Cubicle warriors across the U.S. may be participating in an unintentional moment of silence today. A coalition of internet radio stations including Yahoo! Launch, Live 365, Pandora, Soma FM and others are participating in a day of silence to protest the Copyright Royalty Board’s proposed rate hike that could effectively put most of these services […]
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Fleck, TechCrunch, and the role of journalism
It seems like ages ago that the blogosphere was abuzz with a debate over the value of telephone/in-person interviews. At the core of the debate were Wired Magazine‘s Fred Vogelstein, Jason Calacanis, and Dave Winer. Vogelstein had asked Calacanis and Winer for interviews, and each had suggested that they’d be happy to answer questions via […]
Blurring the line between magazine and web site
You know this internet thing, it might not catch on unless people can relate it to old school media. That appears to be the 1995 thinking that went into the People Magazine “Best Summer Ever” online edition. Rather than direct People Magazine’s print readers to a traditional website where they can watch movie trailers, see […]
Are blogger ethics “people ready?”
Traditional news organizations have a long history of maintaining separate departments responsible for advertising and editorial content. Sure, you can look at many magazines and television programs these days that don’t seem to have gotten the memo. But at most news organizations the reporters will never speak directly to the business managers. Coming from the […]
The pictures tell the story
Last week Dave Zatz organized a little blogger get together in New York. And the digital prints have finally been developed (uploaded from a flash card) to prove it. From left to right, that’s Kevin Toefel of jkOnTheRun, Mari Silbey of Connected Home 2 Go, me, Dan Dorato of Uneasy Silence, and Dave Zatz. Considering […]
Cutting the cable (TV)
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 […]
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. […]