Blogging and Citizen Journalism

Optional Question of the Week: 11/28

2005-11-28T05:39:00.000-08:00

Examine one left leaning political blog and one right leaning political blog for one full day's worth of postings. Comment on their similarities and differences in terms of which media they cite and which bloggers they link to.

Update
Some top left-leaning blogs include
Daily Kos
Atrios
Josh Micah Marshall
Huffington Post
AmericaBlog
Wonkette

Some right-leaning blogs include
Instapundit
Michelle Malkin
Hugh Hewitt
Power Line
Little Green Footballs

Creating a Screen Capture

2005-11-21T09:05:00.000-08:00

Most vlogs maintain a posting etiquette of creating a small screen capture of the video and posting this .jpeg file to their posting to indicate that it is a video. In order to create this screen capture, you will need to open the video in the preferred media player program (quicktime does a nice job!). Get to the frame that you would like to have a picture of and then use the following command (depending on whether you are on a Mac or a PC) to take a screen capture

1. On the Mac: press Apple+Shift+4 (all together), and your mouse pointer will turn into a crosshair. You can use this to draw the border of your screen capture. Define the frame of the file around the borders of the movie file, and then save. The file will save on your machine as a .png (most probably), but sometimes as a .pdf (can't tell you why on this one). Open this file in the preview application, or in photoshop, and then make sure to resave it as a .jpg. Do not use a .gif extension because .jpg handles photography better, as opposed to .gif which is better for flat areas of color. Also .jpg will give you better compression rates with photo-like images

2. On a PC: hit the button "print screen" (on your keyboard above the insert/delete buttons. It is also after the f12 button). The picture is now stored in the computer's memory (or the clipboard, to be more exact). Open a picture editiing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks and crop the frame of the file player window, extracting extraneous background image/color from the picture. Save the file as a .jpg (do not use .gif, see point no. 1 above for the reasons why).

You now need to insert this image into the area of your story where video appears. To create a link to the video, you can put a text link immediately below the image that says: View video (making this a hyperlink). You can also make your image clickable, allowing a user to click on the image to get to the video segment. However, making the video image clickable does not substitute for a text link. In other words, you must have a text link.

Makeup Question for the Week: 11/21

2005-11-21T05:53:00.000-08:00

Analyze the case study of Apple vs the Bloggers as presented by blogger Michele Malkin (see here, here, and here). Give your opinion on the application of this ruling for BOTH citizen journalism and mainstream media. Be sure to follow the links she provides in the story.

Comments are due by Monday, November 28, before class begins at 8:30 am.

Question of the Week: 11/21

2005-11-21T05:48:00.000-08:00

Refer to the following readings for this week (We the Media: Here Comes the Judges [191-208], We the Media: The Empire Strikes Back {209-235]) and comment on the implications of copyright for citizen journalism. Be sure to make reference to an actual situation (there are several in the readings) where copyright can have dangerous consequences. Is there a mentioned situation where copyright restrictions can have beneficial outcomes? Make references to citizen journalism and/or mainstream media in your response, where appropriate.

Comments are due by Monday, November 28, before class begins at 8:30 am.

Amy is Live Blogging

2005-11-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

Amy Lavergne was live-blogging Ari Fleischer's visit to UT last Wednesday, November 9, 2005. Check out her posting, complete with pictures.

Adam Weinroth Guest Speaker on 11/16

2005-11-14T13:25:00.000-08:00

Adam Weinroth, developer of the blogging tool, EasyJournal, which is now owned by Pluck, will be our guest speaker this coming Wednesday, November 16. This blogging and syndication toolkit now powers the Austin American Statesman's citizen journalism endeavor. Aside of his interests in citizen journalism as it relates to mainstream media, Weinroth has interests in social media and collective action, and has posted an interesting interview with Jon Lebkowsky and Clay Shirky called Tag Team. This interview is about the bubble up nature of folksonomies and tagging, something we have discussed in reference to user-generated categorical organization of content.

Angela Grant has posted a previous blog entry on Weinroth's visit to the UT Multimedia Journalism class here taught by Rosental Alves. Be sure to check out her thorough posting.

Question for the Week: 11/14

2005-11-14T05:48:00.000-08:00

[UPDATE: Please be sure to reference citizen journalism sites in your response]
Referring to either layer number 6 or 7 from Steve Outing's article, the 11 layers of citizen journalism, comment on the role that citizen journalism can play in impacting the production and dissemination of news. Make reference to other commenters on this article, including Gillmor's note for the inclusion of more layers, Grubisich's commentary on the poor content level of citizen journalism publications, and Heaton's rebuttal on the insulting comparison between mainstream journalism and citizen journalism.

New Tools for Submitting Group Assignments

2005-11-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

As we discussed in class, there are two solutions for posting your group assignments. Both of these solutions make use of your ourmedia.org accounts, where you can store your video and audio files for your projects (if they involve multimedia).
Now, to the two solutions:

1. You can create a group account on Blogger.com and through the admin interface invite the other members of the group to join. Whoever creates the group account must authorize the other team members, once they accept the invite, to have admin status such that you can all collaboratively post and edit the entries to the blog. Since it is best to not edit entries after posting them, please remember that you can store your post in draft format, and you can make use of clever titles to the post, like version 2.0, to indicate the changed status of the story. From blogger, you can link to your audio/video files stored on ourmedia.org.

2. The second solution is a full-blown wiki alternative called seedwiki, via URL http://www.seedwiki.com/?ld=2005,11,9,11,9,9. You must create a free account, then create a new wiki, and from then on, it is straight HTML. As you can see, wikis do require some rudimentary knowledge of HTML, mostly heading tags, paragraph tags, and breaktags. The method of creating new pages is simply to edit an existing page, and within the edit box include a new page name with format [newpagenamehere]. On saving the page, the new page created will appear with a question mark: clicking on the question mark and entering content in the edit box makes the page a viable, alive page. Then, that is all there is too it. For the more adventurous, you can tweak the template, but this is not a requirement since the format appearance looks very much like a wiki, which is good.

Use whichever method you prefer, just be sure to let me know the URL of your post, ensuring that 80% of the content is near a complete state when you submit.

Please add any questions you have to this post as it relates to the actual format of the group assignments or configuration issues on either of the solutions.

Who said this citizen journalism thing was easy work! Good luck!

URLs for Class Session 11/09

2005-11-09T05:45:00.000-08:00

Following through on the taxonomies that we have developed for the way that blogging (text) is being incorporated into MSM Web sites, you can use the following URLs. We have already covered how beat blogs/opinion blogs are being used in the newsroom. See the remainder of the URLs for other examples of blogging under the umbrella of MSM.

Group Blogs
Dallas Editorial Blog
Business Week Blogspotting
Guardian UK Group Blog for Breaking News
CBS News, The Public Eye
Seattle Times (interesting one--youths being encouraged to blog for the newspaper. Cross into the citizen journalism taxonomy)

Spot/Event Blogs
CNN's Hurricane Blog
Knight Ridder Convention Blogs
NOLA's Weblog

Citizen Journalism
Ohmynews International

CASE STUDY: News-Record.com, Greensboro, North Carolina
Newspaper as Town Square
If all of us build
Bloglines Feed
Full Report
Publishes Letters to the Editor
Citizen Journalism Section
Blogs On Newspaper Page

Other Notable Citizen Journalism Endeavors
Knight Ridder Newspaper C-J Initiative
Northwest Voice (Bakersfield Californian)

Guest Speaker Jim Debth and Tim Lott, Austin American Statesman

2005-11-04T08:12:00.000-08:00

Jim Debth and Tim Lott will be our guest speakers for class this coming Monday, November 7, @ 8:30 am. They will be discussing the implementation of the new citizen journalism blog initiative, both from a strategic big picture and from real-world implemetation.

See here for a look at the community blog initiative. Reviews on the Statesman initiative are below:

Austin-American Statesman Gets it Right With Blogging

Pluck Press Release on Initiative

Editor and Publisher Article on Initiative

Guest Speaker Hal Straus

2005-10-31T11:01:00.000-08:00

Hal Straus of the Washington Post will be a guest speaker at our class on Wednesday.

Straus is currently the Opinions and Blogs Editor for the Washington Post, a position he has held since March 2005. Prior to that, he was the Director of Site Tools and Newsroom Technology, a position in which he organized and managed the site's first team of technical producers and led the functional requirements for the development of the Washington Post's new Content Management System (CMS). He joined the Washington Post in 1997 as a Database Editor. Prior to working at the Washington Post, Straus worked at the Atlanta Journal & Constitution as a Web Editor/Database Editor/Editor Reporter, (1982-1997) and at Newport News as a reporter (1979-1982).

URLs for Class Session 10/31

2005-10-30T19:03:00.000-08:00

Use the URLs below to examine the way blogging is being incorporated in MSM as it relates to our first taxonomy: individual journalists being allowed to have their own blogs in the newsroom. Some of these also straddle group blogs (taxonomy two). Please note, the amount of newsrooms incorporating blogs is enormous. In this session, we will examine some existing examples.

Washington Post Blogs (Case Study)
Rebuilding Weligama
Joel Achenblog
Howard Kurtz, Media Notes
Dan Froomkin
Interview with Hal Straus, Washington Post
Washington Post partners with Technorati
Example of Technorati sidebar in a Washington Post story

Other Examples
Dan Gillmor's e-journal for Mercury News
MSNBC.MSNBC is at the forefront of including citizen journalism in their programs
News-Record.com (Greensboro, North Carolina)
Omar Gallaga for the Austin American Statesman. See all of their blogs here
Ward Harkavy of the Village Voice
Daniel Weintraub of the Sacremento Bee
Scott Norvell of Fox News
Christian Science Monitor blogs. Ethan Zuckerman writes a great post on the possibility that CSM is the world's bloggiest newspaper
Dave Barry of the Miami Herald
Mickey Kaus of Slate
Spokesman-Review. The Spokesman-Review, in addition to the New York Times, won awards from the Online News Association. See article in New York Times (registation required)

Question for Week: 10/31

2005-10-30T13:02:00.000-08:00

Using a couple of examples from CyberJounalist.net listing of J-Blogs affiliated with newspapers (as opposed to independent blogs by journalists unaffiliated with the MSM directly), or listings from the class blog for this week's lecture, please apply your week's readings to an examination of the usage of blogs in the newsroom. Since many newspapers are making the move to incorporate blogs, what practical significance can you see in the way they are implementing it? Any criticisms of the way they are using it?

This question requires you to use our class discussion and class readings for an informed opinion on how blogs are being incorporated in newsroom ecosystems.

AudioBlog Test: Instructions on Registering With AudioBlogger

2005-10-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Resources for Lecture 10/24

2005-10-26T05:51:00.000-07:00

Examples of Moblogging

http://wec.textamerica.com (Election Project)
Joi Ito (one of the earliest moblogs)

Mobcasting
http://bushprotest.blogspot.com(protestors at January 2005 US presidential inauguration
http://mobcasting.blogspot.com(used at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society's conference on blogging, journalism, and credibility, Jan 21-22, 2005)
http://katrina05.blogspot.com (Katrina mobcast)
http://nycgates.blogspot.com(Gates @ Central Park, a mobcast that allowed visitors to Christo's Gates place to post audio clips, photos, and text. Site featured in NY Times and Wired magazine

Group Blogs (Most Famous)
Slashdot. See how the content is administered/controlled here
Kuro5hin. Learn about Kuro5hin's voting system here
Plastic. See moderation guidelines here. For this site, you need to register
MetaFilter. Moderation guidelines are posted here

Blog Resources for Moblogging
Blogger Mobile
Claim Blogger Token Page
AudioBlogger

Tools for Moblogging
EasyMoblog
FoneBlog
SplashBlog

Guest Speaker on 10/24

2005-10-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

Avery Holton of the Fort Worth Star Telegram is going to be our guest lecturer on Monday, October 24. Avery was kind to send along a brief biography of himself, which I am posting below. Please be sure to arrive early to class so that Avery can begin on time.

Avery Holton
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Online editor ... sorta
Avery keeps trying to hide from the Internet, but it keeps pulling him back in. Originally a sports writer -- he covered the Round Rock Express for two years for the Austin American-Statesman -- he left the University of Texas, where he also helped teach two undergraduate courses, with a Master's degree in Journalism in 2004. He thought about infiltrating the Drag Rat community just to stay in Austin, but came to his senses and headed to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after much scolding from his mom and UT Journalism director Lorraine Branham. There he covered all levels of sports for about 11 months before suggesting that the paper look into blogs. A few proposals later, he logged on as one of five online editors for the newspaper. He now takes care of a dozen blogs, helps with online coding and editing and spies on other papers in his spare time. The other day he received his first commendation from the paper for correcting the misspelling of 'Wookiee' (that's two E's) in an article. Yes, he is a dork. He has the braces to prove it. Feel free to drop him a line at Aver9aol.com.

Podcasting Resources Part 2

2005-10-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

Podcasting Resources
Recapping the steps to creating a podcast:

1. create a media account on ourmedia and archive.org, and make sure to activate the application from the link sent to you via email.
2. create your audio via Audacity (ensuring your have the LAMElib framework on your machine as well)
3. move the audio file up to ourmedia when completed
4. use the feed URL to add to iPodder, add a feed URL link to the side of your blog (eg, Podcast feed) or add a link to the mp3 file in your future blog posts.

Capturing Audio Through your Computer
For podcasting, the simplest way to create/edit audio through your computer is to download the open source tool called Audacity, which is both a PC and a MAC tool. To save your audio files to mp3, you will also need to download LAME, which is an mp3 encoder. When you download LAME, please note where you downloaded it to, because when you create audio in Audacity and attempt to convert it to mp3, it will ask you for the location of LAME. MAC OSX users can put it in their Applications folder; PC users can put it in their Programs folder. If you have problems locating LAME when you try to convert the audio to mp3, you can always resort to putting it on your desktop.

Documentation on Audacity is available as well. This open source documentation contains all of the material for learning how to use Audacity. Audacity can be used to not only create audio direct from your machine, but edit existing audio and convert WAV files (another audio format) into mp3. To do the latter, you will need to open the preexisting audio in Audacity and export to mp3 from the File menu.

For storage of your media files (applicable to both audio and video), you will need to create user accounts on both ourmedia and archive.org. On registering with ourmedia, there will be an email authentication sent with a username and password, which you will need to upload the media. In the future when you try to upload your media to ourmedia, you will need to log into both archive.org and ourmedia, so please remember the new assigned password to ourmedia which you get in your email (and you can change the password in ourmedia when you first log in) and your archive.org password.

Linking to your Podcast from iPodder and a Preexisting Blog
To link to the podcast, you can login to ourmedia, click on "your page" (left hand side), and then scroll down the page (pass the missing icon for your photo, if you did not upload one) to the mRSS icon. Right clicking (PC) or control+clicking (MAC) gives you the feed URL, which you can plug into your iPodder application. Also, you can create a link on your blogger blog on the left hand/right hand side called "Podcast Feed" and link to the mRSS feed from ourmedia. That way, people can subscribe to your podcasts. Finally, you can also directly link to the media file in ourmedia through clicking on the audio/video file link and then using that URL (which should end in .mp3 if it is audio, or .mov if it is a video) and adding it to one of your blog postings.

For those interested in using GarageBand (MAC) to create podcasts, read this tutorial.

Capturing Audio Outside of Your Computer
You will need additional devices if you want to record audio outside of your computer. For those with standard size iPods, there are two gadgets, the Belkin Voice Recorder or the Griffin iTalk. Please note these devices DO NOT WORK with an iPod MINI. You can also use headsets for your computer, for better sound, once they are USB headsets. Check out Logitech headsets from BestBuy, or any cheap USB headset. Some sites that talk about the hardware requirements such as microphones and headsets include Gizmodo and Engadget.

Creating a Podcast-Only Blog
We will cover this next week Wednesday in class. Please be sure to practice some of this stuff here before you come to class next week. It will help to demystify the process to you. Since everything builds on what came before, I can also address any questions you have concerning podcasting next week. We will also do some stuff on vlogging next Wednesday (FireAnt and creating a v-log-only Blog). The process is essentially the same for video as it is for audio, so once you understand how to do audio, doing a vlog will be an easy process.

Add any questions you have to this post. I also encourage you to share any tips/tricks/resources you have here, or on your blog (and alerting us to your post on the class blog). We can contribute to a true user community of knowledge and ideas if we all share what we learn with each other.

Have fun podcasting!

Question for the week: 10/17

2005-10-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

Use the resources for either Bye's Echo Chamber Project or Olsen's Blogumentary Project to address the role that vlogging or open source documentary production/journalism can play in MSM production of news stories. It has been said in the past that citizen journalism's role is limited to recording day-to-day events, but these examples highlight a deeper, more fundamental and architected role for citizen journalists doing vlogging. Do you think that the author(s) approach to movie/film production can aid television in new strategies for investigative journalism? Are there any helpful, new aspects and novel approaches to their form of video production that can benefit MSM? You can decide to address any of the following aspects in your comment:

a. Transparency
b. Collaboration
c. Wisdom of Crowds/Network
d. Open Source Journalism
e. New toolkits, e.g., laptops, camcorders, WiFi, open source tools for editing/collaborating

Kent Bye's Echo Chamber Project Videos
Kent Bye's Web Site

Introduction to the Project

Effect on Media and Politics

Interviews on Changes in News Media due to Blogging

Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary Project
Blogumentary Web site

Links to all trailers for the documentary

Trailer Updated

Another trailer

Chuck Olsen's Web site containing videos

Press Review of the documentary

NOTE: You do not have to agree with any of the perspectives expressed in these movies.......

Downloading Podcasts

2005-10-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

To download podcasts, you can use the following options:

Download iTunes. With iTunes release of its 4.9 version and higher, you can now subscribe for podcasts straight from the music player. Of course, the iTunes are heavily weighted to MSM's offerings, but, just the same, you can witness the amazing transformation occuring within MSM industry. Who would belief that a technology, born from the grassroots culture, could pervade big media industry so quickly. iTunes offers you a sampling of some of the best MSM and independent offerings. I highly recommend subscribing to some of the news feeds from iTunes.

The original application, iPodder, is available here for download. You will need to select the appropriate computer platform (PC/MAC). Once installed, the application can be accessed through clicking on the 'Lemon' icon. Through this application, you can sample the best of the podcast offerings from some of the top podcast aggregators and search engines that index podcasts. You have options of adding feeds directly through point-and-click reference to the directory, or through finding a feed from a podcast directory and manually adding the feed through the "Add feed" toolbar icon. iPodder is recommended for sampling a wider variety of podcasts beyond what we call "A-listers" to more of "niche media" (remember the long tail).

If you would like to learn more about iPodder, visit the user guide. There is a wealth of information on using the application, including how to set your preferences (scheduler) to allow automatic downloading of podcasts to your iTunes once iPodder is operational.

Have fun!

South Asia Quake

2005-10-10T05:25:00.000-07:00

Angela noticed the amazing amount of information already collected on Wikipedia on the South Asian Earthquake. Another useful resource is the story on Wikinews, which is an experiment in ever-changing and updated news stories as new developments occur (as opposed to rewriting the story from scratch).

Another developing blog: South Asia Quake Help. This blog was developed by the core group that formed the SEA EAT blog, a blog and wiki to aid Katrina victims, as well as a blog and wiki to support and fund victims of the Rita hurricane disaster.

We are seeing true mobilization in terms of what the Internet can do to support relief and financial aid across the globe in times of disasters.

Question for the Week: 10/10

2005-10-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

Use the resources below to locate a podcast of interest to you. (CAVEAT: Be sure to find a podcast that is related to either your topics for your individual projects topic, your group project topic, or a podcast that is directly relevant to the content of the course). Write a review of the positives and negatives of the podcast in terms of content and delivery. Be sure to comment on the relationship of the podcast to citizen journalism, user generated content (UGC) or do it yourself (DIY) media.

Resources for selecting a podcast:
Popcasts [BETA]
Listing of Podcast Search Engines
Feedzie
Podcast Network
Podnova
Podcast Alley
Odeo
iPodder
Podcasting News
Selection is available through iTunes (must have an upgraded iTunes of 4.9 or higher)

URLs for Class Session 10/05

2005-10-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

URLs for Photo-Blogging

Photo Blogs and Photo Sharing Sites
23hq
Webshots
photoblogs.org/
buzznet
fotolog
my-expressions.com
fotopages

Sell your Images
scoopt
spymedia

Flickr
flickr
interesting flickr photos
flickr clusters
making a flickr badge

URL for JOT

2005-10-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

Here's the URL to log into JOT: http://jot.communication.utexas.edu/

Reminder: Group Assignments

2005-10-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

Here are your group assignments for the class project:

News Media
Ruth, Jonathan, Kim Loop

Politics
Emily, Angela, Rachel, Matthew

Entertainment
Jillian, Stephanie, Monica

Entertainment
Joanna, Kimberly, Chase

Technology
Amy, Julie, Chelsea

No Question This Week; Reminder of Individual Assignments Due 10/05

2005-10-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

You will have no question for this week. Please put all of your time into ensuring that your individual assignments are submitted BEFORE class begins on Wednesday, October 5, at 8:30 am. Late assignments will not be accepted.

Resources for Citizen Journalism Project

2005-10-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

For your group projects, it might be helpful to tap into the following projects that have been carried out at other universities.

The first project was carried out by six students with a time period of eleven weeks and a budget of $0 (sounds a bit similar to our situation?). This team of New Media grad students from Northwestern University harnessed open-source software to create a community news site for and by the residents of Skokie, Ill. Without the support of a commercial content management system, the students resorted to using Geeklog, a free, open-source software that supports group collaboration. Visit the hyperlocal community journalism site goskokie here. You can also read a PDF report assessing how they developed the project and the success of their community journalism efforts.

The second project is MyMissourian.com, overseen by Clyde Bentley, an associate professor at Missourian School of Journalism in Columbia, MO. Bentley presented a case study of the project this year at the AEJMC conference in San Antonio. Though the case study is not online, you can visit a synopsis of the value of the project. Bentley found that issues relating to civic life and religion was more popular than other issues. For this online community site, both students and missourian residents contribute to the site's content.

URLs for Class Session 9/28

2005-09-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

Use the following URLs in class to search for information on the London Bombings

Technorati (Blog Syndication):
London
London Explosion
London Bombing
London Bomb
Londres

Blog Sites (First Person Accounts)
We're Not Afraid
BBC posts of citizen accounts
Eamonn's Home
Metroblogging London
On the District
Camera Video Phone Slide
Flickr London Underground Set
BBC Citizen Journalism Photos
Der Spiegel

Pluck speaks

2005-09-26T06:43:00.000-07:00

Dave and Adam from Pluck talked to Rosental Alves' multimedia journalism class on Sept. 22. Here's some of what they said:

Pluck

Dave and Adam

Dave: Company history

Thought there was opp to help consumers using IE to get more out of the Web.

Browser hasn’t changed much b/c Microsoft stopped developing.

Pluck wants to change it.

Set of tools to find info & organize it to share.

RSS—thought it was good place to start. People can aggregate their own info and see it on one page.

They build browser tools along same lines. So people can control their media.

Spoke to publishers about RSS. But they talked more about blogging, what it
What can Pluck do to help publishers embrace instead of fight the trend? They came up with some software.

In the last nine months they’ve been working on it.

Adam: how blogs have become so popular

10-15 million now.
Mid 1990s—visions that everyone will have homepage. Would just be digital representation of a person. Back then the tools were too complex; people had to know technology to do it. It was too much work.

About 2000—blogs emerge. Was content management system and helped people build and update sites. Free and cheap services, all in one, popped up. It was server based so people didn’t even need to download software.

Community-enabled tools—people discover each other and connect.

Two key technologies adoption criteria.

Cost—free or cheap.

Ease of use—anyone using a browser can do it.

Adam: role of RSS

There was “content avalanche”

How do you keep up with it? Really Simple Syndication.

Pluck started with tools for aggregation and news reading.

We needed standard for aggregation services. So they could read content on apples-to-apples basis.

RSS simplifies the sites to text only. It’s a “one stop shop.”

Think: focus of syndication is purely aggregation and personal consumption right now. But what kinds of things can we use it for? If you have any ideas, Adam wants to know about them.

Dave: E-commerce—if they build tool for user to build feed about thing they’re auctioning for on e-bay. Use it to stay in touch.

Adam: Media intelligence—(sorry guys I missed what he said about this).

Adam: use it for things you check over and over. You’re looking for real estate listings…you’re looking for items on Craigslist. “Search results would come to you and let you know when you’ve got something.”

Adam: what do traditional publishers say?

Recurring themes—we’ve got declining circulation; online business activity is small, but it’s huge growth area; paid advertisers online, but not enough pages; they want to hold younger audiences who use RSS or blogs instead.

Most of them aren’t tech-driven. They’re focused on content. They’re stuck on their traditional news delivery methods.

InSite Services

Giving EasyJournal and RSS to the publishers at cheap prices.

They can do the technology for the publishers. Gives them lowrisk way to get involved and hang on to younger audiences. Maybe grow their online sides.

With insite blogging, it’s customized and feels like service running on publisher’s site. The Austin American-Statesman is a recent example.

They generate new pages to put ads on.

It bolsters their current content. Example: coverage of ACL from Statesman is enhanced w/ bloggers. Adds to news experience.

Reader’s side: they’re getting more out of it. They see story from multiple angles and hear what their peers think.

Statesman example

ACL page

On the right there’s sidebar supplement from the blogs.

The statesman has the tools from Pluck to do this. They can embed the content on their pages.

If you make a blog on the statesman, you get to see how many people have accessed your posts. You can make sure your blog looks okay. There’s a pending comments area…it’ll go into a que and notify you by e-mail then you get to read the comment and approve it before it gets posted on your blog. You don’t want bad content.

Statesman benefits. Pluck is running the thing behind the scenes. Statesman isn’t tech driven. They don’t have servers, IT people to help. Pluck takes it “off their shoulders.”

Statesman has community management tools. They can see what’s happening all the time. Check out users, what people are posting about. They have a lot of control to stop people from posting bad things like child porn.

Dave: Also, there’s a link for people to report abuse. That’s when “community policing” come in.

Thing launched about 1.5 weeks ago. It’s not a full blown launch yet. They’re allowing posts on ACL, also UT sports. So far there’s a “few hundred.” They seem to be pretty active. Producing high quality stuff. Worth statesman featuring next to their own content.

Old-minded journalists are still afraid about letting the average joe post things next to the paper’s content. But day by day they’re growing more comfortable with it.

Nothing happened like with the LA Times Wiki. That was a disaster b/c people used it in way LA Times didn’t like. Objectionable content (child porn) on there. They took it down w/ in 72 hours.

Internal control at the statesman: right now they’re featuring blogs in the sidebar, but only if someone at the Statesman or another connected person has vouched for that blog. You gotta know someone to get your foot in the door.

Surface area—eventually on different statesman pages, there’ll be snippets of blogs or links.

Blogger recruitment—Pluck wants to help find the right kind of people who will make the right kind of content for the Statesman. It’s worked out well so far.

The statesman did have inhibitions about that. The tools they have from Pluck lets them manage things and feel comfortable.

“Superstar bloggers”—recruitment has paid off. Some people writing about ACL are complete experts, even more than reporters. One guy is writing about what kind of blanket to bring. It’s micro expertise.

Adam: publishers’ issues of citizen journalism

Content liability

Integrating content

Finding best participants

Awarding/recognizing valuable content

URLs for Class Session 9/22

2005-09-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

Use your group assignment to visit the following relevant URLs. Visit each URL and work with your group members after individual exploration to provide a report to the class:

Wikis
http://www.tsunamihelp.info/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Tsunami_Help/Missing_%26_Found
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake
http://www.socialtext.net/tsunamihelp/index.cgi
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Strongest_earthquake_in_40_years_hits_Southeast_Asia

Blogs
http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com
http://www.choiresicha.com/archives/000550.html
http://www.kevinsites.net/2004_12_26_archive.html#110436685268779983
http://tsunamimissing.blogspot.com/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/insomnia/525268.html
http://www.jeffooi.com/archives/2004/12/tsunami_kills_5.php
http://tsunamienquiry.blogspot.com/
http://blog.ceneus.com/archives/2004/12/index.html

Mobilization
http://wireless.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000207025240/
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/31/tsunami_reconnect_pr.html
http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/__Sumatra.htm
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001841.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001815.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001844.html
http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/blog/archives/2004_12.html#000151

Photos and Syndication
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/tsunami
http://www.tsunamis.com/tsunami-pictures.html
http://www.pbase.com/issels/phuket_tsunami&page=1
http://del.icio.us/tag/tsunami
http://kinja.com/user/tsunami-info
http://www.2bangkok.com/quakes.shtml
http://tsunami.blogpulse.com/

Question for the Week: September 26, 2005

2005-09-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

Using any of the disasters or terrorist attack events to comment on the unique role that citizen journalism can play in providing first-hand news accounts during times of emergencies and disasters.

Discussion on Pluck this Thursday

2005-09-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

The owner of the company Pluck, who has recently been responsible for powering the Austin American Statesman's recent community-blog endeavor, will be speaking to Rosental Alves' Multimedia Jounalism class, held in A4.308. You are all invited (I won't be able to be there), and I will strongly encourage you to attend. Because.........

I am also happy to announce that Jim Debth and Tim Lott will be giving us a guest lecture on November 7. They are both connected to the Austin American Statesman. Debth is the Internet director and Lott is the assistant managing editor for online news. I plan to invite other classes and professors in the college to this lecture, so please be sure to come early to get a good seat.

UPDATE: Class will be held on Thursday from 11 am to 12:30 pm.

Katrina Photo Event

2005-09-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

Six of our journalism department photo-j students will be putting on a presentation at 7:30 p.m. this Wednesday, September 21, in the CMA Auditorium. The six students will be showing the work they did during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and talking about the experience. It should last about 90 minutes. You all are cordially invited and I hope you will come to support the students and Prof. Eli Reed, who oversaw this project.

This is an excellent opportunity to network with other students who capture first-hand photo accounts in times of national disasters. More importantly, since we are a blogging and citizen journalism class, this is an excellent opportunity to examine how journalists, at the scene of national disasters, can also become citizen journalists as the lines of objectivity blur to the extent where the journalist and audience become indistinguishable. This is particularly so in photos where emotion is conveyed through the visual. As we visit this topic next week (From Wars to Natural Disasters: Blogs as Citizen’s Media for Live Reporting), seeing this photo display is a nice opportunity to ask yourselves: Can we all be citizen journalists? Is there always a divide between journalism and citizen journalism?

Question of the Week for Sept. 19

2005-09-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

Here is the question for this week. Responses are due by Friday, September 23, at 5 pm on your individual blog

Use a few of Eric Raymond's principles of open source development in The Cathedral and the Bazaar and apply them to Gillmor's discussion of the impact of openness in the chapter, "The Gates Come Down" in We the Media (44-65). How can the open source development model help explain some of the new transparencies that Gillmor discusses in this chapter?

Gary Chapman Guest Speaker on 9/19

2005-09-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

Gary Chapman, a faculty member of the LBJ School of Public Policy, has agreed to guest lecture to you all on Open Source Technologies on 9/19. For complete bio information on him, visit his Web page here.

Chapman is currently one of the most influential thinkers in the US on the social implications of computing, doing work in this field for over 20 years. He has been a tech journalist for many years (nationally syndicated) and he continues to write a bi-weekly column for the Austin American Statesman. Among his many achievements, he is currently the Director of the 21st century project and an associate director of the Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute. He was named by Texas Monthly as one of the 25 most powerful Texans in high tech. This year, Chapman was key note speaker at the School of Journalism's Online Journalism Symposium. To see the recorded video for his 2006 speech, go here.

Arianna Huffington on the Blogosphere

2005-09-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

I thought you guys might find this interesting.

Wired News has posted this interview with Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post in which she comments on everything that bloggers offer and a few "failures" of the mainstream media.

When bloggers decide that something matters, they chomp down hard and refuse to let go. They're the true pit bulls of reporting. The only way to get them off a story is to cut off their heads (and even then you'll need to pry their jaws open). They almost all work alone, but, ironically, it's their collective effort that makes them so effective. They share their work freely, feed off one another's work, argue with each other, and add to the story dialectically. All of which has made the blogosphere the most vital news source in our country -- and led me to take a flying leap into it with The Huffington Post.

Thought you guys would like to know.

Blog Spam

2005-09-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

It is not uncommon for blogs created on blogger to be bombarded with comment spam. It is your responsibility to monitor your blog and delete comments that are unrelated to your posting (do this in the admin area by clicking on "View Blog", clicking on the comment link under the post with the comments you want to delete, and hitting the trash can icon on the specific comment you want to delete.).

We can chat on Wednesday about the difficulties you all are encountering with blog spam. If need be, we can lock each person's blog to just allow comments from the class/myself. I have done that on the class blog with great success.

Individual Blog Usage

2005-09-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

On your blog, you are highly encouraged to post commentary on any and all issues related to citizen journalism, news, MSM (newspapers, television, radio, Internet journalism), technology development (open source technologies, search engines, blog tools), and blogging (podcasting, vblogging, and photoblogging). If you find an interesting URL on any of these issues on the Web, I encourage you to cite it so that your classmates can share in the information. But like all things, there are parameters with blogs created to support class activities. In order to make sure that the blog is an educational experience, please refrain from using your class blog to broadcast personal or private matters (parties, dates, drinking games, etc). For these issues, you can make another blog and link to it from your individual class blog. Maintaining a respectful separation of work/play issues can enable both your classmates and myself to have quicker access to content relevant to the class goals.

Since your class blog will be used to submit assignments, for this class, I strongly encourge you to work on developing something that can support for professional/academic goals for the future. Please use the CyberJournalist Blogger Code of Ethics codebook to support your blogging practices so that you can use your blog in future job quests. Working on developing a strong public voice will only make you a better journalist.

Lecture URLs for Week of Sept 12

2005-09-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

URLs used in the lecture, "Blogging and Journalism: Dynamics of a Complex Relationship," are below:

EPIC
State of the News Media
The End of Objectivity by Dan Gillmor
What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism by Jay Rosen
What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism by Jay Rosen
A Few Thoughts on Journalism and What Weblogs Can Do About It by Rebecca Blood
Blogosphere: The Emerging Media Ecosystem by Hiler
Blogging vs Journalism is Over by Jay Rosen
Blogging, Journalism and Credibility by Rebecca Mackinnon
Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics
Blogger's Code of Ethics by Jonathan Dube

Diagrams were taken from:
Worldwide Web Conversation by Rebecca Mackinnon
We Media

Classmates Blogs

2005-09-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a listing of your classmates' blogs. We're still missing two on the list, and I'll send those along as soon as we work those out. In the meantime, please add the following 13 blogs to your bloglines account so you can keep track of your classmates' blogging. I encourage you to comment on each others' blogs as well.

Jonathan: http://www.suspiciousjournalist.blogspot.com
Chelsea: http://www.chelseastark.blogspot.com
Jillian: http://www.jillianclaire.blogspot.com
Monica: http://www.utgal2006.blogspot.com
Angela: http://www.angelagrant.blogspot.com
Kim: http://www.lkloop.blogspot.com
Joanna: http://www.joannajennings.blogspot.com
Ruth: http://www.latenightedition.blogspot.com
Kim: http://www.kimdenby.blogspot.com
Emily: http://www.emilyedelman.blogspot.com
Chase: http://www.jchase.blogspt.com
Amy: http;//www.amylavergne.blogspot.com
Julie: http://www.juliejruff.blogspot.com

UPDATE: Rachel: http://myjournalismclass.blogspot.com/

Made corrections to the visible URL for Jillian (had jillainclark when it should be jillianclaire), Monica (had utgall2006 when it should be utgal2006), and Kim (had kiimdenby when it should be kimdenby).

How do I...

2005-09-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

I'd like to add a section on my sidebar for links, so I can put everyone's blog link on my blog. How do I do that?

Add Blogger Accounts

2005-09-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

Please add your blogger URL (for example: http://www.merazzle.blogspot.com) to this post so that your classmates can add your blog to their bloglines account.

I also plan to make a list of all of your blogs on the class Web site (http://www.merazzle.org/blogfall2005).

Notes for 9/12 Group Discussion

2005-09-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

These are the notes I took from our discussion this morning on blogging and journalism. I did minimal editing, preserving most of your viewpoints. See responses below, and feel free to add or post to the class blog if you want to initiate a discussion.

What is the role of Journalism and the job of the journalist?

First Group

Role of journalism to facilitate public discussion

Don’t think the role of journalism is technology related but information related

News should be third party, neutral and factual

Objective

Credible, can be held accountable

Public can call the media if they make a mistake

As long as credibility stands, MSM cannot be replaced by technology

Second Group

Journalists should keep gov’t accountable

Keep us informed about it

Third Group

Role of journalism to disseminate info and inform people in a way that is interesting, accurate, creative, and timely

Fourth Group

Providing truthful info to the public: important, unbiased, and relative to what people need to use for discussion, citizenship

Last Group

Journalists can offer more first hand accounts, more interviews, more first hand reporting, Journalists’ role is to offer more direct/primary info as opposed to secondary information.

Caveat: Seems like blogging allows more of a forum to discuss as opposed to MSM.

Debate: does the journalist step past his/her boundaries if they are facilitating discussion Should their role be solely informational?

Do people care enough to talk about news?

Do people want to remain in their fragmented worlds?

Is Blogging Journalism? If so, why? If not, why?

First Group

Blogging isn’t. For several reasons: 1. Accountability (we can argue both ways, the average blogger can throw anything out there and he/she doesn't have to answer to anyone, but he/she can also be accountable to the general public. However, the blogger does not have the threat of being sued and being fired), 2. Bloggers don’t get the news themselves, but many gather news from other sources. They piggy back on the MSM and from other blogs. They are filters…..Viral effect.

Second Group

It depends on the blog……..Some go talk to people. In the last election, you had people interview. Editors can sometimes be a bad thing….if they are less knowledgeable and are not content experts then they do not know enough about some subjects to be responsible for editing them.

Third Group

Mostly no. Blogs don’t have to have credibility to be journalism. Blogging is creating a blur or lack of distinction between blogging and journalism. You can’t tell what is accurate or not, and it is difficult to tell. No way to verify accuracy.

Fourth Group

In general, blogging is not journalism. An individual blog is not thorough, each one has an intense focus. A lot of times, blogs are partisan and concentrate solely on their narrow opinions. But, there are exceptions in the blogosphere: if one writes something inaccurate, other bloggers are the check by providing the accurate facts and the opposite opinion. Thinking of bloggers like a community or a conglomeration of blogs, it appears more like journalism. They are transparent cause they link and cite their sources.

Last Group

Can’t make a decision. Transparency is there. But too early to tell. A lot of people cite sources to news organizations: BBC, CNN. Etc……Agenda setting in blogging is evident with the role of the MSM in blog reporting.

Question for week of September 12

2005-09-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

Compare the perspectives of blogging as journalism presenting by Lasica in Blogging as a Form of Journalism (in We've Got Blog: How Weblogs are Changing our Culture) with the Gillmor's introduction chapter to We The Media. Do they share a similar perspective in the role that blogging can play in transforming journalism?

Resposes are due on Friday, September 16, by 5 pm. You will submit the posting on your personal blog.

History of Blogging Notes

2005-09-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is a short PPT on the History of Blogging. We will go through this quickly in class before we jump into our next topic for the week of September 12 titled, "Blogging and Journalism: Dynamics of a Complex Relationship."

Blogging and Web Publishing

2005-09-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

I've collapsed all of your comments from the prior comment stream on blogs and Web publishing. Your comments were all great. Below are some of the things you had to say about the differences between blogs and Web publishing.

Barriers to entry are lower in terms of computer programming knowledge

Free software and hosting widely available to publish with, removing the need for spending money to get an ISP provider

Easier to update than a typical Web site; the later involves several steps, ie, creating the file, checking it, and using an FTP program to upload to a Web server

Simplifies the process of Web publishing

Democratized Web publishing, moving it from the domain of the elite to be widely accessible to the masses, even children and seniors

Made Web publishing possible through a Web browser (as opposed to having to buy desktop software programs such as Dreamweaver)

Blogs seem to center more on an interest, appearing more “self contained” as opposed to Web sites that appear more informational on a product/service

Makes it possible to share opinions more easily

Appear to be more interactive in terms of permitting conversations online, ie, allowing comments, trackback, and syndication through RSS feeds

Some blogs act as a filter and provide a gateway to news and other important niche sources of information on the Web

I’d like to add some more information to the above:

Blogs create the expectation that there will be more frequent and shorter post updating as opposed to Web sites

Blogs permit Web site updating through more flexible means. For example, one can update a blog through mobile devices such as camera phones or blackberries. There is greater tie in now with other technological devices

Blogs are subject to different standards of ethics, credibility, and professionalism as Web sites. The latter are typically used for some professional or financial purpose

Blogs allow conversations and community formation to occur online (if comments are enabled), making the need for face-to-face communication less pertinent. Or blogs can permit an extension of offline community online, for example, through blogs, communication can continue to occur online

Blogs permit syndication through RSS, allowing other users to read your blog through RSS readers or offline from a Web browser

Blogs provide the ideal platform for daily updating. The format is set with a timestamp, headline, post body, and comment stream, providing the ideal environment for posting opinions online

Prevalence of blog software means that a would-be blogger does not have to reinvent the wheel each time a blog needs to be created. Bloggers can take advantage of existing technical infrastructure (software) and create blogs that share similar feature with other blogs on the Web, making a site that is familiar to other users on the Web

Blogs enable one to find community online and be part of something bigger depending on the interest selected to blog about. Because of the tools contained in blogging software, being part of a community of interest and practice online is much easier than through Web publishing

For many, the power of the blog is in the link, as the idea of the hyperlink in blogging has come to signify transparency of sources and credit to those who have been an influence to your post

Post any questions to these points in the comments below. We can answer any questions you have on it next day in class.

Using Bloglines

2005-09-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

To use bloglines, simply register and then click on the link that is sent to your email box (provided you put in a valid email). Complete the authentication process. All of you should have been completed with this process in class.

Once in bloglines, the goal is to get into the practice of adding RSS feeds, the method used to read blog updates from your favorite blogs. To add a feed:

1: Click on my feeds
2. Click on add
3. Enter in the blog or feed URL. If you recall in class, I mentioned several ways to get the feed URL. Safari and Firefox (not IE) are built to indicate to you whether a blog (or site) has RSS feeds. When you type a URI into the browser's address bar, you can click on the RSS blue button and copy/paste the feed URI that appears in the browser bar into bloglines. In Firefox, you will see an orange icon which appears when a blog has an RSS feed on the bottom right hand corner of the browser window (if it does not appear, chances are that the site DOES not have a RSS feed). Hovering over the orange bar (which says "subscribe to RSS"), you will see the feed URI. Lastly, you can simply enter the site's URI in the bloglines reader (as opposed to the feed URI). For example, for the New York Times, I would enter http://www.nytimes.com. Bloglines is smart enough to retrieve the feed URI for the site without you having to find the specific feed URI for the particular site. Another example, if you wanted to enter the class blog, simply type in the site URI for the class blog, http://www.merazzle.blogspot.com, and Bloglines will find the appropriate feed.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to enter any questions you have concerning bloglines in this post. Do remember that the best way to begin digging into blogs is to subscribe to them in a blog reader, such as bloglines. Bloglines can become a ready place for storing all of your favorite blogs, and is Web-based, which means you can access your bloglines reader on any computer.

Question for 09/07/05

2005-09-07T05:34:00.000-07:00

Blogs are considered a form of Web publishing. But, how are blogs different from former forms of Web publishing?

URLs for 09/07/05

2005-09-07T05:18:00.000-07:00

The following are URLs that we will be using in class.

Features/Characteristics of Blogs

Daily Kos

Instapundit

Dan Gillmor

Slashdot
Scripting News
Mary Hodder

Sample Blogs in Different Software

Movable Type: Danah Boyd and Tim Porter

Wordpress: Jeff Jarvis and Sharon Meraz

Blogger: Class Blog and Kaye Trammell

Typepad: Rebecca MacKinnon

Radio Userland: Radio Userland

Create a bloglines account

Survey of Class Blog Agendas

2005-09-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

I've taken some time to go through your surveys, and I'm providing a summary of the learning needs of the class. The results here are anonymous, and are meant to provide a broad or general overview of some of the things we need to accomplish through the fall 2005 semester.

Question 1: Do you have a blog?

Almost 50 percent of the class either does not have a blog or does not maintain the blog regularly.

Question 2: Do you read blogs regularly? If so, which ones?

The results for blog readership in the class spans from entertainment related blogs, to friends/family blogs, to political blogs. Some of you indicated that you search for blogs in a somewhat haphazard way, and would be interested in some guidance as to a more streamlined approach to reading blogs.

Question 3: How familiar are you with the following technologies:

For most of these technology items (Open Source Languages/Programming, Blog Software, RSS, Podcasting, Vblogging, Flickr, Tagging, and Mobile Blogging) there is over 80 percent unfamiliarity in the class. Among these technologies, there is however strong shared knowledge of Flickr.

Question 4: Have you ever built a Web site

Most students indicated that they had not yet built a Web site before. A couple of student indicated that they were in the process of building a Web site, and a couple of you have your own Web sites already developed.

Question 5: What do you hope to get from this class

Answers were varied for this question, but many of you had shared goals. On a collective note, here were some of the things you were all hoping to get from the class:

Survey of blogosphere in an informed and guided manner

Desire to possess skills in a "new journalism" so that it could be attractive to potential employees

Improve writing

Learn new technologies

Develop a "blog voice"

Understand influence and authority in the blogosphere

Understand citizen journalism

Awareness of changes to online journalism

Regulation, control, and ethics in the blogosphere

Develop skills for multimedia publishing, i.e., podcasting, vlogging

Balanced and informed perspective on the impact of blogs on journalism

Desire to "catch up" on the developments online

Develop momentum to continue blogging in the future

Deconstruct the pros and cons of blogging as it relates to journalism

We will try to touch on many of these questions and goals as the class proceeds.

If you would like to add more goals to this list, please add a comment to the blog post.

Class Survey

2005-08-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to J 394 T: Writing for Online Publications. This fall 2005 semester, our topic of interest will be Blogging and Citizen Journalism. I am excited to guide you all through what is an exciting time in Web publishing and citizen empowerment, and it is my hope that at the end of this class, you too will feel more engaged to participate in the revolution that has been instigated by freely available technological toolkits.

In order to make sure you get the most out of this class, please take the time to answer the following questions on the paper survey. The questions are listed below so you can refer to the survey later on:

Have you commented on a blog before?

Do you have a blog?

Do you read blogs regularly? If so, which ones?

How familiar are you with the following technologies: (answer familiar or unfamiliar)

Open Source Languages/Programming

Blog Software

Podcasting

Vblogging

Flickr

Tagging

Mobile Blogging

Have you ever built a Web site?

What do you hope to get from this class (please describe as clearly as possible)