Archive for the ‘Blogs and journalism’ Category

J Student blogs at NYT

By Marcus O'Donnell • Sep 15th, 2006 • Category: Blogs and journalism

In a fascinating experiment NYT columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has selected a J student Casey Parks to travel with him throughout Africa and write about their experiences on a blog. Unfortunately this great little experiment is behind the Times Select barrier and requires paid registration (you can get a 14 day free trial or its […]



Publish your homework

By Marcus O'Donnell • Apr 21st, 2006 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Doing a search for resources on e-portfolios I stumbled across this gem from Pete Hubbard

We do need to harness all of the creative energy that is now at the hands of our students (with access.) I say this in my presentations all the time, but how cool would it be for us to remind our […]



Katie Couric to blog?

By Marcus O'Donnell • Apr 18th, 2006 • Category: Blogs and journalism

USA Today’s Peter Johnson reports that Katie Couric’s new contract with CBS includes a commitment to a “daily, regular presence”. Current NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams already contributes a regular blog to NBC’s site and the ABC co-anchors do a fifteen minute daily webcast.

But exactly what form that’ll take has yet to be worked […]



Urban Blogging

By Marcus O'Donnell • Apr 17th, 2006 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Interesting article in the NYT about urban activism around a Brooklyn real estate project that has found a focus in the blogsphere. The Atlantic Yards project, a vast residential, commercial and arena development near Downtown Brooklyn, has come in for some tough criticism:

But Atlantic Yards may well be the first large-scale urban real estate venture […]



Blog as place and genre

By Marcus O'Donnell • Dec 22nd, 2005 • Category: Blogging, Blogs and journalism

Excellent piece in Kairos on “Blogging Places”. Tim Lindgren explores a range of new place blogs that are primarily concerned with locality and ecology as distinct from the global or purely personal approach of much of the blogsphere.

Some unrepresentative cherry picks:

On blogging genres:

Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd suggest, blogging is remarkable for its ability to […]



Bigger than Jesus

By Marcus O'Donnell • Dec 21st, 2005 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Any article that begins: “How big are blogs? Bigger than Jesus. Bigger than sex” sounds like it’s going to be yet another blogsploitation spiel. However Daniel Rubin’s article in the Philadelphia Inquirer is a pretty good summary of major blogging trends.

If 2004 was the year blogs entered the language (so says Merriam-Webster), then 2005 was […]



New survey: blogs and journalism

By Marcus O'Donnell • May 17th, 2005 • Category: Blogs and journalism

A new survey (another report here) of journalists and members of the public just released by University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy shows a wide divergence of views between journos and the GP on a range of key issues about freedom of the press and trust in the media.

On blogging:

Perhaps the widest gap […]



Bloggers and the First Amendment

By Marcus O'Donnell • Mar 10th, 2005 • Category: Blogs and journalism

San Francsico Chronicle reports on the Apple versus bloggers case currently before a local court: Net buzzing on bloggers’ status / First Amendment issues become hot topic in chat rooms.
The case could affect the future of bloggers and Web site publishers because lawyers defending the sites have asked Judge James Kleinberg to rule that the […]



Pew Finds Surge for Web as Source of Political News, As Newspapers Sink

By Marcus O'Donnell • Mar 8th, 2005 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Link: Editor and Publisher report on pew survey
NEW YORK A Pew Center study released today found that using the Internet to get news of politics during the 2004 presidential contest grew sixfold from 1996, while the influence of newspapers sank.
In 1996, only 3% of those surveyed called the Web one of their two leading sources […]



Blogging as disseminator

By Marcus O'Donnell • Mar 4th, 2005 • Category: Blogs and journalism

CJR Daily has an interesting example of the way blogs can take an ignored mainstream news story and create a buzz. Peter G. Gosselin, who covers the economy for the Los Angeles Times, wrote three articles examining “an American paradox”: Why do so many families report less financial security than ever, even as many benchmarks […]



Blogs and the post-press era

By Marcus O'Donnell • Feb 27th, 2005 • Category: Blogs and journalism

The controversy over “Jeff Gannon’s” access to the White House press room (catch up here and here) has raised yet more interesting questions about alternative versus mainstream media and the role of blogs.
Gannon it turns out is really James Dale Guckert and gained his press pass under a false name. He was known for […]



Blogs and the tsunami

By Marcus O'Donnell • Jan 4th, 2005 • Category: Blogging, Blogs and journalism

I thought John Schwartz’s article in the NYT: “Myths Run Wild in Blog Tsunami Debate” was going to be the inevitable snow job following on from some fairly positive coverage of the role of bogs in the disaster. And it certainly starts that way.
But the blogosphere’s tendency toward crackpot theorizing and political smack […]



Year of the blog

By Marcus O'Donnell • Jan 1st, 2005 • Category: Blogging, Blogs and journalism

A basic, but interesting, article on the evolution of blog influence over the last year on BBC Online.
Andrew Nachison, Director of the Media Center, a US-based “nonprofit think tank committed to building a better-informed society in a connected world,” points to the US presidential election as a turning point for the blogsphere:
“You could look […]



Blogging keeps on keeping on

By Marcus O'Donnell • Dec 12th, 2004 • Category: Blogging, Blogs and journalism

Blogging is continuing to evolve in all sorts of directions. From citizen journalism to business blogging.
Dan Gilmour is leaving his full time journalism gig to explore a new unspecified “citizen-journalism project.”:
I hope to pull together something useful that helps enable — and demonstrates — the emerging grassroots journalism that I wrote about in my […]



NYT quotes blog as “expert source”

By Marcus O'Donnell • Nov 14th, 2004 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Radosh notes another move of blogging into the mainstream. The NYT’s Edward Wong reports from Bagdad on Sunni disquiet over the US assault on Falluja and quotes an academic blog as an expert source:
“After the attack on Falluja, we decided to withdraw from the government because our presence in the government will be judged […]



BloggerCon: Blog Values

By Marcus O'Donnell • Nov 14th, 2004 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Interesting article by Staci D Kramer in OJR about BloggerCon III. She reflects on her own experience of blogging the conference:
It also was my debut as an everyday blogger, someone responsible for the care and feeding of a news blog. The result was a tilt in my blogging worldview. Instead of exploring issues as a […]



The revenge of the source

By Marcus O'Donnell • Oct 7th, 2004 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Interesting post this morning on ojr about journalists, blogs and their sources. Mark Glaser notes the interesting case of billionaire sporting and tech entrepreneur, Mark Cuban, who is using his blog to strike back when interviews are not reported the way he would like. It’s hardly the revenge of the little guy, but it presents […]



Tom Brokaw Calls Blogging “Political Jihad”

By Marcus O'Donnell • Oct 5th, 2004 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Tom Brokaw Calls Blogging “Political Jihad” from blacklily8 at Kairosnews:
Seemingly, no anchor refrains from doling out vitriol on bloggers–even old Cronkite referred to us as “scandamongers.”
This really ties in quite nicely with a theme I’m building into my dissertation about “gatekeepers” and their growing resentment towards free culture as it exists on the internet. The […]



Blog Trumps Trad Media

By Marcus O'Donnell • Oct 4th, 2004 • Category: Blogs and journalism

A link from new media musings blog to sindikk.aeshin
who notes that:
As of 8:42 this morning, the top headline on Google News was a blog. [Daily Kos on Bush Kerry Debate] That’s a first as far as I know. The algorithms have spoken, and the most relevant source of news on the 2004 Presidental debate […]



Blogs track objectivity

By Marcus O'Donnell • Sep 28th, 2004 • Category: Blogs and journalism

Two interesting blog posts, noted by Rebecca Blood, that track the nature of journalistic practices and provide a good example of how bloggers often have a better understanding of journalistic ethics than journalists do:
Campaign Desk on the damaging effects of media ‘even-handedness‘, and Josh Marshall on ‘the poverty of what passes as journalistic objectivity‘.
And these […]