Good and Bad Headlines

GOOD:

Ravens, Browns scoreless at the half

Yahoo Sports does a pretty god job with headlines of wire stories- I initially tried finding a bad headline from them but I couldn't find one. This headline has all the key terms someone wanting to know what had happened in this Monday Night Football game would search: Ravens (name of team), Browns (name of team), scoreless (the score of game, or term "score" could be searched) and half (a relevant time period to search for).


BAD:

Govt to unveil 20,000 MW solar power plan

The article is a Reuters story Yahoo News picked up about India's plan to improve their solar power generation. However, the headline doesn't include anything about India. Additionally, the word "new" probably would have been better for searches than "20,000 MW."

Field Trip Nov. 18 to usatoday.com

On Nov. 18 we'll be carpooling to usatoday.com, at 7950 Jones Branch Drive in McLean, Va. Class will begin at 1:45 p.m., to allow time for driving. If possible, give yourself an hour driving and parking time. You'll pull in to the parking lot by the security booth (on the right) before you get to the building. Park in the lot to the side of the building, and come to the lobby, where you'll sign in with the security desk. We'll meet there in the lobby.

We'll talk with staffers Denny Gainor, Anne Willette and Marisol Bello about storytelling, story presentation and reader interaction. You will be given assigned questions to answer about the visit; your typed responses will count as an in-class grade, and will be due by e-mail before the start of the next class Nov. 25.

If you'd like, we could pre-arrange for carpools. If you need a ride or can share a ride in your car, please post a comment to this post. Be sure to leave your contact info.

We'll end the session at 3:15 p.m., to allow driving time before your next class.

See you there!
Best, chris

Good and Not-so-Good Headlines

Before our next class Nov. 18, please find a good and not-so-adept headline on one or more news Web sites, and explain why you think so on this blog.

Please attach them as comments to this post.

Please be sure to give the full URL and headline for each.

And please don't write anything you don't want the world to see.

Ethics of Reporting and Photography

On Friday, Girl Talk performed a show at Cole Field House for about 2,000 students. There were numerous campus media outlets covering the show, including two from the music blog Terrapin Sound. Terrapin Sound, which is affiliated with the Maryland Music Business Society, sent a reporter and a photographer to the event. They both had backstage passes and where told that they would at least have the chance to talk to Girl Talk's entourage, if not interview him. When they knocked on his dressing room door they were told that they would not be able to do an interview and were asked to leave, which they did.

They later found out that after this incident Girl Talk requested that Terrapin Sound is never allowed backstage again. This is a somewhat irrational request because the two were never actually told they would not be allowed to interview Girl Talk. Maybe he felt they were intruding on his space, which would be a legitimate reason. So in retrospect, did the reporter and photographer do anything wrong?

Local media: the next big step?

Allbritton Communications Co., the parent company of Politico.com, ABC 7 and NewsChannel 8, recently announced plans to launch a new website that will focus on local news in the Washington, D.C. area. This interesting advancement will be led by Jim Brady, the former executive editor of WashingtonPost.com.



I discovered this piece of news while perusing Politico.com a few days ago, the site that I am analyzing for my final paper. This move comes at a time when many forms of traditional media are struggling to hold onto a fickle and impatient audience. As online journalism is becoming increasingly popular, it comes as no surprise that along with websites for national news, there should be a niche for websites covering local news. This innovative move is one that will likely be watched closely by many other news sources, potentially starting a new trend of local news websites.



The entity taking on this move is also noteworthy; Politico.com achieved success seemingly immediately, fulfilling the online niche for political addicts, so it follows that the creators of this new site are hopeful that Politico's success will be repeated.



The other main focuses that this site will encompass are a push toward mobile compatibility and a combination of professional journalism and citizen journalism, a subcategory of the field that is becoming more and more popular. This will definitely be a site to keep an eye on, as its success or failure could determine whether or not local media becomes the newest form of new media.

Big news: Internet domains are moving multilingual!

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization that oversees Internet domain addresses, endorsed a move on October 30 that will allow for domains to be published and accessed using non-Latin alphabets. Starting next year, Web sites will be produced using non-Latin scripts, an act that will allow for an Internet that better reflects international diversity and multilingualism.

ICANN President and Chief Executive Rod Beckstrom called this a “historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet,” according to the New York Times. An estimated 1.5 billion people use non-Latin based languages, according an Associated Press article. Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese are among the major languages to be added to domain names.

I think this is a brilliant move toward accepting international diversity and it is unbelievable that this change has not already been incorporated into Web usage, especially since so many non-Western countries have been at the forefront of developing Web technologies and the majority of people in the world do not speak Latin-based languages. I’m curious to see what this will do for the Internet and online news media, especially as online networks are to expand through this action.

And now that the Internet will move to multilingualism and be accessible to more people from all corners of the world, I’m wondering what complications, if any, this will create. How will this affect search engines and online databases? Even though this move will expand access to people who are less familiar or proficient with Latin-based characters, will this also hinder access to others?

Tweeting Literature- the Next Big Thing?

Tweeting Literature- The Next Big Thing?
During my summer internship at NBC Bay Area News, I wrote an article about Matt Stewart, a local author who published his first novel via 3,700 tweets on Twitter. Stewart claims to be the first author to publish a novel on Twitter, but after digging deeper I found that he is one of a few people who are using Twitter to publish literature.
In all honesty, when hearing Stewart brag about being a published author on Twitter I was not impressed. “Ok,” I thought, “so no one credible wanted to publish your book so you did it yourself. Is anyone actually going to read it?”
Well, Stewart’s novel The French Revolution may only have 1,023 followers on Twitter, but it turns out credible literary organizations are starting to use new media Web sites such as Twitter to publish literature as well.
According to a New York Times article, Electric Literature, a quarterly literary magazine is using new media to its advantage to “revitalize the short story in the age of the short attention span.” In addition to using Facebook for publicity, the magazine also publishes videos on Youtube and will begin having authors tweet out short stories on Twitter.
I suppose it is good that people are trying to maintain art and literature in a world of decreasing attention spans and the-world-at-your-fingertips-technology, but at what point is this too much? Is our society ever going to look back at the simple days when magazines and books were published on paper and miss it?

How web-sharing tools can help or hurt you

Everyone nowadays is talking about how social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, are godsends to the journalism world. Reporters and news organizations can Tweet their hearts out and attract readers by appearing to be up to speed on new media, and readers can link to articles they liked on their Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. But this article from Poynter Online seems to say that some organizations utilize those web-sharing applications better than others.

The author said he looked at both the New York Times and Washington Post to see how easy it was to link stories to Twitter accounts. He found that the New York Times made it really easy by compressing the length of the link in a bit.ly address. Using this shorter form, users could pull the link and still have enough characters to comment on the content of the article. However, the Washington Post didn't foresee this issue with long URLs, making it a whole lot harder to post links from the Post to a Twitter account and have room left to "retweet" the article. Readers would either have no characters left or would have to go through a convoluted process to compress the length of the link themselves.

The author also noticed (and it's easy to double check, just click to both sites) it's also a lot easier to find the "Share" button on the Times website (right next to the headline). The Post only puts its sharing buttons at the end of the article, after the "Sponsored Links" ads. Most readers probably won't bother linking if they can't find the button easily, and the Post makes it quite a scavenger hunt.

The Post gets points for including the option to link to their story, but it loses a whole lot more points by making it impractical for readers to actually do the sharing. If it's difficult to use, it's almost not worth it to attempt having web-sharing tools because it makes readers think you're not actually as tech savvy as you think you are... And that doesn't reflect well on the future of an organization in a new media world, does it?

Ethics in Audio Reporting and Slideshow Publishing

A student in my online news bureau posed an interesting ethical question last week: He's doing a Halloween-pegged story and slideshow about purported "hauntings" at the Surratt House in Clinton, and he wondered if when he plays the audio interview of the museum director talking about alleged ghosts if he could insert sounds of his own footsteps and opening and closings of doors.

It sounded a bit too much like manufactured sound, rather than the capturing of real sound, to me, so I consulted friend and former colleague Keith Jenkins, who now leads a multimedia team at npr.org.

Jenkins' take: If the narration on the slide show made it clear it was the reporters' footsteps we were hearing, it would be OK; but if there was any ambiguity, it would not be ethical. That sounded like a good solution to me. Perhaps the same clarity could be achieved through captioning under the photos, rather than narration.

I'll post a link to the finished stories as soon as they're ready this week.

BTW: Sound issues on slide shows have come up in the past. I agree with purists, including Jenkins, who argue that no background music should be heard in a news slide show, unless the music was playing at the time of the interview. But I've heard others in the business argue differently.

--Chris Harvey

Tim Berners-Lee and the Dreaded Forward Slashes

News Alert: Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, is sorry for putting forward slashes in web addresses. In a BBC article, he admits the symbols // before web addresses is "unnecessary."He's annoyed himself. I never notice it. Most of the time they will appear after you type the main part of the address. I don't find it a big deal, but apparently he' s gotten an earful about it from his users.

Computers, the internet, the World Wide Web, it's such an engrained part of our everyday lives. It's hard to imagine that one man is (partially) responsible for creating a society built online. It's funny to imagine him annoyed about coding he invented himself.

I found this article amusing because it reminds you that there's a person behind all of "this." Just as you should remember there are people behind every post, blog, website. Users feel they can get away with anything online because they can stay "anonymous." But there are measures to enforce punishments on those who publish defamatory or false information. It's something I think about as the media begins more and more to provide online content. We're still just as accountable for what we publish even though we can't be seen. So thanks for making life harder with the forward slashes, Tim Berners-Lee. We really needed the aggravation. I posted the address here, but it doesn't appear to link up. If you copy and paste it, that should work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8306631.stm

Multi-Media for The New York Times Dining Section

One of my favorite examples of multi-media can be found on The New York Times Dining and Wine section. Every Wednesday, there is a review of a different restaurant. An audio slide show usually accompanies the review. The writer of the review is actually interviewed for the slide show about his main opinions regarding the restaurant. Throughout the interview, attractive photographs of the eatery's interior and of noteworthy dishes are streamed.

One of the best multi-media packages in the dining section was about the influx of artisinal pizzerias in New York City. Frank Bruni wrote an informative and entertaining column discussing the trend. However, my favorite parts of the feature were the accompanying interactives.

The audio slide show, titled The New Generation of Pizzerias, features Bruni discussing eight new and important pizzerias. Each pizzeria has a separate slide show that consists of about three photographs. This interactive makes me crave pizza every time I watch and listen to it.

There is also a Google map of the five boroughs that shows where the pizzerias are. This is very useful for readers. It shows how online journalism can also be great service journalism.

Linking to PDFs in WordPress

A few of you asked about linking to .pdfs on the clips page of your personal WordPress sites.

It's easy; it requires two steps:

• Click on the "Media" button on the left side of your dashboard; click on "Add New"; click on the desired .pdf saved on your computer to upload it; grab the coding for that URL
  
• On the page you wish to add the .pdf to as a link, simply drop the URL into a link tag: Headline Goes Here
  

That's it.

Earn Money Next Summer Doing Multimedia Journalism

UMD's Philip Merrill College of Journalism this fall will be awarding 10 multimedia reporting fellowships to outstanding journalism majors under the national News21 program. The program, which encourages innovations in journalism, is funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corp. and Knight Foundation.

Selected graduate students and seniors graduating in 2010 will spend 10 weeks next summer immersed in multimedia storytelling and site building. Fellows are paid for their full-time summer work: $7,500 for the 10 weeks. The newsroom will be based in a lab in our new journalism building on the College Park campus.

Fellows must also take a multimedia class on covering environmental issues in spring 2010.

The journalism college's 2009 News21 project, The New Voters, can be found online at http://umd.news21.com/.

To learn more about the program contact professor Leslie Walker at lwalker@umd.edu.

The application form, due Nov. 2 at 5 p.m., is linked here.

Welcome, Fall Class

Welcome fall 2009 crew.

Throughout the course of this semester, you'll be asked to use this class blog to respond to queries from me and to comment on threads from your classmates about the state of the industry and interesting multimedia projects that you've found online.

Each of you should be starting at least one discussion thread, as well as commenting on others.