Interesting stuff I saw online, Jan. 27 to Jan. 31
Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Jan. 27 through Jan. 31:
- Angela Foster: As the recession grows, publications serving Britain's ethnic communities are more relevant than ever – An item that I'll put in our Post-Dispatch blog, A Conversation about Race: "So is there still a need for the black press? Yes. There are still many issues affecting the black community that do not get covered in many mainstream papers – for instance, the disproportionate number of black people in mental health institutions and the high school exclusion rates for black boys." [via the Guardian]
- Editing comments does not make you legally liable | BeatBlogging.Org – This falsehood must stop now. It’s been used — knowingly and unknowingly — by news organizations for years as justification not to allow user comments. [via journalism.uk.org]
- Nieman Reports Article: When Journalists Blog: How It Changes What They Do – "In generating story ideas, blogging journalists don’t need someone to tell them who the readers are and what they want: They already know, because the readers are on their blogs, telling them who they are and what they’re curious about. In this new blogging relationship, editors are the middlemen being cut out." [via Journerdism]
- 10 Steps To Protect The Admin Area In WordPress – Smashing Magazine: "The administration area of a Web application is a favorite target of hackers and thus particularly well protected. The same goes for WordPress: when creating a blog, the system creates an administrative user with a perfectly secure password and blocks public access to the settings area with a log-in page."
- Getting Crisis Communications Right: Miracle on the Hudson – Brief but interesting post: "A crisis is one of the trickiest things that companies, organizations and municipalities can be forced to deal with. That is why the majority has such a hard time doing it right. Why is that?" [via @VandiverGroup on Twitter]
Interesting stuff I saw online, Jan. 4 to Jan. 5
Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Jan. 4 through Jan. 5:
- Forget Survival: The Journalist’s Guide to Owning 2009 and Beyond | New Media Bytes – A well-done pep-rally for journalists — yay, TEAM! "Journalism is NOT dependent on the fate of your employer, newspapers or mass media. Rather, YOU can help decide journalism’s future."
- Nine online publications breached suicide reporting rules, PCC finds (Journalism.co.uk) – Something that never would have occurred to me, and another reason to give thanks for the First Amendment (a blessing the UK does not enjoy): "Nine online publications breached suicide reporting rules, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has ruled."
- News Mixer Generates Widespread Interest | PBS' MediaShift Idea Lab – A rundown of links to mentions of the story commenting project by the Medill School and Gazette Communications in Cedar Rapids.
- What’s next for Lee Enterprises? (From Reflections of a Newsosaur) – "So, let’s not forget that there is a reasonably robust business here. The problems are that (a) the business is not as robust as it used to be and (b) the business may not be robust enough to make a $142.5 million debt payment due this spring."
- Drilling Down – Internet Skyrockets as a News Source – NYTimes.com – The change does not represent a decline in the popularity of newspapers, which actually picked up a percentage point over last year. Rather, it represents a near-doubling, from 24 percent last year, in the number of people naming the Internet as their primary news source.
Interesting stuff I saw online from Dec. 3 to Dec. 4
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.
Interesting stuff I saw online from Aug. 14 to Aug. 15
Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet from Aug. 14 through Aug. 15:
- Todd Andrlik: Chicago Tribune's Social Media Evolution – "By sharing its relevant, high-quality content through these new social channels, chicagotribune.com immediately realized an uptick in traffic and eventually an eight percent increase in pageviews."
- Beat Blogging: Blog readers lead to A1 story for Dallas Morning News – The key line in this blog item, and the lesson for journalists: "His readers — many of which are teachers — knew more about this topic than be did, and he hoped they could shed some light on the situation."
- Is porn the answer to newspapers’ woes? – I have nothing to add to this. Try as I might. The blogger: "Steve Boriss teaches the class 'The Future of News' at Washington University in St. Louis and is a principal of The Future of News, Inc."
- What Social Media Does Best – Chris Brogan on how to talk to your boss about social media. I should commit this to memory. So should someone in all the other newsrooms out there.
What I’ve read: Aug. 11
Here’s some of the stuff I thought was interesting while stomping through the Internet on Aug. 11 from 4:09 pm to 7:01 pm:
- Journalism.co.uk » Who’s behind Wikipedia: Virgil Griffith’s WikiScanner investigates – This is really interesting, based on analysis of Wikipedia posts: "Overall – especially for non-controversial topics – Wikipedia seems to work. For controversial topics, Wikipedia can be made more reliable through techniques like this one." Also posits that anonymous posts/updates are not, by definition, a bad thing.
- Journalism.co.uk » Associated Press launches celebrity news service – For this, the AP is bringing in new staff: "New staff have been hired to work on the service and new video production technology has been bought for its Los Angeles, New York and London bureaux."
- Journalism.co.uk » Salon.com opens doors to readers, asks for tips – Alas, the things we can do with the right tools. Congrats on Open Salon. It will bear watching.
- The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com Empower Users to Do Good – News release for "Good2gether" (social network connecting givers and nonprofits). Interesting piece of their "how it works" section talks about newspaper publishers faced with "declining readership, ad revenue loss, brutal competition." This, they say, will help us.
- Digital Domain – Goodbye, Passwords. You Aren’t a Good Defense. – NYTimes.com – My favorite quote from the story: When I asked Scott Kveton, chairman of the OpenID Foundation’s community board, about criticism of OpenID, he said candidly, "Passwords, we know, are totally broken." Uhhh, yeah. That's for sure.
- Olympics: Only 0.2% of Viewers Exclusively Watch Online – ReadWriteWeb – I side with this reader: "Color me nutty, but, as much as I love me some Interwebs, nothing beats seeing the 4×100 men's relay in glorious HD." Especially after I just got me my HD TV.
Kurt's Tweets- Why is this not a national story? Maybe I missed it. Appalling. Disabled woman was tortured and held as a sex slave http://ow.ly/2CiAq
- Bravo. RT @pwthornton: "Banning unsigned online comments undermines the media’s role as a forum for debate.” http://bit.ly/bmZsOn
- I would like to just take the two steps forward and skip the one step back. How about that? Would that be OK?
- Still seeking talented journalists to run #Patch sites in two south St. Louis County communities. Know anyone? http://ow.ly/2Axnv
- Waiting for a listings collector to give her more #Patch marketing cards. The work never stops.