You're so on the right track...

I just came across this write-up for a fall multimedia intern at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It's too late to apply, but I'm copying it here because it gives a great picture of modern journalism (and should make you feel good that you're learning all of these things in Boot Camp here at Cronkite).

This new position is for a multidisciplined and flexible multimedia journalist who can generate and execute multimedia ideas. Ideal candidates will be able to hit the ground running and juggle all types of content and content mediums on deadline assignments. One day you’ll be shooting breaking news photos and transmitting live from the scene, the next day creating a Soundslide feature on a local music festival, the next day shooting video of a political rally for the presidential election.

This position works for the web department and will be focused on quick turn assignments for the web as well as engaging feature assignments that are web-only. Video and audio gear provided, some still equipment provided but the focus of this internship is multimedia. This 13-week, paid internship has a flexible start date (ideally sometime in September) and college credit is available.

Mandatory skills:
+ iMovie or Final Cut Pro
+ Audacity (or other multi-track audio editing programs)
+ Soundslides
+ Photo, video and audio content gathering and editing skills
+ FTP and remote transmission skills
+ Ability to turn high-quality projects quickly
+ Ability to write cleanly and create engaging, informative blog entries, captions, web teases and headlines

Would be awesome skills:
+ Flash or any other multimedia production tools

"Not now, Futura..."

Since we've been talking about fonts in class, you might enjoy this video.

What multimedia should do

Here's a rollover idea that so clearly adds to the understanding of the text that it's hard not to be excited about it -- so I'll stick with the enthusiasm. Slate carries the text of Obama's acceptance speech. As you mouseover the highlighted areas, a text box appears to the right of the copy. Inside, it contains explication or context for the highlighted material. So smart. It doesn't hinder the reading through distraction or tempt the reader to leave the page; what it does is return the reader to the reading feeling smarter, more informed.

Gustav

One of the best features of the Soundslides program is its ability to produce publishable work quickly. At the (Richmond, Va.) Times-Dispatch, tonight, the editor in charge asked that a show be put together of the top AP photos of people preparing for Gustav to hit in New Orleans. Then, after putting together a narrative from the related AP stories, he recorded the voice track. Sometimes, the images are synced to the audio points, but not tonight. The result, "Preparations for Gustav," can be seen here. It was linked off the home page as part of the storm package:

A story, a latte and a connection

Jodie Mozdzer of the Hartford Courant has a story today on how online-only news organizations are having a larger presence in journalism (fyi: East Hampton is on Long Island in New York):

The Island Traders coffee shop in East Hampton is not a traditional newsroom. It's a relaxed, colorful place with palm trees and bamboo shades, rather than a dingy office with ringing phones and clicking keyboards.

But news flows through this small bistro nonetheless.

This is where Cristina Johnson, editor of the online community newspaper East Hampton Today, often sits with her laptop and notes, tapping out updates on East Hampton politics and events.

Johnson is part of a growing trend in journalism: online-only news reporters. To file stories she needs nothing more than a place to set her laptop computer, a connection to the Internet, and, if she's lucky, a caffeinated beverage. ...more

nola.com goes all out

This screen shot shows only a small part of the offerings of the Web site of the local paper, The Times-Picayune. The paper distinguished itself during Katrina by publishing from its New Orleans offices as long as it possibly could. When it could no longer use an actual press, it published pages designed for the print press online with full readability. The blogs it hosted and the online forums it set up were instrumental in saving lives, alerting people to dangers and those in need, and helping friends and relatives connect during a time of chaos and devastation.

Gustav "evacuate" videos can be embedded -- but there's a problem

In keeping with the spirit of Web 2.0 -- interactivity -- and the essential spirit overall -- sharing -- CNN now lets users/viewers embed its news videos on non-CNN sites. (The video most recently embedded here was of people leaving New Orleans after Mayor Ray Nagin advised them to get out as the 'mother of all storms' bears down barely three years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.) The danger, in terms of the old business model for publishers hosting journalism, is that people will not need the actual site once they can see the video elsewhere. Nor will their "clicks" count as the "eyeballs" sales reps sell to advertisers. However, others contend that people viewing a CNN video, no matter where, will be likely to trust CNN enough to seek out that site for future news. And, it's free brand distribution. But there's a bigger danger. Bet you don't see a video here. That's because each time CNN updates, the link goes sour and you can no longer see the embedded video. Unless they fix it after the time of this posting, that's a serious frustration. I'm tempted to go elsewhere because CNN has now wasted my time -- I embedded two videos that worked and then didn't -- and, even worse, make the embedder look foolish.
UPDATE: About 60 minutes later, the video embed is working. Must have been my criticism, right? (Not.)

"TV Guy thinks this is cool"

Bill Silcock (Dr. Bill) called this to my attention: a panorama shot of Barack Obama's speech last night. The viewer can move the image in any direction. To see a larger image without going to The New York Times site, click on the image above.

Dove Evolution Video

Ok- so this video might be a little old, but I just saw a reference to Dove while I was surfing. I wanted to share it in case you haven't seen it, because it is pretty crazy to think that that is what is going on. It really makes you think about how our perceptions are getting distorted. I think this image distortion is having a serious impact on how we interact with each other and our expectations.

CSS Zen Garden

So- seeing as how we have been hacking away at this website, I thought I would share this cool website about CSS that my big brother told me about. It is called Zen Garden. Graphic artist go and modify the main page by only changing the CSS style sheet. There are some really cool examples that are fun to look at it. The neat part is, they didn't do anything to the HTML, just modified it with CSS. Anyway, have fun looking at all the different styles. Some of them are pretty incredible.

Several items of note...

There are a number of interesting posts I'm coming across lately. I don't have time to synopsize them, alas, so I'm going to archive them here via links and heds.
CBS Trying Hand at Citizen Journalism -- CBSEyemobile. Similar to the CNN imobile we looked at earlier in the semester. Also, here.

Birmingham Post Goes Web-First With Site Relaunch

London School of Journalism to Offer Lectures in Second Life

All in the eyes of the reporters...

OJB, or the Online Journalism Blog (a British publication), presents a series of cartograms -- pictures representing the world in terms of what was reported in 2007.As the blog explains: "These maps allow you to grasp several media trends at a glance."

Take Me Out

So I'm not a huge sports nut, but there is something about Chicago sports that fires me up, so to speak. Maybe it's just the hometown pride, but Chicago is a city that really gets behind its sports teams, and it's really cool to see. The Chicago Cubs in particular have a rabid fan base, and Wrigleyville during baseball season is truly a sight to behold. I thought I'd share video of opening day, if for no other reason than it does a really good job of creating a sense of what it's like to hang out with a bunch of drunken baseball fans on opening day (sorry about the annoying commercial at the beginning):

Mother Knows Best

So, if you're anything like me (which, God help you if you are), you have a mother who you love to death, and who means well, and who just wants you to be happy--but for the love of God woman, can you please just stop nagging me for two seconds and let me live my own life every once in awhile???

Ahem. Where was I? Right. So, luckily for me, my mother can't find the power switch on a computer, let alone send an e-mail, so the guilt trips and "advice" just come in the form of phone calls, which is just fine by me. Some people aren't so lucky, and it is for those people that Postcards From Yo Mamma was created.

The concept is simple but brilliant: readers send in e-mails from their mothers, which are in turn posted on the site, providing children with parents everywhere the comfort that they're not the only ones out their with a well-meaning but occasionally exasperating mother.

Here's a sample:

Look who finally learned the computer. Dad set me up email ACCOUNT AND ALSO SHOWED ME HOW TO GO ONLINE.I DON’T KNOW WHY EVERYTHING IS SUDDENLY WRITING BIG LIKE THIS, SO JUST IGNORE IT. SO HOW WAS THE CONCERT YOU WENT TO WITH FRIENDS/ CALL ME SOON. THIS WRITING IS WEIRD SORRY, LOVE MOM.

Visit and enjoy. And don't forget to take your vitamins and lock your doors before you go to sleep, and would it kill you to call every once in awhile??

Lights out, 8 to 9 p.m.!

What a brilliant place and way to publicize Earth Hour. I can't imagine a day going by without visiting Google at least a dozen times and, while okay maybe I'm a bit excessive in my use, it's a wildly popular place. I'd forgotten about this time, and certainly that it was tonight, until this morning when I Googled something. I'm getting my candle ready as soon as I hit "publish" on this.

Great Documentary from Frontline

I happened upon this Frontline documentary on Monday night when I got home. It traces the Iraq war from the beginning up until 2006 or 2007 (I can't remember which). It was called Bush's War. It was incredibly disturbing. What the administration thought they could do and how it spiraled out of control really puts the whole situation in a different light. The thing that was very cool was that they have all the complete interviews on their website and all kinds of other features that they kept promoting during and after the documentary. Also, you can watch the whole thing on line. I haven't had a chance to explore the website, but I thought it was a good example of broadcast taking advantage of multimedia.

Following Helen O'Neill's story...

I just did a Google News search and found one site that packaged the story with many related stories -- many were on your idea list from last night. So my first contribution to this "sighting collection" is from ABC News.The Guardian merely carried her story. And we had such high hopes!

Interesting way to display photos at the Charlotte Observer.

WOAI in San Antonio just shoveled three stories onto a Web page, one on top of another.

Sadly, a paper in Hays, Kansas, didn't even bother with a headline:

Hulu.com

I'm sure you've all by now heard of Hulu.com, the joint venture between NBC and News Corp. that brings TV and movie content to the web for free. I finally checked it out this weekend and was pretty impressed. After being sucked in to watching clips from old episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", I came upon a collection of clips from the very first Today Show (I love the "Today in Two Minutes" feature):


The site can give away the content by including advertising in the clips, which is a small price to pay for being able to access such a library of content, in my opinion (where else can you find "The Three Amigos" AND "Requiem for a Dream"?).

The video player offers many features, including the ability to rewind and fast-forward with ease, to email, share or embed links and to watch full-screen. My personal favorite, though, is being able to watch video in a pop-up screen. This allows you to keep watching a show while simultaneously browsing other sites. The player runs independently and does not lose its spot even if you navigate away from the page. I have two monitors at home, so I can work on one side of the screen and watch a video on the other. Nice!

"The last Jews of Baghdad"

Aaron Brown showed this video in his class the other day and I was lucky enough to be told about it (thanks, Samuel!). Aaron said this is the first video CNN aired that depended in huge part on still photographs, making much of this very similar to a Soundslide. I'm posting it here because it's such a moving example of a story well told in both visual and spoken narrative.

Green Toe Shoes

I was shopping or rather wishing I could afford to buy these cool shoes made by Simple when a I came across a very neat website design. The line of shoes is called Green Toe and they are organic, recycled and all that earth friendly stuff. Somehow it seems like all the earth friendly stuff is way more expensive, that has always intrigued me. Anyway, I digress, they have a cool little feature on their website where you can go learn about all the stuff these use to make the Green Toe shoes. I thought it was a unique way of getting information across to the consumer without boring them with the technical jargon. The best part is that it does not take long to load but it is still visually exciting.

A little Term Paper Advice

Since the semester is continuing forward at a rapid pace whether we are ready for it or not, I thought we could all use some advice about the dreaded term paper. Also, they just started offering this code to embed the player so I wanted to see if it works!
Enjoy!

Time to start practicing

Well, maybe just time to start watching for good videos on YouTube. Here's the link to the Cliburn channel.

Clinton SNL clip pulled from YouTube!

I knew I should have looked this afternoon!

Yahoo in the news ranking business

Just got an email about Yahoo! Buzz, a new service designed to compete with the likes of Digg and Reddit. It's still in beta, but from the looks of it, users vote on the popularity of news items (including blog items) and the news gets ranked accordingly.

Interestingly enough, many of the rankings list Yahoo News as the source, even though Yahoo aggregated the news from some place else, likely a wire service. That only seems to add confusion to the whole did-this-come-from-a-credible-source conundrum of internet journalism.

PR 2.0

Ford's Media Relations site is a good example of public relations in the Web 2.0 environment. The site includes links to multimedia press kits arranged by product, event or theme. In addition, the site also features Social Media Press Releases that package a traditional press release with photos , video, quotes, tags and links to additional resources and discussion groups. This innovation excites me, as I think it makes the jobs of both the PR practitioner and the journalist much easier and, potentially, the relationship between the two much richer and more symbiotic.

Sound Advice

Newsvideographer.com, a site founded by Angela Grant of the San Antonio Express-News, is designed to provide tips of the trade for anyone interested in producing online news video. The site features tricks of the trade on everything from equipment to storytelling, as well as examples of interesting online video. Here's one about graffiti artists in Orange County:

"A news version of YouTube"

CNN has launched a separate iReport site. The company has had iReports -- viewer-submitted content -- for months, but any time iReports were used, it was because it had gone through a vetting process. This new site, which is in beta, offers reports that are unedited and that represent ALL the reports submitted. Some will still be used by CNN, but at that point they'll be displayed on the "professional" site. Jon Dube has an excellent write-up about this on Poynter, kicking off his revisioned column.

Miami Herald maps generator sites

Much of Florida is blacked out just now and nobody's reported a reason why. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald has published an interactive mashup showing where people can find generators at gas stations. I especially like that the reports are marked as either confirmed or unconfirmed and that directions are linked.

Emily's presentation

Reading Test

I can't remember who I was telling about this site I discovered through stumbleupon, but I thought I would share it. We were just discussing how all capitals is not a good design feature (because you brain can't recognize the word shape so you actually have to read each individual letter) in my electronic publication design class when I found this site. It is very cool to actually be able to read it and have an insight into how amazing our brains are. It also makes you wonder what other gaps our brains fill in and how much of our own reality is filled in by the brain. A little spooky!

Top 30 newspaper sites

The following list was released by Editor & Publisher (E&P) recently:
Brand -- unique audience (000) -- change over year

NYTimes.com -- 20,461 -- 45.1%
USATODAY.com -- 12,314 -- 19.4%
washingtonpost.com -- 9,902 -- 14.6%
Wall Street Journal Online -- 6,962 -- 81.4%
LA Times -- 5,715 -- 4.7%

Boston.com -- 5,194 -- 23.7%
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 4,255 -- (-3.9%)
New York Post -- 4,027 -- (-3.5%)
Newsday -- 3,764 -- 59.2%
Chicago Tribune -- 3,185 -- (-15.7%)

Daily News Online Edition -- 3,104 -- 23.3%
Chicago Sun-Times -- 2,695 -- 12.7%
Village Voice -- 2,686 -- 116.4%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution --2,391 -- 8.9%
The Politico -- 2,371 -- 253.4%

Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 2,256 -- 24.2%
The Houston Chronicle -- 2,208 -- (-37.1%)
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 2,207 -- 6.1%
Azcentral.com -- 2,145 -- 12.0%
Baltimore Sun -- 2,137 -- 44.7%

The Seattle Times -- 1,814 -- (-23.0%)
International Herald Tribune -- 1,789 -- (-15.0%)
NJ.com -- 1,630 -- 29.1%
Detroit Free Press -- 1,574 -- 30.6%
The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 1,529 -- (-26.4%)

Star Tribune -- 1,511 -- 54.2%
The Washington Times -- 1,510 -- (-16.1%)
tampabay.com -- 1,468 -- (-11.7%)
Philly.com -- 1,400 -- 18.6%
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- 1,303 -- (-9.9%)

Context is here.

AP offers embedable video: This one is on Kosovo's independence

AP -- the Associated Press -- was formed as a "membership" in which content would be shared among partners. If you were not a member of AP, you were excluded (except, I think, for some arrangements for buying particular news reports). I found it amazing, and fascinating, that AP had an "embed" feature offered, meaning content would be distributed with no restrictions or payments. As you can see, it works.

NIU Shooting

I couldn't help but bring this painful event up, mostly because I am so disturbed by it. I wanted to check and see how far in the news the NIU shooting on Friday had fallen. I checked the BBC news and there was a reference at the bottom of the page. The Washington Post had a photo slide show at the bottom of their home page. Upon a quick scan of the New York Times home page there didn't seem to be any link to a story covering the shooting, until I kept scanning down to the bottom where there was one reference under Education. Upon checking CNN.com I found a human interest story about the shooters girlfriend with a large eye catching photo at the top of their home page. Of course, the Chicago Tribune's homepage was an entire spread about the shooting (if it wasn't, I would have seriously doubted my sanity).

My point in looking at all this is to see how fast news passes away. The Virginia Tech shooting seemed to stop everyone dead in their tracks. This didn't seem to have as much of an impact. I wonder, is everyone becoming numb? All these shootings are awful and make me question the world. According to the news, both of the shooters had a history of mental illness. This brings up another question, are American so naive and unaware of mental illness that those who need help and support are not getting it?

Jack Johnson puts it best in his song Sleep Through the Static--"Who needs keys when we've got clubs? Who needs please when we've got guns?" and also in Fall Line--"somebody saw him jump, but nobody saw him slip, I guess he lost a lot of hope, and then he lost his grip."

Carnival of Journalism Blogs makes 3rd stop

A blog "carnival" is a little bit like an edited volume: It's a collection of writings by different authors on a related topic that is presented by an editor. A carnival is a selected collection of blog postings that is published by a rotating group of editor/publishers -- the member blogs. A journalism carnival, featuring some of the most provocative and in-the-know j-bloggers out there, has just pitched its virtual tents at the collegemediainnovation.org blog -- the direct link to the carnival for February is here. Wikipedia has a good definition of a blog carnival, and you can find a directory of carnivals at blogcarnival.com, where the analogy is less to an edited volume but to a magazine. But back to the J-Carnival: I've checked out a number of the blogs and plan to look at all of them. I don't think you'll regret the time. There's a wide sweep of current thinking out there, and these bloggers are earnestly and intelligently adding to the positive side of journalism's evolution.

Interactive map finds help for storm-struck

Butterfly Effect

Here is the link to the film company I was talking about in class. I haven't had a chance to look at any of their other films, but "Spin" is awesome. The soundtrack alone is worth the download time, if you like hip hop techno kind of stuff. If you go to the website you can actually download the score for free. After I was done watching it I wanted to replay it over and over again. I like the whole idea that you can never make anything perfect. Enjoy!

Really?

Article (Bowl Threat Revealed) from Thursday's (2/7) Arizona Republic about a super bowl threat plot states that the person planned the attack because he was upset that his request for a liquor license was denied. It was reported that the application was recommended for denial because an entry on the applicant's blog listed the name of his intended business (Drunkenstein's) differently from what was listed (The Haunted Castle) on the license application. The article is already archived on the Republic's website (need to purchase at this point to see it). This raised some questions for me that may be more about the reporting than anything else. Was the blog entry posted by him or someone else? How did the the blog come to the attention of the Tempe City Council? The Tempe City Council really used a blog post as part of their deliberations and decision making process?

Slate's candidate tracker

The elections, as was hoped, have spurred some interesting multimedia reporting tools including this one from Slate that maps where candidates are across the country. When you click on map markers, you're directed to local news reports of the event and you're given where/when information in a pop-up. My husband's overseeing multimedia coverage for a Virginia paper of this event that senators Clinton and Obama will attend. Security concerns prevent the shooters (photographers or videographers) and reporters from leaving the event, even to go back to the newsroom (which is nearby), should there be equipment failure; each journalist takes his or her laptop along with other gear, such as a camera, mic, recorder, etc. They are expected to file (send in their stories, pictures, etc.) digitally from the site. Yesterday, one reporter was issued a new computer with which he's not yet familiar; he'll take a backup laptop as well.

Tracking the Election

The New York Times created this handy Election Guide so you can track your favorite candidate's progress through primary season and beyond. I especially liked the state maps that show how each county voted, as well as how many people voted. It was interesting to compare how many Republican and Democratic voters turned out in each state.

They also have a feature where people can post photos of their polling place - this is a picture of a frozen polling location in Flagstaff, Arizona.

ZIP to local on GoogleNews

Google released a new "experiment" yesterday. So far, it's only available in English. If you go to Google News and scroll down you'll find a search box where you can enter your ZIP code. When I tried it just now for 85224, it brought up four Arizona Republic items with links to azcentral. I would love to see it access many more sources, including very small publications -- and maybe it does and I just haven't seen them yet; I should try more ZIP codes. And, of course, many very small publications don't even have a shovelware presence online yet. Much as I know news sites like to decry Google, I think there's revenue opportunity here. More and more people from outside the geographical region are likely to pull up azcentral -- or wherever -- stories. It allows for topical ads. While the popular wisdom is that mom-and-pops will suffer from this, there are some who could take advantage of different sorts of advertising, something that plays up something distinctive about what they have to offer. I am so tired of one-size-fits-all chain merchandising and branding that it would seem like a relief to me. But I digress. There's an excellent post on Google local at Journalistopia where Danny Sanchez talks about the growing importance of geocoding stories. More about that anon.

Is this your picture?

A blog called ifoundyourcamera posts pictures developed from found cameras so the owners can claim them!

Obama "Yes we can" video goes dramatically viral

As of this morning, roughly three days after its release, a music video based on Obama's much publicized New Hampshire primary speech has had about two and a half million views, 1,454 blog posts and 11,864 comments, according to tracker Viral Video. Some of those blog posts make much of the political implications -- Buzz Machine (rhetorical element of campaign), for one -- notes Yoni Greenbaum in Editor on the Verge.

Miss a Super Bowl ad?

They're all online here.

Cue the scary music

I was just about to Googlemap "hairdresser" and my ZIP when I decided to take a look at this video first. So maybe my hair will stay shaggy a bit longer...

Liveblogging the latest Clinton-Obama debate

You just don't get commentary like this on TV...

9:55: In the usual "offbeat" final question slot, the two were asked if they would form a "dream ticket." They both have some fun with it and don't rule it out. Obama has some good quips while Hillary fritters it away by plugging an upcoming TV event. But then amazing moment at end, as Obama gallantly pulls back her chair as she gets to her feet. Then they whisper to each other and nearly embrace. It's almost sexy.

Editor & Publisher blogged the debate. It's interesting reading -- the blog is available here.

Williams-Sonoma redesigns Web site

Okay, there are at least a few Foodies in this class, including me, so I thought we might analyze this Web site. No, this isn't an assignment!

Video and newsprint: the multimedia journalist

This links to a really nice blog post (in Media Nation) about the editor of a newspaper, Cathryn Keefe O'Hare of the Danvers Herald, who first captured video on Memorial Day and now uses it as a routine part of her job. The post includes links to a slide show, an audio interview and several videos, including one she shot. The text is well hyperlinked and chock full (I've never used that phrase before; where did that come from?) of information about the equipment and software the paper uses. And here are some words to live by from O'Hare:

"The thing that remains true, whether it's in print journalism or the Internet or video, you have to tell a story," says O'Hare. "And you have to tell it as true as you can make it. And you have to try to speak for those people who can't tell their story."

Blog as motivator

Friend Pat developed Gray26 and posts a photo a day hoping that the discipline of always being on the lookout for good shots will help him "see" more and better pictures. I laughed out loud at Wednesday Jan 2. Sorry for the delay in this posting. Little bit of a learning curve, never having blogged.

Food, Glorious Food

Sticking to my number one love, a friend (thanks Yvonne!) told me about Chocolate and Zucchini, a blog all about food. The fact that it is written by a French woman, who found her love of food in San Francisco, amuses me greatly. I once ran into a baker who was professionally trained, which apparently means you use French to refer to everything. I couldn't communicate with her about cooking because she kept throwing out these French terms. I was never entirely sure why it was necessary to use French when referring to a pie crust. But, perhaps that's why I'm not a chef. I seem to have wondered off topic. For those of you who love cooking, this is a fun blog. Her English is very good and best of all-- recipes!! The blog has a good amount of interesting facts regarding cooking and the entire site itself is fun to waste time on.

Blogs Coming Out of My Ears

I was turned on to the blogs o' Arnie (seen at left) by a Chicago friend who is a friend of a friend of a friend of his (wow, that was a lot of friends). Anyway, Arnie is an improv-er (as in, somebody who does improvisational comedy, not somebody who makes things better by improving them) in Chicago who has documented the last three years of his life using pictures.


2008's blog is A Year in Pictures of Comedy, documenting a show he performs in and his life in Chicago. Years past include A Year of Working, documenting his arrival back in Chicago from Arizona, where he was living with his girlfriend at the time, and A Year Following the Breakup, which is self-explanatory and actually kind of heartbreaking. He's funny, articulate and self-deprecating, all things I can appreciate in a blogger. You don't have to know the people he writes about to understand what he's talking about...I recommend starting with the breakup one and working your way forward. Considering he's a stranger, reading about his life is highly addictive.

Diversity -- and free advertising

Pepsi's Super Bowl ad is already making the e-rounds. This time, the "talk" factor is that there is no talking: it's a video of a conversation in sign language with screen subtitles. Take a look. Does it cross a line or is it an interesting way to disseminate a worthy message?

Technical Skills in Journalism

PBS' Media Shift listed Eric Ulken's site as one of its Top 5 of the week. I thought it was an interesting look at the many technology skills required of today's journalists. Good thing we're taking MCO 598.

Media Shift is a cool site itself -- it tracks all things new media. One of today's posts talks about how Google and Wikipedia have changed the way we conduct research.

Even AOL Video lets you embed now...

In this obviously newsworthy clip, Letterman messes up John Edwards' hair.

Last semester's project

Ever wonder how many steps it is from Stauffer Hall to Lot 59? One of the intrepid reporters from last year's class set out to see, accompanied by an equally intrepid videographer. In three videos and a Soundslide, the Fall 2007 class tackled relevant issues concerning the parking situation here at ASU's Tempe site.

Sharing the fantasy

Landon Pigg's "Falling in love at the coffee shop" is the wildly popular song behind the equally popular DeBeers diamond video ad now making the rounds. Spinner, a blog that focuses on music, has some of the background here.
Those of you who are want to know how to embed videos -- it's easy, especially if you're getting them from YouTube. At the end of the video or in a box near the video there are "boxes" where the embed code is displayed. You can cut/copy and paste that code into the message box of this blog. Save and publish. But here's a further refinement: If you want to reduce the size of the embedded video and still keep everything proportional, you have to change a couple of things in the code. The dimensions for width and height are in that code. This video started out at 425 for the width and 373 for the height. I've replaced those numbers with 275 and 200, thereby reducing the size. If you go to YouTube to look at it, it will be larger.

Gawker in flap over Scientology video

I can't embed the video from YouTube because it's been pulled, as it has been from other sites. Scientology officials protested its airing with a copyright infringement notice. Gawker, a staffed media blog (managing editor Nick Denton oversees two media reporters and four bloggers), decided to keep a copy of the video available on its site as something newsworthy. One thing to note on Gawker: there are links to previous posts as well as to information on other sites. Some of the traffic to Gawker (there were 1,597,036 viewings as of this morning when I pulled up the page)has been sent there by another blog, the Videologist. Its story is here. And some traffic was channeled to Videologist by AOL News's promo on the AOL welcome page. There are many other links and traffic patterns, but that's the one I followed.