The FJP

Google’s Richard Gingras: We are at the beginning of a journalism renaissance

navigatingmedia — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:41:05 -0400

Google’s Richard Gingras: We are at the beginning of a journalism renaissance:

via Nieman Journalism Lab:

Richard Gingras, the head of news products for Google, visited the Nieman Foundation last Friday to talk about Google’s approach to news and information discovery, but also the pace of change in technology and how it has affected the future of news. Recently Gingras has spent time talking about his8 questions that will define the future of journalism.

On Friday he said newspapers need to completely rethink their approach to news, how the design of their site responds to the flow of audience and the ways news companies can separate their business model and content model to help increase audience and generate revenues.

Click-through to watch the video.

Infographic: How is the Newspaper Industry Trying to Save...

navigatingmedia — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:01:47 -0400

Infographic: How is the Newspaper Industry Trying to Save Itself?

via GOOD & Column Five Media

"The past two decades have witnessed a disconcerting decline in the quality of coverage, particularly..."

navigatingmedia — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:15:48 -0400

“

The past two decades have witnessed a disconcerting decline in the quality of coverage, particularly by TV networks obsessed with presentation rather than content. This became more pronounced during the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The ‘dictatorship’ of live-time coverage has proved especially subversive. ‘Parachuted’ journalists are obliged to broadcast within minutes, even if they have no idea what’s going on.

This means less legwork. As veteran producers lament, their networks have abandoned real journalism, while Fox News is nothing more than propaganda. Wars are now presented as reality shows with computer game graphics and screaming captions.

”

- “Lessons from Afghanistan: Let’s Get Back to Real Foreign Reporting,” a perspective on foreign reporting from Edward Girardet, former foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor.

via Nicholas Kristof

The New Renaissance Journalism Website If you’re not...

navigatingmedia — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:23:52 -0400

The New Renaissance Journalism Website

If you’re not already familiar, Renaissance Journalism, a program of San Francisco State University’s Department of Journalism, is a great resource on the future of news (especially for those in the Bay Area). Also see their new media toolkit for curated tools and tutorials. Some new features include:

What’s New?

A new blog called “Media Matters” by Jon Funabiki, Renaissance Journalism’s executive director, who weaves together insights from a career that spans journalism, philanthropy and academia.

Bay Area Ethnic & Community Media Map: Based on a 2011 Renaissance Journalism survey, we’ve charted the more than 140 ethnic and community media organizations in the Bay Area. You can narrow down your search by primary language or search by a news outlet’s name.

Resources page, where we’ll be posting studies, research and writings on media innovations—from Renaissance Journalism and other journalism and media organizations—as well as links to many of our partners’ and collaborators’ websites.

"If things that are not journalism entertain, inform and facilitate agency better than things that..."

navigatingmedia — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:57:00 -0400

“

If things that are not journalism entertain, inform and facilitate agency better than things that are, don’t bet on journalism to thrive.

I work for a newspaper and I think about how to reinvent newspapers and reassert their relevance all the time. And people are consuming more news than ever, so we must be doing something right. My guess, though? Most innovation in media and most of the revenue and most of the value will come not from the incumbents and not even from news startups, but from people who unwittingly stumble into producing media as the solution to another problem.

”

- Stijn Debrouwere in his recent blog post on the state of the news industry and opportunities ahead.

He argues that journalism’s disrupters are companies that don’t actually produce journalism, but fulfill the same underlying consumer needs that traditional journalism has sought to fulfill.

I will repeat this because it’s important: YouTube nor Facebook or any of these other companies aim to be an alternative to journalism and much of what they facilitate or do doesn’t look like journalism at all. A good chunk of it contains written or spoken words, but sometimes not even that. It’s not journalism. But you’d be naive if you thought their services aren’t often consumed instead of news. It’s the same kind of functionality in a different package, after all, and that new package happens to be rather attractive a lot of the time.

Thus, the shift in journalism is radical—“from narrative and stories and reporting to entirely different and entirely unrelated ways of sharing knowledge.”

News organizations and publications may be able to survive in the digital era, but that’s about it:

I’m confident that strong digital players like The Guardian and the New York Times and Digital First Media will survive. I’m less confident that they’ll ever thrive. I mean, we’re congratulating The Guardian for losing money online, NYTbecause its paywall isn’t the crash-and-burn we expected it to be, and because the Journal Register Company is in the black. If you don’t go out of business, you’re a hero.

Through this same lens, he comments on effective changes being made in the news industry, and what more can be done.

If people tell you, as they did assistant professor Amy Zerba’s research assistants, that they hate not being able to multitask when reading a newspaper, does that mean we should try to find ways to make it easier for readers to multitask, or is it simply a symptom of people not caring all that much about the news? And does that in turn mean they just don’t care about stuff in general anymore and have become jaded and uninterested in politics and world news (for which there is some evidence), or is there more to it and are people perhaps getting their information needs met in other, more convenient or more exciting ways? Are we trying to get better at something that doesn’t matter anymore? Perhaps we should take the best traditions of journalism and do something entirely new with it.

Read on. The comments on the post are most interesting, as are the reactions storified by Burt Herman.

The First Accredited Foreign Correspondent to be Expelled from China in 14 Years

navigatingmedia — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:59:00 -0400

The First Accredited Foreign Correspondent to be Expelled from China in 14 Years:

Chan, who was the sole Al Jazeera English correspondent in China, said she knew she was on shaky ground for most of this year.

She had been working on month-by-month credentials since January, when the government refused a routine visa-renewal request. Ordinarily, journalists are granted year-long credentials, but Chan is believed to be the first foreign correspondent to be given temporary papers.

In March, she wrote about a distraught mother seeking a daughter who had been forcibly sterilized and put in an illegal “black jail” for violating China’s one-child policy.

“A lot of journalists have done black jail stories,” she said, but hers “was probably the first” to get coverage on TV. “It’s also the first time that we got a government official to respond to a question about the existence of black jails.” The official denied the black jails existed, “but it was on the record, Chan said, “so that was useful for human rights groups. And that could be one reason why there’s the perception that I’m a go-getter.”

Click through to keep reading.

FJP Has a New Mascot Jihii just returned from two weeks in India...

notable — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:21:40 -0400

FJP Has a New Mascot

Jihii just returned from two weeks in India and brought this guy back with her. Naming rights are open since he (at least she says he’s a he) doesn’t yet have one.

Hit us up with your recommendations or suggest something if you reblog.

theatlantic: Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man At...

johnjohnston100 — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:36:11 -0400

theatlantic:

Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man

At 11 p.m Monday, the Columbia University Human Rights Review published and posted its Spring 2012 issue — devoted entirely to a single piece of work about the life and death of two troubled and troublesome South Texas men. In explaining to their readers why an entire issue would be devoted to just one story, the editors of the Review said straightly that the “gravity of the subject matter of the Article and the possible far-reaching policy ramifications of its publication necessitated this decision.” […]

The Review article is an astonishing blend of narrative journalism, legal research, and gumshoe detective work. And it ought to end all reasonable debate in this country about whether an innocent man or woman has yet been executed in America since the modern capital punishment regime was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1976. The article is also a clear and powerful retort to Justice Scalia in Kansas v. Marsh: Our capital cases don’t have nearly the procedural safeguards he wants to pretend they do.

Read more. [Image: Corpus Christi Police Department]

UK newspapers reveal Saturday-only sales for first time

johnjohnston100 — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:56:46 -0400

UK newspapers reveal Saturday-only sales for first time:

New figures have revealed the extent to which UK national newspaper Saturday circulations far exceed sales on Monday to Friday.

The shift in reporting the circulation figures for particular days, instead of lumping them together may seem like a small change to reporting figures but it also signals the beginning of a seismic shift in the business model of UK newspapers. If Saturday is the best day to publish a newspaper, maybe it’ll become the only day?

As the shift to online reporting via iPad, apps and the web itself continues, we could see newspapers using their websites during the week and the Saturday edition become bumper packages with more long form journalism, features and lifestyle stories.

This could be a long-drawn out affair or a quick one - after all, The Economist has seen steady increases in readership and initiatives like Matter show that there is an appetite for less noise in users consumption of news. Intriguing times.

Things You Can Do That You Never Used To Via Archive.org: For...

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:01:51 -0400

Things You Can Do That You Never Used To

Via Archive.org:

For over a decade, CNN (Cable News Network) has been providing transcripts of shows, events and newscasts from its broadcasts. The archive has been maintained and the text transcripts have been dependably available at transcripts.cnn.com. This is a just-in-case grab of the years of transcripts for later study and historical research.

So if you can’t get enough of whatever it is they’re trying to do in the Situation Room, a one gig tarball of text is waiting for your download.

H/T: Flowing Data

New York Times Give Red Sox the Boo

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:29:27 -0400

New York Times Give Red Sox the Boo:

Via the New York Times:

The New York Times has sold its remaining stake in the Fenway Sports Group, the company that owns the Boston Red Sox, the latest in a continuing effort to shed assets unrelated to the company’s flagship newspaper…

…In 2002, The Times paid $75 million for a 17.75 percent stake in Fenway. But the 2008 recession and the steady decline of print advertising revenue at newspapers like The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The International Herald Tribune, has prompted the company to shed its nonessential assets.

As a Boston fan who knows the Red Sox suck, nonessential? Harsh.

Google-NSA: A Relationship That Dares Not Speak Its Name

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:02:00 -0400

Google-NSA: A Relationship That Dares Not Speak Its Name:

Via Wired:

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the National Security Agency’s decision to withhold from the public documents confirming or denying any relationship it has with Google concerning encryption and cybersecurity.

That’s despite the fact that Google itself admitted it turned to “U.S. authorities,” which obviously includes the NSA, after the search giant’s Chinese operation was deeply hacked. Former NSA chief Mike McConnell told the Washington Post that collaboration between the NSA and private companies like Google was “inevitable.”

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, invoking the Freedom of Information Act, had sought such documents following the January 2010 cyberattack on Google that targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The attack was among the considerations that prompted Google to consider abandoning China, and Google announced that it was “working with the relevant U.S. authorities.”

The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post followed up, saying Google had contacted the NSA following the attack.

EPIC sought documents seeking to know what type of collaboration there was between Google and the NSA and, among other things, records of communication between the NSA and Google concerning Google’s e-mail service Gmail.

In response, the NSA invoked a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency neither confirmed nor denied the existence of records on the topic at all. EPIC sued and lost in the lower courts.

On appeal, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the NSA’s conclusion that admitting the existence of relevant documents would harm national security. (.pdf)

"Sometimes something is too provocative or too sexist or too racist but it will inspire a line of..."

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:46:34 -0400

“Sometimes something is too provocative or too sexist or too racist but it will inspire a line of thinking that will help develop an image that is publishable.”

- Françoise Mouly, Art Editor, the New Yorker, on how she works with artists on the magazine’s covers. Secrets of the New Yorker cover.

Mouly’s just published a book called Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See, that shows rejected work and the sketches made in the process of arriving at the covers that ended being used.

Bob Marley, February 6, 1945 - May 11, 1981 Video: War, from the...

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:58:00 -0400

Bob Marley, February 6, 1945 - May 11, 1981

Video: War, from the 1979 Amandla Concert at Harvard University.

"Journalists like to think of themselves as responding to a calling, or duty. For some journalists,..."

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:35:05 -0400

“Journalists like to think of themselves as responding to a calling, or duty. For some journalists, there are stories that are worth taking a calculated risk to obtain—pieces that establish responsibility for organized rapes or massacres, for example, or reports that implicate powerful figures in corruption or organized crime. These are stories that would otherwise not be told.

Every high-risk decision brings both the potential of lasting, positive impact, and the possibility of permanent, tragic loss. Decisions about risk are highly personal, but the individual should be keenly self-aware. Your emotions come into play, as does adrenaline. A good story with an element of danger can bring with it a rush as compelling as sex or drugs.

In such a moment, you might be wise to ask yourself: Am I being driven by the emotions of the moment? How much of my decision is driven by ego? How much am I motivated by telling the story—and how much by the glory I might derive from telling it? Am I trying to prove something to myself or others? Perhaps every journalist is motivated by some incalculable mix of service and ego, intellect and emotion. Experience can help you better discern between duty, ego, and adrenaline.

My advice: Give yourself a chance to understand not only your coverage area, but yourself. There are plenty of tough stories to go around. If you really want to take on a dangerous beat, you’ll get your chance. So, yes, J-school students, your professors are right: Go ahead, go overseas. But start with a beat that allows you to learn—mainly about yourself.”

- Frank Smyth, Senior Adviser for Journalist Security, Committee to Protect Journalists. Should J-School grads just get up and go overseas?

University of Minnesota Launches Open Textbook Catalog

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:08:00 -0400

University of Minnesota Launches Open Textbook Catalog:

With college students spending, on average, over $1,100 per year on course materials, the drive to develop and use open textbook alternatives to traditional publisher releases is growing.

One issue in their adoption though has been quality control.

Enter the University of Minnesota with a plan to provide a growing catalog of peer reviewed books. Via Inside Higher Ed:

Minnesota launched an online catalog of open-source books last month and will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books. (Faculty members elsewhere are welcome to post their own reviews, but they won’t be compensated.) Minnesota professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500, with all of the money coming from donor funds.

The project is meant to address two faculty critiques of open-source texts: they are hard to locate and they are of indeterminate quality. By building up a peer-reviewed collection of textbooks, available to instructors anywhere, Minnesota officials hope to provide some of the same quality control that historically has come from publishers of traditional textbooks…

…The goal of the Minnesota database is to curate texts in a way that empowers instead of frustrating professors. Material posted in the catalog must have an open license, be a complete book, have a print version and be adoptable outside the author’s institution. Minnesota isn’t creating any of the books, just assembling the best of what’s been published elsewhere. The catalog includes texts from Rice University, which launched a series of peer-reviewed open-source books earlier this year.

There are currently about 90 books in the catalog in subjects ranging from history to law to math and economics.

Reach Out and Touch Something Carnegie Mellon and Disney...

notable — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:20:19 -0400

Reach Out and Touch Something

Carnegie Mellon and Disney Research have teamed up to create a prototype called Touché that turns almost any surface — from solid to liquid — into a multifaceted touch surface.

Via Carnegie Mellon:

A doorknob that knows to lock or unlock based on how it is grasped. A smartphone that silences itself if the user holds a finger to her lips. A chair that adjusts room lighting.

They are among the many possible applications of Touché, a new sensing technique developed by a team at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Touché is a form of capacitive touch sensing, the same principle underlying the types of touchscreens used in most smartphones.

But instead of sensing electrical signals at a single frequency, like the typical touchscreen, Touché monitors capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies.

This Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) makes it possible to not only detect a “touch event,” but to recognize complex configurations of the hand or body that is doing the touching. An object thus could sense how it is being touched, or might sense the body configuration of the person doing the touching.

SFCS is robust and can enhance everyday objects by using just a single sensing electrode. Sometimes, as in the case of a doorknob or other conductive objects, the object itself can serve as a sensor and no modifications are required.

Even the human body or a body of water can be a sensor.

We look forward to the day Touché and Siri get together and make babies.

Iranian Cartoonist Draws Politician, Sentenced to 25 Lashes

notable — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:11:37 -0400

Iranian Cartoonist Draws Politician, Sentenced to 25 Lashes:

Via the Guardian:

An Iranian cartoonist has been sentenced to 25 lashes for a caricature of a local MP, the semi-official Ilna news agency has reported.

Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani, MP for Arak, took offence to a cartoon published in Nameye Amir, a city newspaper in Arak.

The cartoonist, Mahmoud Shokraye, depicted Ashtiani in a football stadium, dressed as a footballer, with a congratulatory letter in one hand and his foot resting on the ball.

Iranian politicians, including Ashtiani, have been recently criticised for interferring in the country’s sports…

…Shokraye was subsequently sued by the MP for having insulted him. A court in Markazi province, of which Arak is the capital, sentenced the cartoonist to 25 lashes – an unprecedented punishment for an Iranian cartoonist.

#monazarat

blakehunsicker — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:35:14 -0400

#monazarat

Them, not that or there: Bing and the social search...

blakehunsicker — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:56:07 -0400

Them, not that or there: Bing and the social search engine

Let’s speak cryptically, because the mood today calls for it: the search engine as self has always been a middle man (or woman), pointing us toward wikipedia, yelp, or wherever else we want to go online but don’t actually know it yet.

But what if instead of sending us out there, it told us who knew what — who, among my friends and acquaintances, can give me suggestions on where the best hikes are in upstate New York, and help me avoid those old looking state park sites that don’t tell me anything? Well, Bing to the rescue.

via Fast Company:

“We’re literally no longer indexing text,” [Bing director Stefan] Weitz says. “We’re trying to associate data that exists on the web in all forms with the physical object that spawned it in the first place.”

That means that when searching for upstate hiking trails, you’ll be shown who among your friends may have been somewhere up there, during a Summer trip five years ago that they never mentioned but maybe, conveniently, made into a photo album on Facebook that you never saw.

But, like most new ideas, there are hurdles.

via Co.Design:

Bing isn’t taking all user-generated content into consideration when it makes its people-relevance decisions. That’s because it would take an extraordinary amount of computing power to analyze all the free text people generate and determine its meaning (for example, if you write about “turkey,” are you talking about the bird or the country?).

So instead, Bing is simply looking at what your friends Like, share, or search for to assess their expertise on certain topics. But those proxies might not be sufficient to actually get you to the right people. “Just because there’s someone in my social graph who Likes Hawaii doesn’t mean they’re the best person to recommend a hotel on Kauai,” Rebecca Lieb of the Altimeter Group tells Fast Company.

FJP: One oversight on Bing’s part may be the fact that I don’t want to ask that one guy I haven’t seen in three years what the Adirondacks are like. But it’s still a good idea.