Huxley, Orwell and Postman

I wanted to talk a little bit about this quote from the Neil Postman book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not
prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally
imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to
deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people
will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their
capacities to think.

Remember, the paragraph and the book were written pre-Internet explosion. But I wonder how that quote relates to right now and what Postman, if he were alive, would be writing about the Internet and convergence journalism.

Let's talk about that a bit in today's class.

The Last Class

For the final class of the semester, we will spend the first 45 minutes, looking over the videos you created and talking about the texts and coming up with some general conclusions about Convergence Journalism.

Then, I have a few people coming in to talk about convergence journalism and jobs in online journalism and how to get them.

We will start that conversation in the classroom and then continue it somewhere where food is available with those folks. (It is always a good idea to bring your resume on such occasions.)

Also, Steve Silva, a producer at Boston.com and the founding editor of BostonDirtDogs.com reluctantly can't make it to this class. But he has promised to send in his thoughts on landing an online journalism job. I will post those here when he sends them.

Final Assignments

To recap, final assignments:

1. Write a blog entry, summarizing your semester-long tracking of the blog you have been following. It should be a final critique with links, quoted material and your thoughts on whether or not you will continue to be either an active or passive member of its community. This should be between 500 ann 1,000 words.

2. You are doing a one-minute video journalism piece, with you in front of the camera, on whatever story you want to cover. You are working with a partner --Courtney and Owen, you are partners -- to help edit the script and shoot the video (hold the camera). Then you will post links to your videos -- each partnership will yield two videos -- on YouTube or somewhere else on your blog.

3. Read Smart Mobs Chapter 8 and Amusing Ourselves Foreword, Chapter 1 and Chapter 11. We will use this as the focus of our final class discussion.

The Clampdown

The U.S. Army has decided to censor blogging from its ranks. Pre-approved blog posts? Whose job would that be? I wonder if that would be a fun job in some ways.

'So, What's the Mood on Campus?'

This is a very interesting column from Dan Radmacher, a Virginia-based writer, that asks some of the same questions we were thinking about in class about the quality of media coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Feeding the Beast

Journalist Amy Gahran gives tips on how to feed the blog beast.

Project 3

The third and final mini-project of the year is due in two weeks -- on May 3. That assignment is to pick a piece of convergence journalism on the Web and to critique that project, using multimedia to tell your story. That means you can use whatever elements of blogging, photojournalism, video, audio, podcasting or whatever other convergence journalism tools of the trade to tell your story.

If you want to borrow class equipment, let me know, and we will set up a sign-out sheet over the next two weeks.

How'd They Do?

Writing an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, media critic Tim Rutten says the media by and large did a good job in covering the Virginia Tech tragedy.

He writes:

Taken as a whole, the news media did a thorough, competent and humane job of
covering the massacre at Virginia Tech, particularly over the story's first 24
hours, when facts were most in demand and hardest to come by.

Today in class, we will look at the coverage from a more student-centric point of view.

To Air or Not To Air

NBC had a tough decision on whether or not to and when to air the video of the Virginia Tech shooter. Here is the background on that.

Two Quotes for Today

For the first part of class today, I want us to consider two quotes from the Henry Jenkins book Convergence Culture.

The first one actually is from historian Michael Schudson who is quoted in the book on page 226. Schudson says:

Monitorial citizens tend to be defensive rather than pro-active... The
monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than
information-gathering. Picture parents watching small children at the community
pool. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on the scene.
They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required. The
monitorial citizen is not an absentee citizen but watchful, even while he or she
is doing something else... [They] are perhaps better informed than citizens of
the past in that, somewhere in their heads, [while] they have more bits of
information, there is no assurance that they know at all what to do with what
they know.

That is an interesting comment and something Andrew Shelffo should be able to talk about first hand today.

The other quote comes from the very end of Convergence Culture. Jenkins writes:

Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where
grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer
and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. Convergence
culture is the future, but it is taking shape now. Consumers will be more
powerful within convergence culture -- but only if they recognize and use that
power as both consumers and citizens, as full participants in our culture.

A pretty powerful ending and a call to action. What do you think?

Voice Gets a Face

This is a simple audio slideshow from the Herald Tribune in Florida that shows the face of one of the most famous voices of all-time. It is only about a minute long, but I like it a lot.

Assignment for the Week

Assignment this week: Read Chapter 6 and Conclusion of Convergence Culture.

Guest speaker this week will be Andrew Shelffo. His blog Prospect Perspective is very good. Check it out in advance, so you can be prepared to pepper him with insightful questions.

What Are You Doing Right Now?

At first I was skeptical. But after numerous visits, I will say Twitter.com can become fairly addicting. I mean, during my downtime, when I happen to be doing nothing the slightest bit captivating, I find it interesting to find people that are doing interesting things, even if many of them happen to be liars.

An Audience of One

Dan Barry wrote a funny piece on blogging for the Hartford Courant. He says he does not blog because of:

the fear that if I post my most intimate observations about, say, my all-time
favorite Abbott and Costello movies, no one will read them. I can just imagine
laboring over an appreciation of "Lost in a Harem," then checking in every hour
to monitor the number of visitors, only to find that any increase was because of
me and me alone: 0006; 0007; 0008..."

Funny stuff.

This Week's Assignments

In addition to reading Chapters 1 through 4 of Podcast Solutions, the assignment for this week: Listen to two podcasts and write 250-word reviews for each of them.

I am interested in independent podcasts, not podcasted versions of produced shows. For instance, professional organizations like ESPN and NPR offere podcasts of their shows. I am looking for people producing shows especially for podcasts.

Here is a list at Podcast Bunker where you can find a bunch.

Here is a directory list from Podcasting News.

And no, you do not have to download and listen on a portable device. If someone offers a streaming version or a version you can download to your computer, go ahead and listen that way.

If you have questions, e-mail me.

This American Life

The David Sedaris piece we listened to in class can be found here. Fast-forward to the 51-minute mark.

The story of the old Brooklyn man who takes in homeless prostitutes can be found here.

The This American Life homepage is here.

From the Horses' Mouths

A lot of fanfare has been made over Curt Schilling's new blog 38 Pitches. For the record, I like it a lot. Here is my full take on it.

I add it to a small but entertaining group of celebrities taking their unedited stories directly to the public.

Others...

---Dallas Mavericks owner and Internet guru Mark Cuban

---Actor/writer/director Zach Braff

---Singer-political activist Barbra Streisand

---Actor/writer Wil Wheaton

A Great Piece of Journalism

I don't know if you got a chance to read this soaring piece of journalism from Joshua Green that appeared in November's Atlantic Monthly. But if you have not, you should check it out.

Exaggerations or Lies?

Since we will be talking about audio and podcasting today in class, I thought I would point out this ongoing conversation/debate about truth in what you write and say to a national audience.

As you probably know, David Sedaris is a hilarious writer and commentator. His audio essays on This American Life are classics that people talk bring up years later. Well, in a story (subscription required) in the most recent issue of The New Republic, journalist Alex Heard questions the veracity of a number of Sedaris' pieces.

For the record, Sedaris has admitted to exaggerating for comedic effect.

More recently, J. Peder Zane, writing an opinion piece for the News and Observer newspaper, defends Sedaris and attacks the spirit of the Heard piece. Now Heard has written a letter to Romenesko, defending his own piece.

It brings up a very good question: Even as it applies to humorists, where do you draw the line on truthfulness?

Also, Jack Shafer at Slate looks at this little episode as part of his piece in Slate, titled: Lies and Memories: When Stories Read a Little Too Good.

Back Into the Loop

Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, did a project with his students with WearComp, computers equipped with "eye taps," which allowed them to broadcast everything they saw and heard on the Web.

Mann, quoted in Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, says:

What my students and I did -- and continue to do -- is something far more
important than just providing "home movies" and "alternative" images for viewing
on the Internet. We are also engaging in a process of cultural reclamation,
where the individual is put back into the loop of information production and
dispensation.

What do you think of this quote?

Mobile Journalists

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/eyewitness/0,,1524278,00.html

We will talk about how smart mobs helped to cover the breaking news story of the bombing of the underground in London in 2005.

Pro-Am Journalism

Pro-Am Journalism. A funny phrase. It is being used to describe the
Assignment Zero journalism initiative out of New York University. The project blends the efforts of professional journalists and amateur/citizen journalists in covering various news stories. The project, headed by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, is getting a lot of national attention.

Journalist or No Journalist?

We keep asking one central question in class: Is this journalism? To continue that line of conversation, I ask you: Is Josh Wolf a journalist?

This Week's Assignment

Before class this week, please pick an RSS Reader and sign up for it, customizing it for yourself. We are going to want to talk about what reader you chose, what feeds you signed up for and any adjustments you have made so far.

Here is more info about RSS readers.

And here is a list of tips for picking the best RSS reader for your individual needs.

A Lesson in Modern Media

A warning: If you are a student and you road-trip to New York City and write about your trip to the big city for your college newspaper, it will most likely be linked to and quoted from in a snarky NYC blog. Then it will get worse. The even-snarkier commenters will post mean (but pretty hilarious) things about you.

Amazon-Style Journalism

I asked in class if anyone thought there was journalism happening at Amazon.com. I am interested to hear what folks have to say. For me, long ago, I realized that sites like Amazon.com that have both editorial reviews and user-based reviews are showcasing some fine journalism. I use it all the time to figure out whether or not to buy something. Often, the user reviews are more helpful to me than the series of 30-second sound clips.

Today I was checking out the reviews for the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah CD Some Loud Thunder. The user reviews, as usual, run the gamut from awesome to awful.

The lead customer review, written by Adam P. Newton "Dryvetime," unveils some mighty fine writing. And it assues me I do, in fact, want to pick up this CD.

Newton writes:

So, when news surrounding the release of their second album, entitled Some Loud
Thunder, began leaking out, people obviously began to wonder what might happen
to CYHSY. Would the album be worth anything? Would the band do it all over
again? What was going on?!? The last thing indie rock needed was for its poster
band for true independence to release an album that sucked or, even worse,
actually sign to a label, indie or otherwise. Well, rest easy all of you skinny,
unwashed, messenger bag-carrying masses - Some Loud Thunder is a quality album
that's filled with better songs and greater focus than the debut.

There are less distinguished reviews, like this all-caps one from Chris J. Marksbury:

PRODUCTION SUCKS THE LIFE OUTTA THIS RELEASE. GIVES ME A HEADACHE. WHINING,
WHINING...THE VOCALS ARE REAL PATHETIC. SAVE YOUR MONEY.

But even that I find entertaining and somewhat helpful.

So the answer to my own question: Yes, there is journalism at Amazon.com. And some of it is top-notch.

The Other Walter Reed

Today's class starts here...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html

Comment and Win

We have been talking about comments in this class, and many of you have been employing your own set of cheap tricks to try to elicit comments to your blog posts these past couple weeks.

Over at Gridskipper, they are having a contest to try to allure more commenters.

They write:

Tell you what, 25th commenter this week, will win a Gilette Fusion Power
razor, a copy of Secrets of the Model Dorm and a plastic hand. We figure
that covers pretty much every demographic we have.

That sounds like a mighty-fine prize package. I mean, who could resist?

Journalism's 'Watershed' Moment

In the Miami Herald, columnist Carl Hiaasen nails the way the Anna Nicole Smith story has played itself out in mainstream media.

Hiassen writes:

Don't make the mistake of dismissing the Smith story as an anomaly; it's a
media watershed. If the death of a hapless, doped-up ex-model can knock two wars
out of the headlines, there's no end to the squalid possibilities.

We have seen the future, and it's in the gutter.

Well put.

Assignments

Here is a recap of the two assignments for this week...

Project One: 1,000-word blog post on your first-hand experience being an active member of an online community.

Assignment for no-class week: Write six different blog entries (on whatever topic you want) with the express purpose of eliciting as many comments as possible. Write one follow-up post summing up the project.

Vote for the Worst

After reading some of the Jenkins book, it is especially fun to check out the Vote for the Worst site. Their goal is to influence enough people via the Internet each week to pool enough votes for the worst contestants each week on American Idol to push them through to the next round. In the words of those animated Guinness dudes: Brilliant!

The Anna Nicole Smith Story

We watched together in class as the Anna Nicole Smith story started to break. Huge coverage across all the major media players. Was it over the top and too much, we asked ourselves.

Investigative report Diane Dimond thinks so, and she had a very interesting conversation with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik, discussing the matter.

ZURAWIK: You know, we are so bad in the media today. When the public really cares about a story the way they cared about the O.J. story -- you know, I experienced a little of this when I wrote about the Anna Nicole thing. There was a lot of back and forth -- should we treat it this way, should we treat -- listen, the public cares about something this much, we ought to not be above it. We ought to try -- now, there's way to explain it. Help us understand why we care about it.

DIMOND: But five straight hours? ...If a less popular person died, and it wasn't Anna Nicole, the sexpot -- say it was Dick Cheney. I guarantee you he would not get five straight hours of coverage on MSNBC or a full hour on "20/20."

Read the whole CNN interview transcript here.

Related: Houston Chronicle ombudsman James Campbell in his About:Chron blog writes that he thinks the Chronicle set a new low in running a lengthy A1 story on Smith and her alleged long-running lesbian affair with an older Texas woman.

Behind the Scenes at On Being

In class last week, we looked at some of the On Being videos being featured on WashingtonPost.com. I thought you might find this blog Q&A -- you need to scroll down to see the answers posted in the comments section -- with Rob Curley at WaPo interesting. Curley talks about what goes into On Being each week, and why he thinks it is successful.

The PAPER of Record?

Will the New York Times printed edition still be around in five years? The paper's publisher made his own headlines across the media-watching blogosphere when he said earlier this month that he was not so sure.

The paper's futurist, however, thinks the print edition will continue to hang around for a while, while the newsroom spreads its wings a bit.

Read more.

On On Being

This Washingtonpost.com video project On Being is fascinating to me. I really like watching them -- and I like reading the comments. Once you watch a couple, trust me, you will be hooked and checking back every Wednesday for the next one.

The Power of Gossip

In Chapter 2 of his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins tackles both the historical and more recent role of gossip in society.

He writes:

The specific content of gossip is often less important than the social ties
created through the exchange of secrets between participants -- and for that
reason, the social functions of gossip hold when dealing with television
content. It isn't who you are about but who you are talking with that matters.
Gossip builds common ground between participants, as those who exchange
information assure one another of what they share. Gossip is finally a way of
talking about yourself through critiquing the actions and values of others.

It is especially interesting to me that Jenkins focuses on American Idol in this chapter of this book. This season marks my first year as a viewer of that wildly popular show. And what blows me away about the whole phenomenon is the life the show takes on after everyone has left their TV screens. There is water cooler chat, but beyond that it dominates media coverage and the conversations on the Internet are endless.

Take the latest controversy -- or gossip: the steamy photos of contestant Antonella Barba that have been flying around the Internet. As a result, Barba (and American Idol) has been one of th biggest news stories of the day today. Web sites from major news outlets are all over the story. Watch what TV news does with it tonight and newspapers tomorrow. And bloggers are all over it is well.

Check out this post at NJ.com of this one from PhillyBurbs.com. And just dive into those comments at both places. Wow. Yes, Henry Jenkins is right on the mark.

The Feedback System

In chapter 12 of his book We the Media, Dan Gillmor writes:

Blogs and other modern media are feedback systems. They work in something close
to real time and capture -- in the best sense of the word -- the multitude
of ideas and realities each of us can offer. On the Internet, we are defined
by what we know and share. Now, for the first time in history, the feedback
system can be global and nearly instantaneous.

This feedback system is a big reason I got involved in the online world in the first place. I am wondering where it ranks for other people as a reason for them to be pulled into the Internet.

'Emergent Democracy'

Joi Ito is one of the primary thinkers and innovators when it comes to the crossroads where technology meets democracy.

Ito wrote an essay called "Emergent Democracy," which started as a wiki. In the essay, Ito writes:

The monolithic media and its increasingly simplistic representation of the world
cannot provide the competition of ideas necessary to reach consensus.

Here is the whole essay.

Dan Gillmor on Storytelling

In the introduction to his book We the Media, longtime journalist Dan Gillmor writes:

This book is about the transformation from a twentieth century mass-media structure to something profoundly more grassroots and democratic. It's a story, first, of evolutionary change. Humans have always told each other stories, and each new era of progress has led to an expansion of storytelling.

This is also the story of modern revolution, however, because technology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone [to] become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before.

So I ask: What is happening as this evolution meets this revolution? Is the world changing because of it? Is journalism changing because of it? And if there is change happening, is all of it change for the good?

A True Insider

A patient in a Russian hospital heard muffled cries of young children. When she saw gagged babies, she pulled out her cell phone and took some video and stills. This is yet another example of the everyday person becoming a documentarian, a journalist, a whistleblower. It is another example of uncovering news and distributing it worldwide almost instantaneously.

An Obscure Mass. Law

Wow, I've lived in Massachusetts for 10 years, and I never even knew about this law.

The comments on Reddit.com for this piece are priceless.

Convergence Journalism at Its Finest

This story, "‘Man Down’: When One Bullet Alters Everything," by Damien Cave for the New York Times is poignant and rich in detail. The accompanying photos add some stirring visuals. And the associated video, narrated by Cave, gives even more details.

The whole package is a compelling example of convergence journalism. And it has drawn the ire of a soldier's family and the US Military and threatened the embedded status of the journalists responsible for the piece. Here is the AP story talking about aftermath of the story.

Just Because It's on a Web Site...

Mary Ann Akers, who writes a behind-the-scenes political blog for the Washington Post Web site, tackles the icy tension between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Fox News.

The highlight of her post, however, is the quote from an internal memo that John Moody, the VP for news at Fox, sent to staff in the wake of Fox's controversial and incorrect news reports that Obama was educated at a Muslim madrassah in Indonesia.

Moody writes:

For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does
it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating
information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this.

Who Needs Magazines?

In the current media climate, why would you want to launch a magazine? Maer Roshan, who has been working on Radar for four years now, answers that question in his letter from the editor for the upcoming Feb. 13 issue.

The Craigslist Anomaly

This is an impressive anomaly. I especially like the adjectives Michael Slater uses to describe the designs of craigslist and Google.

Geo-Locative Info

Are we entering "the sunsetting of the Web" as Caterina Fake, one of the cofounders of Flickr, puts it. Says Fake:

The idea of a browser, of a Web page, is becoming less and less important. The Web is breaking apart. We set up our services online, but are then looking at the data on a mobile phone or PDA.

That quote comes courtesy of the Poynter-based blog of Monique Van Dusseldorp, who attended the Digital Lifestyle Days conference in Munich this month with Fake.

Van Dusseldorp writes:

What does this mean for new services? Your device knows where you are and where your friends are. Fake was convinced that the next wave would be in "geo-locative' information.

Another next wave to monitor. Cool.

Welcome

Welcome to Convergence Journalism, a new course we will be unveiling at UMass-Amherst this semester.

I will be updating this blog throughout the semester with news, updates and plenty of links to stuff I think is worth checking out.