I just got finished reading the rewrites of your final projects, and I want to tell you how impressed I am. Every one of them was good; some are exceptional. I hope you’ll take some time during the break to see what your classmates did. It’s not only a great learning experience, but I think you’ll enjoy them, too.
Now that the semester is over, I hope you will keep blogging, not just with text, but with your photos, videos and maps as well. Those of you who were successful in developing a beat may find that your blogs can be a key to professional success.
As promised, here are links to your final projects. Be sure to check out the online extras — video, slideshows and Google maps.
- Adrianne Loggins: Profiles of New England journalists who write blogs for their news organizations
- Amara Grautski: “Sports Radio: Building Online Content and Finding Its Niche of the Future”
- Ami Van Wygerden: “NYT Photo Project Encourages Citizen Journalism”
- Belen Bogado: “Getting to Know a Citizen Journalist’s Universe” (a profile of Steve Garfield)
- Bobby Feingold: “Is Print Dead?” (a look at Zinio.com, a service that provides for electronic magazine delivery)
- Candice Novak: “Where Are the Women?” (a video about Women’s eNews as well as the state of women and media)
- Chaz Miller: “Playing a Numbers Game” (about online computer-assisted reporting)
- Drew Bonifant: A feature on Bleacher Report, a fan-driven Web site about sports
- Erika Carrubba: A story on WRBBsports.com, the new online home of Northeastern sports
- Firuzeh Shokooh-Valle: “The Fabric of Our Lives” (a story that’s mainly about a digital storytelling workshop in Durban, South Africa)
- Jared Molton: “The Internet Magician’s Playground” (a feature on Genii, a Web site for magicians)
- Jess Volpe: A profile of Emily Sweeney, a staff reporter, blogger and video journalist for the Boston Globe
- Julie Balise: “Food for Blog” (about TheFoodMonkey.com, a foodie blog based in Boston)
- Liz Stitt: “EcoPaparazzi Allows Creator to Continue Following Her Bliss”
- Marc Larocque: “Open Media Boston Offers Social Media as Alternative to ‘Corporate Media Model’”
- Mark Rizzo: “Confronting the Internet, or, How Old Media Are Going New”
- Matt Collette: A story on Bostonist, the local outpost of the popular Gothamist chain of blogs
- Michaela Stanelun: A profile of Adam Gaffin, co-founder and editor of Universal Hub
I hope you all have a great holiday, and that I’ll see you on campus again soon.
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A little while ago I sent back your final projects. I’m asking every one of you to do more work — just a little bit in some cases, quite a lot in others. So please open your e-mail and take a look as soon as you can.
If you received a low grade, it is because you didn’t do the required number of interviews — five. You’ve got time to do them, and I’ll allow you to do them by e-mail. I’ve even made suggestions as to whom you should contact. Moving your grade up should not be hard.
A misspelled proper name will cost you one letter grade. If you have a misspelled name, you will see that I have told you about it. You’ll need to double-check each name. Neither you nor I want to see your grade suffer because you botched a name, so please make sure you get those fixed.
Be sure that all e-mail interviews are labeled as such — i.e., said by e-mail or some such thing.
Your deadline is Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 10 a.m. You have the option of accepting the grade I’ve given you. But I hope each one of you will take the time to make your posts as good as they can be. I’ll be writing a final round-up post on your projects and linking from Media Nation.
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I’ve spent the evening reading what you have to say about Twitter as a journalism tool and Adam Gaffin, the founder and editor of Universal Hub. Not to oversimplify, but I’d say most of you gave thumbs down to Twitter, but a big thumbs up to Universal Hub.
Twitter has its good points, but it’s hard to get excited about it when people use it for constant updates on what they’re doing during the day, or when news organizations do nothing more than replicate their RSS feeds. Using Twitter to break news following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai is an interesting idea, but the results don’t quite match the hype.
I’ve been using Twitter since last summer, and I agree with a comment Steve Garfield posted on Jess Volpe’s blog: Stick with it for a bit, and it won’t seem as useless as it might first appear. It’s hard to explain, and I realize I risk sounding like Mark Twain’s sardonic description of Wagner’s operas: it’s “better than it sounds.”
By contrast, there was no such negativity over Universal Hub, which is the sort of professional/amateur collaboration we’ve been talking about quite a bit this semester. Adam Gaffin is a professional journalist; before he became a tech editor, he was a reporter for what’s now the MetroWest Daily News, in Framingham.
All of you seem quite enthusiastic about Universal Hub.
In bringing a journalist’s sensibility to the cacophony of voices spread across nearly 1,000 Greater Boston blogs, Gaffin has showed that citizen journalism can be timely, funny and heartbreaking, shining a light into small corners that most news organizations can’t be bothered with.
And though Gaffin has not developed Universal Hub into a full-fledged business, he has demonstrated that an ambitious, entrepreneurial young journalist might be able to find a way to blog for a living. That’s good news at a time when large news organizations are downsizing.
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Adam Gaffin
Many thanks to Adam Gaffin, who talked about his Boston-area blog of blogs, Universal Hub, during Wednesday’s class. Please write up your observations about Gaffin’s presentation by 5 p.m. on Friday.
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I have posted today’s slide show on Twittering the news, which you may find useful as you think about Twitter and journalism.
Before class on Wednesday, please write a 350-word post for your blog on this subject. You won’t need to get a Twitter account in order to do that, but I do recommend it. I would like you to examine at least three Twitter feeds that have some relationship to journalism and tell me what you like and don’t like about them.
Strong opinions about Twitter as a journalism tool, both positive and negative, are encouraged.
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I can’t recommend this profile of Jeff Jarvis highly enough. I urge all of you to read it. It’s as good an overview on the state of the news business — and especially the newspaper business — as you are likely to find.
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November 26, 2008 · 1 Comment
During the past week we’ve all been participating in a “news hunt” to find quality journalism about the global economy, and to submit what we found to NewsTrust. I thought I would build in links to what all of you wrote about NewsTrust on your blogs, as well as to your pages on NewsTrust.
If you haven’t done so already, I hope you’ll take a look at what each of you has been up to.
Finally, here’s what I wrote about NewsTrust, and here is my NewsTrust page.
At the time of this posting, you had submitted and/or reviewed 86 stories. Most of you seemed to find it an interesting and worthwhile experience, even if you’re dubious about NewsTrust’s value. I hope you will continue to use NewsTrust. If nothing else, it’s a place to find good journalism that you otherwise might have missed.
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Mike LaBonte with Reinventing the News students.
Click on photo for Flickr slideshow
Today we heard from Mike LaBonte, an editor and reviewer for NewsTrust.net, which allows users to submit and rate news stories for journalistic importance and quality. As a learning exercise, we had four teams read and analyze this story in the Independent on a proposal by the United Nations for a “Green New Deal.”
For your next assignment, please take part in a NewsTrust “news hunt” for stories on the global economy. I would like each of you to find, submit and rate three stories (including writing a brief assessment under “Notes”) between now and the start of class on Monday related to that theme, and to write a 350-word post on your blog.
Among other things, you should link to each of your three reviews; reflect on the experience, and explain whether you think NewsTrust is a valuable tool; and make suggestions, if you have any, on how NewsTrust might become more useful.
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I want to remind everyone that we’ll be meeting Wednesday in 442 Curry Student Center from 2:50 to 4:30 p.m. At least four of you said you were bringing wireless laptops, and so I’d like to remind you of that as well. We will be hearing from Mike LaBonte, an editor at NewsTrust.
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