Employers A-Twittering?

I know class is almost over, but I came across this and couldn't pass up a post. Prof. Eisman has been urging us to try out Twitter (for the record, I tried it and am not sold). But Loren Heiny, a programmer and blogger at Incremental Blogger, published an interesting post today. We're all well aware that we are "Google-able" and that prospective employers will probably run our name through the search engine and pay careful attention to what it spits out. We're also very conscious as college students of what we put up on our FaceBook profiles. But Heiny warns that Twitter may be the next measurement for employers to keep tabs on their future employees.

He says, "Read through their tweets to see what they talk about. Is it all about drinking and partying or playing golf or some other leisure activity? Or is there talk about industry trends and news. The latter is more compelling. What’s the demeanor? Is it matter of fact? Confrontational?"

He also says that looking at the ratio of followers to who a Twitter user is following is telling, as well as how often they use Twitter: "How often does the person tweet? Once, ever? Once a day or so? Dozens of times a day? I’m not sure what the frequency of tweeting says, other than the person’s acceptance of the Twitter concept. A more important measure, might be how often other people respond to what the person says or asks."

Personally, I think that there are simply not enough young users on Twitter for this to become as standard as "Googleing" or "Facebooking" someone to find out about their life outside of their resume. I do, however, think that it is interesting to use a status message application to check up on someone; usually profiles posted on sites like MySpace or FaceBook are the standard way to look into a future employee. But think about it: how many of you would feel comfortable with your employer checking your AIM or Gchat away message regularly? Twitter is basically the same thing, only it keeps records of your previous away messages. So, if you have an "out partying" status message on Thursday night, your boss can see it on your Twitter and will know why you're so groggy on Friday morning.

If it is true that Twitter is on its way to becoming another way to check up on future employees, I think that this will further prevent younger users from jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.

Superjournalist Chef Liveblog

For all of you who could join and watch this, I hope this is entertaining and makes you hungry for tomorrow morning. I'm not going to tell you what I am cooking because it is a surprise, however you may be able to guess because I will be talking about my cooking process and what is generally going on in my kitchen.

In the interests of transparency I premade one of the batters I'll be working with and making into...something....

Enjoy, please feel free to comment on the liveblog.

Web attacks are not "free speech"

Apparently Chinese hackers believed that the best way to protest U.S Media coverage of the Chinese crackdown in Tibet was to conduct a cyber attack on the CNN.com Web site.

The attack was planned by hackers online, at a forum Web site called hackcnn.com for April 19th. However, Yahoo news reported that one of the main organizers of the attack backed down at the last minute. Still, according to the article, many other hacker went ahead anyway.

Unidentified hackers used botnet style attacks to attack the CNN Web site, Yahoo News said. A botnet attack utilizes a network of computers to run various Trojan horses, malware and spyware programs. Computer users are generally unaware that bots are running on their computers because the bots are usually well hidden.

According to the Shadowserver Foundation, a non-profit website that tracks botnet activity on the web, educational networks, corporate networks and even military networks have been used to run botnets. Botnets can be used by hackers to attack websites by overloading them with alot of data packets and requests. This simulates Web site traffic and can overload the servers running a Web site. This is called a blunt force attack and is common on the internet. One of the most notorious examples of this was last summers cyber attack on the Estonian internet.

In the case of CNN, Yahoo News reported that hackers managed to slow down CNN's Web site by two tenths of a second. According to the article CNN's network management team responded to the attack by temporarily blocking off some site traffic from Asia-Pacific region from reaching their website.

The interesting part of all this is that the Chinese hackers were doing this as a form of political protest. In the United States political protests are legally covered under the 1st amendment and the right to free speech. However, hacking and taking down a website violates several major international laws, and in and of itself is far more of an impediment to free speech than it is a political protest because it disables the internet, which is a forum for free speech.

While internet regulation laws and rules are still being written and debated worldwide a good way to view this attack is through the lens of how radio first began in the United States. At the turn of the 20th century as radio expanded, it was an unregulated bonaza of sorts. The FCC did not exist and neither did the idea of spectrum scarcity, which is the basic legal concept for why the government can regulate the airwaves. Spectrum scarcity means that there is a limited, finite, amount of airwave space over which radio transmission can occur, thus it has to be regulated so it is audible for the public.

In 1920's America when anyone could set up a radio station, there were many instances where mom and pop radio stations overlapped and caused most radios, especially in cities, to just pick up static--rendering the airwaves useless. The U.S. government stepped in and formed the FCC, which leases portions of the spectrum.

Today, the internet is growing in a similar, albeit different way. This attack on CNN represents a parrallel to the early days of radio in that if in 1920 you didn't like what someone was broadcasting you simply could boost signal power and mess with their station. Similarly hackers did this to CNN.

With any regulation of the internet and further policing by the government would come concerns for media outlets, like CNN, that operate large internet sites. It is an interesting and facsinating problem that is going to be battled out in court rooms around the world during the next few decades.


As for the Chinese hackers, trying writing some blogposts next time--that's how we do things in America, the capital of the freeworld. Last time I checked China was, and still is, a country run by an authoritarian government. Maybe you should be hacking your governments servers as a protest as opposed to those of the free world--it might be a wiser use of your time and a more effective protest.

iReport.com: making journalism degrees useless?

Most have you have probably already seen this, as I realize that four months is an eternity in the world of converged media, but earlier this year CNN launched their iReport.com site. It's the journalistic equivalent of YouTube, where users can upload their own clips and articles about anything they want to -- provided that, in theory, it's journalistically sound.

MediaWeek ran an interesting article in February about the launch of the site. The article notes that iReports have become increasingly popular, and reminds readers that coverage of recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings and last year's wildfires in California came largely from user-generated video sent to newsrooms.

A particularly interesting feature of the site is the navigation bar including categories of iReports: latest, highest rated, most viewed, most shared, on CNN, and newsiest. Not only do users who upload news items have their work in the online community for feedback, but CNN.com actually uses some articles on their site and tags the ones that have been lifted from iReport.

iReport's "About" page starts off with an important caveat: "The views and content on this site are solely those of the iReport.com contributors. CNN makes no guarantees about the content or the coverage on iReport.com!" Notably, none of the content on the site is pre-screened. Everything is published until fellow users flag questionable content for review.

Articles under the "Highest Rated" tab generally do have genuine news content, with the top story being a photo gallery covering the Olympic torch protests. But then you also get stories like this one under the "Most Viewed" tab, about a husband's (kind of mean) April Fools joke on his wife.

User-generated content sites always have a range of uploaded content, from the interesting and germane to the downright out there. But what happens when you call all of those uploads news?

Have any of you submitted user-generated news content to this or another Web site? What do you think about this means of engaging readership, making them authors as well as users? There are obvious ramifications for what it means to be a journalist -- iReport's only standard is that users be at least 13 years old to upload content on the site. (Which makes me feel just great about that expensive diploma I'll be getting in a month.)

It seems to me that iReport may have a useful purpose for niche news -- it is a good place to see what the major networks aren't covering. Much like YouTube, where users often go to find videos that are not accessible elsewhere, iReport can be a good source for off-the-beaten-path news coverage. And this, seemingly is what CNN is capitalizing on.

Apparently blogging is the New Big Thing in the publishing world. I'm working with my literary agent in NYC on a proposal for a new book I'm writing--a relationship memoir written in a humorous style. The proposal is written and pretty much ready to go out to editors, but now my agent has told me that I'll need to create (1) a Web site for the book and (2) a blog as part of the book's promotional campaign because, well, every new author is expected to have a book Web site and a blog. I'm not altogether sure how I feel about this. I don't really mind creating the Web site or blogging. But I'm having some feelings of resentment toward the Powers That Be in the publishing world in that I think they're dumping more and more of the responsibilities for promoting/publicizing a book onto the author. They now expect the author to create a Web site for his/her book and to devote the time to blogging--before they even agree to publish the book! So there's really less and less value being placed on the quality of the writing of the book and more and more value placed on the author's willingness to pay to have a site designed and to spend the time and energy to blog. Is that fair?

Blogging about Blogs

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban seems to be right on top of industry changes as far as convergent media is concerned. In his blog, he touches on YouTube, internet video, and most appropriate for this class exercise, blogging. A recent post, "Bloggers in the Locker Room: It's the Pros vs the Joes", was sent to my Sports Journalism class by Professor Don Markus. The post talks about the NBA's recent lift on banning bloggers in the locker room. As Cuban says, "I can't wait to see the results."

Though Cuban sarcastically likens the role of online bloggers to "the internet equivalent of Talk Soup or VH1's "Best..." series," he introduces an interesting (if tongue-in-cheek) idea. Cuban had previously banned bloggers from his locker rooms, but the NBA lifted the ban. (Check out this ESPN article discussing why this was a bad move on Cuban's part.) Reacting to this, Cuban says that he doesn't care of you're a blogger that works for a major company -- of if you're in 8th grade. If you're blog is substantial, he'll send you press credentials to a Mav's game.

While sports blogging may be a different beast entirely from political and news blogging, the challenge of getting access to events has plagued bloggers. Do you think that the NBA's lift on the blogging ban will have an effect on blogger-journalists outside of sports? How difficult should it be for bloggers to get press credentials, and how should organizations decide to grant credentials to bloggers?

Navigating the networks

The BBC just posted some pretty extensive guidelines for its staff related to personal use of social networking sites.

Most of the rules are pretty straight forward (don’t leave mean comments, don’t bash BBC), but still worth checking out as most of us are going to have to wrestle with these issues.

A few things I find interesting about the new rules:

*The BBC facebook-stalked its staff and found that 8 percent of the 11,899 with an account identify themselves on their profiles as politically liberal.

*Editorial staff have to get permission before joining any political group on a social networking site. If joining a partisan group is necessary to story research, they recommend joining groups for both sides of the issue and remaining transparent about your purpose.

*When it comes to BBC-related entries on sites like Wikipedia, staffers are encouraged to be transparent. The guidelines read, “We should never remove criticism of the BBC. Instead, we should respond to legitimate criticism.”

*I think what strikes me most is the tone of the rules. There isn't a lot of "never do this or you'll lose your job" in the guidelines, but rather an invitation for openness and dialogue between editors and their staff.

If you read the guidelines, what stuck out most to you? I know we touched on this in an earlier entry, but do you think should media organizations be rigid in their rules about social networking?

News All The Time: Are We Missing Something?

When I first found out about the live-blogging assignment, I was a bit skeptical. Obviously, live-blogging an American Forum is just a way to practice this type of news gathering; rarely are those forums that leave-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat intense. Live-blogging is not for every news event, but after actually doing it, I realized even more of its shortcomings.

When the forum first started, I began typing away as if I were just taking notes, but then found myself trying to type full sentences. As I went back to make sure the sentences actually made sense, I noticed how much information I was missing in the meantime. Not every bit of information was necessary to get down, of course, but I realized just how much I was missing by trying to write in complete sentences rather than in my strange shorthand that no one else can understand. I was missing good quotes left and right, and I couldn't truly appreciate Chuck Lewis' mild-mannered sparring with Roger Aronoff over the difference between making "false statements" and telling "lies" in reference to the Bush administration. I could insert enough of my own perceptions about the mood of the panel, but trying to get everything down in real time took away from the depth with which how I normally cover events.

It's important to update to the Web as often as possible as a news organization in this competitive business, for sure. I do, however, think there is something to be said for taking the extra few minutes to make sure that the information you jotted down is correct factually and orthographically. You can live blog a Clinton-Obama debate and be the first to comment on a funny face Hillary made or an angry tone voiced by Obama, but when journalism becomes too much of a competition to catch a newsy sound bite first, a lot more can be lost in the news gathering process. Michael Massing, one of the panelists, even made a comment about live blogging and how bloggers are more prone to miss details and get facts incorrect because of the time demand on them. I don't think he realized how close to home he was hitting, considering about half of his audience was doing just that.

It is only natural that journalism moves toward the Web as technology advances, as this class has taught us so far. However, I think it's paramount that everyone who is even considering becoming a journalist thinks about the inherent pros and cons of a 24-hour news cycle while starting out his or her career. Breaking news is something every journalist has to deal with, but the basic principles of seeking the truth and reporting it should not be completely overshadowed by the race to be first.

"Five Years of Media Tears" by Patricio Chile

The American Forum on Tuesday prompted me to reflect on how crucial the media’s role has been during the Iraq war. It is interesting to note that at the same time the war began in 2003 and developed since then, the world of journalism has been engaged in its own war.

This conflict in the media industry is a civil war, a divisive conflict with an often-awkward reconciliation between traditional print and broadcast journalism and the innovations of online reporting through blogs and other user-generated content. The battleground is a question: what is true journalism? The conflict raised questions as to whether the mainstream media covered the conditions leading to the war acccurately. The mainstream media and user-generated online media have also been tested during the conflict as to how well they can cover the situation in Iraq. Some have criticized too much reporting on the negative aspects of the conflict and others have said the media focuses too little on the downside of the war.

We all know that bloggers and user-generated content have added an additional element to the reporting of news: the average citizen. A practice no longer confined to radio programs, news channels like CNN now demand that viewers send in their opinions, photos and videos of news events. YouTube users have even acted as moderators on the 2008 presidential debate. Though the opinions of citizens can hardly be seen as true journalism, public involvement does well to point out inadequacies in political and media practices. As one of the panelists said at the forum, the 24-hour news cycle has stripped professional journalists of the ability to reflect on their content adequately. However, the blogosphere has picked up on their mistakes and has provided feedback on their coverage.

Bloggers have more freedom since they aren’t constrained by the formal rules journalists have to follow when it comes to getting sources and such. They are also not constrained by the pressure of having to sell their content to mass amounts of people. As Michael Massing, the journalist and the author of “Now They Tell Us,” said at the forum: “There’s a culture in which independent thinking is not accepted.” Thus, the online world offers the courage and freedom to not only express one’s opinion but to present facts that would normally be deemed controversial or against the status quo. It is this growing opportunity for dissent that is driving the changes in the world of journalism.

The panelists were asked during the forum whether they thought future conflicts would be questioned better, now that we’ve seen the consequences of limited reporting before Iraq. Post staff writer Michael Dobbs said anyone who thought the media was perfect was “foolish”. This is especially true today as news companies downsize and the public turns to the internet more. Most panelists agreed that big change should not be expected. However, I think that as citizens maintain their own 24-hour watch on the media and politics, there may be less room for politicians and journalists to make mistakes. Former Va. Sen. Governor George Allen’s “macaca” incident is proof of this. The other side of the issue is whether this new media source can be reliable with the information it distributes. Fact checking is and always will be a necessary practice. With almost 4,000 soldiers dead and many wounded in Iraq, we can certainly hope that this new watchdog remains reliable and vigilant.

SOMETHING FUN: BarelyPolitical.com, the Web site responsible for Obama girl, satires news, politics, and the mainstream media. Their provocative take on the internet as a source of news is shown in this ad for their site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FnHqN0DN8A

A LiveBlog of John Foster at AU, Graphic Designer from Fuszion Collaborative

AU Goes Dancing!

The wait is finally over for alumni, students, and friends of American University basketball.

After nearly 41 years in Division I athletics, the American University Eagles are going to the big dance for the first time, after defeating the Colgate Red Raiders 52-46 in the finals of the Patriot League Tournament Friday.

If you were not able to make it to the big game, you can catch up on all the action you missed by clicking on the below links, which not only provide some great details about today's win, but also demonstrate how the media has come to represent AU in a variety of different ways including video highlights of the game, news stories about the team, photos from the game, and blogs detailing players and coaches reactions.

Once again GO EAGLES!

• USA TODAY
• ESPN
• Washington Post
• Fox 5 Story and Video
• ABC 7 Story and Video
• Hoop Time- Blog of Patriot League Basketball
  

CNN.com's primary failure

(Screen shot of my laptop at 8:05pm)

Spot the journalistic faux pas: On the night of four crucial primaries, CNN offered its most prominent right-panel advertisement space to Obama for America, the Illinois Democratic candidate's Web site. And, as expected, clicking on it redirected the reader to BarackObama.com, where he or she could learn more about -- or donate to -- his presidential campaign.

I’m not going to insinuate the existence of a pro-Obama media bias; as much as I believe the media has unfairly covered this election, speculative finger-pointing won’t encourage the likes of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to act more responsibly. Instead, I’m more concerned with CNN’s decision to include political ads on their Web site during such an important night in the primary season. To be sure, the ads rotate – out of sheer curiosity, I refreshed the page at least 10 times and never saw the image again – but the principles CNN violated are obvious: Even if a news organization (or, business) is overwhelmingly cash-strapped, editors ought to avoid ads that disrupt even the notion of objectivity. To do otherwise is to create undue suspicion, the prevalence of which damages any article or publication's credibility or reputation in the long term.

Granted, print media have a history of publishing politically motivated ads; MoveOn.org’s press campaign last year, for example, blatantly attacked Republicans’ Iraq war policy and ignited a firestorm of criticism. Nor was it the exception to the rule: The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007 that political advertisements in print tripled since 2000.

But while it’s difficult to gauge whether these ads affected readers’ votes, it’s easy to understand the reason for their heightened popularity. As seemingly everyone in the industry would agree, funding mass media's news enterprises is by no means an easy task. Newspaper readership seems to be declining as more readers embrace the Web, a medium with so much uncharted territory that advertising is a murky business at best, and the result has been an unpredictable and tumultuous economic climate that many news organizations have struggled to navigate.

In the search to break even, political ads are one way to fill the void. As The Washington Post reported during the 2004 election, some news Web sites were in fact courting political ads “in an attempt to earn a slice of the $1.25 billion expected to be spent on political advertising [in 2004].” And while we're obviously months away from possessing final numbers on 2008 political advertisements, we can say with certainty that newspapers and Web sites coveted every bit of the revenue they've received (or, at the very least, that CNN's does). Where else can they find such a steady source of funding?

Problematically, this perceived breach of objectivity carries with it an ironic twist. The Post article continues:

“Political ads on the Internet are not governed by the same rules that apply to radio and television, leaving news sites free to run ads without having to disclose who paid for them. Sites also are under no obligation to provide equal time to candidates or offer campaigns the lowest available advertising rates.”

Granted, there are a variety of reasons for this double-standard, ones that range from a Web page's space limitations or, coincidentally, the Web's lack of space limitations (to the extent that users can seek alternative viewpoints ad nauseam, in ways that TV and radio pioneers could not have fathomed). But while technology has changed the way that journalists disseminate political information, it has not revised the rules of engagement. The code still reads, "In the war between a publication's editorial and business offices, the prior never loses to the latter." Journalists thus recover lost profits through accurate, fair and balanced reporting -- which, to excuse my flowery prose, is both far less tangible and far more beneficial than any financial motivation.

But therein lies the struggle; it is impossible to encourage investigative reporting without sound financial backing; to that degree, maybe all of this concern over political advertisements is merely an exaggeration, and perhaps the CNN-Obama ad is truly benign. But if print is slowly dying (creating a revenue crisis) and the Web needs advertisers' attention to sufficiently develop (creating a revenue demand), political ads of this kind are probably here to say. The journalistic faux pas is slowly becoming fashionable, and what it means for political journalism largely remains unclear.

Newseum, hear us roar!

PHOTO COURTESY PRANKS.COM and MARGARET ENGEL

So the Washington Post an architectural review of what is sure to be the biggest thing in D.C. this year, save for the 2008 campaign. The Newseum opens here on April 11, but they let Post architectural critic Phillip Kennicot in for a sneak peak, as some Post photographers snapped away.

The resulting slideshow of images gives prospect visitors an inside look at a project that has been highly anticipated (but one that has been many years in the making.) It's not the building itself that has so many of us so excited, however. It's a museum, for all of us media dorks, celebrating the news.

While admission is going to cost a whopping 20 BUCKS (except for opening day April 11, when everyone is welcome for free), it's going to be well worth it. The 7-level structure features, 14 galleries, 15 theaters, two broadcast studios, a 4-d time-travel experience (whatever the heck that means!), one Wolfgang Puck luxury restaurant and a huge new complex of apartments. Just take a look at the Newseum's own virtual tour. It's awesome!

At 250,000 square feet, Newseum is sure to impress. They have 35,000 historic magazines and newspapers in their collection. Famous for their database of daily newspaper front pages online everyday, Newseum will display 35 papers' front pages in sidewalk displays. All of this and whole lot more to the tune of $450 million.

Now, I'm not sure about this $20 admission thing (there is no student rate) but the idea is there. Newseum is a wonderfully interesting and useful online tool, so seeing it in person is bound to something short of euphoric. Don't think for a second that I won't be the first in line for Opening Day on April 11. Besides, some of ABC's Good Morning America will be filming there that day. And I love me my Diane Sawyer.

Making Customized Google Maps

Newspapers have been using Google Maps as one way to do alternative story telling. And now aspiring superjournalists can practice at home with geoXtract.

I found this program through a post in mediabistro or journerdism or something like that, but I have been playing around with it for about a week now, and it is kind of interesting. I just made a map of my spring break road trip, but it was a good way to get a feel for the program.

Basically you input in Excel Spreadsheet with the addresses you want to plot and any additional information that you want to pop up when someone scrolls over the marker on the map. The program uses this information to "geocode" the address, and--bata-bing, bata-boom--it spits out a Google Map at the end with your map points plotted on it.

Ok, it isn't actually that easy. It took me some fiddling to get my spread sheet into the right format that it could read, but it does make a pretty cool map.

The free version does not have a lot of features. For example, as far as I can tell you can only use one type of marker for all the points on the map, so you can't use a gas station marker and a restaurant marker for different locations.

Let me know if you try it out, and you figure out anything cool to do with it.

How does it pay to be a $uperjournalist?

PHOTO COURTESY OF: TRACY OLSON
An informal survey conducted by Will Sullivan of Journerdism in October 2007 examined the pay rates of online journalists. Sullivan’s survey produced 72 responses from online editors, directors and photographers/videographers in the U.S., and even in Asia, the United Kingdom and South America.

While I am generally not interested in the money aspect of my career, three years as a meager college student has opened up many adult realities, mostly involving the importance of a steady income. Moreover, I know we all desire to be successful and aspire to be someone important. There will most likely be times when we turn to our given salary as a convenient measure of our worth.

Sullivan believes online journalists earn a mode salary of about $45,000, about $3,000-$5,000 more in salary compared to those in print, all depending on the cost of living. That’s somewhat comforting, and may or may not be surprising for some of us.

What’s most interesting about Sullivan’s survey, however, is that online producers (those who program and design online multimedia) can often make $5,000-$15,000 less than online editors (those who oversee web teams and the market).

It seems the journalism industry (like all others, I suppose), is more about those in executive positions than it is about those who work just as hard, if not harder. The convergent online news industry is still evolving with more skills required of journalists, but their salaries don’t seem to be following along the same lines. In the case of Sullivan’s survey, salaries may prove to be an inadequate and quite arbitrary indicator of some journalists’ efforts.

That’s trifling. Online producers, who have skills in HTML/CSS, Flash, video, audio, photography, graphic design and everything else interactive, seem like they should earn more for their relatively rare skills. It certainly takes a lot more than “wearing a tie,” as Sullivan wrote, to do the things they do. (I have learned to appreciate really impressive interactive packages now, such as this one from The Dallas Morning News. How many of us can design and program something like that? I guess, in the future, maybe all of us).

Online editors no doubt have a demanding and important role in presenting news, and seriously, more power to them. But I hope that the Journerdism survey is somewhat misrepresented and that producers really do earn what they deserve for whatever skills they bring to their organization.

Does anyone currently know people in the industry who might be able to add more to this? What are your thoughts?

For those of us who will have some job in online news media, it shouldn’t matter how much you ultimately make, of course. Money isn’t as important to me as the creative value of the job itself. Still, Sullivan’s survey has taught me, at the very least, to find a job in the industry where we can be appreciated for what we can bring to the table (and quite frankly, our computer).

Was The New York Times ready to run McCain story?

All: This should get your journalistic hearts racing ... Read this New Republic piece on behind-the-scenes at the Times as the McCain story was reported, held, and published. Share your thoughts below ... (It isn't exactly a Web discussion, but the article did show up on the Web the night before ...) Here it is. Professor Eisman

Should journalists have personal blogs?

Here's a hot topic we've been debating in class. What do you think? Professor Eisman

Newspapers turn to ... YouTube

You might find this interesting ... newspapers are turning to YouTube to attract readers, according to this piece in OJR. Thoughts?
Professor Eisman

Welcome

Welcome students to your class blog. Here's where we will dissect new media, new media jobs and the changing world of digital journalism. Dive in!
Professor Eisman