Columbia Journalism Review, January/February, 2003, “Newspapers Online”
January 30, 2003
?Newspapers are no longer willing to just write the Web site off as a money-losing proposition,? says Jonathan Dube, a weekend producer for MSNBC who also runs Cyberjournalist.net. ?We already see much less free information.?
State of the Union: Instant Analysis
January 29, 2003
As soon as President Bush finished his State of the Union, anchors and media pundits immediately began analyzing it. But readers of WashingtonPost.com got to do more than just hear talking heads talk — they got to discuss the speech and the Democrats’ response with Washington Post Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser. “I thought the strength of print journalism was it could be reasoned and deliberate compared to television news,” asked one reader from Alexandria, Va. “Are you comfortable popping off with ‘instant analysis?’ Or is this just for fun?” Kaiser replied, “A painfully good question. Watch how I do this to see an essentially uncomfortable instant analyst trying to avoid the pitfalls of the art form. Will he fall off the high wire? Probably. I like the repartee with readers the best.” When it comes to repartee online, Kaiser did a wonderful job, avoiding the trap of condescension and keeping a sense of humor. Here’s the transcript.
Dave Barry Starts a Weblog
January 27, 2003
Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry has started a Weblog at davebarry.blogspot.com, packed with tidbits of Barry-esque humor such as, “SPORTSMANSHIP: The way it works is, if your team wins, you celebrate by wrecking stuff, and if your team loses, you celebrate by wrecking stuff.” Barry thanks blogger Ken Layne for helping him get the blog up and running and writes, “NOTE ABOUT THE TWO CUTE LITTLE DOGGIES OVER TO THE RIGHT THERE: Those were not put there by me. Those were put there by Ken Layne. I don’t know how he did it, and I don’t know how to make them go away. If I did, I’d put cute little doggies on his blog.” A few blogs have been speculating as to whether it’s the real live columnist or just someone pretending to be him, but Dave Barry tells CyberJournalist.net, “That is indeed me, and I started blogging because of widespread public demand. Actually, the only person who demanded it was Ken Layne, but he is pretty widespread. (I mean “widespread in the sense of “broadly distributed on the Internet,” as opposed to “having a big butt.” I have never seen Ken or his butt.).”
NHPR Budget Builder, NHPR.org
January 26, 2003
New Hampshire Public Radio has built a great interactive tool, the Budget Builder, that gives listeners an opportunity to try their hand at deciding what the state’s priorities ought to be and building their own budget. What’s particularly great about this is the way NHPR.org packages the interactive tool with detailed information about the budgeting process, useful links, related NHPR reports and a discussion board.
Sacbee.com’s Budget Game
January 26, 2003
Last year the Seattle Times turned Washington state’s budget deficit into a clever online game, where users got to try their hand at balancing the budget, and New Hampshire Public Radio built a similar tool, the Budget Builder. Now the Sacramento Bee has taken the idea one step further — after you come up with your solution, you can e-mail your suggestions to the governor and state legislators.
Nytimes.com: Interactive Hirschfeld
January 25, 2003
Here’s an excellent interactive tribute to legendary Broadway artist Al Hirschfeld, who died, from NYTimes.com. It includes slide shows with audio narration and video clips.
Posting Transcripts Online: Go for it!
January 24, 2003
Last fall CyberJournalist.net reported on Sheila Lennon, a J-blogger for The Providence Journal, posting the complete transcript of an interview with The New York Times’ David F. Gallagher, who reduced it to one paragraph for his story. Now J.D. Lasica has done a similar thing from the writer’s end, posting the complete transcripts of interviews he conducted for an article he write for the Online Journalism Review on RSS feeds, because he didn’t have room to include all of them. News sites will post complete interview transcripts from time to time, but, in an explanation in his New Media Musings Weblog, Lasica speculates more “journalists don’t do this because (a) it’s a hell of a lot of work, and (b) it could call into question the decision-making process on which quotes the writer selected for his or her story.”
True, time concerns are always an issue. But concerns about the decision-making process shouldn’t be an issue unless the reporter made poor decisions ? in which case, the editor and reporter have bigger problems to worry about ! In many cases ? including this one ? posting transcripts online is a great use of the Web, and news organizations should consider doing so more often when time permits it and when the transcripts contain information useful to readers.
All Aboard the Blogging Bandwagon
January 24, 2003
The (Wash.) Spokesman-Review keeps pushing forward with its use of blogging, adding two new blogs: Eye on Olympia, a reporter’s notebook-esqe blog from legislative reporter Richard Roesler; and “Movies and More” — written by film and book critic Dan Webster, who just spent five days at the Sundance Film Festival. The site has been at the forefront of publishing event-driven blogs, such as this one covering last year’s State B basketball tournament and this blog covering a local incorporation vote. Ken Sands, the site’s managing editor and a major blog proponent, says he’s got several other blogs in the works, so stay tuned for more.
Dynamic Links to Blog Headlines
January 23, 2003
The Albuquerque Journal is another site that’s gone gung-ho into the Weblog movement, with seven staff-written Weblogs on abqjournal.com (here’s an index). Rather than just leave standing links to the Weblog on the site’s home page, the site takes a smart approach to promoting them: “We create a dynamic link, as the headlines of the blogs change, that appears at the bottom of our home page,” Donn Friedman, the Albuquerque Journal’s assistant managing editor, tells CyberJournalist.net. As a result, he says, “We get about 100 accesses daily to the Science, Health and Culture blogs, which usually puts them within the top 100 pages on our site.”
Projo.com: City Hall on Trial
January 22, 2003
BEHIND THE SCENES: Projo.com, the Web site of The Providence Journal produced impressive coverage of the corruption trial of Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., including Web-exclusive daily updates, audio, video and a tour of the courtroom. In this Behind the Scenes piece for CyberJournalist.net, Andrea Panciera, editor of projo.com, explains how it was done.