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Monthly Archives: October 2006

Media Is Not a Spectator Sport: Notes for my talk

October 31, 2006 – 1:47 am

Halloween morning, Justin Crawford and I will be leading a discussion with journalism grad students at the University of Colorado. The topic we were given is rather amorphous: "blogging and citizen journalism."
Well the good thing about an amorphous assignment is that I can make of it pretty much what I choose. So that’s exactly what [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Justin Crawford: Notes for his talk

October 31, 2006 – 1:45 am

As I mentioned, Halloween morning my colleague Justin Crawford and I are giving a talk to a class of journalism graduate students at the University of Colorado on the amorphous topic of blogs and citizen journalism. Here are some notes for Justin’s talk, What are blogs and why should you care?…
READ THE REST OF THIS [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Amy's Adventures, Media Musings, Resources, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Wifi: When Will Conference Venues & Planners Realize It\’s a Must?

October 23, 2006 – 12:02 pm

I go to a lot of media conferences, where attendees generally expect (or even need) wifi access in the conference areas — for filing or updating stories or blog posts, fast fact-checking, coordinating with editors, participating in chat-based coverage, etc.
Almost invariably, the hotel or conference center has no infrastructure for providing wifi in [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Amy's Adventures, Net Effects on Society, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (1)

Running a Group Conference Blog: What I\’m Learning

October 22, 2006 – 10:17 pm

This Tuesday I’m flying to Burlington, VT for my annual brain food festival — the conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). I’ve been working with this group since 1990, and I have a lot of friends there, so this event is always a blast.
This year, I set up an unofficial SEJ2006 group weblog. [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Amy's Adventures, Media Musings, Net Effects on Society, Resources, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

10 Ideas: What To Post to a Conference Blog

October 22, 2006 – 7:41 pm

I’ve been working hard lately to get the unofficial conference blog up and running for the 2006 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Now that it’s up and the crew of volunteer bloggers is mostly trained in how to use our blogging tool, Typepad, they’re starting to request more guidance on content. Most of these [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Amy's Adventures, Content Style & Business, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Transparency vs. Payola: Weighing Risks

October 11, 2006 – 2:50 pm

PayPerPost: Worth the risk?

Over at the Center for Citizen Media blog, I’ve joined an interesting conversation concerning the thorny issue of payola in online media. See: PayPerPost: A Cancer on the Blogosphere, or Merely Semi-Sleazy? by Dan Gillmor.
Background: The controversial online advertising service PayPerPost attracted considerable blog and media attention after it recently got $3 [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Conversations, Media Musings, Net Effects on Society, Real World Writing, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

N. Korean \”Nuke Test\” — Find the Right Sources Before Rattling Sabers

October 9, 2006 – 11:23 am

Did today’s lead online head from washintongpost.com jump the gun?

Today, in the numerous U.S. news stories speculating about North Korea’s as-yet-unconfirmed nuclear test, I’ve noticed a glaring omission: The acronym CTBTO (sometimes CTBO).
That stands for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization — the body that runs the International Monitoring System (IMS), which is how scientists [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Media Musings, Resources | Comments (0)

Blogging Gets Bumpy, and that\’s OK

October 8, 2006 – 9:38 pm

Recently, PR blogger Kami Huyse published an interesting article: 5 Tips to Avoid Comment Hell: Dealing with Trolls. There, she posed a crucial question for new bloggers who are nervous about allowing comments on their blogs:

"I have had many clients ask me about the risks of blogging. How do you keep competitors and arch enemies [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Content Style & Business, Conversations, Real World Writing, Voices: Blogs, etc. | Comments (0)

Net News Wire: Not a great podcatcher

October 8, 2006 – 9:52 am

So I’ve been playing with the Mac-based feed reader NetNewsWire quite extensively for a few weeks now, and I’ve decided I love it as a feed reader — but unfortunately, I’ve had to ditch it as a podcatcher. I just switched to using the online service Odeo as my podcatcher.
Here’s why…

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Amy's Adventures, Resources | Comments (0)

Help Request: My Gmail May Have Been Hacked

October 5, 2006 – 1:12 pm

This morning, my e-mail (which I access via Google’s Gmail service) got weird on me. About 90 minutes ago I started receiving a ton of bounces for messages I never sent.
I figured that maybe some spammer spoofed my e-mail address in the Reply-To field — that happens to nearly everyone sometime, and there’s not [...]

By Amy Gahran | Posted in Amy's Adventures | Comments (2)