newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Link early, link often, and avoid plagiarism accusations
Plagiarism is a lot easier to catch these days. Just plunk a suspect passage in Google and see if you get a match. It’s been the downfall of three writers recently: Margaret Wente, Jonah Lehrer and Fareed Zakaria.
The blockquote alone makes it easier to identify material from other sources. But more essential than that are links. The whole point of the World Wide Web from its conception was its amazing ability to use hypertext.
What do we use for coding? Hypertext markup language, a.k.a HTML. What are those letters at the beginning of every web address? http — hypertext transfer protocol. That’s what the Web is all about — the magical ability to be transported through hyperspace from one place to another with a simple click.
So use those links generously. Not only will you be avoiding accusations of plagiarism, but you’ll also be using the Web just as Tim Berners-Lee intended.
More posts in the Links category
Friday, September 21, 2012
Lineups for iPhones are like lineups for Star Wars
Andy Ihnatko explains something that’s puzzled me for awhile: why do people line up to buy the latest version of the iPhone?
After all, it’s easily available online. And it’s not like waiting a day or two is going to kill you. Plus — bottom line — it’s just a phone!
Ihnatko deftly uses a Star Wars analogy in this piece for the Chicago Sun-Times:
It’s not about the phone. It’s about the adventure. It’s the same reason I showed up at the best THX-certified theater in New England to purchase first-day, first showing tickets to “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.” It wasn’t about the actual product. I wanted to be with a community of people who were so amped up about a new Star Wars movie that they were willing to get in line at 4 a.m. just to score tickets for a movie that still wouldn’t open for months.
The appeal of Star Wars has always eluded me, but I guess I kinda get it now. Thanks, Andy!
More posts in the Links category
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Hey, reporters, start your own news site
I sometimes wonder why more reporters don’t start up their own news sites. It wouldn’t have to be much more complicated than creating a blog. Do a good job, sell a few ads and you’ve gone indie. Meanwhile, the mainstream media are still chasing their tails, trying to figure out how to support their massive infrastructures.
A great profile by Michael Andersen for Nieman Journalism Lab shows how a married couple is making a go of it with the Ann Arbour Chronicle.
It’s one of the oddest local-news startups in the country, and one of the most idealistic. It’s also, Morgan and Askins say, bringing in $100,000 a year and growing by 16 percent annually.
Admittedly, $100,000 a year isn’t exactly making them rich, especially when you consider they have expenses. But you have to like those growth projections.
More posts in the Links category
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
The hijacking of #muslimrage
Megan Garber has a great piece at The Atlantic on how Newsweek’s cynical ploy to use the #muslimrage hashtag to promote its cover was turned on its head. Newsweek has become a troll and people are all too well aware of it.
Newsweek didn’t give any indication that its incitement to discussion was motivated by a desire for anything beyond pageviews and newsstand sales. So its audience met it where it was, in that glib place of low expectations. But they turned the magazine’s own cynicism into something better — something funny and meaningful and insightful and real.
The lesson, it should go without saying, is that if we expect to engage with readers, we should be genuine and authentic about it. If we try to game the system, they’ll game it right back at us.
More posts in the Links category
Saturday, August 11, 2012
App.net 'puts users first'
The producers of a new service called App.net are betting that people are willing to pay for a service similar to Twitter if it is better than Twitter. At first glance it looks promising.
I especially like their business model, which depends on payment from users instead of advertisers:
Rather than waste most of our engineering time coming up with new and exciting ways to sell your personal data to advertisers, 100% of our engineering and product team will be focused on building the most innovative and reliable service we can.
In an age of cynicism, these are refreshing words indeed. There’s just one problem — they need $500,000 in the next two days to get the project off the ground. As of this writing, they’re at $423,950 — so tantalizingly close. But you can help make it happen.
Update: They more than met their goal.
More posts in the Links category
Monday, June 11, 2012
The tweets of outrageous fortune
A reporter in New York state was understandably angry to find that his words had been ripped off by a competing paper, and he eventually elicited an apology. But perhaps more bizarre was the way he went about it.
He alerted the competing paper and his followers via Twitter. When he didn’t get a response, he again took to Twitter and threatened to go to Romenesko.com and create a Storify of the day’s Twitter outrage.
Apparently, the editor of the competing paper does not spend his time glued to Twitter and wasn’t aware of the situation until late in the day. It was at that point that he promised to look into the matter and later apologized.
I hate plagiarism to be sure. But I have to shake my head in wonder at a reporter who apparently used Twitter as his sole means of communication. If one way doesn’t work, then try another. Sheesh.
More posts in the Links category
Friday, May 4, 2012
Free food or death!
Not sure how this blog slipped under my radar for so long, but thank goodness it has been found. Stuff Journalists Like helps us do what we need more of in this business: laugh at ourselves.
Sure, we can go on about freedom, democracy, transparency and all that — but what is that truly interests us? Free food, sarcasm, cursing, cluttered desks . . . yeah, that’s more like it.
On the front page today: 10 Additional Jobs That are Worse than Being a Journalist. You know you want to see what they are.
More posts in the Links category
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Journalists hurt themselves by behaving unprofessionally
Steve Buttry at Digital First Media has issued a reminder that journalists should be professional at all times — even on Twitter. It’s something that bears repeating, but there are still some fine lines I’ve seen crossed.
The trouble comes with journalists who show their sense of humour, which is fine, but display a sense of humour that makes them look more obnoxious than anything else. I’m not sure how you get around this. If someone is irritating in real life, they’ll come across that way on Twitter as well. To make things worse, they often have such an inflated sense of self-worth that they don’t realize they are actually held in low esteem by their peers.
These people need guidance from their supervisors, but all too often the people in charge aren’t aware of what’s going on. And the rest of us don’t feel it’s our place to “tell” on the offender. In the end, though, people like this will find that they have ruined their own reputation, and that career opportunities will be diminished.
More posts in the Links category
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The AP breaks with Twitter, engages with Facebook
Does the Associated Press take Twitter seriously? These numbers speak for themselves:
About a dozen staffers run the AP’s flagship Twitter account, and the AP’s 20-plus Twitter accounts are run by around 100 staffers.
Those figures come from Josh Sternberg at Digiday, who provides an inside look at how the wire service uses social media. It’s unimaginable that these people work full-time on nothing but Twitter, but the commitment is there.
The article notes that AP uses Twitter mainly for breaking news and Facebook for news of a more “transcendent” nature. Still, the wire service places much value in Facebook:
The AP finds that Facebook, not Twitter, is the best social tool for engagement. It has five or six accounts that actively communicate with its fans. It also does a lot of crowdsourcing on Facebook.
Twitter’s great for news junkies who need their news fixes, but Facebook does a better job of spreading your message far and wide — and in the end brings in much more traffic than Twitter.
More posts in the Links category
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Fallout from the falling bear
If you haven’t seen the falling bear by now, you’re one of the few. Not only has this bear gone viral, but it’s the subject of a Tumblr log. There’s an example at right.
What’s so a amazing about a bear falling out of a tree after being hit by a tranquillizer dart? Nothing, really. The photographer caught the bear in mid-air, striking a pose you don’t normally associate with bears.
In a week or two, the picture will join Kony2012 in the mists of time. It’s just another example of how the Internet has shortened our attention spans to the point where they have become almost microscopic.
The bear has now been released into the wild, but the story is not over yet. Photographer Andy Duann is looking at suing the newspaper that originally published the photo because he wasn’t paid for it. You can read more about his plight at the Poynter website, and see the picture itself, which Poynter has reproduced with Duann’s permission.
My prediction is that the picture will be long forgotten before the case ever gets to court, and that not a single reporter will bother covering it.
More posts in the Links category
