Good Will Toward Men

 

When the clock strikes twelve on New Year's Eve, people all over the world cheer and wish each other a very Happy New Year. For some, this event is no more than a change of a calendar. But for many others, the New Year symbolizes the beginning of a better tomorrow...
May these ancient words be fulfilled this year and every year: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" (Luke 2:14).
All the best in the new year to come to you. Best wishes to all my colleagues, friends and readers for a happy and healthy New Year.
Happy New Year in many languages!

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  11:03 PM

Top 100 Daily Newspapers 2005

 

US Media Monitoring service BurrellesLuce has put out a press release ranking and featuring the circulation of the top 100 daily newspapers in the United States.
Excerpt:

1. USA Today 2,281,831
2. The Wall Street Journal  2,070,498
3. The New York Times 1,121,623
4. Los Angeles Times 907,997
5. Washington Post 740,947
6. The Daily News NY 708,773
7. New York Post 643,086
8. Chicago Tribune 565,679
9. Houston Chronicle 527,744
10. Dallas Morning News 477,493

Related Link:
2004 list

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  5:48 PM

Time Flying By, Not In Seconds but ClicksThinking Digitally

 

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation

Mason Cooley

And now the media think tank(Media Center) at the University of Minnesota is setting up a framework for discussion on innovation in progress, including the creation of a group who are working and thinking on "tomorrow's Fourth Medium" and ongoing (r)evolution in digital storytelling.
They think the transitional time when a new medium is primarily used to replicate the established medium is playing out.

This is dawn of the connected epoch in human civilization. We are living, you and I, in the first seconds of a society reshaped by empowered individuals connected by digital network, of lives shaped by unprecedented volumes of information and shifting notions of knowledge and trust. Institutions like media and governments are bending under weight of change, of social and economic disruptions to the way people acquire and apply knowledge. New institutions and conventions are taking shape.

, says Andrew Nachison, Director of Media Center.
Thanks to Susan, here we have a summary of Media Think presentation:

• Beyond Media
• Find, Participate, Play
• The Age Citizen Journalism
• Being Smart About Infographics
• Flash Journalism
• Multimedia Photojournalists
• Good Days and Bad
• It's the Structure, Stupid
• Immersive Graphics
• No More "Been-There-Done-That"
• Digital Story Early Adopters
• Multimedia Narration
• The Art of Progress
• Beyond Media
• Intro to Persuasive Games
• Documenting Nature
• Blog Obsession
• The Art of Progress
• Thinking Outside Screen
• Literature and Collaboration
• Swimming the Web
• Phlogging
• Turning Points in Online Experience
• Designing Experiences

The site has been developed totally in Flash, so you need the viewer to see it
Wish Andrew and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota Digital Think all success.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  2:49 PM

Wikipedia, A Reliable Source?

 

Should journalists rely on Wikipedia as primary or supplementary source? The ongoing debate on the credibility of Wikipedia warms up again.
Some recent references to Wikipedia in the Tampa Tribune has stimulated an interesting discussion on Sticks of Fire blog.

Is Wikipedia an acceptable source?

, asks Sticks of Fire.
Whilst reading through the Guardian Newsblog, I noticed a post by Jane Perrone entitled St Nicholas's letter to the Wikipedians. You'll find some useful links to the ongoing controversy over Wikipedia's credibility there.

Related posts:
WIKIPEDIA Zooms Ahead

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  12:04 PM

One Blog Created 'Every Second'

 

The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, says a new report of the Technorati's State of the Blogosphere.

Excerpt:

• As of October 2005, Technorati is now tracking 19.6 million weblogs
• The total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months
• The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, with no signs of letup in growth
• About 70,000 new weblogs are created every day
• About a new weblog is created each second
• 2% - 8% of new weblogs per day are fake or spam weblogs
• Between 700,000 and 1.3 million posts are made each day
• About 33,000 posts are created per hour, or 9.2 posts per second
• An additional 5.8% of posts (or about 50,000 posts/day) seen each day are from spam or fake blogs, on average

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  12:04 PM

Writing Better Headlines

 

Kenn Finkel, a long-time desk editor and supervisor at different newspapers, will host a headline-writing workshop for print media staff at NewsU of The Poynter Institute For Media Studies.
Last night, I received an announcement in the mail from News University saying NewsU is offering copy editors the opportunity to review your headline-writing techniques and to renew your commitment to excellent journalism....
Participants will learn to:

• Write engaging headlines that draw readers into a story
• Identify the elements of good and bad headlines
• Identify some of the worst (yet most common) transgressions in headlines and eliminate them
• Use key words in the story to write stronger headlines
• Recognize when and how to use word play
• Pinpoint strong verbs for headlines

You'll also get coaching and individualized feedback on your work by instructor Kenn Finkel, and you'll have the opportunity to share online with other course participants.
I wish I could take part, but due to my busy schedule that would be impossible. I recommend that anyone with a direct interest in this should sign up for Kenn's course(esp those involved in print journalism).
Former Miami Herald copy desk guru, Kenn Finkel, is regarded as one of the newspaper industry's top teachers of reporting, writing and editing. I have some of his handouts and go through them on occasion. He'd be a perfect guy to produce a writing style book for journalists.
Before becoming a consultant, Kenn had worked for 33 years as a journalist at the Miami Herald, the New York Times, Newsday, Dallas Times Herald and Miami News, serving as a reporter, copy editor, assistant city editor, features editor, sports editor, graphics director and associate managing editor.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  1:06 PM

Guardian: Sie ist ein Berliner!

 

How today's Guardian is differenet from the Saturday's one: Larger than a tabloid, smaller than a broadsheet...
The Guardian moves from broadsheet to berliner.

"The change from broadsheet to the so-called Berliner format has led to a thorough reevaluation of most of the things we do, both editorially and commercially. No newspaper ever stands still. But this change is, by any standards, a radical one."

, the Guardian says.

You can find more on current changes to the Guardian at:
The new Guardian
Digital dialogue on the web
How we got the measure of a Berliner
The most radical change in 50 years
From Monday: a new, smaller Guardian, the UK's most colourful national paper
Hidden benefits of a half-size Berliner
The shape of things to come
Talking heads
Birth of the new-look Guardian
The Guardian Editor's blog

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  12:34 PM

AP News Coverage of the War in Iraq

 

Here you'll find the answers to FAQ about how AP covers news of the war in Iraq.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  12:49 PM

Tired of bad news?

 

Tired of all the bad "news that's fit to print"? Here's your alternative!
A cool citizen journalism site with just happy news. Read some exciting Good News for a change.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  11:51 AM

Dead Trees: RIP for Newspapers?!

 

In a recent edition of the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley poses a thoughtful parable about dying of trees for newspapers! Print journalists may enjoy reading it, as I do.
Excerpt:

Some evil force is causing people to stop reading newspapers! ...
This alarming possibility threatens all of us, because reading newspapers is, in the end, what makes us Americans. We are prudent, practical, common-sense people. And what could be more common-sense -- more downright American -- than chopping down vast swaths of trees, loading them onto trucks, driving the trucks to paper mills where the trees are ground into paste and reconstituted as huge rolls of newsprint, which are put back onto trucks and carted across the country to printing plants where they are turned into newspapers as we know them (with sections folded into one another -- or not -- according to a secret formula designed for maximum mess and frustration and known only to a few artisans) ...
Newspapers are essential to every American, and none more so than the fools and ingrates who have stopped buying them. It is up to us, as members of the last generation that experienced life before computer screens, to make sure that future generations of Americans will know what to do when it says "Continued on Page B37." ...
As with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the government would buy vast quantities of newspapers on the open market and store them somewhere for a rainy day (when they can be delivered sopping wet, as the newspaper industry prefers whenever possible). One possible location for the reserve might be my mother's apartment, where there are already neat piles of newspapers dating back to Watergate that she is going to get to soon. If you go to inspect the reserve, please don't tell her how the 2000 election came out. She wants to be surprised...

To be continued here.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  11:49 AM

WIKIPEDIA Zooms Ahead

 

According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, Wikipedia's share of U.S. Internet visits placed it at number 13 in the Hitwise Education - Reference category at the beginning of 2004. However, by the week ending April 16, 2005, Wikipedia's total Internet share of visits skyrocketed by 618 percent, making it the second most visited reference website overall.
Steve Outing, at the Poynter Institute E-Media Tidbits has posted his analysis of Wikipedia's Traffic Up. He says:

I'm not surprised. What seemed at first to many of us a crazy idea -- an open encyclopedia written and edited by anyone who feels like contributing -- has turned out to have affirmed the wiki model as a legitimate and important publishing orce.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  12:31 PM

Big Media Companies Weigh Blog Strategies

 

A Reuters report says that established media don't regard blogs as a direct threat to their ad models -- yet. But they are flirting with the format, fearing their news could be upstaged by the unbridled mix of opinion and humor offered by individual bloggers....

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  1:25 PM

Newspapers Podcasting

 

More and more newspapers and newspaper-run sites are jumping on the bandwagon all the time.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer has published a list of newspapers that podcast.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  1:17 PM

Stand Alone Journalism

 

Jay Rosen, Associate Professor of NYU's Department of Journalism, has cowritten The Stand Alone Journalist is Here... with Chris Nolan, a former columnist at the Mercury News.
It is a nice story about the coming age of stand alone journalism.
In The Stand Alone Journalist is Here..., you will find the difference between bloggers, citizen journalists and stand alone journalists.
Rosen and Nolan have defined "stand alone journalism" as followed:

These are not bloggers. They are people who are using blogging technology--software that allows them to quickly publish their work and broadcast it on the Internet--to find and attract users. They understand that the barrier to entry in this new business isn't getting published; anyone can do that. The barrier to entry is finding an audience. That's why their editorial product is consistent, reliable and known. Readers have expectations and stand alone journalists understand this and put that understanding into practice.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  9:55 AM

Poynter, Knight Launch Online Training Portal

 

It was a few months ago when I found out about NewsU. NewsU was in "Pilot Phase" when I joined it. Yesterday I received an email from NewsU, saying: News University officially launches ....
But what is NewsU?
NewsU is a project of The Poynter Institute For Media Studies funded by the Knight Foundation.
NewsU offers tightly focused, interactive courses for journalists at all levels of experience and in all types of media.
If you wish to know more about NewsU, have a look at the interview with Poynter's Howard Finberg about Poynter, Knight Online Training Portal.
Here's the list of NewsU's courses:

• The Interview; sharpening your interviewing skills.
• Language of the Image; understanding the elements of photojournalism.
• ONA Training Project Module; learning from the best online projects [with ONA].
• The Lead Lab; writing better leads.
• Cleaning Your Copy; the importance of style, grammar, and spelling.
• Beat Basics & Beyond; how to create and manage a beat.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  11:11 AM

Hi Again

 

Hi! I am here again.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  11:08 AM

"Spring" Is Knocking at Our Door

 

Spring! A time for fresh beginnings as new life emerges from winter's deep sleep.
The spirit of spring awakens Mother Earth.
This is what I'm looking for, When Spring comes knocking at my door, This is what I long to see, When spring awakens over me.
This is the glory that I long to hold...
Spring is a blessing to behold.
This is what I've waited for - Nothing less, Nothing more.
Spring has come, Spring has spung, It's a time of love, For the old, For the young...
It's a time for all of us, NOT just for some.
It was a long, hard, cold Winter, but 'Finally' Spring has arrived,
Some of our Friends aren't with us,
Only the strong have survived...
Happy New Year and Nowrooz to all my colleagues, friends and readers. May the New Year bring you good health, prosperity and, above all, happiness.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  9:24 PM

The Growing Popularity of RSS

 

The Digital Edge published an article entitled "RSS Providers Analyze, Newspapers’ Opportunities" in which Susan Mernit discusses the growing popularity of RSS among information-hungry consumers.
She says:

The growing popularity of RSS among information-hungry consumers is having a direct impact on publishers’ audience acquisition and Web monetization strategies. Although journalist/blogger Tom Biro reports that 160 newspapers in the U.S. are offering RSS feeds of their content, only a few have comprehensive strategies for distributing and monetizing the feeds. Most, like the Ventura County (Calif.) Star, are experimenting and watching carefully to see what’s next....

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  10:28 AM

Survey Indicates 75.3% Read Blogs for "News I Can't Find Elsewhere"

 

A survey of 30,079 blog readers conducted March 2005 by BlogAds finds that one reader in five is a blogger, 75.3% read logs for "news I can't find elsewhere", 59.8% for "faster news", ...
Here are a few ones which are interesting:

• 79.3% of blog readers don't have their own blogs.
• 75.5% of surveyed people(23,847) are men.
• 10% of respondents are students. In addition, 14.8% have a job in education sectors.
• Among respondents, 38% think online newspapers are "useful" sources while 50% assess the blogs as "Extremely useful" sources of news and opinion.
  Many things else to be followed especially by PR and media people. Continue here.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  3:16 PM

Using RSS to Follow Your Beat

 

After the previous post, I found some nice points among my notes and made decision to share them with you and everyone else.
You can take them as a quick guide to RSS:

• RSS for Journalists: Jonathan Dube, editor of Cyberjournalist.net, has a guide entitled RSS for Journalists in his column on Poynter. It is worthy of reading over and over.
  Newspapers with RSS: Sidewalk theory has listed most U.S. newspapers with RSS. It is possible to change the format, therefore, you can see the papers by state, by owner, ... or see only the sites with RSS feed.
• How to use RSS to follow your beat: Mark Schaver at C.A.R offers a detailed instructions on using news aggregators.
• AP RSS News Feeds: Here you can create your own AP ticker with RSS feeds from The Associated Press.
• A Guide To Media Monitoring With RSS: Listening and monitoring is a vital discipline that any 21st century information and communication activists have to practice regularly and RSS makes it easier to listen and monitor. Josh Hallett has provided a guide one need to know to get started.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  2:39 PM

RSS can smooth out waves for information surfing

 

The Houston Chronicle writes about RSS:

As more people find themselves getting most of their news, information and even entertainment online, they're facing a problem.
There's so much out there, how can a dedicated info junkie keep up? It's easy to chew up too much time surfing from site to site, trying to spot changes since the last visit.
The answer is RSS, a way for sites to get content to users without their visiting the site.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  2:29 PM

GMail Invites

 

I have 50 GMail invitations. Looking for a GMail? Leave a comment here or e-mail me @.
First come, First served.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  6:24 PM

Pushing Boundaries, Blending Borders

 

Just when you think you've seen everything, you end up somewhere new.
Thanks to a new service called BlogBinders, now your blog can find its way between the covers of a bound, printed book!
It is an interesting idea that connects the frontiers of the cyberspace labyrinth and the real world.
Anything doing this starts to look like a phenomenon that draws both citizens and netizens' attention...

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  4:44 PM

A New Search Paradigm: Real Instant Information vs Links To Pages

 

It was a few months ago when I first got to answers.com, but since then I had forgotten it.
Answers.com is a start to a new search paradigm. I haven't use it for a while, but thanks to Walt S Mossberg he brought it back to my mind to try it again.
Mossberg has recently reviewed answers.com in the Wall Street Journal, and found a lot to like.
In an article run by WSJ on January 27, 2005, entitled Unlike Search Engines, Answers.Com Responds With Data, Not Links, Walt S Mossberg mentions:

For all of their popularity and importance, search services like Google have a significant limitation:
They don't answer questions or provide information directly. If you want to know the biography of a historical figure, the meaning of a word or the size of a city, Google and its competitors usually won't simply tell you. Instead, they will generate a list of Web sites where the answers might -- or might not -- be found...
Answers.com is also a start toward a new search paradigm where the object is to provide real instant information, not just links to pages where that information may, or may not, be found. I urge you to try it.

To be continued here.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  7:36 PM

Keyboard-to-Keyboard Combat!

 

When I was again reviewing Frank Bajak's, the Associated Press' Tech Editor, recent overview of the blogging and beating down the walls of the media establishment, another nice and key portion drew my attention.
It reads as follows:

The bloggers aren't quite overrunning the newsroom, but they are engaging established media in keyboard-to-keyboard combat that's benefiting public discourse and making the journalism ``franchises'' more accountable.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  11:20 AM

Web logs come of age as source of news

 

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article, entitled Web logs come of age as source of news, about how bloggers are breaking the news...

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  6:14 PM

Not the Container but the Content

 

Frank Bajak, AP Technology Editor, predicts that the sovereignty of Big Journalism is eroding.
Bajak says:

If you don't know what blogging is by now and you're reading this in a newspaper please fold it up and boot up your computer. You're missing a revolution.
Bloggers, derived from the term Web log, include citizen journalists who publish on the Internet. Most aren't worth our time. But plenty of these real-time diarists can't be ignored as they second-guess and otherwise hound professional journalists like no in-house fact-checkers ever would or could.

He adds:

As such, they are beating down the walls of the media establishment.
We in traditional media should have no illusions.
Web publishers and bloggers are already stealing readers, advertisers and classifieds. Particularly for young people, journalism has become, in the words of NYU professor and PressThink.org blogger Jay Rosen, more of a conversation than a lecture.

Bajak insists:

In our business, as my boss, AP chief executive Tom Curley, observed recently, what matters now is not the container but the content. That may sound self-serving from a news wholesaler, but I can tell you that most of the information I process, books and magazines excepted, is in electronic form and delivered to my e-mail inbox via RSS feed.

I suppose It is worthy of reading by all communication men and women, so continue here.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  5:51 PM

Bloggers Move Into the Mainstream

 

The Wall Street Journal has previewed this weekend's "Blogging, Journalism and Credibility" conference at Harvard University.
The WSJ's story, running under the headline "When Bloggers Make News", looks at the bloggers' world and the phenomenon has become known as "citizen journalism" (also known as "open source journalism", "hyper-local journalism" and "participatory journalism"), and gives the readers a picture that says:

Bloggers ... are finally moving from the alleys and side streets of the Internet into the mainstream. And as their visibility and clout increases, some are asking: what are the rules of the road? There is no exam to pass or society to join to become a blogger -- anybody can set up a "Web log" to publish his or her ideas -- and at last count, an estimated eight million people in the U.S. are doing so, writing on everything from pets to porn.

This refers to a study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to the findings of Pew Internet & American Life Project, 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  1:19 PM

Dialogue of Journalists and Bloggers at Harvard

 

To both journalism and blogging, credibility is essential...
There can be no question that the phenomenon of blogging, especially blogs focused on politics and public affairs, has changed the way information becomes front page news...

A group of bloggers and journalists are gathering at Harvard on Jan. 21 and 22(Friday and Saturday) for a conference exploring how journalism is being affected or transformed by blogging, entitled "Blogging, Journalism and Credibility: Battleground and Common Ground."
The conference is being organized by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, the American Library Association’s Office of Information Technology and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Among questions to be discussed and reflected on are: What are the areas of common ground shared by these very different approaches to handling news and information? Can journalists who also blog do their work without conflicting standards? Might bloggers adopt standards and a transparency that will elevate their credibility? and so on.
The conference organizers are launching a pre-conference discussion on this here.
The conference is invitation-only, but don't worry, because it will be webcast live and there will be an IRC so that people can participate remotely in the discussion. All conference sessions and all online discussion will be completely public and on-the-record.
According to Jon Dude at cyberjournalist.net, you have to check this page as the dates approach for links to the webcast and instructions on how to join the IRC.
By the way, a list of participants is accessible here.

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  4:47 PM

Back again

 

Hi again. Well, new year and new start@Cyber Journalism vs Print Journalism

Jack Smith  |  *Feedback  |   0 comments   |     |  3:17 PM