2008 at 3:55am — No Comments

Dawn of Sunshine Week

While Sunshine Week doesn't officially begin for another 15 minutes or so, a quick Google search suggests news organizations across the country are gearing up for an active week both in print and online. As the creator -- there's a term I never thought I would get to use in this business -- of the Sunshine Week group on WJ, I just wanted to encourage participants to share some of the things they have planned for the week.

At The Telegraph… Continue

Added by Nick Pappas on March 15, 2008 at 11:47pm — No Comments

Blogging about blogging, parts one and deux

Below are a couple recent posts from my blog, The Linchpen, linking and summarizing other blogs blogging about blogging. Don't you just love meta-metablogging?

The first links to some insightful posts about blogging. The second looks at an interesting discussion about blogging that involves Howard Owens (who is linked in the first post), Mark Cuban and the… Continue

Added by Greg Linch on March 15, 2008 at 11:14pm — No Comments

JEECamp highlights

JEECamp was held at Birmingham, but even from afar i could participate. It was a great chance to follow the discussion about all those issues related to the future of media. A small overview here

Added by Alexandre Gamela on March 14, 2008 at 3:10pm — No Comments

Live from NSC 2008

The 2008 Northern Short Course will offer a live brodacast of a video strategy discussion Thursday evening from the site of the 2008 NSC in Rochester, NY.

Chuck Fadely, of the Miami Herald and Howard Owens, Director of Digital Publishing at Gatehouse Media, Inc., will discuss and debate the current trends in multimedia and video on the web. Fadely has been an innovator and leader among photographers making the transition to video storytelling. Owens is famous or perhaps infamous for… Continue

Added by Damon Kiesow on March 13, 2008 at 11:55am — No Comments

WJ Tutorial: How to make a photo gallery with a Google map

I've posted a new tutorial on my blog, make a photo gallery with a map using only free tools.

The project, depending on what you want out of it, usually takes less than an hour to produce.

You can see the final product here.

How would you go about this project? Would you do anything different? Let us know!

Added by Zac Echola on March 12, 2008 at 9:30pm — No Comments

Monkeying around in Sacramento trees

My first video ever! I filmed and edited this for my husband's grandmother's birthday. I used Windows Movie Maker (so amateur, I know). I found the actual editing to be really simple - of course I didn't do too much - but what was probably the most frustrating was the process it took me to figure out that I had to download a third program to transfer my camera's video file to a file type that Movie Maker would open. Once that was done... woohoo!

Now if I… Continue

Added by Lacey Waymire on March 12, 2008 at 2:31pm — No Comments

TOP 5 New Media Journalism Doctorate Programs in the USA

I've asked this before at the Faculty Lounge group, but i'm inviting you all to share with me your experiences and thoughts on this:

I'm applying for a fellowship to get a doctorate degree in the USA , and i need to choose up to 5 universities in my application. So , which are the top 5 doctorate programs in new media journalism in the USA?

Any recommendations are welcome

Added by Alexandre Gamela on March 11, 2008 at 6:37am — 16 Comments

Link strategies

Does anybody know examples of newspaper, TV and/or radio sites that consistently link to original reporting done elsewhere, either automatically through trackbacks or by hand?

I'm specifically looking for examples similar to the sites described in these excellent pieces by Scott Karp and… Continue

Added by Zac Echola on March 11, 2008 at 1:44am — No Comments

Big Words

Why do some people like to use big words? Well, it's probably because they think big words say "I'm smart. Don't believe me? Just listen to the big words I say."

It's funny to note, then, that some very small words can garner the respect of one's peers. Like the word "garner." Is anybody impressed with me for using it? If so, it's not for the word's length. After all, the word is only six letters long.

I believe that it's the infrequency of a word's usage that makes… Continue

Added by Christian Sheckler on March 10, 2008 at 9:35pm — 11 Comments

The long and the short of the net

There's a discussion going on right now at Gangrey.com about whether people will actually read long stories online. Seems, in standard newsroom logic, some editors have decided that what works in print must work on the web. You know, "quick hit" stories and "News in Five" pages that made papers like USA Today take off. But, of course, this really irks us narrative journalism-types who want to write long-impassioned stories about the human condition. So, at… Continue

Added by Meghan E. Murphy on March 10, 2008 at 12:00am — 3 Comments

Sometimes, boring is good

The online project that I'm most excited about at my paper (the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph) is really boring - thank goodness. There's no video, no audio, no interact maps, no Twitter or other goofy-named app, nary a speck of user-generated content. A kindergarten-level searchable database built on Caspio is the only thing that's mildly cutting edge - but it's a butter-knife edge, at most.

The project deals with Town Meeting season, wildly important in New England but loaded with the… Continue

Added by Dave Brooks on March 9, 2008 at 8:57am — 4 Comments

Mobile Harder Than I Thought

For a decade, I've been a journalist who relies on the phone, meetings, tips, the public and some pit bull instincts for my coverage. This year, the newspaper purchased a video camera, a laptop, and an internet card to do some mojo journalism. Since then, I have found it incredibly difficult to do it as a county government reporter. I don't think newspapers should ever stop covering meetings, because that's how we watch decision making of local officials. I work in a county where it is growing… Continue

Added by Dan Telvock on March 8, 2008 at 11:31pm — 7 Comments

Storytelling vs. Writing

Mindy McAdams recently posted a blog on what every journalism student needs to know. In addition to basic reporting skills like interviewing and ethics, she listed:

-basic knowledge of XHTML, Soundslides and Podcasting

-photo composition and Photoshop skills

Like her, so many bloggers (and teachers) are stressing the ability to tell a story through multimedia…and so are the people who do the hiring (for the most part.)

GateHouse Media recently posted a… Continue

Added by Nathalie Heiberg on March 8, 2008 at 5:36pm — 4 Comments

The Good Life

At the moment, I'm sitting in a coffee shop. I've been here for almost three hours. I just finished my mocha with caramel, and I had to plug my laptop charger into the wall because my trusty computer is about to run out of juice.

I'm spending the day in the coffee shop with my laptop because I have a story to write, and my deadline is lurking around the corner. Needless to say (but as always I'll say it anyway), I'm pretty stressed.

The thought occurs to me: I want… Continue

Added by Christian Sheckler on March 8, 2008 at 5:32pm — No Comments

Serving readers

My good friend Jason over at wemediaguru has a good post that I wanted to touch on.

In response to a Rob Curley post on serving audiences and giving readers what they want:

A perfect example at where I work is the fact that…

Continue

Added by Matt Neznanski on March 6, 2008 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Why the iPhone may rule the (journalism) world

You know, when the iPhone came out - many people were jealous and quickly showed that their mobile phones also had Google maps, push e-mail and maybe even a touchscreen. OK. Now you can ask them - can you convincingly play the melody to "Chopsticks" on your phone? Or are you in an iPhone band?

Bear with me - this blog is really about the future of mobile journalism

This video above is of the iAno - a program, or application, that runs on the… Continue

Added by Robb Montgomery on March 6, 2008 at 9:30am — 4 Comments

File Under: WTFAwesome

We all love hating Wal-Mart. At the same time we all have friends and family who shop there regularly. We tell them they’re ‘ruining the world,’ and when they ask us to elaborate, our explanations are slightly unorganized and convoluted. This is all part of the American experience, and we can handle it because we understand big business tactics. We tolerate it because we’ve seen it before, we know what to do with it, it makes sense.

Or it did, before a… Continue

Added by Tom Mattson on March 5, 2008 at 11:28pm — No Comments