Old media attitudes can’t translate online

Today my web journalism class was “treated” with a guest speaker — Morning Call columnist Bill White. White’s been a columnist for a long time, and it shows.
While he writes both columns and blogs for the paper, there’s a definite preference for the printed product. He talks about regretting the personal elements in the blog [...]

Worthy journalism skills to learn on your own

I’m interested in compiling a list of worthwhile skills I can teach myself, preferably over the summer. So far I’m crawling through Pat Thornton’s summer reading list, the Innovation in College Media blog’s multimedia course syllabus, and a few other “Top Ten” lists.
But I still want to know more. If you’re a professional, what are [...]

MTV and Time: How Suribachi and reality TV help and hurt journalism

Time magazine decided to run an image of the second flag raising at Mt. Suribachi with a tree instead of the flag to highlight it’s global warming story.
As NPR’s Talk of the Nation discussed today, not everyone was happy about the cover.
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MTV added to the ever-expanding amount of “reality TV” last week with “The Paper”: [...]

Mobile journalism kit

I decided to rummage through the things I carry with me when I’m reporting (read: all the time). For those curious few who didn’t click the link I’ve got the image — untagged — below:

Basically if I’m in  wireless hotspot I can publish anything either to my college’s newspaper site, this blog or anywhere else. [...]

CoverItLive reactions

As I posted earlier today, I used CoverItLive to post a liveblog of the presidential debate. I had some problems getting the thing to post in WordPress and I found another key problem: preparation.
These blogs need a lot of prep: Photos, poll ideas, text links and invites. Invitations are possibly the greatest time consumer beforehand. [...]

Trying CoverItLive - Presidential debate in Philadelphia

Trying out a new tool, Cover It Live. Let’s see how it works with the presidential debate:
<iframe src=”http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php?option=com_altcaster&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=17198ddadf&height=550&width=470″ scrolling=”no” height=”550px” width=”470px” frameBorder =”0″ ></iframe>
UPDATE: Apparently embedding the frame isn’t working with BonEcho or WordPress
Check out the liveblog here.

Using platforms for more than new tools

What platforms do you get your information from? Sounds like a simple question right? Then why did a guy talking about journalism trends stump an audience for a few minutes with it?
Randy Parker from the York Daily Record had a group of journalism students and professors staring at him throwing up traditional answers.
After a few [...]

Push the basics at Speak Up, Write Out

So this weekend the crew and I went to Gettysburg College to take part in a journalism conference type event. Overall I’d call it a success, despite getting lost (a few times) and what looked like the small amount of attending students. There were panel discussions, a nice long networking lunch and a keynote address. [...]

The Commuter branches into video

Today I received a message via Facebook telling me that a 9 minute interview I did with three Ron Paul supporters was now on YouTube:

This would be the first time I’ve ever been on video doing any kind of interview or discussion and overall I’d be interested to see if there’s anything that needs improving [...]

Getting back to blogging

I’m going to come out and say it: I’ve been slacking off at this blog. Now I know there aren’t many readers and the impact of my absence probably didn’t make anyone question anything but I have to remember that I didn’t start this blog to be popular — it’s for me to chronicle my [...]