Bad Facebook

Very bad.

The Ratings

At the moment, I'm posting stuff about the impact of FB on human affairs, just because I think that's a little more fun.
Eventually, we are going to have to dig into the guts of the thing and figure ot how it works.
Courtney A. is already there, poking around in its business model.

Not so brightening but interesting

Death and FB. Either the expansion of "the personal"or the dilution of "the private."

To brighten your day

FBI WHY?

I wanted to transition over the Facebook this week partly because it has gigantic implications for the legacy journalists we were talking about last night, but also because the topic is so big that we may need other sessions to work on it.
In fact, our "what is a journalist" talk from last night would reverberate with this formuer publisher learning new tricks.

One thing we can rely on is that just about every day some new piece of journalism comes out about Facebook. And those stories will create other stories.

Front Page

Lots of ways to do a page one.

From jazzy.

To sober.

Sometimes a sports story is weirdly big.

And every day, it seems, some paper tries a redeisgn.

Interesting, the Courant's parent paper has moved some of the small item clutter off page one.

The Courant has not.

I think there are ways to get the small items in.

You Guys

I've been trying to rememeber where it was that I had seen a real detailed rendering of a sample of the plagiarism problem. Matt reminded me.

Which is why -- thank you Courtney A. -- SPJ said it was theft.

Sheila doesn't like the online Courant.
Contained in Lisa's critique on the same themes is my suspicion that one of the things a newspaper -- or almost any news institution is selling is discernment about what is and isn't worth bothering with.

Jessica makes some interesting points on the Auriemma story.
Courtney A. seems sympathetic toward AA.
but it seems to me that we keep stumbling back toward the question: WHAT IS A JOURNALIST?

Matt explains the journalism notion of leaving a story in place.

Matt also gives you a radio reporter's view of the plagiarism story.

Dan almost never blogs about the assignment, but he always has interesting things to say -- this time about aggregation, Wikipedia and the whole concept of selling something of value (which may not be the future model for newspapers anyway).

I may eventually assign the podcast of this show on hyperlocal news referenced by Lisa. I thought Bass's comment on comments were the most interest part of his remarks (but Paul and I are old friends so I've heard al ot of his spiel before).

Odds and ends

I will probably try to get Aldon Hynes to come to our class when we move out of the present/past and into the present/future. But he's already thinking about what we're thinking about.

Also, Peter Kann has a pretty good snapshot of where we are right now and why I'm having us look specifically at newspapers -- partly because the future of newspapers and the future of news are intrexicably entwined.

We'll probably also click through some of the top-rated newspaper sites tonight.

I like this one too. Simply laid-out. You can find everything.

More Courant

Props to Greg for looking up the circulation figures.

Jessica wonders about the plagiarism scandal. Was it the kind of thing tha happens when you suddenly have 15 people soing a 30-person job?

M. Fitz is shocked, truly shocked

Matt says it's all about the the benjamins. What about that, though? Isn't every business about profit?

UPDATE: Alylssa has a capitalist critique as well.

I have mixed feelings about the answer. In the final season of "The Wire," David Simon attempted to explore -- again with mixed results -- the grief felt among newspaper people for the end of their age, an age in which working for newspapers seemed at times like more than a business:

Down a hallway at the entrance to the Baltimore Sun offices , there's a quote by its most famous journalist, HL Mencken, that is also used as an epigraph for the final episode of The Wire. Looking back, Mencken realised that of all the things he'd done in his career, being a newspaperman was the most fulfilling: "It really was … the life of kings."

Couple of things

Make sure you read Jessica's comment about comments on an earlier post.
And if you're STILL having trouble getting your url to me, post it as a comment here.

SO?

So, a LOT of people have not blogged about the assignment.

Some have.
Kevin has several nice posts.

So does Allison, including this one on the plagiarism mess.

Kasey has some interesting thoughts on the hostage controversy and on the question of design.

And Courtney A. is, as usual, firing all cannons.

One last thing I need ya to do

Pick anything that interests you on the Courant web site and (try to) leave a comment on it.

Trad Men

This is a sharp-eyed catch by Greg -- the newspaper as a self-consciously retro style accessory.

Some readings for this week

Remembere: Your first jobis to look at the Courant itself. Look at the website. How well does it work for you, especially compared to anything comparable that you might be using? Be specific in your criticism or praise.

Then: read this. It describes one of several controversies lately in which the paper has been criticized.

One of the biggest messes to splash up on the Courant was the plagiarism fiasco. It has been covered in many places, ranging from (again) the CJR to student journalism to future-facing sites to "the trades" to law journals. Analyze, please.

Well, what could be worse?
How about if you had already -- just weeks before -- been through a storm (again, a national story) over the firing of your counsumer watchdog. What do you notice about the way this story was covered? The result, oddly enough, has been a new online publication.

Start here to read about a relatively trivial tempest for the Courant but one with implications for us because it does raise the question of the back-and-forth between outside bloggers and paid staff. You should dig around a little, read some of the other coverage of this story. What do you think about it.

Your inbox is full (of spies)

Keeping track of Facebook issues will be almost a full time job.

Annie Le

You warmed to this question. It's a great study in memes.

Matt thinks it was first and foremost a TV story, tailored to the medium.
Remind me to say why I think there's on odd retro element to the story.

Courtney A. doesn't like this story and is freaked by the role of social media in covering.

(Jus)tina found most of the social media generated info useless.

Kevin had some interesting stuff but his blog is freaking out on my screen for some reason.

Bowden Barks

So ... Mark Bowden.
If he were here tonight, what questions would you ask him?
What questions would you ask Richmond and Sexton?
Did you notice anything interesting about the WAY this article appeared?

Alhough he doesn't specifically reference the Atlantic article, Dan has a lot to say about what he imagines to be the mind of a blogger and a blog reader.

Here's Lisa on "what you have to worry about," but her post makes me think: who really dropped the ball here? I think Courtney C. wonders the same thing.

For Courtney A. it was the moment-to-moment nature of news (also mentioned in Pew) and the the question: what does journalism even mean? Is it sometimes little more than gossip?

Jessica, as we said, drew a lot of cross-parallels. In many ways, she sees Bowden's piece as documenting the new signfiicance of "every man" -- a rise caused by this.

Le Pew and You

In looking at the Pew study, Kasey was intrigued by the shift away from institution and toward indivudal.

It is increasingly the case, as the Pew study notes, that individual reporters can be supported and underwritten. There are even hyperlocal sites where stories are sponsored.

Kasey wrote about every writer having an equal voice. (Not sure I get the throwing star.) Can we talk about this?

Greg analyzed the report. He wrote, about the losses at newspapers, that they have made things worse by cutting. Discuss.

Matt was interested, of course, in the financial viability of radio news.

Courtney A. had alot of thoughts. She made reference to this article, which used Connecticut, in particular, to look at what happens when conventional legislative coverage withers. She, like Kasey is interested in the whole notion of citizen journalism and, like me, was intrigued by the rport's finding that citizen journalism sites seem to have less interactivity. We have to think about what that means, but we may not get there tonight.


She also noted the finding about how legacy sites do not link often to citizen sites. Not surprising but worth thinking about.

Courtney also frets about the death of newspapers. Kevin wonders what difference it makes if they publish only online.

(Jus)Tina posted on what Sheila would call the Silo Effect, the tendency of people to seek out information that confirms and does not challenge their existing prejudices. But she is also interested in something I too find fascinating: the most undocumented impact of online sources on sports coverage -- including sources that trash traditional sports coverage. Sports is really interesting, because its fans tend to geek out and will happily pay for more of what they want.
Why is that? There's an easy answer. An oddity. One of the early contributors to the preceding link then decided to geek out on something else and became one of our go-to sources last year for election coverage. That transition is described here. (I'm intrigued by the idea of a subculture of counter-experts. We may have to return to that.)

Jessica did sort of an omni-post, Pew, Annie Le and Bowden all together. She highlighted the decoupling of content from ad revenue in the Pew study.


Of interest to me: The New Haven Independent was among the new alternative journalism ventures mentioned.

Mind-blowing statement

Consider that that in January 2009, the Digital Future Report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School found that 79% of adult users said the Internet was now their “most important” source of information (not just for news), higher than television (68%) or newspapers (60%). Getting news online, in other words, has become more of a reflex and a larger part of people’s daily lives.10

Ahem

A few of you still need to send me urls.
And a few others of you need to post stuff germane to the homework.
It's not hard. Just go over the Pew stuff and pull some trends out and discuss them.
And read the Atlantic piece and comment.
And tackle the Annie Le question if you can. At least read the piece to which I linked, so we can discuss that, and note that the author of the piece has already commented back.

Early moments in class blogging

As usual, Courtney A. has come storming out of the gate. I recommend her posts and the links therein.



But ...could there be ...another comparably high traffic blogger in our midst? Matt Dwyer had a lot to say in his first few days of blogging. And Matt is not the only one in class to focus on the Annie Le story. Jessica went there too.

So maybe we should all think a little bit about the Annie Le story and how it plays in to our subject areas.

To that end, I offer you this, which has quite a lot to say, although it misses the point that the New Haven Independent is more new than old media. (It's not a newspaper in any traditional sense.)

13 ways of looking at Facebook

The story itself is interesting enough, but I'm intrigued by the way different institutions cover it.
Contrast this blog from a mainstream news outlet with this Reuters story, which was linked from this Slate evening aggregator. Mashable makes an interesting point: FB is so much more vast than Twitter, but if all you read was the last six momnths of news coverage, you would conclude that Twitter was far more important. Here's young advertising pundit on her own blog. While I was searching for more stuff, I found this interesting blog. I think it might be time to remind ourselves of this year's worst piece of social media journalism. But where would YOU go if you wanted to learn about this development? There is no right answer. What would you be looking for? What the heck: let's look at some TV coverage.

A moment at the end of last night's class ...

... inspired me to write this.

One of my former blogging students is working on a thesis involving this guy. Part of such an argument might be that hearing sad news from the saddest -- as opposed to the most credentialed -- person in your media universe is more primal, more human, more connected to our true nature as (tribal) communicators.

Syllabus

Workload
First things first! As soon as possible...like by the end of Tuesday ....create a blog on which to do work for this class. If you have an existing blog that you think you can dedicate mostly to the class this semester, you can use that, but bear in mind two realities:
a. your classmates will be looking in on this blog, so if it also tends to have a lot of pictures of you dressing up cats in funny outfits or wearing vomit-stained t-shirts while you wave glasses of vodka in the air, consider the implications for your in-class gravitas.
b. I need you to blogroll all the other class blogs, and that may screw up your existing blog.
This here blog is on a very old blogspot account. That's the most obvious way to go, but I really enjoy it when people use other platforms. So consider using another platform.
If you have never had a blog and do not know what to do, ask somebody you know who has a blog. Bloggers usually really like showing you how to blog.
After you get the blog started, you should put a few resources up on your blogroll.
These are not necessarily the most fun or exciting resources, but they're good place to start.
Mashable.
Paid Content
Bloggasm
Hitwise's data center.
Mediashift.
Pew: Internet

OK, you can stop now.
As soon as you have your blog in place, e-mail the URL to me at Quine96@aol.com

You will do pretty much all of your work this class on your blog. I don't require final papers for a class like this. What I require is steady posting to the blog, many posts per week which, when you have done them, will prepare you to be a scintillating conversationalist at the weekly class meetings. The great thing about this system is that, on the last day of class, you're done. The bad thing about it is you really can't skip weeks, zone out, etc. Your grade is some rough mix of
50 percent how good and meaty and interesting and consistent your blog posts are.
30 percent what you bring to class meetings.
20 percent what you contribute to the seminar goal of teaching each other. (In other words, if you're reading the blogs of your fellow students, leaving comments, taking what they do and building on it, that's worth something.)
If, for some reason, you just cannot function this way and would like to help your final grade by producing some huge paper, see me, and we'll work that out.
The Flow
Every week, you will have some assigned reading -- we'll even start using books!! eventually -- and/or work to do on the 'net. You will be expected to comment on that reading on your blog, and you will also be expected to keep your eyes open for new subject matter. Check this blog on a daily basis, because sometimes I will have new leads I want you to track down. To a certain degree, you wil be reporters in this class. We'll cover stuff in real time.
Class 2 -- Sept. 21
Before we can really plunge into new media, we need a sense of where old media are. Fortunately, there's an obvious place to go. Unfortunately, it's a pig in python, in terms of what you'll have to digest.
It's this yearly study. You really have to comb through it, and, when you do, you'll have a pretty good sense of the revolution in progress. Read it and then post about what struck you. But we also need kind of a case in point to discuss. so read this very recent article too. We'll be closely analyzing it.
Class 3 -- Sept. 28
An Old Gray Lady.
I don't think we have muich choice but to use the Hartford Courant as kind of a living lab on what's happening to old media models. The assignments for this week will include reading the coverage of some of the recent problems of the newspaper and analyzing the newspaper's own website. Also, read this, as a discussion starter.
All of those assignments will be posted here on Sept. 22
Class 4 -- Oct 5
Google and Yahoo! battle to rule the world.
Google will have just rolled out Wave, so we'll follow the coverage of that. But we'll also look at how each of thes brand names has tried to become all things to all people.
Class 5 -- Oct. 12
Facebook time. FB is definitely winning its war. But we'll really pull the site apart. How does it work and what don't most 'bookers know?
Class 6 -- Oct. 19
Twitter. I hate Twitter. But you'll all have Twitter accounts, and we'll explore the ways it's being used. Same deal. We will tear the whole thing apart and see how it really works.
Class 7 --Oct. 26
Aggregators. How people use sites like Digg and Reddit. I don't especially like them. But I do like
Gabe Rivera's sites (look to the right for "see also"). And what's a Digital Native?
There are also big battles -- as we saw with the Courant -- about what an aggregator is and whether the original sources of news have any rights. Also, if we really need to devote some time specifically to blogs, this will be the week we do it.
Class 8 -- Nov. 2
Wikipedia. I actually think this is the most important class, but that's just me. There are constant battles with in Wikiworld. and in some ways it's both the most flawed and focused of all new, social (and it is social) media. We'll study a few cases involving the social life of information on Wikipedia.
And most importantly, you will all become Wikipedia contributors. and you will work on articles and blog about what that's like. It will open your eyes.
Class 9 -- Nov. 9
Crowdsourcing . Read "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky.
Class 10 -- Nov. 16
Memes and how information spready. Readings from McLuhan. Readings in Memetics.
Class 11 -- Nov. 23
Online identity. How new media shapes our psyches and our self presentation.
Class 12 -- Nov. 30
We launch our team projects. We look at future models in class.
Class 13 -- Dec. 7
We present our team projects
Class 14 -- Dec. 14
Final class. Great weeping.

BOOKS
Here Comes Everybody.
Eminem
Say Everything. (Maybe)