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.