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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