The personal blog is dead and this is before much of the public understood what is was used for. Most college students and especially graduate school of journalism students understand what the publishing tool offers, but many people are just now being exposed to blogging though mainstream media. It is practically a requirement that professionals in the media now have a blog. (more…)
Photographer Robbie Cooper captured the tears, the focus, and the victory dances of kids playing video games…and it’s a bit disturbing. The stills Cooper froze from the original high resolution video footage are interesting, but the video takes it a step further, as you can hear the sounds of the game and watch the changing (or amazingly unchanging) facial expressions.
Robbie Cooper's image of a boy playing video games from NYTimes.com
Click here to watch the video on nytimes.com.
Check Columbia Journalism Review’s open thread on Twittering. Though not closed to its benefits, I’m not a Twitter fan, primarily for the bolded reason below. Thread highlights:
“I’ve found out the following from twitter: that my neighborhood in West Hollywood was in lockdown, being searched for an armed gunman; that the earthquake I felt was powerful but doing little damage, and that the NoOnProp8 protests in my neighborhood were peaceful but growing exponentially. I got this info minutes – and in some other cases, hours – before it was available from other news sources online.”
“What does get lost with this tool is it is missing a specific socioeconomic class of people that journalists should not ignore. It just requires them to go out and talk to them face to face – and that isn’t as instant as the group of people on Twitter.”
I’d go further than UMiz new media prof, Jen Reeves, above, and say that Twitter excludes most of the world’s people and what’s happening to them in their neighborhoods. I care less about the platform, more about whom I’m talking to. So far, Twitter is breaking news/running commentary from the college-educated, technofiles and the upper middle class. Our media is already an echo chamber for the privileged so I’m cautious of any technology making it easier to remain that way. It’d be very cool though, if people in Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Upper Harlem, the South Bronx and Jamaica, Queens could Twitter with each other and the privileged. Who wants to help me invent that platform?
“I don’t know, John. Should journalists use the telephone? The fact that you cannot see the other person is only the most obvious of that platform’s limitations. What do others think? Join the conversation: is “telephone” just a stupid audio trick?”
“Twitter takes nothing, it’s only a fragment of the whole that makes a news story.
In a 24/7 news cycle it is probably one of the greatest (and cheapest) ways to gather and distribute information. That is, if journalists are open to learn how to use Twitter, and listen. Without ever forgetting the basics of the trade.”“Maybe one of the Tweet Revolutionaries can explain how Twitter helps with the much more crucial tasks of connecting dots, situating events in their proper context, explaining and analyzing complex issues, etc. If our information culture did a better job at the latter, I suppose I would be a lot less concerned about all the hype devoted to the former.”
“And these “Tweet Revolutionaries” you refer to, who are supposed to unfold the awesomeness of Twitter for explanation, background, context, as well as breaking news, of course… who are they? Or are these simply the people you really, really, really want to argue with, whether or not they exist?”
“I think journalists should follow people relevant to their beat in order to get some sense of the what people are talking about and to cultivate sources. Twitter may not connect the dots, but it does an awesome job of letting you subscribe to lots and lots of important ones.”
Read more (and comment!) on CJR’s page.
Lured by modest rents to Central Harlem, new faces are moving in and making long time residents feel that they are being pushed out.
The voices of those newcomers like Joe Friedman, 32, have often gone unheard. But to hear people like him is to listen to the story of a neighborhood undergoing a controversial transition from a different viewpoint.
Friedman, a guitarist that has played on tour with jazz legend Eartha Kitt, moved to New York from St. Louis in 1999. He lived on the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side and Hell’s Kitchen before moving to Harlem a year ago. He said his former landlord in Hell’s Kitchen raised the rent so high to force the tenants to move.
The Beginning
http://www.vimeo.com/2570596
A studio apartment in the SoHo/Tribeca neighborhood runs for at least $2,395 per month, a one-bedroom in the Lower East Side costs about $2,250, while an affordable studio in Harlem for those fleeing more expensive neighborhoods can be found for nearly $1,500 per month, according to data compiled for November by Citi Habitats, a New York City brokerage.
Central Harlem had only a small white population until recently. In 1980, white residents accounted for 1 percent of the population with just 672 people. From 1990 to 2005, the percentage of white residents increased from 1.5 percent to 4.3 percent of the population to a total of about 5,000 residents, according to census data. But many say that number has probably doubled during the past three years.
The Middle
http://www.vimeo.com/2570673
Even as the numbers of white people have increased exponentially in Central Harlem, it remains a symbol of black success and autonomy. The neighborhood has been among those newly gentrified communities most closely watched.
During 1990 to 2005, the percentage of black residents in Central Harlem decreased from 88 percent to 72 percent with a total black population at about 85,000, according to census data.
The End
http://www.vimeo.com/2570719Although Friedman laments that some Harlemites are not happy with the newcomers moving in to the neighborhood, he hopes that time will change things. Still, some long time residents of Harlem plan to continue their struggle to stop the displacement of families from their community through gentrification.
Jon Stewart and Arianna Huffington had a great discussion about blogging last night on the Daily Show. I tend to agree with Stewart on most of his points, and it’s part of the reason why I have so much trouble with this blog thing. I feel like I’m posting the drecks and stale leftovers of my mind.
Arianna says to “blog your passions.” But why burden the web with random ramblings about stuff I like, even stuff I’m “passionate” about? Do you really want to hear about my obsession with overweight cats and sequins?
As Jon Stewart says, there’s a reason why he doesn’t air all his thoughts.
So what is behind the necessity to blog? Are we having a tug of war between quantity versus quality?
I found Arianna’s points to be interesting, and I think what she says has merit. Blogging is a different form of communication as it is more immediate, intimate, and informal. It’s not perfectionism. I guess it’s more akin to IM’ing or emailing a friend. I just wonder at times how journalistic it is in nature, and whether it really contributes something of value.
So, we’ve been told more than once over the last few months that our big break might come along if we start a unique blog for a unique community. If you’ve considered starting one about crosswords puzzles, I’m sorry to tell you it’s already been done. The Press & Sun Bulletin in Binghamton reports that my one of my former college professors is bringing in an average of 12,000 visitors a day to his blog, Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle.
Check out the sidebar, where he asks for donations “to help keep this site strong, independent, and ad-free.” What do you guys think about this? If his readership grows from 12,000 to 12 million, maybe he’ll be able to quit his job teaching 17th Century British Literature and move somewhere slightly warmer than Binghamton. Then again, with a topic so specific, is that even a possibility?
P.S. It seems my old prof has the honor of winning DorkFest ‘08.
Yellow shirts are the new brown shirts in Thailand. Since 2006 Thai people have worn these yellow shirts on mondays to show support for their king. It seemed one of those charming and idiosychratic Thai rituals – on the first day of the week the streets became a golden wave of pride for the world’s longest serving monarchy.
Since that time the shirts have become the garb of the People’s
Alliance for Democracy - a movement that is explicitly against both the people and
democracy. The group was responsible for Thaksin’s ouster and now
wants to move Thailand from a popularly elected parliamentary system to
one where 70 percent of parliamentarians are appointed.
The color and the style of the shirts, which almost every Thai person
now owns, allows the PAD to identify themselves with the monarchy – an
institution that seemingly enjoys close to total support in Thailand.
Here in these videos we can see the evolution of the shirts from
fetching show of royalist support to locust of violent anti-democratic
protest that is now embroiling Bangkok and threatening to tear apart
the country.
I was recently relaxing at home, watching NY1 (I’ve decided to start paying attention to local news- after my fiascos on the 7, I realized it was kind of important to me), and what I saw was more frightening than my memory of when I spilled hot coffee on my new laptop (it still works, calm down!)
Starting in early 2009 subway fares are to be raised from $2.00 to $3.00!! Express bus fares are to be raised from $5.00 to $7.00!! But…..but…..
No-one has any money!! How will we get to work, and to school? It was blasphemous enough when the $2 bonuses they gave on MetroCards went down to $1.50. What the shit am I supposed to do with a buck-50 bonus when each way is two freaking dollars!?
Of all things, raising the price of transportation is the most PAINFUL of all solutions to help this economy! Increase the price of soy milk for god’s sake! Instead of getting RID of a few lines (yes, not only are they making it more expensive to take public transit, but also wayyy more difficult), make, say, Whole Foods prices- which I already laugh at- higher. At least the picky eaters who shop there can feel, I don’t know, more elite? That they’re spending more money on….lettuce and cheese? Shopping at Whole Foods is like saying you only drive BMWs. Ahh…I digress!!
Please, MTA…don’t do this to me! Don’t do this to New Yorkers!! The 7 has taken too many of my tears. Too much of my BLOOD! (Hey, I stubbed my toe on the door, once, okay! and it reallly hurt!)
Where will all the New Yorkers go?
Could it be?
No, the title is not a tryptophan induced mirage (Happy T Day on that note)–there may be some hope out there.
As I was checking my Gmail after a lovely Thanksgiving feast, I noticed an interesting web clip above my inbox. If you have Gmail, you know that those web clips are generated from words and phrases that show up in your emails (possibly chats too? That’s a little scary come to think of it…), so it saddens me to admit my Gmail unearthed an article titled “Can Crowdfunding Help Save the Journalism Business.” Pessimistic emails about my shaky looking future must be filling up my archive bin.
If you were one of the students in room 308 at the end of the day on Tuesday, you probably considered jumping in front of one of the frequently late subway trains as we heard, yet again, that it will be very hard to find a good, stable job in journalism post-graduation. Its disheartening to hear over and over again. But an article in the previous day’s New York Times might offer a glimmer of hope.
In an article titled “Web Sites That Dig for News Rise as Watchdogs”, the paper profiled an outfit called VoicesofSanDiego, a non-profit news operation that specializes in locally-focused investigative reporting. From the article:
Here it is VoiceofSanDiego.org, offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists — the province of the traditional media, but at a much lower cost of doing business. Since it began in 2005, similar operations have cropped up in New Haven, the Twin Cities, Seattle, St. Louis and Chicago. More are on the way.
Their news coverage and hard-digging investigative reporting stand out in an Internet landscape long dominated by partisan commentary, gossip, vitriol and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs.
The fledgling movement has reached a sufficient critical mass, its founders think, so they plan to form an association, angling for national advertising and foundation grants that they could not compete for singly. And hardly a week goes by without a call from journalists around the country seeking advice about starting their own online news outlets. (emphasis mine)
Good news, no? It’s nice to think that in even these very tough times some new models of journalism are taking hold. With hyper local sites like VoicesofSanDiego and outlets with a more national focus like ProPublica, we might be seeing the rise of non-profit journalism as a viable means of disseminating the news. This is also, strangely enough, a good time for these kinds of outlets to be forming since they’re going to be exclusively based on the internet. These outlets will learn how to quickly integrate new technologies into their portfolios and will be able to teach them rapidly to young reporters, so they won’t ever have to worry about being restricted by the old rules. That’s not to say that writing and reporting skills are being greatly altered (you still gotta be able to do the basics), but it’s just nice to know that there might some scrappy outlets looking to hire a master’s journalism student who’s willing to dive into the new media environment with both feet.
