Was this the first blog by a professional journalist? July 27, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , 2commentsDan Gillmor’s intro to the blog on Silicon Valley News, posted on 22 October 1999:
“Welcome to my weblog. What follows is a digested version of my column for Tuesday, October 26, 1999, in which I explain why we’re doing this and how I hope it’ll evolve.
Why? I’ve been thinking about the new ways of journalism, namely the ways the Internet is imposing on all of us. Internet Time has compressed the lives of all kinds of people in all kinds of businesses, and journalism is no exception. In fact, it may be one of the businesses most affected in the long run, both in the opportunities the Net creates and the threat it represents.
So I’m trying one of those new forms. It’s called a “weblog” — and it’s a combination of styles that could exist only on the Web. Text, pictures, hyperlinks and, soon, audio and video are all part of this new form, and I can’t wait to start experimenting with it.”
Welcome To 2007: Johnston Press Bans Facebook | paidContent:UK July 2, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a comment"Can any modern news publishing business justify banning its staff from accessing social networking sites? While many national and regional newspapers have now reversed earlier decisions to ban workplace access to time-sapping Facebook—Johnston Press has set the clock back to 2007 and informed staff at The Scotsman and its other Edinburgh papers that Facebook is banned except in special cases. In a memo, (via Allmediascotland), JP management warn reporters that “a recent review” found more than half of the company’s entire outbound traffic is to Facebook so it has no choice but it stop people visiting. the Memo reads: “Journalists who require access should seek approval from their departmental head, who should contact the Group Helpdesk to have the permission restored.”
Just like Friends Reunited before it, Facebook has become a standard reporting tool for many local and regional reporters—one JP journalist told me recently they couldn’t imagine working without it.
You can't do that in a classroom! July 2, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentWhat traditional teaching env. canNOT do (Cath Ellis — great post): "I think it’s time we shifted our thinking away from what eLearning can do to what traditional teaching environments can’t do. The simple fact is, however, that such thinking is deeply iconoclastic. The simple suggestion that traditional, face-to-face learning environments have limitations and *gasp* may even be found wanting is unthinkable to many teachers and learners who have never experienced anything else. But that’s precisely the point. It’s vital that we be able to evaluate different teaching and learning environments on their objective relative merits in order to best harness their distinct potentials. As such, it’s vital that we move away from old-fashioned hierarchical thinking that positions face-to-face learning environments at the top of the heap.
To that end, here is a list of 5 things that can’t be (easily) done in a rigidly synchronous learning space (a time-limited physical face-to-face classroom) "
Search takes umlaut out of Bruno online July 2, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentGuardian style guide ed (David Marsh): " So we have opted to use the umlaut in the paper but not online. The production editor of guardian.co.uk says: "In exceptional cases such as this, where the stories are just not being found on the internet because of the accent, we will remove the relevant accent on the website." "
As style guide editor I support that decision, even though it has given rise to an unusual situation in which we are using one spelling in our newspapers and another on our website. There is not much point in being consistent, however, if no one is reading us.
Student hoax wins magazine's top prize July 1, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentFake reportage winner in Paris Match (Independent):
"Amid its traditional mixture of glossy celebrity and gritty reportage, the magazine Paris Match published this week a searing double-page spread on student poverty in France.
The excellent black and white photographs of students prostituting themselves or looking for food in dustbins won the magazine's annual prize for student photojournalism. Student poverty certainly exists in France but the photos were entirely faked.
Before they received their trophy and €5,000 (£4,260) cheque at a ceremony on Wednesday, the prize-winners, Guillaume Chauvin and Rémi Hubert, read out a statement admitting to the hoax, stating that they had wanted to make a "powerful artistic gesture" attacking the "voyeurism" and gullibility of parts of the press."