Photo manipulation

This goes back a few lectures when we discussed how easy it is to alter photos with software programs such as Photoshop. Here is an article on on USA Today altered a photo of Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice - it was an AP photo and they touched up the eyes for the Web version. Pics are included with the article - read it here

Following your blog topic in the news

A great feature that Google provides is News Alerts. These make it easy to follow your topic in the news without checking out numerous separate Websites everyday. For example, for my Keeping Score blog, I have a news alert that sends me an e-mail with all the news stories that have the key words - "women, LPGA, golfers." Once a day, Google sends me an e-mail and I can scan the headlines and look at the stories that look like they might be something I want to put on my blog. You can set up as many news alerts as you would like - I have several. The trick is to have enough key words so you don't get flooded with a ton of links but not so narrow that you miss out on things. Google also provides links to blogs that match your key words also - so this can lead you to fellow bloggers in your topic area.

State of the Media

We will be talking about this report in class - State of the Media 2005 put out by the Project for Excellence in Journalism

The media biz is freaking out over your news habits

The Chicago Tribune also has a piece on where young people are getting the news. In addition to commenting on the New York Times piece, (see this post) you may want to add a sentence or two about this piece, along with it.

Something light ...

I took the What Kind of Food Are You? test that Taryn links to from her blog and here I am ...

You Are Thai Food

Trendy yet complex. People seek you out - though they're not sure why.

What Kind of Food Are You?

I want my news for free

This week's blog assignment is to go off your blog topic and write an essay in response to this article in the New York Times "Why Should You Pay to Read This Newspaper". Post your response on your own blog. Write about your own news habits - how do you get your news? Also, talk about other kinds of content you use - music, movies, books, magazines, - what are you willing to pay for? How much a month roughly do you spend on media content? What do you get for free? How have your habits changed over the past few years? What technology has enabled some of these changes? Examine other questions - is the news worth paying for? What is the future of paid news content? How are these news organizations going to stay in business if no one is buying the product? What does this mean for your future as a journalist or other profession? Your essay should be posted on your blog by next Tuesday (November 1).

Promoting your blog

Where is everybody? It can be a bit discouraging, when you are writing post after post on your blog, but don’t see anyone commenting on your prolific witty and knowledgeable writings. I think there are many blogs out there that got off to an enthusiastic start, but slowly fizzled because the writer wasn’t sure if anyone was reading and gives up. The best course is to just to keep plugging away. Write and write and write. It’s good discipline and you will grow as a writer, even if no one, but your best friends or parents, are reading you. If you feel you are starting to find a voice, and you are writing regularly, you might want to think about getting your blog “out there” a bit more. There are a few ways to plug in to the blogosphere. One is to link to other blogs on your site and then read them on a regular basis. When you click on the link from your blog into theirs, they may notice you if they are following their referrer links (some blogging programs allow bloggers to see how much traffic they have and where it is coming from). Some of these blogs, may in turn, put up a link back to you, driving their readers over to your site for a visit. To be more involved, start commenting on these other blogs to join the conversation. To find other blogs in your topic area, see below **

Another option is Google. Share your url address with Google and they may add it to their vast index. This means when people type in certain words during a search, your blog may turn up as one of the links. Go to this page to learn more about this: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl. You can also submit your blog address to Blogwise – here is their page on how do to it.

** Finding other blogs. There are a few blog directory/search engines out there. Google has one, there is Blogwise, and Tecnhnorati

J-students and $$ - Part II

Jeff Jarvis -- who writes the BuzzMachine blog and is heading over to head up a new media program at CUNY -- has a counterpoint post to that Cleveland Plain Dealer piece on j-students and jobs and $$$. Read it here.

Also the Dealer columnist responds to critics about the piece's lack of attribution, slam against PR people, etc - read it here

Professors who blog

There is a story in the Chicago Tribune about a professor with a popular political blog who was recently denied tenure - the article looks at if it was his blog that doomed him - "Did blogging doom prof's shot at tenure?" You can read the prof's post of his "pretty bad day" here along with all the comments from his readers.

Is it all about $$$?

Romenesko's media blog had a link to this story - "For future journalists, it's cash, not causes" - in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about how j-students are not interested in low-paying j-jobs. Please read and comment on what you think of the story.

Public vs. Private

Yesterday I went to a panel discussion here at Northeastern titled "Public Private: Intersections in New Media". It was moderated by David Marshall from Comm Studies and Dan Kennedy from my journlism dept. was one of the panelists. Here is a link to the materials that the library put together. Part of the discussion was defining what "new media" is. Another part was the whole concept of how what used to be viewed as private information has moved into the public sphere on the Internet - for example - facebook.com - which we've talked about in class. Our student newspaper - the NUNews also has a frontpage story on facebook this week - (Note: I was interviewed and quoted in the story)

Don't get your hopes up ...

But some bloggers are finding a way to make $$$ from their blogs. Here's a piece from Wired magazine - Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?

J-Learning

For anyone interested in free, do-it-yourself materials for building Websites, blogging, digital photography - there is a great online resource called J-Learning. You don't need to, but you can register for additional access like forums, etc. It is run by The Institute for Interactive Journalism, a center at the University of Maryland's College of Journalism. They gave a presentation at a educators conference I was at in August and I have found their site to be a great tool. We are using some of their materials in class. J-Learning is a big supporter of community journalism and their site is focused on getting people to use the Web as tool for the community.

The missing link

I forgot to add Barry's Notes from the Roller Disco - a blog on the Boston music scene. Music writing is a hard beat to break into professionally- but the online music writing scene has been a boon to Lester Bang wanna-bes. And the blog is a great format for it. Barry's blog is now on our class blog list in the sidebar and everyone is up and rolling ...

The History of the Internet

Next week, we will be working on Basic HTML and building Websites with Dreamweaver software. We so often take the Web for granted - just hop on and point and click, etc. But I think it's important to know how the Internet came to be - so today we will be doing a bit of history. Here is a link to Wikipedia's History of the Internet - Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is written by anyone who chooses to write or edit an entry - read an introduction to the site here. Some people are leary of a site that allows anyone to write an entry - and there are some valid concerns that Wikipedia addresses here- . I find it to be a powerful research tool that sometime leads me to other sites, ideas, etc. A lot of the "techie" entries for topics such as the history of the Internet are dead on and just a wealth of information. Look for an article in the November issue of Esquire, where an editor submitted a factually incorrect piece and let the Wikipedia readers edit it.

Facebook story

There is a piece in today's Boston Globe (you need to register to read this site now - it's free) about a Fisher College student who was expeled for postings he wrote in a discussion board on Facebook. We talked about this in class the other day - how what you write online should always be considered as something that is out there for the public to read - even on sites like Facebook where the "members" are limited to people with a .edu e-mail. There are no private spaces on the Web. Whether he should have been expeled or not, is another matter all together, which we can discuss in class.

Blogs as satire

Someone has morphed The Onion's fake news humor and the Daily Show shtick with a blog format to create Harriet Meirs's blog -it's completely fake, obviously, and somewhat funny and it also raises a lot of online legal and ethical issues that we will talk about in class.