Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Political Timing??? (Click to Read Article)
I was looking at USA Today... today for a review on how they are using new media and came across this story. I really don't think this was the best time to decide to redecorate the oval office. Everyone else in America is tightening their belts to make it through the "summer of recovery" / recession and the President is redecorating around the time he goes on vacation in Martha's Vineyard. Who knows how much of this was actually donated and how much it actually cost the American taxpayer... all the while our country goes into more and more debt. It is things like this that are leading to the rise of tea party candidates and a +10 point lead for the GOP on the generic ballot.
Interesting Idea (hope it works)
Pay students to be good students... wish I was they did that at my school, seems a lot more tangible than a scholarship (which I've never been able to get)
Monday, August 30, 2010
Comment @maurapierce
[FYI: It was ambiguous whether you meant to comment on the article in a "post", or make a real "comment"]
Dan Gillmor's piece was more or less what I think our class's opinion was on the matter. What I am trying to figure out is (respectfully, of course) why do we need to define who is a journalist or what journalism is, because I think it is so dynamic right now that a definition will just constrain our view for what it can be.
I enjoy social media in general. Social media is the first time that people are able to be more of a broadcaster instead of a direct communicator. Think about something that happened in your life today. Now if it was 20 years ago, you'd call up someone and tell them about it, or maybe you'd send a letter to your family/friend. This is active one-on-one communication where you are forcing someone to listen in on something you have to say. Social media allows us to post less important things and allow our family and friends to only listen to us if they choose to. It is a lot nicer way to treat people's time. The downside is that now we all have an influx of useless information coming towards us that we read and sometimes it's hard to focus on the important stuff with all the noise.
Typically I "like" things on Facebook that have some connection to myself. For instance, if a friend gets a car and I am happy for them, I will like the post. I do usually skim news articles other people post, which, I have found, are usually strange or unusual news items. On Twitter, I repost things if I think the people following me would like to know about it/if it says something about myself.
Dan Gillmor's piece was more or less what I think our class's opinion was on the matter. What I am trying to figure out is (respectfully, of course) why do we need to define who is a journalist or what journalism is, because I think it is so dynamic right now that a definition will just constrain our view for what it can be.
I enjoy social media in general. Social media is the first time that people are able to be more of a broadcaster instead of a direct communicator. Think about something that happened in your life today. Now if it was 20 years ago, you'd call up someone and tell them about it, or maybe you'd send a letter to your family/friend. This is active one-on-one communication where you are forcing someone to listen in on something you have to say. Social media allows us to post less important things and allow our family and friends to only listen to us if they choose to. It is a lot nicer way to treat people's time. The downside is that now we all have an influx of useless information coming towards us that we read and sometimes it's hard to focus on the important stuff with all the noise.
Typically I "like" things on Facebook that have some connection to myself. For instance, if a friend gets a car and I am happy for them, I will like the post. I do usually skim news articles other people post, which, I have found, are usually strange or unusual news items. On Twitter, I repost things if I think the people following me would like to know about it/if it says something about myself.
News Story: Purdue Hires Crossing Guards (Click This To Read)
Front Page: http://www.purdueexponent.org/pageScans/2010/08/31/issue.pdf
CSPAN+Exponent Ideas?
As you will see in the Tuesday edition of the Exponent this week, I wrote a story on students being hired as crossing guards on Purdue's campus. They held a callout meeting Monday night which I attended, and during this time I was feverishly taking notes and asking questions. I decided that it would be fun to play with an app on my phone to record the event. While walking away from the meeting, I played it back and, of course, had to listen to the terrible quality the audio was since my phone's mic was so far away from the source of the audio. I then had a mini epiphany. Why doesn't the Exponent pursue more primary source style documenting, like C-SPAN does, as an option for our readers. It would be awesome if I could go to an interview/conference, give the speaker a wireless mic and record everything he says in a nice quality. We could then attach this to our stories in a mini-embedded player. This would give our readers who want to know everything about the topic the ability to listen to the entire interaction. It would also allow the paper to use this content for possible future podcasts. If there was ever a confusion about misquoting an interviewee, we'd have proof of what was said. The hardware can't be too expensive and I believe the benefits from using it would be very high. Hopefully with our new website, we can easily store and publish this kind of content. I think we'd be the first student newspaper to do this, and might set a standard in the industry for providing a minimal/non-bias approach to our stories. I certainly would trust a news source more if I had access to the original content.
Huffing(and puffing)ton Post
I don't think I can ever take the Huffington post seriously as a journalism venue anymore... freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2579985/posts
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New Media on Major News Websites Today
Today I am looking at the New York Times. At least when I think about the most widely known paper today, I think about the Times. They have a long rich history, but have run into trouble in recent years trying to stay afloat. I will be finding things I like and dislike about their website.
Looking at their home page, my head starts to hurt. They seem to want to push as many stories on the front page as they can. There is not much media on the page, just one video player for their video podcast and a few ads. I like how the multiple ads on the page are all for one thing. All in all, the site is ugly and doesn't seem to have a real focus for me to be directed to. I could see how a power user might like this look, but I wouldn't think an average end user would.
Inside a news article, I like the quality of the photographs, but they seem unrelated/unneeded to the story. The story I chose to read was "New York Rebounds From Slump, but Unevenly" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/nyregion/31nyecon.html). They have pictures for some of the people affected in the story, but they are very stylistic portraits and I would have liked to see a real graphic, maybe a pie chart or some statistics. In line with the story, they have links to the comments section of the site, promoting it. I like their goal, but would like to see something more rich, maybe allow people to comment on particular paragraphs or sections in the news story and have them show up in real time for all the people browsing the story. It would be cool if news fostered a discussion instead of just allowed you to comment on a story. I think there is a difference. They push the sharing links (put the story on facebook, twitter....) right up to the top and in your face when you read the story. I found it interesting that they have a reprint button which will take you to a tool to help you be legal when reposting quotes/pictures/full story, I don't know if I like it or not.
All in all, the website seems out of touch with their audience and could use a major overhaul. They don't seem to be using any kind of new media that I could find. I would not use the Times as a role model for the Exponent's new website.
Looking at their home page, my head starts to hurt. They seem to want to push as many stories on the front page as they can. There is not much media on the page, just one video player for their video podcast and a few ads. I like how the multiple ads on the page are all for one thing. All in all, the site is ugly and doesn't seem to have a real focus for me to be directed to. I could see how a power user might like this look, but I wouldn't think an average end user would.
Inside a news article, I like the quality of the photographs, but they seem unrelated/unneeded to the story. The story I chose to read was "New York Rebounds From Slump, but Unevenly" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/nyregion/31nyecon.html). They have pictures for some of the people affected in the story, but they are very stylistic portraits and I would have liked to see a real graphic, maybe a pie chart or some statistics. In line with the story, they have links to the comments section of the site, promoting it. I like their goal, but would like to see something more rich, maybe allow people to comment on particular paragraphs or sections in the news story and have them show up in real time for all the people browsing the story. It would be cool if news fostered a discussion instead of just allowed you to comment on a story. I think there is a difference. They push the sharing links (put the story on facebook, twitter....) right up to the top and in your face when you read the story. I found it interesting that they have a reprint button which will take you to a tool to help you be legal when reposting quotes/pictures/full story, I don't know if I like it or not.
All in all, the website seems out of touch with their audience and could use a major overhaul. They don't seem to be using any kind of new media that I could find. I would not use the Times as a role model for the Exponent's new website.
Job Hunt Part 1
When I woke up today (much later than I should be allowed) I had a nice email from Patricia Morgan stating that Cisco was going to be at the Computer Science building today. I dusted off my old resume file and updated it to include my most recent changes, when I realized something; I am done with internships. It seems like for as long as I can remember I have been in an internship over each Summer. My last year without a summer job (that was paid) was between sophomore and junior year of high school. So I got to edit my objective today to state that I was looking for full time employment instead. I got to talk with a Cisco employee who I knew graduated from here last year and he seemed pretty happy with my resume. I hadn't ever considered Cisco a company for me, but the more that I think about it, the more I can find possible opportunities there. They are based in nice places all over the country, such as San Jose, CA. He said that if I got hired, I would be interviewing my possible team leaders and picking the team and project that I most would want to work on, which I think is pretty cool. We'll see how this turns out. As always, I will hope for the best, but this is in a long series of job hunt stories. I am going to be pushing my resume in every direction I can this year and hopefully will have a few options come graduation.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Blogger Droid
This is my first post from this new app (to me at least) called Blogger Droid for my phone. I think it could probably use some work and I'm probably going to be on the lookout for the latest and greatest new apps that work for Blogger on my Evo 4G. I wonder if this is a bad idea for my classes... we'll see...
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