Poynter

"This story has affected me,” Huppert said. “I own a boat. And yesterday when I hooked it to my..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:00:23 -0400

““This story has affected me,” Huppert said. “I own a boat. And yesterday when I hooked it to...

On 1-year anniversary of Times-Picayune announcement,...

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:00:38 -0400

On 1-year anniversary of Times-Picayune announcement, photographer looks at print readership

Some people are still enjoying a print paper, but it’s not the Times-Picayune. A group of friends at Fair Grounds Coffeehouse trades sections of The New York Times and The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, which has moved aggressively into New Orleans. “The group deems The Advocate’s New Orleans coverage not up to snuff,” Eve Troeh and Knapp write, but one person says “”she hopes that will change ‘as they get to know our needs.’”

(Photo by Bevil Knapp)

"I don’t have to tell them it is scary."

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:00:34 -0400

“I don’t have to tell them it is scary.” - KWTV’s Gary England, on covering...

"I think killing innocent people with drones is rude. I think keeping people who are innocent in..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 13:18:00 -0400

“I think killing innocent people with drones is rude. I think keeping people who are innocent...

todaysdocument: Happy 130th to the Brooklyn Bridge! When it...

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:00:42 -0400

Photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge Across the East River, 04/1974. ARC ID 55572

Pedestrians on the upper deck promenade of Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, ca. 1910 ARC Identifier 541908

todaysdocument:

Happy 130th to the Brooklyn Bridge!

When it opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Designed and built by German-born John A. Roebling and his son, Washington A. Roebling, the bridge connected New York and Brooklyn. The remarkable design used Roebling’s patented system of steel wire cable construction. Its graceful limestone and granite towers, pictured here, took 5 years to build.

Photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge Across the East River, 04/1974. From the EPA’s DOCUMERICA Series

Plan of One Tower for the East River Bridge, 1867

Pedestrians on the upper deck promenade of Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, ca. 1910

A happy birthday indeed!

"The system is slowly destroying itself. I’ll give you an example of how this might work out. Let’s..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:00:29 -0400

“The system is slowly destroying itself. I’ll give you an example of how this might work out....

wnycradiolab: atlasobscura: odditiesoflife: The Amazing...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:00:25 -0400

wnycradiolab:

atlasobscura:

odditiesoflife:

The Amazing Underwater Forest of Lake Kaindy

What makes Lake Kaindy truly remarkable is that it contains an underwater forest. Visible on the lakes surface are the tall, dried-out tops of submerged Spruce trees that rise above the water’s surface like the masts of sunken ships. They are the only sign of the amazing frozen forest below the water’s surface.

The water is so cold (even in summer the temperature does not exceed 6 degrees) that the pine needles remain on the trees, even after a hundred years of being submerged. During the winter, the lake freezes and becomes a popular spot for ice diving.

The lake is 400 meters long and is located in Kazakhstan’s portion of the Tian Shan Mountains, about 129 km from the city of Almaty. The lake was created after an earthquake in 1911 triggered a large landslide blocking the gorge and forming a natural dam.

Even more on Kaindy Lake…

Holy crap.

Guys, look at this. Not journalism, but beautiful.

wired: futurejournalismproject: Why It’s Time to Rethink Web...

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:00:26 -0400

wired:

futurejournalismproject:

Why It’s Time to Rethink Web Video Entirely

Producer Adam Westbrook recently built an essay called The Web Video Problem about how cinematic video content is wrong for the web, and that we can and ought to recreate the visual storytelling experience on the web entirely. Toward that end, he’s working on web publishing house (Hot Pursuit).

He writes:

In visual storytelling on the web we are still talking about images in deliberate sequence. We are juxtaposing these images, either over time (in a linear audio/visual way) or in space (like a web comic might).

If we accept this definition of visual storytelling (in the purest sense) then it doesn’t matter if it’s video, a web comic or even an animated GIF - or a combination of all these and more.

Combine this with the growing capabilities of the web browser, and the connectedness of the internet, and potentially we have the ability to tell dynamic, visual stories in a way that hasn’t been done before.

This excites me very much.

The essay is nicely built and designed with bold, scrolling visuals (using the curtain jquery plug-in, which yes, is very popular these days and can be downloaded here for your own building pleasure) so that you can choose to read the whole thing or just get the highlights. It’s worth checking out.

Bonus: He provides some great resources on visual storytelling:

A good briefing on the principles of visual storytelling are featured in the second issue of Inside the Story Magazine, available here. If you don’t want to pay for the whole thing, this free articlecovers a lot of the same ground. Scott McCloud’s comic book on comic books is an essential read for visual storytellers. Craig Mod’s essay on Subcompact Publishing informed some of the ideas about thinking web-natively, as did this article by John Pavlus and this piece by Bryan Goldberg. Finally, Steven Benedict’sanalysis of Spielberg’s cinematic storytelling skills demonstrate what visual narrative can acheive, and let Steven Soderbergh tell you why this new thing shouldn’t become like the movie business.

Image: Screenshot from The Web Video Problem

Today in good reads.

Today’s Historical Headline: New York ready to read On...

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:00:40 -0400

Today’s Historical Headline: New York ready to read

On this day in 1911, the New York Public Library - and its two lions, Patience and Fortitude - was dedicated. According to the Boston Evening Transcript, the library was constructed at a cost of $10 million, and notables at the dedication included Pres. William Howard Taft.

The Public Library will take care of a copy of the Bill of Rights in a partnership with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the next 100 years. Read more about it at the New York Daily News.

(Photo from here.)

latimes: Behold: The amazing “electric newspaper!” Pictured...

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:00:41 -0400

latimes:

Behold: The amazing “electric newspaper!”

Pictured above is the The Los Angeles Times-Richfield “Electric Newspaper,” seen during its test run way back on Oct. 12, 1931.

From the original L.A. Times article announcing the bulletin:

As the vast grist of the day’s news pours into The Times’ offices by telegraph, telephone, radio, mail and messenger, it will be concentrated into brief, snappy, informative bulletins by expert newspaper men and flashed by teletype to an office in the Paramount building at 6th and Hill, where is located the huge controller of the electric bulletin board.

Here another squad of men will transcribe the bulletins by stenciling machines on the wide, endless tapes which, fed into the controller, project their perforated letters on the screen, made up of electric lights in multiple banks. The effect is that of letters of light, forming words and sentences and moving continuously from one end of the board to the other, a distance of some eighty feet.

That sounds a whole lot more complicated than sending out a breaking news tweet…

For the full story, head over to Framework.

Photo: Los Angeles Times

We’d like to see this on city streets more.

"… it’s better to work highly focused for short periods of time, with breaks in between, than to be..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:00:33 -0400

““… it’s better to work highly focused for short periods of time, with breaks in between, than...

"The Internet has solved the basic distribution of event-based facts in a variety of ways; no one..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:21:34 -0400

“The Internet has solved the basic distribution of event-based facts in a variety of ways; no...

"Think hard about the lead. Don’t be afraid to begin with your best fact."

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:00:30 -0400

“Think hard about the lead. Don’t be afraid to begin with your best fact.” - Ezra...

theparisreview: “If you chance to find an authoress occupied...

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:00:28 -0400

theparisreview:

“If you chance to find an authoress occupied with her needle, express no astonishment, and refrain from exclaiming, ‘What! can you sew?’ or, ‘I never supposed a literary lady could even hem a handkerchief!’ This is false, and if expressed in words, an insulting idea. A large number of literary females are excellent needle-women, and good housewives; and there is no reason why they should not be.” Etiquette for dealing with the authoress, from 1854.

Darn straight authoresses are multifaceted! Poynter Online’s editor, Mallary Tenore, can write a mean lede and cross-stitch with the best of them.

"Persist until you succeed."

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:00:28 -0400

“Persist until you succeed.” - DeNeen Brown, a Washington Post feature writer, on how to...

"PBS has become more and more dependent on viewers nothing like you."

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:28:05 -0400

“PBS has become more and more dependent on viewers nothing like you.” - The Colbert...

Today’s Historical Headline: Truman signs Greek-Turkish...

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:00:30 -0400

Today’s Historical Headline: Truman signs Greek-Turkish aid measure

President Truman in 1947 signed a measure that would become the basis for the Truman Doctrine, a policy designed to prevent Greece and Turkey from becoming Soviet satellites. Part of containment policy (a policy championed by George Kennan), many say this signaled the start of the Cold War.

For more on the Truman Doctrine, here’s The Week’s “Today in History.”

(Photo from here.)

"For years Lady Doyle was his constant companion, accompanying him on all his travels. It was to her..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:00:23 -0400

“For years Lady Doyle was his constant companion, accompanying him on all his travels. It was...

futurejournalismproject: To Strongbox or Not to Strongbox Last...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:00:30 -0400

futurejournalismproject:

To Strongbox or Not to Strongbox

Last week we noted that the New Yorker launched Strongbox, an online system meant to preserve the anonymity of leakers submitting sensitive material to the magazine.

Strongbox is based on the work of Aaron Swartz and Kevin Poulsen and, as Amy Davidson noted when announcing its implementation, “Even we won’t be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won’t be able to tell them.”

Which is a good thing given recent news about the Justice Department’s surveilling of journalists and news organizations.

But can it be be a newsroom boon?

Writing at CSO Online, John P. Mello argues that while Strongbox “provides strong protection of the identity of a source, it removes an important element in the process: authentication.”

Here’s what he means:

A system where anonymous leakers are dropping documents into a folder has advantages when government investigators start probing a story’s sources, but it also creates tremendous disadvantages. “The government can’t come after you to find out who gave you the document because you have no way of knowing,” [Northeastern University assistant journalism professor Dan] Kennedy said.

“That gives more protection to the source, but it makes it harder to vet the document because you don’t know who gave it to you,” he said…

…”All sources, anonymous or not, have to be evaluated. That’s impossible to do without context. “Knowing your source’s motivations helps contextualize the information,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director for the Pew Research Project for Excellence in Journalism.

“A solution that prevents the news organization from knowing the identity of a confidential source has value, but it’s not an ideal solution because it is important to know the identity of the source to weigh the information,” he told CSO.

“Information supplied by a confidential source needs to be evaluated, weighed and understood in the same way that information of somebody speaking on the record does,” he added.

FJP: A tool is a tool. While Mello illustrates important drawbacks, if the alternative is no documents to work with then you work with the tools available. It’s just important to know going in what their limitations are.

Images: Independent Twitter posts via Nicholas Thomson and Kevin Anderson.

Anonymity is crucial to some kinds of reporting - Watergate wouldn’t have happened without Deep Throat, and the “47%” video wouldn’t have leaked had Scott Prouty not felt that his identity would be protected.

Many publications have used digital reporting tools to strengthen their stories and to find all sorts of data. Some aspects of shoes-on-the-ground journalism have digital companions, like email and Skype interviews that stand in for face-to-face interviews.

The question is - can anonymity be protected in the digital age? Does it have an online companion?

mentalflossr: This week on the mental_floss List Show, John...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:00:30 -0400

mentalflossr:

This week on the mental_floss List Show, John Green looks at 50 common misquotations and what was actually said.

Misquotations are a problem for journalists and John Green alike. His observation on Thoreau is quite astute, by the way.