Author Archive
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The News Frontier
Inside the Haiti Earthquake: a Simulation
November 11, 2010 03:50 PMAfter I wrote about the Toronto Star’s excellent multimedia coverage of the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath, I was alerted to another Canadian organization's impressive interactive project on the same topic. “Inside the Haiti Earthquake” is a first-person... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
IWMF Grant for Women in Digital Media
November 11, 2010 01:30 PMThe International Women’s Media Foundation is awarding three grants of $20,000 each to female journalists “who aspire to be new media entrepreneurs” in the “global digital media frontier,” according to the IWMF website. The grants will go... Continue reading
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Darts and Laurels
Darts and Laurels
November 11, 2010 08:00 AMIn 2008, L.A. Weekly reporter Christine Pelisek learned that the Los Angeles Police Department had recently dedicated a secret task force to investigate the connection between several unsolved murders in the city from 2002 and 2007 and a number... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Amid Industry Turmoil, “The New Journalism Ecosystem” Thrives
November 10, 2010 05:35 PMInvestigative Reporting Workshop founder Charles Lewis offers a few sobering—though unfortunately unsurprising—PEJ statistics in the introduction to his latest report about the “new journalism ecosystem.” For example, from 1980 to 2005, the number of newspaper reporters covering... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Some Stories are “Un-Webbable”
November 10, 2010 01:00 PMThe Hearst Foundation and Columbia University’s J-School Digital Media Program hosted its annual panel on Tuesday night, entitled “The Changing Media Landscape.” Panelists from Reuters, The Washington Post, Mashable, Tumblr, and Impremedia discussed changes in the business: social... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Virtual Haiti
November 9, 2010 03:10 PMThe earthquake that rocked Haiti in January leveled its capital, killed at least 230,000 people, and made another million homeless. Almost one year later, with so much of the country still damaged, how do news sites continue to... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
“Help, I Don’t Understand”
November 9, 2010 12:25 PMBob Woodward plays the straight man himself to Ben Bradlee’s zany future-thinking exec in this new Washington Post video for its iPad app. I really want to believe this is what goes on in the Post newsroom. And that Woodward... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Local Ad Networks Bring Home the Bacon
November 8, 2010 11:45 AMWhen Washington, D.C. local news site TBD.com launched in August, it got a fair amount of attention for the blog network with which it shares content and, potentially, advertising. When it launched, the TBD network had about <a... Continue reading
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The Kicker
The News That Wasn’t
November 8, 2010 10:50 AMFans of the late William Safire know that before he was a the New York Times Magazine “On Language” columnist, he was a speechwriter for President Nixon. On Friday, the blog Letters of Note unearthed the speech from... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Olbermann Isn’t Alone
November 5, 2010 03:30 PMCountdown host Keith Olbermann has just been indefinitely suspended for donating money to three Democratic campaigns, and thereby violating MSNBC policy. MSNBC president Phil Griffin says he learned of the contributions last night; it was first reported by... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Yahoo’s Ask America Infographic
November 5, 2010 01:45 PMIn anticipation of the midterm elections, Yahoo created an interactive project called Ask America, part of which is the “Issues Wheel,” a method of measuring popular opinion on key political issues. “LEARN. LISTEN. BE HEARD,” declares the home... Continue reading
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The Kicker
BBC Journalists’ Strike is On
November 5, 2010 11:55 AMOur colleagues across the pond have initiated a two-day strike over pension benefits, the AP reports. Some radio and TV programs are operating on skeleton crews, and others have been cancelled altogether: the revised schedule is on the... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Hey Bernanke, Say It Again in English
November 4, 2010 04:00 PMWhen Slate’s Jeremy Singer-Vine debuted the “Plain English” tool on Slate Labs, I was curious to see how people would take advantage of it. It’s a program that translates meaningless jargon into, well, plain English. It’s kind of... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Interactivity on a Budget
November 4, 2010 11:55 AMEarlier this week I did a quick rundown of some eye-catching interactive graphics that newsrooms at papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal rolled out for Election Day. It would be unfair, though, to... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Election Day Tools, Maps, and Graphics
November 2, 2010 02:15 PMElection Day is an occasion for high drama on the Internet: data coming in all day and night, polls, pundits, analysis, voting booth mishap stories, Twitterers typing away until the dreaded “over capacity” whale appears. It’s also the perfect occasion... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Don’t Forget the Facts About NPR Funding
October 28, 2010 11:42 AMJuan William’s abrupt firing from NPR and hiring by Fox News seems to have kicked up an old debate over whether public radio should still receive federal funding. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has funded public radio since... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Visualizing the Iraq War Logs
October 27, 2010 12:55 PMWhen WikiLeaks gave seven news organizations access to 400,000 previously classified military documents pertaining to the Iraq war, one of many challenges that those organizations faced was how, if possible, to try to visually depict some of the... Continue reading
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The Kicker
CNN Stoops to Tabloid Nonsense in Assange Interview
October 25, 2010 03:53 PMCNN reporter Atika Shubert sat down for an interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this weekend, and it did not go well. Shubert hounded him on inane topics like interpersonal conflicts at his company and legal troubles in Sweden, until... Continue reading
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The Kicker
U.S. Corporate Interest and the Chamber of Secrets
October 22, 2010 03:45 PMThe New York Times has a front page story today about some sizable corporate donations to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for the Chamber’s national ad campaign to weaken federal regulation of businesses. Laura McGann at... Continue reading
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The Kicker
What to Do When Commenters Attack?
October 22, 2010 02:03 PMOn the occasion of the Portland Press Herald debacle (about which more here), Poynter’s Damon Kiesow has a great roundup of various strategies that news sites are testing to deal with chaotic comment sections.... Continue reading
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