Forget for a moment that I have the iPhone in portrait orientation, and check out the quality of this brief walk through the newsroom. I’ve uploaded videos to YouTube from all kinds of cameras: Sony Camcorder; Flips; my beloved Casios; the MacBook iSight.
But I don’t think I’ve ever ended up with a clip that looked and sounded this good. I know, could be some Cupertino Mind Trick but I think I’m correct on this point. And the iPhone has YouTube option built right in.
Missourinet reporter Steve Walsh showed up for work on Thursday with a brand new iPhone. Like most of the folks in the newsroom, Steve is a long-time radio guy who remembers what a splicing block is used for.
All of our reporters know how to post stories to the web and about half of them are getting their Twitter on. But it was nice to see Steve invest his own hard-earned journo bucks in the latest tech. (I’ve encouraged him to take advantage of the 30 day grace period and upgrade to the new iPhone)
I can’t wait to see how Steve uses the iPhone to cover and report the news. To help him along, I thought I’d make a list of some apps that might be useful. I have these on my phone but the list is far from comprehensive and I welcome your suggestions in the comments.
Steve does most of the heavy lifting for the Missourinet blog which can be found at Missourinet.com.
I’m pretty sure June 4, 1984, was my first official day at Learfield Communications. And since 25 years feels like something of a milestone, I’ve been trying to come up with something to post here to mark the date.
The calendar [larger image] above was on my desk that first month and means absolutely nothing to anyone that wasn’t around back then. And not much to the handful that was (Clyde, Roger, Bob), so I’ve annotated a few entries to jog their memories.
With good jobs hard to keep and harder to find these days, let the record show I am one lucky web boy. Can’t wait to see what the next 25 brings.
So you’ve got a TV station or radio station or newspaper with all this good “content.” The cost of producing it is already sunk so you put it on your website and sell some banner ads. Ch-ching. But it just isn’t working for a lot of “legacy media” and Terry Heaton explains why:
“The assumptions of any content play are that its value is so great that expensive, adjacent advertising will support it and that the mass attractive to advertisers can be created through scarcity. Neither of these assumptions is viable online, and the real problem is that both must be present for significant revenue to be realized.”
So what do we do?
“We should nurture our legacy products as best we can, but we simply must separate our ability to make money from our dependence on the content we create. The key to that is in defining, understanding and developing the Local Web.”
I added the bold in hopes that would help me understand what he’s saying. I think he’s referring to the content we are already creating. We have a story in the paper, we put it on the web. We have a good radio morning show, we stream it. And so on.
We can’t just “re-purpose” our existing content and expect to attract an audience that will be attractive to an advertiser. I think he’s right.
It really doesn’t take much to make me happy. Since the first time I saw one in a browser address bar, I’ve wanted to add one of these little graphics (they’re called favicons) to my website(s). And it always requied getting someone else to do it for me. I hated my ignorance.
But it’s a snap on WordPress. No end of little plug-ins that make it a snap. You’ll probably have to put up with a bit of gee-whiz’ing for a while as I discover tiny new wonders about WordPress. Thank you, and good night.
The always insightful Amy Gahran poses a little thought experiment that I believe I’ve posted on a few times:
“What if social media (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Google Earth, etc.) were the only tool you could use to deliver the benefits of journalism to your community? You could still gather information however you choose (through in-person interviews, phone, Web, archive research, etc. — even social media), but you could only deliver your work via social media. How would you do it?”
I suspect this experiment is already out of the lab and we’ll see more and more examples. And I especially like the notion that “creativity thrives on constraints.” 140 characters. 30 sec of video. Boiling a story down to its essence.
I’ve read a lot news stories, blog posts and tweets this weekend, reminding everyone to remember the men and women who served and died in defense of our country. How best to do that? Little American flags? Those magnetic yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbons?
My dad was in the Navy (a radio operator) and saw action in the pacific during WWII. He survived but never talked about it. To me or anyone else as far as I know. I do recall my mom telling me how relieved everyone was when it “started looking like we would win” the war. That was the first time I really understood it was possible for our country to lose a war. The movies always included some drama on that score but you knew the good guys would prevail. Not so for those who fought the thing.
Perhaps the best time to remember our men and women in uniform is before we send them off to fight and die. And if the cause isn’t just and right –whatever that means anymore– we don’t send them.
I grew up during the Cold War and I kind of miss it. If you think about it, a thermonuclear war is the only war where the politicians –who decide to go to war– might die in the first ten minutes. That is my kind of war.
The Typepad-to-WordPress migration is underway. My friend Phil managed
to get most of the 4,000+ posts ported over with images and links
intact. I’ll have to re-post photos from the last six months but that
won’t take long.
You shouldn’t expect any visible dramatic changes. Most of the good stuff is under the hood. I’ve picked a rather spartan theme and expect to do a bit of experimentation in that regard. Sort of like coming home to discover your wife has repainted the living room. Every day.
Posting here will continue to be light until we point smays.com to the new home.
Missourinet (a Learfield network) News Director Bob Priddy covered last night’s execution of Dennis Skillicorn. Reporters and witnesses can’t take cell phones past a certain point, but Bob was planning to use Twitter to file updates before and after the execution (he was a witness).
The wifi he expected wasn’t available so he took notes and posted to @missourinet when he got back on line (at the motel, I assume).
As I expected, Twitter was a very effective tool in the hands of good and experienced reporters. Here’s a screen shot from early this morning.
Had reporters been allowed to keep their Blackberrys and iPhones, this is probably as close to live coverage of an execution as we’re likely to get.
And in the hands of someone as responsible as Bob Priddy, I think this might be a good idea. As I understand it, the rationale behind having witnesses is to insure the people of Missouri “see” this ultimate punishment. Twitter might be the least sensational way to accomplish this on a mass scale.
I’ll make a prediciton here: If not in Missouri, some state will allow or provide this coverage.
