November 2008 Blog Posts (32)

I sum up the W3C’s mobile web best design practice guidelines in the latest post in my blog Online News Design.

Small screen devices might well point the way to efficient and improved web site design for news sites. Small devices force designers to become disciplined, gets them to cut out the inessentials from their design and makes it as easy as possible for users to access site…

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Four months after winning the KNC grant, Dave Cohn is a happy man. He started with a wiki where he presented and tested the different sides to his project, and he quickly managed to fund three stories. Now it is on its way to fund a fourth one. All of this even before having an official website.



The way it works is quite simple: someone - a journalist, a citizen, a community - pitches a subject to be investigated journalistically; the story is then open for funding, and… Continue

I just finished watching videos made by my students in Reinventing the News. All of them have good points; some are quite strong from beginning to end.



A few technical notes:



1. The videos were shot with low-end digital cameras, several of which created file compatibility problems. Two students who used Flip cameras had to edit their work on their Windows laptops using Windows Movie Maker, as… Continue

In an age of immediate access and media saturation, it’s tough for hard-working journalists out there to have a scoop that 10 other journalists don’t have.



Under every journalist’s pillow is the dream of landing that story no one has. It’s the desire of having journalist, newspaper following their leads and sourcing them in stories and earning co-workers’ envy and getting the much deserved newsroom bootycall. They don’t happen often but when they do, they are just sweet. They can… Continue

I thought the US elections this time saw news sites trying out new things more than ever before. Sites also seemed to have matured in terms of innovation in presenting news on the web and the speed with which they adapted themselves to the changing news scene.

I tried to capture how the fast changing situation was reflected on the front pages of some key sites as it climaxed. In a post on my blog…

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I really wanted to come up with something original to say about President-elect Obama's victory and I hope someone hasn't already beaten me to the punch when I say this: As much as the win was about breaking down a major race barrier and vindicating the idea of democracy at a time when it was in question, it was also the realization of the full potential of the Internet.



That latter point goes easily overlooked in light of the former two, but I think it's a monumental one that we're… Continue

I'm new to the whole "audio slideshow" medium and I didn't have a lot of guidance or time for this but I'm relatively pleased with the result. Any feedback would be really helpful.



This slideshow is cross-posted at… Continue

With Election Day finally upon us, MTV's Street Team '08 is gearing up for the day we've been looking forward to for almost a year. And it's going to be awesome.



We have reporters in every state and Washington, D.C., and we'll be filing reports throughout the day on think.mtv.com and chooseorlose.com (they redirect to each other). These will be video reports from… Continue

This is a cross-posting from my blog, Ink-Drained Kvetch, which is devoted to displaced and mid-career journalists:



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This very long presidential campaign has been most exciting for me, as a journalist, in seeing how new Web tools and sites devoted to politics, fact-checking, instant communication and social media have dramatically transformed how Americans and others around the world get their election… Continue

This past week I was at the Kansas City National College Media Convention with the newspaper.

It was pretty sweet. I think there was over 300 seminars to choose from and a lot of them were really informative. Much of the classes and keynote speakers talked about new media convergance and the uncertainty of where journalism is going. Less people are picking up newspaper and going online. Not only that but, you can't just be a reporter or photographer these days. Everyone must have some level… Continue

The BBC Internet Blog has come up with interesting insights on how people use digital media. These have been summed up in visual presentations that are fascinating.

The aim was to explore how people "find, play, personalise and share programmes across different devices and services - like BBC iPlayer, Sky+, YouTube, peer-to-peer and traditional TV and radio." BBC interaction designer Adam…

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Google News had some months ago introduced a 'quote extraction' feature, using which one could access parts of the speeches or statements of important persons, compiled from various news sources. It had recently been expanded to quotes dating back to five years.

This is a good example of a news archive based tool that is not likely to lose its utility value with the passage of time. And also a good example of the kind of innovation that is possible…

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