I was thinking about writing a post about our decision to cut our monthly bills by over $50 a month by getting rid of our cable television subscription. But Zack over at the SnapStream Blog beat me to it with a top 10 things he loves about his over the air HDTV antenna post. Rather […]
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Do you get your news from robots?
The rise of news aggregators like Techmeme, digg, and reddit (what’s with the social services using all lower-case letters) raises an interesting question: Is the traditional role of the editor being replaced by robots and crowds? While Techmeme uses an algorithm to find the day’s top tech-oriented stories, sites like digg and reddit rely on […]
Telling Stories with Sound: free online course
News University has a free online course titled “Telling Stories with Sound.” It’s geared toward print and online reporters who are looking for an understanding of how (and why) to use audio to help tell a story. The course should take about 2 hours to complete, and it includes a lot of useful information like: […]
Putting it together, frame by frame
This is why I love the internet. Photojournalist Mike De Sisti with the Appleton Post Crescent found an innovative way to answer the question “how many photos do you take?” Typically news photographers shoot dozens or hundreds of photos for every shot that winds up in the newspaper. Perhaps a few of them will make […]
More on shooting cheap video
Just got an email from radio producer Thomas Pierce, responding to my post on shooting shaky video with a cheap digital camera. While the ability to record video on still cameras hardly makes them decent video cameras, Pierce has demonstrated that you can use an inexpensive camera to do more than record videos of your […]
CNN and YouTube to host presidential debate
It’s one thing to talk about how user generated online content is changing the way people get the news. It’s another thing when YouTube plays a major role in the presidential election. And we’re not talking about posting candidates’ ads or speeches on the video sharing site. We’re talking about YouTube members creating videos asking […]
Download Squad Switcher Podcast launches
After a several month hiatus, I can call myself a podcaster again. When PVR Wire was absorbed into TV Squad, the PVR Wire podcast kind of went gently into that good night. But over at Download Squad we’ve launched a limited edition podcast today. With Windows Vista and Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Linux both launching […]
Is this the future of public radio?
The Public Radio Talent Quest has announced the winners of round one. 1,442 entered, 10 move on to the next round. This is actually more brutal than American Idol. And of those 10, does any really have what it takes to host a public radio show? Eh, odds are they could all do it. Would […]
Proof that you don’t need good equipment to shoot bad video
I’m trying to do some more audio and video production for Download Squad. I’ve got the podcasting thing down. And I recently stumbled across Screencast-O-Matic, a web-based video screen capture service that makes it really easy to demonstrate software, save a video and upload it to YouTube or another service to share with your readers. […]
Should young journalists expect newspapers to exist in 10 years?
It’s not just old media types and print news veterans who are confused about the state of journalism. As 25-year old reporter Steven Barrie-Anthony points out in the Huffington Post, it’s also a confusing time for young journalists and journalism students. A lot of folks who had no thought of becoming the next Woodward and […]
The New York Times live-blogs the New Hampshire debate
Live-blogging is a great example of how journalists can use new technology to tell a story, be among the first to publish it, and provide a behind the scenes look at current events for news junkies. While bloggers have been live-blogging tech events like Steve Jobs product announcements for ages, the mainstream press is just […]
Yahoo meta-journalism – online profiles of online personalities
Yahoo! has launched a new project called “People of the Web,” hosted by online journalist Kevin Sites. The goal of the project is to look at the people behind the websites and blogs. There are already several profiles on the site, looking at Josh Wolf, Kirk Cameron, and other folks who are making a difference […]
Webcasters seek delay in new royalty hike
NPR and the Digital Media Association, which represents online audio and video companies are asking a federal appeals court to postpone a royalty rate hike expected to take effect on July 15th. The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board had been prepared to raise rates on May 15th, but delayed implementation due to pretty much universal opposition. […]
Relocating a Journalist
A little over a week ago my wife and I packed up and moved from Princeton, NJ to Brooklyn NY. It wasn’t a long journey, but sometimes it feels like we moved a world away. The first year we lived in Princeton I continued to work full time at WHYY in Philadelphia. Even after I […]
Traditional Media (or public radio) weighs in on email interviews a month later
NPR’s On The Media weighed in this week on the whole “I only do interviews over email” think that spread like wildfire through the blogosphere last month. (Can anything spread through the blogosphere like wildfire? Isn’t a decentralized network kind of resistant to that?) Anyway, a quick refresher. Weblogs Inc founder Jason Calacanis and several […]
Citizen Media Law Project launches
As the line between bloggers and journalists continues to get thinner and thinner, one thing is clear. Citizen journalists/bloggers tend to practice their craft without the backing of major media corporations that can support them in libel lawsuits or other legal matters. The Citizen Media Law Project is a new partnership between Harvard Law School’s […]