Obama's People

Here's a really interesting multimedia piece done by the NYTimes. As usual right? There's a gallery of the portraits made of the officials that will make up the new administration, but there is also a gallery documenting the creation of the portraits. There's some great photos all around and the premise is pretty fun.

Now if I only had an army the size of the 3rd Regiment to pull something off like this as well.

Front-Row View

Here's a NPR interview with Pete Souza, who has been announced as the the official chief White House photographer, talking about covering Barack Obama during the last several years.

Has a nice photo gallery as well.

Lawrence Lessig vs. Stephen Colbert

Really interesting argument about copyright from a recent show. It's funny as hell.

I see aspects of both sides of the battle. I'm not sure that one side or the other is absolute, the future is most likely a blend of something in the middle. And it will be based on the type of the content and the content producer.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Lawrence Lessig

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Found this via a photography business blog that is hellbent on copyright protections.

One in 8 million

Really nice multimedia player from the interactive gurus at the NYTimes that is set to be updated weekly with a short piece on one of the 8 million people in New York. Everyone has a story and an opinion, it should be interesting to see what characters are found.

Fresh sparks from being a "one-man-band"

A good interview with CNN photojournalist Bethany Swain talking about how she and some colleagues created an outlet for natsound pieces on all the CNN platforms. No "talent" standing up yammering in front of the scene or someone talking over good imagery.

Just good storytelling.

End Times

A really solid story on the eminent tsunami of newspaper deaths to come, probably sooner than we expect.

____

If you’re hearing few howls and seeing little rending of garments over the impending death of institutional, high-quality journalism, it’s because the public at large has been trained to undervalue journalists and journalism. The Internet has done much to encourage lazy news consumption, while virtually eradicating the meaningful distinctions among newspaper brands. The story from Beijing that pops up in my Google alert could have come from anywhere. As news resources are stretched and shared, it can often appear anywhere as well: a Los Angeles Times piece will show up in The Washington Post, or vice versa.

____

Kobré's Top 20 Video Productions of 2008

Haven't had a chance to view them all yet, but I'm sure there are a few that are pretty well done looking at the names of the outlets. 

I'll be curious to see what the average length of all the videos after reading Mindy McAdams' post this morning.

Tools for News

A pretty good beta database for all kinds of journalism tools to use. Register and you can add to the growing list. 

One last hurrah for newspaper competition

An awesome story about how an intern at the Chicago Tribune won a Chicago Sun-Times contest.

Too bad in the decline of competing newspapers we don't get to see great ideas like this anymore. Radio doesn't even do this much anymore considering they are all owned by the same company these days. Too bad, might be one way to increase readership. You know, actually competing on stories that the community wants to know about rather than sharing the same freaking content.  

Seattle P-I Year in Photos

I always love the P-I's YiP. The staffers pick their favorite 10 images and explain the back story to the photos. It's always fun to learn a little more about why or how a photo was made.

Photojournalists get the job done

A NYTimes story about the Mumbai attacks detailing how two working photojournalists had the images and reportage that mattered. Though there were many "citizen journalists" posting photos on Flickr, Twitter and other social networks as the attacks unfolded Sebastian D’souza and Vasant Prabhu have hundreds of images documenting the events and ability to describe some details they witnessed.

Granted these two put themselves in dire situations to make the resulting images, the point is that a citizen journalist is not going to willingly put themselves in danger for the sake of journalism. We could then get into the credibility debate as well, but that would take hours. A working professional has a base of experience and knowledge to work from in tough situations that most citizen journos won't. When you need something done right, best to use a professional.

10 Questions for Journalists in the Information Age and info-overload

Here's some great notions to consider in this overwhelming era of easily accessible information. Having the right information available in functional and engaging access points will be a major component of successful journalism. Too bad most newspapers just shovel all their content into a big bucket on the web and expect readers to "find" what they need to know. Newspapers were barely able to accept the notion that television was a competitor by the time the Internet began to steal even more of their audience. Glacial pace won't work in the instantaneous realm of the Information Age.

Boston's BIG Picture year in photos

This is only the first of three gallery pages. Gotta love those GIANT photos. Looking back at 2008, you will find several newspapers that "borrowed" the Big Picture idea and turned their daily galleries into similar productions.

MSNBC's Year in Photos for 2008

Good blend of audio and visuals from the year. MSNBC always puts together good multimedia. Just wish they would go easy on the music sometimes. But when you go back and see what photos are the most popular, you will understand what the major audience type is. Still good stuff to look at.

2008 Year in Pictures by NY Times

Nicely done gallery with full-screen mode. Lots of photos that you really don't get to see when you just read the stories on the web.

50 Things we learned in the last year

There's a bunch of great stories and links in this compilation by TampaBayOnline. There's a few things I had forgotten and a few new ones listed.

What a wild and crazy year. I still feel that exponential theory as applied to the technology of our daily lives is speeding up our society at breakneck speeds. Every year it seems as though everyone makes the statement –"So many more things happened in the last year than the year before."

Well, here's hoping 2009 doesn't break us all, in so many different ways.

Brian Storm: Passion

Here's the text of Brian Storm's –the brain behind MediaStorm– commencement address to the journalism graduates at the University of Missouri.

Lots of good ideas, thoughts and advice. Read it.

Prisoner of War

An interesting read from Men's Journal about journalist Michael Ware –a reporter first for Time, now for CNN– and his demons of covering the stories of Iraq for the last six years.

It's a unique look into the mind of a journalist that's been on the front lines probably too long but highlights what it takes to be there in the first place. The best portion from the piece as a photojournalist:

_____

Among his maxims was that it’s one thing to film a soldier firing his weapon, but it’s a whole other thing to shoot the expression on his face as he does it.

“If you think about it, to get that expression on his face, what do you have to do?” Ware asks. “You have to break from cover and expose yourself. You have to get in front of the man who is shooting and being shot at. Because that’s where the story is, in that face.”

_____

Keep it short, sweet and interesting

So data mining is starting to show that online video consumers are the ultimate ADD
patient. (Yes, I know that could be taken as an oxymoron, but back to the point.)

Nearly half the audience of any video has an itchy trigger finger around 60 seconds into the show. So if you are going to be showing anything longer than that, it better be pretty darn compelling to keep them around. You are going to have only 23 percent of your audience sticking around past the two minute mark based on the study.

Web video services provider TubeMogul report after measuring 23 million streams on six top video sites over two weeks.

That's 23 percent of the people that even bothered to click play mind you. So like the fishing guides in Belize say about setting the hook on bonefish on the salt flats: "You gotta rip his lips off mon!" Then you take advertising into account, if it's not a pre-roll, it's not getting ANY eyeballs.

Typing Without a Clue

This is a great column about the absolute crap that gets published under the flag of writing. The author basically demands that actual wordsmiths have an opportunity to be published rather than the likes of Joe the Plumber or Barbara Bush's dog.

While I was at the checkout lane of the grocery store there were a couple different celebrity rags laying on an unused lane that had signs of being read and consumed. All I could think about was the news of just two days earlier about the Rocky being put up for sale – only a token notion to close it mind you. Why do people have enough interest to pick up a National Inquirer to read quasi truthful stories about Hollywood hacks, yet choose not to be informed about their community and their government's actions?

Is it because that is what media is giving readers? Or are do publishing companies dictate consumption more than we really perceive?

Bigger dominoes beginning to fall

This last week was graced with the unpleasant announcement that E.W. Scripps has put the Rocky Mountain News up for sale. The flagship newspaper for the company that has won four Pulitzers in the past eight years.

This, in the midst of a month where more than 500,000 Americans lost jobs. Those are just the ones that filed for unemployment mind you, there could be many more undocumented.

Then two days later reports are that The McClatchy Company is putting a FOR SALE sign on their flagship The Miami Herald.

Denver will most likely become a single newspaper town, as there will probably not be someone crazy enough to buy a property that is losing over $1 million a month in a competitive market and in a declining industry. Sadly, hundreds more will be added to that skyrocketing unemployment statistic, but those additions will be people I know. People I respect. People that care about the Fourth Estate.

Scary thing is I didn't think all these troubles would come this soon. I knew that the first quarter of 2009 was going to be a bloody mess, but before Christmas bells had even begun to ring? The acceleration in the decline of the newspaper business, as well as the economy in general, is speeding up much faster than many thought would be possible. The first quarter of 2009 may just look like the basement of Leatherface's Texas Home.

Photo Workshop

Been working over the last few weeks to build a working and functional website for Kenn Bisio as well as for my final project in one of my grad school classes. Had several coding issues but I think it's got a green light now. Take a peek and let me know if you find any issues. Or sign up for a trip to Ireland!

Travel documentary and photography

Was tipped off about this site by a fellow photog, thankfully. There's a ton of things to look at on this blog!

I'm sure I'll link some of them soon, but in the meantime check out this one called SocialDocumentary.net

Leibovitz interview

Annie Leibovitz is on a book tour for her book "Annie Leibovitz at Work" and there are a few places that have posted interviews. This is a longer interview in Seattle.

She's really created her own career and carer path in the realm of photography. It should be interesting to see what she included in the book and the back-stories. She also included who influenced and what images stand out to her.

NPR also has an interview and some photos.

Need help with some photo biz works?

John Harrington's book "Best Business Practices for Photographers" has been uploaded to AmazonOnlineReader. You can read it there for free to see if you want to buy it.

Listened to John speak at a workshop a few years ago. He's a smart guy and must know what he's doing considering the photo empire he has created.

Old School film, I mean old school

A post on APAD about the lone Kodachrome processing lab in the world with a audio slide show.

Platon talking about his portraits

This has been out there a while, but this is a solid audio file to listen to. Great stories and insight.

Faces of Sunset Blvd

Great portraiture work and idea out of California for a book. Fun site as well. The video about shooting the LAPD chief is pretty cool. Check it out.

Found via 10,000 Words Twitter Feed.

Tilt shift video playground

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Keith Loutit produced a pretty cool video using a tilt/shift lens on a DLSR shot at intervals. Pretty cool look. Kind of limiting at times I'm sure, but nonetheless a fun trick to play with.

10,000 Words and Photojournalism

There's some fantastic links in this blog post of the best places to find the best photos.

Happy viewing.

MTV's Gideon Yago putting the smack down on Journalism

Gideon Yago worked with The IFC Media Project to create a series about journalism and how news sausage is made. Should be interesting. Hopefully it's available online!

Testing your awareness, again

I posted a link a while back that the Transport For London did to test your awareness while watching a situation. The campaign is in an effort to remind motorists to look out for cyclists.

Well, I got an email from the creator of the videos and they made a few new ones. I'll admit, the first one I watched, I failed miserably. Dare you to take it yourself.

One more great use of online video and the ability to convey a message. Brilliant work.

This will be fantastic, 10 million times.

Google scores one for their "good" column in my book – though their "bad" column in my book has been franticly growing. In Google's quest to dominate the planet and the moon, they have secured 10 million images from the LIFE collection owned by Time, Inc. to be hosted on their servers.

Only about three percent of the collection has ever been published. Can you imagine the photos that you will be able to see there? From all the greats? I may have to set a timer to limit the amount of time a kill just looking at the greatest visual record of history.

Minority Report meets 2008

Very interesting video showing physical computing and design. And we all thought Tom Cruise was living in a futuristic time.

Anyone have $30K I can borrow?

RED's Scarlet has been unveiled. As were several other versions of the high-end digital video cameras. It will be a few months before the culmination of video capture rates at pro-DSLR resolution goodness arrives on shelves. But I don't care, I just need to find someone with some investment capital.

There's a lot of possibilities coming very soon. Very soon...

A good pair of shoes and...

Alec Soth sent an email to the entire staff of Magnum asking two questions: 1. When did you first get exited about photography? and 2. What advice do you have for young photographers?

There are a lot of responses all over the map, but in the end there is definitely a consistent thread of passion, curiosity and need to be self-motivated regardless of the consequences.

Good find from an up and coming photog herself. You can also download a pdf of the responses here.

The real version of Man on Fire

A photo gallery on NYTimes.com about bodyguards in Mexico. Some good images in a sticky situation. Not only the chances of getting caught up in a shootout but not being able to visually identify the "principal" or his family.

Let the bottlenecking begin!!!

So one of the Fox and NBC stations in Philly are going to "pool" the video operations of the two news organizations in an effort to cut costs. Brilliant!! Lessen the scope of journalism even more. The newsrooms will be independent of each other in how they edit or use the footage.

The ever growing notion of doing more with less in journalism.

Mr. Wallace added, “We see no downside on this.”

Only that showing the exact same content on two competing stations will dilute your audience even more, thus weakening your advertising base further. Nope, not a single downside. Nor the jobs that can now be eliminated to reduce costs.

And the fat cats in the corporate offices wonder why their market share is only shrinking ever more rapidly. How about producing unique content that no other news org has? If you are the only one with it, where are the viewers going to have to look for it? I guess on your competition's 10 o'clock newscast.

Laforet and power of the web

Mr. Laforet is trying out a new widget from Photoshelter to promote his print sales and generate money for a student scholarship. As more aspects of business move to the web being able to capitalize on technology is the key to success. I think he's going to make this one works as well as the Reverie video.

Christopher Anderson and Objectivity

Great interview with the Magnum photographer talking about his role as a photographer versus a photojournalist.

Timelapse web watch

Here's a sweet video brief showing the progression of the NYTime's homepage during election night. The crazy kat that had the skills to time it to the music deserves a quality drink. Bravo

Umm, WOW! That's a lot of viewers.

NewTeeVee put together an interesting post about the volume of people consuming information on the web during election night. The numbers are staggering.

Check it out.

Tell me people don't enjoy looking at photos

Some serious numbers of photos being uploaded to a couple social networks. Flickr and Facebook are hosting over 13 BILLION photos.

And that's just two of the several popular social networking sites.

Convergence and an election

Here's a good NYTimes article about how the various platforms of media collided while following the presidential election.

After this is all over –thankfully– it will be interesting to compare the results of the American votes to the investments in the various media platforms used to campaign.

We all know Barack Obama was able to build a media empire with his dozens of sites, YouTube channel, Twitter, Facebook as well as applications within FB and others. McCain did as well, but not nearly to the degree of his rival. Did all of the media platforms and the mainstream media outlets play as much of a role in generating interest in the election as the challenges that our country face?

I guess we'll have to wait and see and give all the talking heads a day or two to find new things to fill all those channels with the next big story.

Experiential multimedia

I'm a skiing nut. So when I was looking at my daily digest of New York Times headlines I noticed a little box highlighting a multimedia piece about how to ski the most treacherous downhill course in World Cup skiing.

The Hahnenkamm in Kitzbühel, Austria, is a torture fest of skill, speed and human limits. In an effort to explain how and what it takes to ski this ice glazed course at 80-plus miles an hour they recruited a former downhiller to be the voice for a multimedia experience.

This is a fantastic way to present information and data about a unique topic. The limitations are falling away in ways to share information and educate. So many more ideas are bouncing around in my brain now. Including wanting to take a couple of runs on the course.

Breaking the rules

Fifty People, One Question: New Orleans from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo.

A fantastic idea that destroys all the limitations of rules in documentary and journalism to create a unique piece. I really want to see the camera setup. A Canon HV-20 with a Nikon 50 f/1.8.

I'm still thinking about what my answer would be.

The dominoes are starting to fall

Once the campaign advertising dollars stop flowing in by the truck-load, the majority coming from the Obama media machine, the advertising dollars will dry up like the lakes east of Los Angeles have.

Let's face it, we're in the midst of a recession. Advertising dollars are the first to go from budgets. Advertising is the rocket fuel for newspapers in print, whereas the ad dollars from the online version resemble the concoction of two-stroke motor oil and unleaded gasoline. You don't see NASA using two-stroke to get the space shuttle into orbit do you?

That recession is going to prevent many from spending too many ad dollars for the holidays, let alone some general advertising. Newspapers are beginning to topple before the election has even come to a close. The first quarter of 2009 is going to look like a scene out of the movie "Saw."

The question becomes: Do we cut off integral parts of the paper in an effort to free it for possible growth online? But if the recent digestion of data is any clue, cutting all the aspects of each newspaper might not work.

The first few dominoes have started to fall, how far will they go?

Making Media work for you

Here's a great story about a guy who found a niché and made his own possibilities with digital media. Entering user-generated ad contests he's nearly made a living out of it. Though he did start off in a rather bleak situation.

It's just another case of finding possibility and capitalizing on it.

InSight America

Magnum photo agency is doing a running project up to the election with some of their top notch photogs. Their objective?

Who are the people of America? What are we thinking? What makes us angry and frustrated? What gives us hope? Are some of us really all blue and some all red? Or are we mostly shades of purple?

What is the American Dream today?

Could be another interesting series to keep an eye on much like Hard Times.

Found via APhotoADay

Four for a Quarter

I was waiting around at the UPS Customer Service center while they dug up a package for me and decided to look through a couple issues of the Smithsonian magazine. I found great photo articles in both of them, but one had a url with more content.

A photographer produced a book based on the photobooth. You know, the ones you used to see in the mall and would get four photos on a strip. There are some great images and a unique notion about how these inexpensive commerce photography sessions recorded very interesting aspects of history. Four frames at a time.

Today, photographic imagery is at nearly every fingertip on a smartphone that the notion a trip to the photobooth could be one of the lone images of a person in existence seems crazy. I only hope that at some point this over abundant digital immersion will drive people back to analog, much like vinyl records are popular again as CD sales plummet.

Got Passion?

Simply put: If You Don't Have Passion - Get Out Da' Kitchen.

That's the title of DigiDave's blog post and it has some great thoughts and links about passion. It's a nice refresher for some of my goals.

Found via Journerdism

Pray for Snow

It's opening day at Arapahoe Basin and Loveland today and all I can think about is fluffy white blankets of joy.

Be sure to watch the hi-def version. The video has a lots of quick transitions that the normal definition looks lame.

Nachtwey's wish is XDRTB.ORG

Watershed moment in the future of American politics?

"We know it's in the millions," he said of the number of e-mails that lawmakers in the House have been receiving. "But we haven't counted yet, because when you're about to get hit by a tidal wave, you don't count the drops of water in the wave."

Seems as though millions of Americans let their voices be heard not only by calling their representatives. They used the fastest communication tool available. E-mail. And the US House wasn't ready for the traffic.

This is the first presidential election cycle that is saturated with the use of online tools and portals. The ease and effectiveness of the Internet in communication will become more and more integrated into our world. Hence, the iPhone and Android phones are the early stages of the evolution towards the mobility and connectivity of our communication world.

A digital stereo camera

Fuji has come up with a two-lensed 3-D camera.

I'm sure the camera is cheap, but the headset player will probably cost a fortune. It'll be interesting to say the least. Maybe someone will be able to hack it and use it for visual storytelling in a new way. Curious...very curious.

Nachtwey's Wish is revealed Oct. 3

I'm curious as hell to see what it is. There's a lot of stories to cover with a $100,000.

Here's the video from last year when he won the award.

Photog that rocks

This is a CNN story about a high school student that created a program for homeless children to have a voice with a camera. Watch the video. She won a huge grant to continue the program and expand it. There's some interesting photos that the children made as well.

This is a great example of the power of photography.

How small do you want to feel?

Scales of the planets to Earth with a cool backbeat.

Is digital photography killing photography?

The advent of inexpensive equipment that allows for even more photographers to produce photography. I paid nearly $4,000 for a Nikon D1H in 2004. I recently picked up a D300 that is nearly 20 times the camera for $1700. And don't forget to add inflation, it would be over $4,700. I remember buying a Nikon N90s film camera for about $1,000 in 1994 and thought it was unreasonable. Boy, was I wrong. The Kodak DCS420 was about $12,000 in 1994. Your cell phone now has twice the resolution the 420 had.

Eventually supply and demand market forces take over and the imagery becomes worth less and less. Add to the dog pile the notion of people willing to give their content away for free so that they can say they have been "published" or in hopes of getting "more business" and you have a recipe for destruction. One more layer to make it truly gloomy? Working photographers struggling to make ends meet in this harsh economy begin to under-cut each other's bids to get work.

All that adds up to an acceleration of inexpensive photography to go with the relatively inexpensive gear.

CNN's iReport and the like go even farther to destroy the notion of a working photojournalist. Why pay for the cow when the milk is free?

Sure, I'm a Flickr user. But I reserve copyright on all my images. Many don't and leave their work open to Creative Commons. Others give their work to Getty in an over-saturated stock photo market.

What's the future of photography? I don't know, but I'm thinking of buying a bunch of silver gelatin paper from Europe since it's fading so fast here in the US, finding a sweet Leica enlarger at a garage sale and preparing for the rebirth of traditional process.

Convergence might as well be retired as a word

Power photographer Vincent Laforet was tasked with putting the new Canon 5D MkII through its paces earlier this month. Well, this video nearly made my soil my pants. The rich visuals and complete command of the lighting are something dreamlike. Then we can talk about the camera and the absolute thrashing of the notion of a DSLR.

Also check out the behind-the-scenes video.

Nikon better react very very fast with an upgrade on the D700 –the D90 was going to be good until Canon did this– or they will be stuck at the back of the pack with Olympus, Sony and Fuji in the digital camera market.

All this being said, I'm still waiting for Scarlet. With the announcement of the 5D MkII it looks like the Scarlet will also be radically different.

All of this rapidly changing technology is just getting rolling. Hold on tight, just like Miss Budweiser it's going to get fast and rough.

Where's the line?

Parents are now social networking their children before they are barely even cognizant of life. Does this further the social interaction of people or does this go too far? Is there a line of no return in our constant sharing and publishing of our lives?

I know that I over broadcast my life at times and am too hyper-connected to various portals of social and digital media. I'm sure some people get sick of some of my pointless Twitter updates which is also connected to my Facebook and FriendFeed. Will all of this computational connecting become shallow and get people to connect in reality again? Social networking has seemingly taken over the web with it's ability to search out those of likemindedness and communicate. I just don't think that it is enough of a replacement for the true social interactions of a true social species.

I guess we'll see, right?

What is Journalism?

Just in case you didn't know how it all worked.

Found via graphicdesignr

A business opportunity in Colorado?

Those Canucks may have figured out a way to use beetle-killed trees for newsprint. Since the price for newsprint is going through the stratosphere, why not figure out a way to go local?

Just need some investment capital to set up a shop in Silverthorne or Dillon and fire up the chainsaw. 

Todd Heisler, Damon Winter and David Scull on photographing the conventions

Talking about covering the political conventions. I always like to hear what was going on outside the view of the viewfinder and behind it. 

Traffic is Growing Fast—but Capacity is Keeping Pace

Some interesting tidbits about the growth of Internet traffic and trends. 

Red is going hunting

Nikon has announced the release of the D90, which is a DSLR with video capability. Well RED has already been turning the motion picture world on its head with his proposed 5K RED Epic camera and now plans on snaring the DSLR world in his spiderweb. 

I may just wait another year to buy any kind of camera.

Wired article on the RED

Wired piece on the 4K RED HD video camera. Convergence progresses...

Sweet, yummy Olympic goodness

A truckload of fun photos from the Olympics. It's always good to see the photographer frames and not the stuff that runs on the printed page or sports section gallery.

Media Needs a Makeover

Rob Haggart reinforces the notion that content is king. Media outlets need to stop chasing those "every once in a while" readers/viewers and capitalize on the readers/viewers that are consuming.

How many times has it been said....

The shapeshifter that is Flash video

NewsVideographer's Angela Grant dug up a goldmine with a gaggle of info pages about converting digital video to Flash video. I'm sure I'll be pouring over the pages in the coming weeks.

Power of Photojournalism to connect the world

Just watch it. Nothing more need be said.

Creative info graphic about men dying

There's a lot of ways to go out there. But the leader is the evil that is cancer. I hate even typing that word.


Found via Popurls on Twitter.

Where can I get one of these?

The Krauts are doing pretty well

It's looking more and more that if you want to work for a newspaper, you might look at going international. Asia's papers are exploding. Europe's papers are gaining more and more traction. South America still gets its info from lady grays.

The last line of this post is striking.

Photography as a weapon

An interesting discussion about the fake Iranian missile launch and other fakes photos.

The power of a visual image is very broad, yet many take it for granted.

The nightmare that is online video compression

Angela Grant over at NewsVideographer posted a week or so ago her settings for compression and was given a few other resources for figuring out what kind of hand grenade to use. I'm hoping we can figure out a better number set to work with the new Scripps player.

J-students shouldn't be too worried

… nearly the same percentage of graduates in 2007 found full-time jobs within six to eight months of graduation as in the previous year, and salaries remained the same.

The stagnant salaries isn't much to rave about, but the notion that graduates are still getting jobs is a good sign. Might be a bad sign for those entrenched old-skool journos though. Having multiple skills is the key to getting a job.

Future browsing experience?

Here's a video clip about a browser in development by the Mozilla folks. There's some interesting notions in there as well as some that will probably be developed faster than the final browser. Scary, yet interesting stuff.

And people wonder why social networking works so well

Microsoft studied their instant messenger users and learned that the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is nearly true. It's 6.6. Can you say LinkedIn? That's basically the premise for that site: Who do your friends know that could get you a job or some business?

Opec 2.0

An interesting column about how the controllers of access to bandwidth could be likened to OPEC's control of oil. Comcast has already been testing tiered bandwidth plans in Canada and Time Warner is testing it on new customers in the southern states.

Who really should control access to the Internet, which is rapidly becoming the primary source of communication for all types of media?

So, how many journos got cut for this?

Despite Gannet cutting and cutting in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms they spend $10 million on an online streaming startup. At least they're doing something more than just cutting and cutting.

Tight limits on War Photographers

A NYTimes story about Iraq War photojournalism coverage. The trend is if a photo is made of injured soldiers or especially those killed in action, the photog is removed from their embed. There's a good gallery of images as well.

Inspirational Photog Interview

Found via MediaStorm

New Media Douchebags

Simplicity from the Muppets

Found via andydickinson.net

Parting Thoughts

The Columbia Journalism Review has set up a place for those that have left or pushed out the door of journalism to reflect. After reading Jim Spencer's piece, I'm looking forward to reading a few more in hopes of finding some solace. Solace in knowing that once I walk out the door of a newspaper in several weeks I'm not alone in feeling like I'm walking away from one of the most important and passionate aspects of my career.

AMEN!! Can this be done last month?

The first notion of reader comments at the bottom of newspaper.com stories I had was it would be a good thing. Maybe people would chime in and figure out a way to solve problems or illuminate other problems. Thus a wiser and stronger community. After watching the constant attacks and childish games in the comments of the Camera, I have to say it's time to pull the plug.

After three comments the story is thrown to the gutter so that only a small number of people scratch, claw and bludgeon each other with poorly chosen words accelerating the downward spiral of humanity. And that's after the really horrific spiteful "comments" are removed by our lone web editor. Once more reason to dump them is not paying someone to babysit the comments.

I guess they didn't learn that lesson from Grandma: "If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all."

Pew's stinky report

"Another diminishing skill set, interestingly, is photographers," the report says. "Overall, 31% of newspapers say they have cut back on photographers in the last three years, vs. 12% that had made net increases. At the biggest papers, this trend is more pronounced, with the majority reporting cutbacks on photographers (52%) and just 6% saying they had made net additions."

The underwhelming conclusion of the report is that as papers cut staff so goes the content. BRILLIANT!! Great idea, make a less desirable product for an already shrinking audience. That'll make all those greedy investors happy. I'm sure of it.

Ok, time to go get a tow truck to remove the tongue from my cheek.

Vanishing Americana

This website predicts that film cameras are at #13 of 25 things that will vanish from America.

At #23 is Newspaper Classifieds

The classifieds thing, I can see. Given some of the scary numbers the last few days from the newspaper industry, a few papers all together will cease to exist. The film camera on the other hand, will shrink and in time become a coveted form of art because of the limited number of people that know how to use film and traditional printing well.

Social Media: What the...

A great slide presentation about what social media is, can be and might become. Pay attention to trends and try to predict for potentials.

Found via Danny Holland

What's after convergence? Mobile Media

1 million iPhones sold over the weekend. I'm planning on picking one up myself in September. Too bad Apple went with AT&T, but I can't wait until 2011 for the market to open up. The media landscape will be vastly different by that time.

Interactive Narratives

The site has been re-launched with a new design and easier ways to search for content. Haven't had a chance to peruse too much, but will be a good source to find good ideas to borrow and use.

Video-journalism site funded by donations

Don't know if it will work or not, but hell it's worth a shot. Especially if they are doing coverage of very important issues that people "need" and "want" to be informed about. Time will tell.

Disney and the interactive Blu-ray

Looks like Disney is seeing an opportunity to be innovative with some technology to use the Internet with Blu-ray DVDs. Further evidence of the impending convergence. I like the line from Mr. Chapek – “We don’t rely on the consumer to have our vision for us.”

Open letter to Craigslist

Some good ideas in this one asking Craigslist to help keep local professional journalism alive. We can only hope that Craig and Jim actually read it.

Foreshadowing your own demise

A designer at the Mercury News shot a series of carnage photos after a few rounds of layofffs at the paper and posted them on Flickr. Everyone found solace and some humor in the midst of all the chaos. Well, the ax felled his job as well.

This made me throw up a little in my mouth

Alan Mutter figures the companies have lost a cumulative $49.7 billion in market capitalization in 3 1/2 years, vaporizing 51% of shareholder value since Dec. 31. 2004.

Found via Romenesko

Why doesn't this guy live here?!

A group of private investors is still very interested in buying the Baltimore Sun, adding that they would take less of a profit and –GET THIS!!!– invest in newsgathering.

Sweet Jesus! What a concept! Maybe there are a few people smart enough to make some newspapers work. God knows that most of the clowns running around buying up everything on a maxed out credit card are not doing the worker bees any favors.

The dying Two-Newspaper-Town

A business columnist at the Rocky Mountain News talks about how the News gets a bad rap concerning circulation numbers in Denver and that the landscape of the biz will not allow for the JOA papers to continue.

MediaNews is in the hurt locker with the collection agencies (financial backers that are already reeling from the housing debacle) as we speak. The completion of the Scripps split is final but there is not nearly the debt burden if any at all for the newspaper side. So the notion that The Denver Post will outlive the News could be a losing bet.

Sue happy in the US, but funny

A former journalist turned lawyer is suing the newspaper he subscribed to because the layoffs and cutbacks will create an inferior product and he would not have renewed his subscription if that had been disclosed.

Go get 'em!!

Found via Fading to Black