Back in Chicago

My flight back to the states was delightfully uneventful. I am not too lagged (yet?) and will be back at Columbia later today. I'll be writing more about what I learned in Dublin as I get some time to reflect. Thanks to all at DIT for a wonderful and interesting visit.

Tags: DIT+Exchange+CCC

Leave the States for a minute and look what happens: Bush Signs Bill Enabling Martial Law

This is from slashdot and I haven't had time to vet it the way I usually do. I am getting ready to fly home from Dublin, so I leave it dangling here for someone else to check out and comment.Slashdot | Bush Signs Bill Enabling Martial Law

More from New Orleans conference

Look at these comments and think about who might have written them : • We post news as soon as we have it, not when it fits our daily print schedule. • Our photographers are posting online many more photos than we have room to print. • We’re rewriting job descriptions to reflect the Internet responsibilities of every journalist in the newsroom. • We’ve allowed readers comments on news articles for about five years. • We’re training all of our journalists on multimedia skills. • We have our reporters blogging to help them understand the Internet audience and to help build our online traffic. • We have online readers vote on tomorrow’s front-page news. • We’re working a complete redesign of our Web sites to make it easier for our readers to contribute photos, stories, blogs and other material. • We’re learning to do broadcast news. This week, our company broadcast its first live video. We showed our online viewers a hotly contested congressional debate. Newspapers have the opportunity to be online TV and radio stations. This is particularly exciting in community markets like mine that have traditionally been under-served by broadcasters. They come from an online piece Away in New Orleans: When Cultures Collide Virtual Greality by Chris Cobler who writes an Online Publisher's Blog for The Tribune from Northern Colorado. He is reporting from the same conference referenced in my last post.

NOLA.com: NewsFlash - Panel: Rise of citizen journalism brings challenges

A good read about citizen journalism efforts that are underway already. It touches on the "how much editing" issue and training and recruiting cit js. NOLA.com: NewsFlash - Panel: Rise of citizen journalism brings challenges

Wisdom of Crowds, literally. "Crowdsourcing"

I follow the advertising and marketing news because those industries are blantantly bottom line and you can see that wither goes the ad business, so might go the news business. This is the first time I have noted "crowdsourcing" used as a verb, but I don't think it will be the last. If Procter & Gamble can trust the crowd, why not everyone?Advertising Age - Who's Ready to Crowdsource?: "Crowdsourcing was coined by Wired magazine earlier this year. It's a process where businesses faced with tough challenges don't try to come up with all of the answers themselves. They tap into the collective wisdom of millions of amateurs around the world to come up with a solution. Naturally, they use digital technology to do so"

I Wanted News Now, I Got It the Next Day

Here's a first hand description of how news organizations miss the boat in an area that might be called "service" or civic journalism. He details a threat to the local school that is reported to parents via and email from the principal. However, the note is sketchy and so he turns to the local news organizations -- via their websites -- for more information, only to find that none of them has covered the event in a way that helps parents or families of affected people. The editors are still thinking about writing stories, not providing information in the most efficient way to their audience. It is a good read that makes some ideas about journalism today move from abstract discussion to concrete example.I Wanted News Now, I Got It the Next Day

Digital native, digital immigrant issue goes front and center

Mark Glaser reports on McArthur Foundation, Pew, and other research efforts and investigations into what social networking and being adolescent and online means for those who are growing up connected and the rest of us.MediaShift . Media Usage::Finding Balance in Teen Use of Social Media | PBS

Center for Media Research - Daily Brief

Interesting evidence that teens are shifting from IM to SN (social networking) as their preferred way of staying connected to each other all the time. Interest in icons down.Interest in social networking site templates up.Center for Media Research - Daily Brief

My visit to DIT - a photoset on Flickr

Here is a link to some of my photos from my visit to DIT and Dublin. My visit to DIT - a photoset on Flickr

Dateline: Dublin : Teaching Moments

I just finished doing a teaching session with the "First Years" here at DIT. It was fascinating. After an introduction to blogs and terminology, we did a "hands on" session with blogger. The presentation I gave included a set of screen grabs that show the steps to setting up a blog on blogger. In the past, I would have taught this the way I like to be taught. That means a thorough linear, text and talk based step by step explanation. Today, I prefaced the set of screens with a comment about how "digital natives" don't like the "show me, then I will do it" approach, and then I just kind of breezed through the explanation and step by step. Dang, those students had their blogs up and running faster than I remember any class doing so. With this "N" of 1, I can't overgeneralize, but I am going to begin to re-design my explanatory sessions with this in mind. These students use Bebo which our students in the U.S. don't use (ours use Facebook or MySpace.) What was really interesting to me, is that as soon as they created their blogs, they asked me how to find their friends blogs. You can't do that easily with blogger. It is set up to create individual blogs which are then picked up by search engines. The whole search focus in Blogger, is on content in the posts and comments -- not on the "who" of the blog creator. These young people are thinking of the social networking first and view it as odd, almost as if something is broken, when they can't orient themselves in a FOAF (friend of a friend) sort of network.

The Netherlands: NRC Next – cool to pay for a newspaper - Editors Weblog- Analysis

This story talks about a news organization that is selling a new news product that integrates web into the lifestyle of its readers. It is attracting the young who haven't been newspaper readers. It struck me that this effort sounds like it is implementing what Amy Gahran and I were talking about in terms of collaborative news, distributed coverage, and giving readers more than the simple "facts" which they probably have heard/read/seen on other media. The Netherlands: NRC Next – cool to pay for a newspaper - Editors Weblog- Analysis

Potential bad news for Flickr and del.icio.us users--the dreaded "M" word comes up

M does not mean "mother" here but "monetize." I'll be burning my photos to disk and ready to jump to tabblo with my photos.Slashdot | How Will Yahoo "Monetize" Their Social Networks?

A bad chat experience leads to attack in the real world.

A bad chat and perceived insults led a man to trace someone from a chatroom to his real home. A fight with knives and an axe ensued. I would have cooled down before I drove the miles to hsi house.BBC NEWS | England | London | Internet user admits 'web-rage'

A couple of simple ideas that could transform news for the better

Amy Gahran pulls together a couple of recent threads from around the world of journalism and comes up with three ideas that could make for a new kind of reporting: --news collaboration --distributed reporting --collaboration on coverage to leverage strengths and resources She is saying that professional reporters could collaborate with bloggers, and different news organizations could split up the work of covering aspects of a story to produce layers or a range of coverage on an issue. I think the young audience, digital natives, care less about which news organization gets a story but they do like to get the kind of layered coverage that results from collaboration, distributed reporting and leveraging resources to really cover a story. If the technology is around now to embed "E-T call home" capability in our stories and media elements like John Perry Barlow suggested in "Old Wine in New Bottles" in 1992, then some of the problems of credit and attribution could be taken care of in a "Holovaty-esque" manner.

Fox Uses Smartphone To Transmit Live TV News - Digital-Lifestyles.info

NO it wasnt' citizen journalism, it was a good example of what Jeff Jarvis has been calling "networked journalism," referring more to the method of getting the news out rather than focusing on who reported the news. After all, if it's journalism, what does it matter who reported it or how they got the news out?Fox Uses Smartphone To Transmit Live TV News - Digital-Lifestyles.info

This is a tool you need to check out

I have experimented with several Firefox extensions that provide a space  for you to create a blog entry and then easily upload it, but so far, this looks like the best so far. The spellchecker is a welcome addition and there are more tools here than I would generally need during a blog writing and posting session.

The "post from Word" command is brilliant as my students or the journalists I work with often do not quite get that Word in its generic form has lots of hidden characters and commands that can make posting problematic in say, Typepad.  

A possible disadvantage to  writetomyblog is that its speed depends on your connection speed and the number of other users. 

Already, I like it. 

Tags: blogs+tools+web2.0apps

? Journalism 2.0: News or chatter? | Digital Micro-Markets | ZDNet.com

Here is a look at the professional vs. amateur news reporter and writer issues that takes two extreme but expressed positions. Too bad it degenerates into a name-calling orgy against any public figure that seems to have suggested any model or idea that wasn't based on the distorted capitalism practiced in the USA today.? Journalism 2.0: News or chatter? | Digital Micro-Markets | ZDNet.com

Nora French, Head Department of Communications & Barbara Iverson, Columbia College Chicago

First Meeting.JPG
Originally uploaded by biverson.

Currentbuzz is on the road for a couple of weeks visiting at Columbia College Chicago's partner school in Dublin, DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology.)

I will be posting about my visit and various teaching/learning experiences that come up while I am here instead of my usual kind of posts about tech news and journalism news.

I'll be available via the comment feature if you have questions or comments. I've only just met some of the DIT staff and don't have much substantive information to post at this time.

I am listening to RTE, radio Ireland, and so far, it has had very good local coverage (of a protest at a Shell Oil refinery or pipeline) and interesting international news, in this case about the Malawian baby that Madonna is trying to adopt.

The Nation acknowledges "citizen journalist" contributions

In this case, it is photos of the Pask River, near Ayutthaya province in Thailand. What I noticed was the insensitivity of "robots" that put up context specific ads. In this case, the story is the plight of Thais who got flooded, but the Google context sensitive ads tout "Dreamhouses in Thailand." Presumably these are not near the river.It is Charlie's turn

Vincent Maher - Media in Transition ? 11 tips for managing a good blog entry

Pretty basic tips, most of which I never wrote down, but someone had to...Vincent Maher - Media in Transition provides 11 tips for managing a good blog entry

AdamMaguire.com - Blog

A young Irish blogger who is a journalist. Perhaps we'll have time for a chat when I'm in Dublin.AdamMaguire.com - Blog

Who do you trust? Lexis survey of consumers shows "traditional journalists" still trusted.

From the Center for Media Research's Oct. 2 brief:

Mainstream Professional Journalists Trusted Most to Report Pandemic Events According to LexisNexis U.S., when consumers are faced with major events that significantly affect their lives, such as a pandemic or an ominous hurricane, their trust mostly remains with traditional media, such as professional journalists at mainstream newspapers, magazines, television and radio, versus emerging media sources including Internet-only publications, blogs and podcasts. Findings show that: * Half of those surveyed said that they would turn to network television for immediate news information * The next most popular source was the radio (42%) * 37% of consumers would use daily local newspapers * 33% cable news or business networks * 25% of those interviewed would rely on Internet sites of print and broadcast media * 6% would turn to Internet user groups, blogs and chat rooms On average, says the report, consumers are four to six times more likely to feel that traditional media is more trustworthy than emerging news sources for news they feel is most interesting. Top news topics of interest (each selected by approximately 1/3 of the respondents) included entertainment, hobbies, weather, and food/cooking. Following closely was sports, selected by roughly two-in-ten consumers. For entertainment, consumers most often picked traditional lifestyle media as the most trusted source. However, Internet blogs, user groups and chat rooms were selected next most often, followed by weekly or monthly general interest and news magazines. The survey identified that food was selected as a topic of interest nearly twice as often as politics/elections (29% vs. 15%). Additionally, popular entertainment was selected as a topic of interest five times more often than personal finance, which received the lowest proportion of interest ratings among the 21 categories included in the survey. 52% of the consumers surveyed anticipate they will continue to mostly trust and rely on traditional news sources. However, 35% expect they will trust and rely on both emerging news and traditional news in the future, and 13% anticipate they will trust and rely mostly on emerging media. In this study traditional news is defined as professional journalists at well-established, popular and mainstream newspapers, magazines, television, radio, etc (and their Internet sites). Emerging or non-traditional news is defined as citizen journalists, pundits and organizations who create alternative or Internet-only publications, blogs and podcasts, often with a personal or particular point of view. The accuracy rate of the survey is +/- 2.5 to 3.5 percent margin of error at 95 percent confidence for total sample

Digital natives are restless

My liveblog of a panel with young people who were representing digital natives has begun a very interesting discussion. My students in one class are currently doing a survey of digital natives, interviewing digital immigrants, and writing news stories for journalism teachers. I will share our findings and some of the stories as they come in. In the meantime,I got an email from a young journalist who said

I am a 27-year-old Communications Coordinator/Web Developer based in Springfield, Mass...I know how to write a feature story on home insulation for the middle-aged homeowners who subscribe to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, but I don’t know how to write a story that could capture an audience my own age – perhaps because, instinctively, I know that they’ll probably seek home insulation information out on the Web.

What are we teaching young reporters and thinking about ourselves? I guess it's not what goes on in the minds of young people.digitalnatives

Gaming "coming of age"

Well, at ONA Nora Paul and I had an interesting discussion about a game that would teach journalism students, law students and history majors that we may work on together. I think the time for more gaming as education is now or even yesterday, and these stats seem to indicate that gaming isn't just for kids anymore.U.S. Gaming Audience Spans All Consumer Segments, Representing Key Opportunity for Marketers

tags technorati : gaming education simulation

There's no place like a home page - Internet

There's no place like a home page - Internet: "Who wants to jump from one Web site to the next just to check your e-mail, scan the morning headlines, and get driving directions for an afternoon meeting? Instead, you can pack all that onto a single Web page and sign in to see it all from any Web browser. We've reviewed four such services that take just a few minutes to set up and can save you lots of surfing time over the long haul. Scroll down to compare the features." Here is a useful review of Web 2.0 apps that can make you more productive.

tags technorati : personalproductivity

Mn Journal

If you were interested in the "digital native, digital immigrant" panel of young folks who spoke about media use and such at ONA, I urge you to read the comment by Michael who is 21. This is a link to his blog. Media types need to be reaching out to voices like this and taking heed of what they say about "their generation." Mn Journal

The Daily Show is as substantive as the "real" news

A new research study found that traditional news broadcasts, including "World News Tonight" and "CBS Evening News" (gasp, Ed Murrow is spinning in his grave) feature no more substantive news than the Daily Show. IN fact, the stories from the MSM outlets were actually shorter in duration than Stewart's coverage on the Daily Show. Ask yourself--which are YOU watching regularly? Then leave me a note with your answer and also how old you are. If folks respond, I will collate and publish the results. The Daily Show is as substantive as the "real" news

ONA session on digital "natives"

I'm here in the session on "how young people use internet," at Online News Association 2007. The moderator makes a joke, "we won't ask them waht they do and how to monetize it." Each of millenials talks about what they do with media: Older college girl--Slate, Google news, listens to podcasts when jogging ("anything under 5 mins." "Very rarely do I go to a newspaper's website, its so easy to get news elsewhere." "Slate gets it, takes the best part of Bob Woodward's book and makes little subheads and paragraphs so it goes by really fast." Jordan (a guy)-check weather and Google RSS feed or other convenient feed. They like the headline feeds with 30 or so stories. Play games, talk to friends, do homework. "Anything I do on the computer is right there--convenient and quickly." Girl HS age-- gets online in school and writes for school paper. Goes on her yahoo homepage and reads sports, entertainment and news. As a HS journo--her job is to skim "big world" and find out what to tell the HS kids. At home its all about Facebook and IM. Email once in a while. Alex, middleschooler--In the mornings I have to go to school and can't do anything on computer. When he gets home, looks up stuff on Wikipedia, "its addicting [wiki]." Play games, watch youtube movies while listening to iPod, play games, check email. "Email is too slow. If we do use email, we all use Gmail." Then she noted that she reads the news that is contextualized for her in Gmail. TV: never watch in real-time. Wanted not watch TV "when it is on." He wants to watch comedy central news "fake news binge", when he wants. HS girl likes TiVo for its rewind and skip commercials, but likes to watch when big premieries come out like "Lost" Middle school boy has a "cheap" videotape camera. Likes to video his brother and the dog--makes video with friends. When he finishes the video he just shows it to his friends. Sometimes he'd tape birthday party and show it to friends later. College girl noted that some kids video impromtu stuff, upload to youtube and says "21 year old guys like this." HS Facebook user notes that she can keep up with friends via Facebook. Good to keep in touch with friends about their lives. "MySpace is a little scary to me because its not just students. I think Facebook is a lot safer because you can just look at profiles of friends." post.com has story about the page who emailed Foley -- called the MySpace a post and she noted that calling it a post was "lame." What about news of the weird? Love to pass it on to friends as sort of a passtime. On her yahoo feed she gets this kind of news--example, people have sex while driving, and she said she had just been in an accident and was wondering about that... HS boy like RSS because he doesn't have "filter through what I'm not interested in."Her uses WaPo, NYTimes and CNET feeds. He uses WaPo feed because that was the paper he read as a kid. NONE OF THEM READ PRINT. IT GETS HANDS DIRTY. The college-age girl talked about the preying mantis sex story and all her friends liked it. It wasn't dumbed down, but it got popular with their friends. "I sold magazines, but I don't read them." "If my mom buys a magazine I'll open it if I'm not at the computer." "When I read a magazine, I always wish it had the "find" command" Do they bring their media with them? College girl--Blackberry always with her because she can always get to the Internet. HS boy doesn't bring stuff with except for phone. 3 out of 4 don't wear watches because their devices tell time. The HS girl does text messaging, and says it is "like a diary of her life." Texting is really fun and I do it when I'm bored. They text from their purses and kind of hide texting when they are bored. Do they help the adults with tech at home? Install software for mother. Helped dad with video camera. All mom can do is email. I had to help her get directions to get to the hotel and session. Young do not "get" why old people don't know how to use computers and use Google. We don't know why. When is multitasking too much? When it breaks down. I do it until I break down. One game, talking, and looking up stuff isn't too complicated because stuff isn't instanteous. The ability to find out what I want when I want it is key. I don't have to go to a library, I can just find out what I need to know at my pace. "Unless it overloads your computer its never too much" At the beach she wasn't connected to everything and got a new perspective on being connected. Its just nice knowing you are connected to everyone all the time. "Visceral drive" to be connected all the time. college girl "When your computer breaks down, your life shuts down." Questions from audience: Get news from message board in games. Middle schooler uses message boards in this games. What about blogs? HS boy doesn't read blogs because he doesn't know how reliable they are. HS girl--blogs aren't accurate. I use blogs for entertainment news cuz who really cares if its real. What defines credibility for you? NYTimes over Joe Schmo. Must link to MSM story in your blog to get credibility. For primary news, still go to MSM. In blogs, Wonkette, snarky blogs and Smoking gun (because of primary source documents.) Registration and ads: do they stop them? Hate full-page ads. Registration don't like it. "Certainly not going to pay for something online." HS BOY on registration: age restrictions are stupid because no one checks. He resents a registration with age requirement, especially if the age isn't related to content or site. Need for speed: What would make you click through and read the whole thing? "Read the whole thing?" Break text up into small graphs. Include explainer to provide context--200 wd. backgrounder so story makes sense to a reader not familar with all the stuff about the story. Don't dumb down content. In-depth detailed info is okay with teens. How do you discover new news? "The point of RSS feeds is that I'm trying to get what I want to know about" HS boy. Uses homepage of yahoo or google to get exposed to new news. HS girl has set up her homepage with categories to show her the top 3 in each of the categories. "Its a let down to click on a video and you get an ad" College girl. Ads can be more relevant online -- HS boy How much do kids talk about "big issues" offline? Would they like a story told from perspective of teenager? Yes to second question--tell story through the person living the problem. Telling the story with a teen hook would be more interesting to kids. HS girl HS boy Teen perspective makes them relate more, but that alone won't get someone read a story. Put all info in the same place. How can you keep integrity and make a lot of people read your site. Privacy concerns? Worry about getting too much spam--have a separate address for spam and real email. HS girl likes email news she asked for from Newspaper sites. Is there any one way of learning about a story you prefer? HS boy--Likes news in text form. Doesn't like TV news because its not in-depth. Middle school boy--likes text for news, because if you don't get something you can read it again. HS girl--text College girl--slideshows need optional audio because they use them at work. Read about digital natives. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian about "keitai" which is something they carry and the mobile phone/alwarys connected society.

Sitting next to Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine and I were sitting togehter in the Mark Cuban talk because we were using the same electric outlet to recharge our devices. You can compare our live blog posts about Cuban. Jeff had a very nice device that produces a wireless network via bluetooth that looks like it would be handy. Jeff got up and asked Cuban a couple of questions, most notably about selling short as the sleuthshare investigative story went online. ONA2007

What is Mark asking Mark?

Will you buy the Cubs?
Originally uploaded by biverson.

Mark Cuban at the end of his address to the Online News Association in Washington, D.C.

Mark Hinojosa, Chicago Tribune is talking to Mr. Cuban.

Icerocket

This is the blog search engine that Cuban is backing and that he uses. He described how he uses Internet tools like rss and search tools to keep track or information. How can you build RSS readers into your site? He holds up his cellphone and asks "How can you get people to go to your site?" RSS is an enabler and a big part of his daily routine. Muni WiFi will enable wireless watching of TV and movies--will it hurt TV? "NO" says Cuban. He claims there is already a daypart of all the people that watch video during the workday. He thinks the devices will not replace but will supplement existing TV. You didn't plan on buying a computer, but when the price point is right, and so the hi-def TVs will sell. Broadband will be a complement to hi-def. He doesn't see any big change in broadband infrastructure soon. 19.4 stream of video, 10-19 bits of streaming info is hi-def. Our job is to put the information into complementary formats for the USER. It is not about the Internet or broadband--its about the USER. Internet is "old news." No is surprised by digital information now. "Work backwards from your customers." You can't ask the customers -- its your job in the business to experiment and try everything out. "Be transport and format agnostic." MarkCuban ONA

Live Blogging from ONA -- Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban explains the site saying "We just present the facts." Financial industry don't think there is anything wrong with Cuban selling short based on the investigation. Cuban claims the info will be the same whether he makes money off the site or not. Bloomberg news reporter who worked for a hedge-fund for years and says that what Cuban did, "wouldn't pass the smell test." If you advance trade on a research report, there is nothing wrong with that. Acting on the information in advance is okay, according to Cuban, because he isn't charging for the news. If its a research site for your own personal business and you can read it openly, then he says the transparency is the protection of the journalistic merit of the work. MarkCuban ONA

Didn't you know this without a study?

Gee, traditional news sources are more trusted by folks than are blogs or UGC (user-generated content.) It seems people see the web differently than some media strategists.Blogs Suffer in Poll On Preferred News Sources

Gee, technology is disruptive. But it didn't mean to be.

Look to yourself and how you live today. Where do you go to find things to do, to be entertained, to meet up or talk to your friends? Even if you are older, you are doing things differently than we all did 5 years ago.... Center for Media Research - Daily Brief

One threat to reputation ranking schemes

I was trying out Naymz, the new service that is supposed to let you create an organized profile of links and information when you are googled, and it seemed like a good service. I was put off a bit by this email request from Naymz. This is what I was cautioning PR folks against. By the way, I looked at digg.com (I am a digg'r) and no one had posted the story. Good for digg'rs and let's hope that this kind of faked bragging and promotion stays a "no, no" on the Internet.

Little old Naymz has finally hit the big time! We had an exclusive interview with the Chicago Tribune which appeared in today's business section. Here is the online version of the article. To view it you may need to sign-up with ChicagoTribune.com. It's free if you are not yet a member. The Trib, as we like to call it here in Chicago, has a readership of nearly 2.5 million. Thanks to Eric Benderoff for doing an awesome job covering the issue of online identity management and Naymz as a potential solution. Thanks to all of you who have signed up and supported Naymz since we launched in June. Over the last few months we have collected feedback, changed our site based on your great advice, worked through some bugs and we now feel ready to really get the word out about Naymz. Anything you can do to help spread the word would be appreciated. If you have a free minute today please go to Digg.com and vote (aka "Digg") for today's trib article. The more votes it gets, the more the article will be read by millions of Digg users. This could really help put us on the map which in turn will allow us to make Naymz a better product for you. As always, let us know if you have any ideas on how to make Naymz more useful. Thanks again! Best Regards, The Naymz Team

[tagname]

A new "_gate"

House Republican leaders react to the Foley e-mails. By Roger McShane - Slate Magazine

Tit for Tat?

U.S. games have featured attacks on Iran. Now the tables are turned as this Iranian game lets players attack oil tankers, at least virtually for now.Iranian video game targets U.S. tanker | CNET News.com