A Jumble of Journalism Links - 4.11.11

A Jumble of Journalism Links - What I’ve Been Reading

Net Impact: One man’s cyber-crusade against Russian corruption: This is literary and journalism: Late on a snowy evening, Alexey Navalny, a lawyer and blogger known for his crusade against the corruption that pervades Russian business and government, sat in a radio studio in Moscow. Tall and blond, Navalny, who is thirty-four years old, cuts a striking figure, and in the past three years he has established himself as a kind of Russian Julian Assange or Lincoln Steffens. On his blog, he has uncovered criminal self-dealing in major Russian oil companies, banks, and government ministries, an activity he calls “poking them with a sharp stick.” Three months ago, he launched another site, RosPil, dedicated to exposing state corruption, where he invites readers to scrutinize public documents for evidence of malfeasance and post their findings. Since the site went up, government contracts worth nearly seven million dollars have been annulled after being found suspect by Navalny and his army. Most remarkably, Navalny has undertaken all this in a country where a number of reporters and lawyers investigating such matters have been beaten or murdered.

The Casbah Coalition: Tunisia’s second revolution: About the popular revolution which forced the Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and then Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi from power. Discusses the use of Facebook and other social media by the protesters.

The Artist Behind This Week's Heartbreaking New Yorker Japan Cover Explains How It Came About http://t.co/ciZ5KEf

Five myths about the future of journalism: There are few things journalists like to discuss more than, well, themselves and the long-term prospects for their industry. How long will print newspapers survive? Are news aggregation sites the future? Or are online paywalls — such as the one the New York Times just launched — the way to go? As media organizations plot their future, it’s worth discarding some misconceptions about what it will take to keep the press from becoming yesterday’s news.

raptorresource's live broadcast. The Raptor Resource Project brings you the Decorah Eagles from atop their tree at the fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa. The live video feed is streamed online 24/7. At night an infrared light provides night vision to viewers through the cam. Infrared light is not visible to eagles, they do not see it or know it is there. Nothing to read here. Just enjoy.

Daytona Beach paper rewards journalists for selling ads, subscriptions – a bridge too far.

A Jumble of Journalism Links 4.4.11

What I’ve Been Reading

Google has begun publishing – online of course – a digital magazine called Think Quarterly http://thinkquarterly.co.uk/. The first issue deals with data – of course.

Mashable has a brief review of the mag.

Another fine example of how high school students are being trained in becoming good citizens of an authoritarian regime.

The Gulf War: Were there any heroes in the BP oil disaster? is a longish story in The New Yorker about the blow-by-blow of the BP spill, but its subtext is the media and the way it frames and reports on such disasters.

The NY Times Paywall Goes Up. When Is It Immoral to Go Around It? http://shar.es/3Mfrx

Interesting entreprejournalism interview here: How To Start Your Own Local News Site.

A database revealing where nonprofit news sites get their money http://bit.ly/2ix7r

Speaking of funding journalism, The Washington Post on NBC and the missing story about parent company General Electric not paying taxes on billions in earnings.

Speaking of funding journalism: Story on the Top 10 Dying Industries - newspaper industry no. 3

A Jumble of Journalism Links 3-26-11

A Jumble of Journalism Links - What I’ve Been Reading

A lesson for the folks out there who ignore the importance of grammar – in this case the comma: http://t.co/IG0y0u9

So, an Orlando editor tells me that we should be training “content originators” who can think critically about issues and then report and write them. The next day this pops up on NYT: Washington’s New Brat Pack Masters Media about young bloggers have become part of the journalistic establishment in Washington, and destination reading for the city’s power elite.

Related to the above, “Journalism as a whole — and media as a whole — are moving to a growing reliance on freelancers,” says Rob Steiner, director of the journalism lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, Freelancers Needed More Than Ever – How Schools Can Prepare Them. Here, I would argue, we should make a distinction between “content originators” of real journalism and the growing demand for a new class of low-paid serfs to feed the superficial, SEO-driven content farms.

Speaking of content origination, recently viewed a presentation of the Asbury (New Jersey) Park Press’s DataUniverse, a portal to public government data in which the paper has assembled links to property records and taxes, government payrolls, school performance report cards, crime reports and conviction records, and much more. Apparently, some of these links get millions of page views.

Bill Keller is at it again defending the NYT mode of journalism in a disruptive age. I agree with him up to a point, but the world is changing under our feet: Traditional News Outlets — Living Among the Guerrillas. For example, how would the NYT handle a story like Why Cut Subsidies to Multinational Corporations When You Can Cut Food Stamps Instead?

Recently viewed this C-SPAN 1989 talk by the father of PR, Edward Bernays. Especially interesting is how he used the media to puncture the rumor that President Coolidge was “weaned on a pickle” – meaning he was humorless – (begins at about 7 minutes) and his discussion about promoting consuming more bacon for breakfast and smoking among women (begins about 20 minutes).

The Institute for Advertising Ethics published their Principles and Practices for Advertising Ethics. Enough said.