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Jan

Timing is everything

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It was just cloudy this morning in Philly — until I went outside.

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Jan

The Daily Mac: 01.17.12

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I grabbed this shot of the Schuylkill River on my way into work about 16 hours ago.

I’m having a very long first day of the semester and the next couple look pretty similar. So, it’s a good thing that I like what I do.

The most exciting news came at tonight’s meeting with the former War News Radio staff. We are expanding the project this spring to address more topics, produce more media and engage more audiences. The working title is Lodge 6. Please take a peek at our page and let us know what you think.

I woke up this morning to find a the story of a local murder victim splashed across both Philadelphia daily newspaper front pages. With all sympathy to the victim and the bereaved, he didn’t look much like the usual 80% of victims in Philly, and I thought the display was especially insensitive for MLK Day. Look for the usual blowback and front page token homage to a random victim of color in the next coming days.

On the bright side, digital MLK remembrances led me to a YouTube video of “Martin Luther King Jr. on Meet the Press in 1965” and an audio link to Marvin Gaye singing “Abraham, Martin and John.”

While searching for another file, I found an entry from my Iraq War Diary this week in 2005. Meanwhile, at least 150 Iraqis have already died in bombings in 2012.

Don’t miss this week’s deadline to enter the Dart Awards and win $5,000 for trauma reporting.

Social media friends have concurred that I should not hyperlink quotation marks in most cases, and helped me to understand why my new glasses are giving me a headache. Catch the conversations at https://www.facebook.com/jimmacmillan

Some random links you should not miss include:
- 40 dramatic pictures of the Costa Concordia disaster
- How Much of US Consumables are Made in China
- Blight takes no holiday
- BBC reader predictions for life in 100 years
- Michael Hastings vs. Team America

Meanwhile, Forbes says SOPA may not be dead yet and Wikipedia is scheduled to go down in protest on Wednesday. Keep up with the latest news with Jimmy Wales on Twitter @jimmy_wales

Finally, come on out for the Philadelphia Conference 10th Annual Year in Pictures multimedia presentation Wednesday night.

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Jan

While you were away: Journalism news from the holiday break

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The pace of change in journalism keeps accelerating so dramatically that I find less and less course content that I can retain without updating every semester.

After planning my new course on Peace and Conflict Journalism last spring and summer, racing through fall with the students, through the haze of final project and exams — and the void of a holiday break — I am now trying to rapidly synthesize my syllabus with some of the most recent developments across the industry and institutions of journalism.

To begin, the state of the old industry doesn’t look good, with a new report from USC Annenberg predicting that most newspapers will be gone in five years and a leading newspaper analyst concurring that print advertising is in a death spiral.

(To be fair, I should point out that I just Googled “newspaper death spiral” to find the above article — which I read last month — but other results led me to predictions going back to 2007.)

Back in October, the Knight Foundation examined “How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability” — with a rich and comprehensive report examining many of the leading projects launched in recent years.

Next, A Columbia Journalism Review article took note of another impediment in “Nonprofit News and the Taxman: The IRS questions whether journalism startups qualify for tax-exempt status.”

Later, Tom Stites at the Nieman Journalism Lab published “Taking Stock of the State of Web Journalism,” arguing in Part I that “we’re still a long way from a sustainable model” and reminding us of the previous Knight Commission “Informing Communities” report which praised “lots of interesting efforts but found no business models that are both self-sustaining and replicable from community to community.”

On the bright side, yesterday’s LA Times profile of Digital First Media CEO John Paton pointed out that their Pennsylvania-based Journal Register chain “has increased digital revenue from $6 million to over $32 million over two years.”

Meanwhile, Digital First’s Steve Buttry literally wrote the book on “digital-first” journalism in a series of blog posts near the end of 2011, which he soon – and generously — made available as a downloadable PDF.

More recently, hyperlocal journalism pioneer Howard Owens updated his popular 2007 post with a new version called “Ten things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list. Concerns with engagement, transparency, and redefining objectivity endure — but with a little more clarity now.

In December, CJR’s Dean Starkman penned a smack-down of what he called the “future-of-news (FON) consensus” among popular digital news gurus — but the blowback got a lot more traction. Clay Shirky responded directly and Starkman followed up.

At the very least, Starkman had written an outstanding primer on the status quo and led me to set up a feed folder just for Jarvis, Paton Rosen and Shirky.

Fact-checking got the spotlight when Politifact.com‘s disputed “Lie of the Year 2011” met the wrath of Krugman and more.

More recently, New York Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane ignited a firestorm with a short post asking” “Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante,” — in a way that is objective and fair. Shirky summed up the situation and the fallout for the Guardian.

Yesterday on CNN’s Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz briefly brought up journalists as referees and pointed to “The Fact Checker” blog at the Washington Post — which measures untruths in “Pinocchios.”

Next, Craig Newmark jumped in to advocate for fact-checking with a nice roundup of resources and recent articles.

Closing out my roundup, I can’t ignore GigaOm’s “News as Process: How Journalism Works in the Age of Twitter” or “Nick Kristof on Occupy and the Rise of Citizen Journalism.” BuzzMachine’s “Journalism via Jokes” may just be my latest must-read but don’t miss Poynter’s “Three Trends from 2011 that will reshape digital news in 2012.”

Finally, there’s SOPA/PIPA debacle, which may have just collapsed or died but a Wikipedia and other sites still have plans to shut down in protest on Wednesday.

Did I miss anything?

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Jan

The Daily Mac: 01.15.12

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Sunday was my first full day at home after a week in Aruba, where I photographed the iguana above.

I haven’t been blogging much lately but I resolved to try again in the new year; so, here we go.

I had every intention of catching up with the national news by watching the Sunday shows, but found myself immediately distracted by Stephen Colbert‘s appearance on This Week. I also read a recent article in Forbes explaining why the media might be so far out of touch.

Locally, I was saddened to learn from local news reports that Philadelphia has suffered 20 homicides over the first two weeks of the year, although the police department stats don’t seem to be quite up to date. Tomorrow in Philly, you can join the Campaign for Nonviolent Schools for MLK Day http://endingviolence.eventbrite.com/

I read a local blog post from last week reminding us that “Photographers are Probably Not Terrorists” and caught up with “10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free” in the Washington Post.

A peek at the @warnewsradio tweets lead me to Sebastian Junger‘s opinion peace, suggesting that “We’re all guilty of dehumanizing the enemy” and arguing that “A 19-year-old Marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it’s okay to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not okay to urinate on a dead one.” On Monday, the Brandywine Peace Community will hold their annual Martin Luther King Day of Nonviolent Resistance at defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

We learned this weekend that “Murdoch doesn’t understand links” but if you do, the new Nieman-Berkman Fellowship in Journalism Innovation looks like an exciting opportunity.
I had a good laugh catching up with SNL’s smack-down of “The YouTube Generation,” but I’m hoping to make plans soon to attend the upcoming Social Media Weekend at the Columbia School of Journalism. (Ticket info: http://socmediaweekend2012.eventbrite.com)

While polishing up my resume for the new year, I realized that it has been just about three years since I lead this urban photojournalism workshop in Boston. This Wednesday, The Philadelphia Conference of photojournalists will celebrate the 10th Annual Year in Pictures at the Pen and Pencil Club. (Let me know if you need more info.)

Crossword Kathy made up for her absence last week by posting her take on the last two NYT puzzles, both last night and today.

“The Fifth Estate” mopped up at johnnygoodtimes.com Quizzo just before we went away but I’m not yet sure if this spring’s schedule will permit me to join the team very often.

This week, I start a new semester with my Peace and Conflict Journalism course and War News Radio at Swarthmore College.

Finally, I read every email that piled up while I was away.

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Jan

Arubahenge

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Archive for Blogging

Timing is everything

The Daily Mac: 01.17.12

While you were away: Journalism news from the holiday break

The Daily Mac: 01.15.12

Arubahenge

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