Underage drinking at Ohio University
Wednesday June 11, 2008
Although about half the students on Ohio University's campus are under the age of 21, you wouldn't know that by looking at Court Street on a weekend as underage students find ways around the drinking laws. This video examines the problems and talks to the people involved with the issue, striving to find a solution.
In regards to the assignment at hand...
Tuesday May 27, 2008
Even though I am writing my own blog, I've never been much of a fan of blogs, I find them to usually be self-satisfying and very annoying. The blogs I hate the most are intimate blogs that read more like online diaries than a true insight into a person's life. Although, I said that I dislike blogs, I don't dislike all of them. I very much appreciate blogs that offer a fresh perspective on things, like when the CEO of a company blogs about a new product or blogs about the latest gadgets coming to a store near you.
As for personal blogs, like the one mentioned in Mark Tage's post, I'm not a fan. There must be an audience out there to read stories on what people do in their everyday lives and yeah its a good way to keep in touch with mom if you live across the country, but still not journalism and certainly not worth reading unless you know the person. I do, however, like personal blogs when they come from someone in another country, like civilians blogging in the countries with which we are at war. It's interesting to read about a person's life different from your own. My criteria for reading a blog is: you must have something new and interesting to say, something I can't get from anywhere else for me to read it and keep coming back to it.
We the Media' needs an update
Tuesday May 27, 2008
“We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People” by Dan Gilmor is a view that was relevant when it first was released and is now tragically outdated two years later. The online element available to accompany the text does not excuse the fact that it desperately needs republished to include everything Gilmor missed.
This book is great for someone who is not hooked up to the internet and does not know what’s going on in the world around them, other than that its old news. The book does offer a thorough history of online journalism before it was online, especially the sections on disgruntled programmers who began to write on the web and change history far before newspapers caught the bug to go online. It’s really the tone of the rest of the book that needs an update because in the world of technology when everything is moving quickly and changing, there are no definites and Gilmor makes these mistakes over and over again. This book cannot be written in the form that these technologies are brand new and something his audience has never heard of because by the time a book is published those same technologies will be fine-tuned and probably processing in a way that no one initially expected.
The small section devoted to internet video is nothing short of ridiculous as Gilmor states, “While the cons of producing video news programming is dropping all the time, delivery it online is extremely expensive, because Internet service providers charge for uploading bandwidth at rates amateurs can’t afford.” Did Gilmor not know about YouTube, the site devoted to video amateurs that Google bought for a billion dollars because it saw such promise in the small company, before publishing this book? Many newspapers post their videos on YouTube and their own news site to help drive traffic to their own site because YouTube is so popular, even CNN used YouTube to interest a younger audience in presidential candidate debates providing video questions directly from the public for the candidates to answer. Another realm of the internet that Gilmor totally ignored was social networking and during his research period MySpace and Facebook were continuing to gain popularity, so why didn’t he include them in his technology to look out for?
Although this book misses the mark on up and coming technologies, what it lacks in new information it gains in explanation of laws. The law section could be a great footnote to journalist law for any industry beginner or freshmen journalism class as its exactly what one needs to know prior to starting his or her own blog. The “Defamation, Libel, and Other Nasty Stuff” section is extremely well-informed and the advice he gives straight from First Amendment attorney David L. Marburger should be highly regarded by every journalist, “try to be insured against libel…second, writers ‘should keep in mind who most often sues: people whose livelihoods depend on the goodwill of the public, who depend on reputation.’” While most of Gilmor’s book is review for anyone studying journalism or those immersed in the new media business, it’s a concise cliff notes for those just getting started.
Las Vegas Sun makes history sexy
Tuesday May 20, 2008
The Las Vegas Sun launched their history project last week, which includes video, an interactive map, stories and archived pictures that tell the story of how a railroad stop became the center of entertainment in just 103 years.
Every part of this project is pitch perfect, there is an 11-part video series (in the style of a PBS or history channel special) that tells the history of Las Vegas through each of its tumultuous decades and is narrated by the Sun's president and editor, Brian Greenspun. Then, there is the interactive map where users can explore the Strip from the very first casino to those most recently built and all the implosion along the way. When users click on a casino they get a brief history plus a collection of stories, videos and photos of each. And these are just some of the highlights!
"The History of Fabulous Las Vegas" project is new example of how newspapers can have fun with multimedia instead of being scared of it! Check it out, I promise it won't be time wasted!
Online video continues to gain popularity
Friday May 16, 2008
According to Socialmedia.biz, one of the leading social media blogs (at least their web site says so), video is becoming more an more mainstream with U.S. internet users. The post, "Online Video Viewing Still Rising," claims that U.S. users watched 11.5 billion videos in March 2008, which is up 64% from just a year ago. They also reported that the average viewer watches 137.3-235 minutes of video each month.
The question is, How will this affect the news industry? I personally think that we're already seeing the result of this with all the big newspapers competing with each other in their online packaging. By just checking out the New York Times homepage, you can see the lead story almost always has video or another multimedia feature along with the text, though, at this point its only a small blue link. I think that in the near future we will see video placed very prominently at the top of the page where you will be able to view it right there on the homepage, instead of following the link to the story, then another link to the video. But only time will tell ... but I think I'm onto something here.
Books or Brews?
How OU Students Bear the Burden of College
Wednesday, May 14,2008
Although the cost of education continues to rise, despite Congress' best efforts, Ohio University students have found ways to maintain their fun lifestyles and continue to pay their bills on time.
Columbus Dispatch slideshow offers great example
Friday, May 9, 2008
Since the next assignment for my Advance Online Journalism class is to create a photo slideshow, I thought that I'd check out what the Columbus Dispatch has to offer for examples and what I found was this photo/audio slideshow about a therapy dog in Columbus.
Even though this slideshow is more of a human interest piece when my assignment is striving to be more newsworthy and civic in style, I still like the quality of the photos combined with the audio interview over the show. I think that I'm going to try to combine those elements with a user-guided experience, though, because I personally like more control of my online content and I want my readers to have the same experience.
Dance major balances final quarter, rehearsals
Friday, May 2, 2008
Ohio University dance major, Nicole Bryant, manages her time between teaching a ballet class, her job, and choreographing and leading rehearsals for two shows coming up in May.
Oldies, but goodies: OJR outlines timeless tips for shooting web video
Thursday, May 1, 2008
With another assignment due just around the corner, I thought it was a fine time to look up new tips on shooting web video. I began my search hoping to find a new and creative way to challenge myself on this next shoot, but instead found web basics that are still important even with one project already under my belt.
I looked to Regina McCombs article, "Shooting Web video: How to put your readers at the scene," featured in the Online Journalism Review and read for the umpteenth time that the content drives a web video just as it does for a news story. McCombs gives a really great tip of guidance in your video shooting:
Refining your story into a sentence helps focus your idea and keeps you from shooting everything that might have only a tangential relationship to the main idea.
I learned from my last video experience that it's important to plan ahead what you want to get out of a video, even though while you're shooting the story could take a completely different direction.
I do think that this article lacked an emphasis on sound recording. Natural sound is so important to a visual piece to keep the pace of the video and give context to the story. This next project I'm going to see if having a separate recording device (because the mic on my camera is awful) will improve the quality of my video. We will see, check out the next post for possible improvements.
About
I was posed with the challenge, by Ohio University visiting professor Mark Tatge, to blog about my thoughts on the state of online journalism today and where it is heading for a class focusing in advanced online journalism. So, I have put together this blog to not only showcase my thoughts, opinions and questions about new media, but also to have a place for my class projects as well, which will be relevant to the material that I write about here.