Here’s an explanation of podcasting, and some links to some good environmental podcasts, for the people attending my Saturday workshop at the SEJ conference…
(UPDATE OCT. 3: OK, the SEJ conference is now over, and I’m back home in Boulder. I’ve just updated this page of notes and links to reflect more accurately what actually happened in this standing-room-only session. Also, complete audio of this session is now available.)
On Saturday, Oct. 1, I’m delivering a talk at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), in Austin, TX.
I’ll be explaining to a bunch of journalists and other attendees what they most need to know about weblogs, feeds, wikis, and podcasts – just the basics. I’ll focus mainly on the “so what” of it all.
This will be a pretty informal presentation, since I know the SEJ crowd pretty well. Here are the links I’ll be using in that session…
Sorry I haven’t had too much to say this week, I’ve been really busy. Right now I’m in Tarrytown, NY right now, getting ready to drive up to Lake Placid. Tomorrow, my I, Reporter colleague Adam Glenn and I will be delivering a talk to the annual conference of the NY Press Association, an organization of the major newspapers in the NY metro area. Our topic: “What is citizen journalism, and why should news organizations care?”
I’ve put together a handout for this event which covers our main points…
It was a year ago yesterday that one of the groundbreaking events of citizen journalism, the “Rathergate” affair, began. It all started with some postings that Harry MacDougald, a Republican lawyer in Atlanta, made to a conservative web-based discussion forum called Free Republic…
A couple of weeks ago, when we both spoke at the Da Vinci Institute’s Blogging Bootcamp seminar, my colleague Dave Taylor made many good points (as he often does).
Of course, I disagree slightly with something he said there (as I often do).
In a nutshell, Dave explained that he doesn’t like to feature a date/timestamp prominently on his weblog postings. He thinks that tends to diminish the perceived long-term value of the content. He encouraged business bloggers to generally follow suit: to focus on providing “evergreen” content, and to play down or possibly even omit the date/timestamp on their blogs.
Personally, I think Dave’s approach puts the blogger’s desires ahead of the needs and reality of the weblog audience – in a way that could be a problem for many blogs, and their readers. Here’s why…
Can citizen journalism be analysis, rather than just news reporting or first-hand accounts? I think so.
Over at “I, Reporter” I just posted this article, in which I examine a brief analysis piece recently published in “, Media Musings, Net Effects on Society Comments (0)
Like just about everyone else who has access to TV and the internet, I am stunned by the news coming out of the Gulf Coast regions smashed by Hurricane Katrina earlier this week.
I try, in my own small way, to imagine what it must be like to be in that situation. And I realize that, with all or most communication systems still down, that lack of information might be one of the most frustrating and frightening aspects of surviving in the aftermath. No phones. No power, so no radio or TV for the most part. No newspapers. And don’t even think about the internet.
For many Southerners in the wake of Katrina, word of mouth has become the new 21st-century medium. That must be a rude awakening…
It’s the new breed of online kudzu, and it’s really starting to annoy me: Fake weblogs which offer no real content of their own. They merely scrape headlines or content from other sites, then paste it onto a page template loaded with sleazy spammish links and get-rich-quick come-ons.
Yep, it’s blog spam. Or facade blogs, take your pick of neologisms.
I hate blog spam because it directly undermines the key usefulness inherent to the connectedness that blogging tools provide: findability. I get especially irritated when my headlines or content end up getting scraped onto such sites – as just happened tonight. Go look at that crap, I dare you. Get ready to cringe.
Believe me, this kind of inbound link does me no favors. Here’s why…
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