Collecting $$ for Darfur

Your classmate Melissa has been blogging about Darfur and she is collecting spare change to donate to a related charity. Here's her post on the grassroots fundraising campaign. If you have any loose change in your bags, feel free to hand it over!

Podcasting complaints

The San Francisco Chronicle is starting to put up podcasts of voice mail messages left by irate or fact correcting or happy readers. The Pilotless Drone one gives you a good taste of what can come into the newsroom on a regular day.

Pics from a 4-year-old

So we've been discussing digital photography in class and you are all taking shots for Monday's photoshop workshop. Just thought I would share the lastest from mi hija. We got her a real basic cheap camera just a few weeks ago. Here is her latest. (Yes, 4-year-olds are into Barbie's - supposedly they grow out of them at 7. I don't even want to know what comes after that).

Another blog highlight

I also meant to point out this blog post in my previous post - your soon to be very famous classmate Glenn is blogging about his band Cassavettes (the Globe recently called them "The Boston buzz band"). So here is a clip of their appearance on the local Fox25 affiliate with reporter Kim Carrigan.

Student blog highlights

Once a week, I will try to highlight different posts from your blogs. First, Tom has already started podcasting (we'll be learning how to do this in class in a few weeks). Tom writes about baseball on his blog Bleacher Seats and here is the link to the post with the podcast. This is great Tom! Nicole is writing about film, and someone has already stumbled across her blog The Reel Scoop and posted a comment. If you are a "24" fan, Susan Torres recaps last night's episode for those who missed it or those who want to relive it! I teach a Monday night class and don't get home until 25 minutes into the show, so this recap helped fill in the holes! Dinah, who is blogging about all things dance, is also doing the same kind of recaping with MTV's new Dancelife show. Both Adam, who is covering non-traditional sports, and Jeff, who is covering the life of writing comic books, are going to town - lots of blogging! That's all for now ...

Boston Globe closing foreign bureaus

We talked in class yesterday about the changes taking place in the media industry. Today, the Boston Globe announced the closing of their three foreign bureaus - here is Prof. Dan Kennedy's take on it, including the memo from Globe editor Marty Baron.

Romney and the Internet trail

Today's Boston Globe has an article on an activist who is taking former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (who is hoping to be the next Republican presidential candidate) to task on past positions by scouring the Internet for old stories quoting Romney and then sending out a e-mail newsletter detailing Romney's changing viewpoints, etc. We'll talk a bit in class about how the Internet is playing a bigger and bigger role in politics - in both poisitive and negative ways.

We're off and running

I've started putting up links to your blogs over on the right!

Newspaper blog readership is way up

Here is a Reuters story on how the readership of the top 10 newspaper blogs has tripled since a year ago. Some newsrooms have been reluctant or unsure about using blogging in the newsroom, but these numbers will probably encourage more to jump into the blogosphere.

Blog about College Media

The Romensko media blog had a link to this blog about innovation in college media
and in particular this Q&A with Howard Owens who is the Director of Digital Publishing at Gatehouse Media. The following are some parts of the interview about what you should be learning as a journalism student that jumped out at me:

ICM: Which leads a little bit into my next question … The online media universe has been changing dramatically over the last two years. What parts of that change do you think are most crucial for student journalists to comprehend?

Owens: Blogging and video. I don’t think many people grasp how much we can learn from blogging about how the way people consume information is changing ...

And ...

ICM: Taking those ideals from blogging and video, then, how can those be added to the skill set students are cultivating while working in student media. Maybe some tips on how students can get started here.

Owens: Blog. Shoot and edit video. But mainly, blog. Every student journalist should spend at least six months totally immersed in blogging. Start a blog and try to draw an audience. Do the things that bloggers need to do, read other blogs, create a blog roll, link to other blogs, post frequently on topics relevant to the audience you’re trying to reach (and read those blogs in that category), comment on other blogs. Learn to be a participant. That’s my advice to pro journalists, too: if you want to learn this culture, become a participant in it. It will totally change the way you think about media and online publishing.

TV-Newspaper marriages are breaking up

Here is a piece in the Washington Post about how newspapers, which at one point, saw their future in partnering up with TV stations - now realize they can do their own TV on the Web. I mentioned in class the other day how the NYTimes sold off their TV stations and we looked at some of their mulit-media examples in class, including video they are now producing online.

Sample of Blogs

We will discuss some of these in class ....


Technorati
http://www.technorati.com

Media
Romenesko's
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45

Media Nation
http://medianation.blogspot.com/


Politics/Law
Daily Kos
http://dailykos.com/

Instapudit
http://instapundit.com/


Sports
Over the Monster (Red Sox)
http://www.overthemonster.com/

Women’s Hoops Blog
http://www.womenshoops.blogspot.com/


Gossip/Misc
Gawker
http://www.gawker.com/

Defamer
http://www.defamer.com/

Post Secret
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Fashion
I am fashion
http://iamfashion.blogspot.com/

Go Fug Yourself
http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/

Military
Blackfive
http://www.blackfive.net/


Technology
BoingBoing
http://www.boingboing.net/

Gizmodo, the gadget blog
http://www.gizmodo.com/

Sigh :(

Here is an article written by a journalism student (not Northeastern - phew!) who writes about how she/he faked many class assignments - made up quotes, people. So this piece really depresses me - it's not that I'm (or other profs) not aware of this problem - the past few semesters I've randomly called/e-mailed student sources to confirm identity/involvement, but it's not foolproof, and I don't like the role of trying to catch someone doing wrong. I would like to think that someone who cheats eventually is consumed by guilt, and is cursed with doom and gloom for the rest of their life. But this cheater is so blase, ho-hum, even a few years later. But I'm curious for comments on what you, the students, think about this piece. Do you think this is now status quote for j-students? Or an anomaly? Don't worry, I'm not expecting confessions, just your thoughts, ruminations, etc.

Spring Semester 2007 - Welcome!

Welcome to Online Journalism. This is the class blog, which I will use to post interesting reading links, additional class material/instruction, general musings on life, news, etc. I will also point out noteworthy posts on your blogs. I hope everyone had a great semester break. Mine was good, but busy. Not as exciting as last year, when I was here ... sigh ...




But I did visit the new Institute of Contemporary Art - over on the waterfront. Here's the family inside the museum.