STL Social Media Guy

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Dec. 3 through Dec. 4:

• Carnegie Mellon's reCAPTCHA software helps digitize books a word at a time - Am I the last person on earth who knew about this? I think it's really cool. "reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher."
• 10 changes in journalists role (and 5 things that remain the same) « O Lago | The Lake - This is a great list. Thanks!
• Why Twitter Turned Down Facebook - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - Ain't this the truth? "Twitter decided that it had too much left to do, beginning with figuring out how to make money."
• ACBJ leads $4.1M round to ThePort - Birmingham Business Journal: - This is the company that provides the foundation for MySTLtoday.com. "Existing investors included in the new round were Lee Enterprises, a newspaper publisher, Atlanta-based Imlay Investments, angel investor Robert Jetmundsen and ThePort's CEO Bob Cramer.

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet on Dec. 2 from 8:35 am to 6:50 pm:

• Even Gen X is aTwitter - TIME - My experience, too: "If you haven't heard of Twitter yet — or, if you're wondering, "Why would anyone ever want to Twitter?" — you're probably, well, not young."
• Readership Institute: Get Smart About Your Readers - My experience as well! "Flash poll: Number out of 180 freshman journalism students with Twitter accounts - 0. Number out of 180 who have never even heard of Twitter - 180."
• DVR commercial skipping: 50% or 97%? Depends on whom you ask - Are you buying this? "If you ask ABC, network execs will tell you that DVR-using homes actually see more total commercials than homes without the devices. According to one ABC exec, speaking recently at a television conference in New York that we attended, fewer people skip commercials than used to."
• Social media 'offers opportunities for online news providers' - "As well as increasing page impressions, social media campaigns can also result in brand enhancement, outgoing NYTimes.com senior vice-president and general manager Vivian Schiller said."
• Get Your Google Profile Tidied Up | chrisbrogan.com - ",,,Because that means my contact info and bio is on every review that someone *might* see every time they Google."

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Nov. 25 through Dec. 1:

• When Everyone Is A Blogger, Nothing You Say Is Off The Record - "Needless to say, his statements indicating that ‘blogging is a dangerous phenomenon’ spurred a lot of angry (and funny) reactions in the local blogosphere, making the situation for him much worse than it already was…"
• The Role of Internet Intermediaries in Censoring Online Speech | Citizen Media Law Project - "Besides the important free speech issues, the article raises interesting questions about the professional responsibility of lawyers faced with potentially conflicting imperatives of pursuing their client's best interests and upholding larger ideals of social justice and human rights. It would make an excellent case study for a law school ethics class."
• Your customers have evolved into a community. Have you joined? - So, in order to reach (your customers), you had to entertain them, turning your customer into your audience
• Research shows generation gap among journos- JOURNALISM.CO.ZA - According to study, 100 percent of millennial respondents, those ages 18 to 29, believe “new media and communications tools are enhancing journalism,” while just 40 percent of journalists ages 50 to 64 believe the same.

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Oct. 18 through Nov. 25:

• Report: Journalists turn to social media - Blogs & Content - BizReport - "Comparitively, only 40% of journalists between ages 50 and 64 thought communications tools were important and only 60% felt that bloggers could shape opinions."
• AT&T may limit Web subscribers' data use - CNN.com -
• City of Mesa using Twitter to get word out - Steve Doig, a professor at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said he sees the move as an interesting idea that may foster more transparency within city government.
• cybersoc.com: 10 tips for live blogging a conference or event - "Here some tips…to help make it easier to track and participate in the back channel at conferences" (or events).

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Oct. 11 through Oct. 16:

• Alton Telegraph fights subpoena over Web posters' identities - Metro-east news - Belleville News Democrat - "The newspaper argues in its motion that Web site posters are protected sources because 'in the digital age a newspaper or reporter receiving information in this fashion is no different from anonymous tips provided to newspaper reporters telephonically or in written form.'"
• Blogging journalists: pt.2: Blogs and news ideas: “The canary in the mine” | Online Journalism Blog - "For blogging journalists, blogs have disrupted the traditional processes of journalism in a number of ways. Respondents spoke of a clearer perception of audience needs and interests as a result of comments and visitor statistics, which in turn fed into the choice of topics and angles to cover."
• How Much Do Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Get Paid? We Asked Them! - From ReadWriteWeb: "We asked 20 top-tier tech bloggers and social media consultants to tell us how much they get paid, by the post, by the hour or by the month - however their rates are set. Half of them told us, on the condition that we wouldn't disclose who they were or where they worked. "
• Oregon Shield Law Protects Anonymous Commenter from Citizen Media Law Project - "According to the Portland Mercury, staff writer Amy Ruiz wrote a post in January 2008 about Portland mayoral candidate Sho Dozono. In the comments section, a site user going by "Ronald" posted negative comments about Dozono's ties to a local businessman, Terry Beard. The same commenter allegedly posted similar statements on the Willamette Week site. Beard filed a motion to compel the two online newspapers to give up "Ronald's" IP address before an Oregon state court. The two competitors teamed up to oppose the discovery request and won. "

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Sep. 30 through Oct. 5:

• (On Facebook…) To Friend or Not to Friend?  | American Journalism Review - One point of view, from NYT standards editor: "…being a friend on Facebook…is essentially meaningless, and everybody knows that. So it's hard to imagine any real conflict of interest that could arise from your being a friend of somebody on Facebook and writing about that person."
• What The F**K is Social Media? - Terrific (and irreverent) slideshare on what social media is. Yeah, it's been there awhile. Yeah, I just found it. (via JackLail.com).
• How shared bookmarks can make you smarter >> Teaching Online Journalism - Vis-a-vis discussions we've had in social media brownbags in our newsroom: "How can bookmarking make you smarter? By cutting through the junk and the spam. People bookmark sites because they judge those sites to have value."
• Tracking Yourself and Your Blog Brand Across the Online Social World « Lorelle on WordPress - Interesting tool for tracking your brand. "The Yahoo Pipes Social Media Fire Hose searches across Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, Digg, various search engines, and even includes blog comments. It creates a custom feed you can then add to your feed reader."
• SR.com: Spokesman-Review to cut staff; editor resigns - These guys were leaders among smaller papers in online. "Jim Kershner, president of the Spokane Editorial Society, which represents the editorial department, called the cuts brutal. The 86-person union will lose 21 members in the layoffs…"
• Newspapers First Need to Redefine 'News' to Move Forward Online - "This is a strategy to be executed foremost on online and mobile rather than print. (Though personalized print editions aren't out of the question in the future.)" Funny that this came out the day I wrote about ending the print publications. Neat coincidence.

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Sep. 20 through Sep. 28:

• Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog » Blog Archive » Was the Scotsman right to sack Nick Clayton for blogging? - "Journalism.co.uk tried contacting the Scotsman…but received no response to the following: does the Scotsman have a set policy on staff writing for external websites? and are journalists aware of this?" The Post-Dispatch has a policy about blogging outside the newsroom by staffers.
• Buttry: Finding our way in social media | GazetteOnline.com - Cedar Rapids, Iowa City - Good strategies and ideas for how to engage audiences from the newspaper newsroom in social media.
• Digg aims to raise its profile - San Jose Mercury News - "Digg's traffic is showing signs of plateauing," Malik wrote this week. "What's troubling is that a mere 1 percent of its users (who can be labeled addicts) are generating 32 percent of the visits."
• Are We Ready for Citizen Journateerism? | PBS - "Basically that means ordinary folks leveraging social media tools to help people in need. I'm not talking about political or community-relevant reporting and opinioning, which is certainly a kind of volunteer community service, but about the re-purposing of citizen journalism tools in response to life and death issues on the ground."
• Interview with Ron Sylvester about using Twitter as a reporting tool | BeatBlogging.Org - Yes! “For traditional print, it kind of puts us back in the game,” he said. “It allows us to cover the courts live.”
• Citing abuse, Maui News kills online story comments - Pacific Business News (Honolulu): - How 19th century! "Instead, publisher Joe Bradley said readers would be directed to submit letters to the editor that could be printed in the newspaper or online. Submitting a letter requires readers to leave their names and contact numbers."
• ThePort helps clients, users interact on Web | ajc.com - Yeah. OK. Whatever.

Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Sep. 15 through Sep. 19:

• Comments on a religion blog - Michael Paulson's Articles of Faith Blog - I was most amused by the first comment, paraphrasing Jesus: "Trolls will always be with us." "A colleague of mine suggests that the web is self-correcting; one person posts a nasty comment about the Catholic Church, and another posts a comment rebutting the criticism. And there's an element of truth to that. But the tenor of that exchange is often ugly."
• Columbia Students Cover Presidential Forum via Twitter - Editors of the blog agreed that Twitter enhanced coverage of the forum. "Leading up to the events, our best up-to-the-minute coverage came from people seeing things online or on TV and texting them to their Twitter accounts, which is much faster than us going to our computers and blogging," said Heather Grossmann, one of the editors of the blog.
• LA Observed: Ex-Times reporters sue Zell - "The plaintiffs include several familiar bylines and at least one current Times star. A team has been looking into Zell's leveraged takeover of Tribune almost since he used employee money to get the company."
• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey - I Want Media - From the St. Louis native and creator of Twitter. He's asked, "Some reports have valued Twitter at nearly $3 billion. Does that sound right?" What does he answer?