Cynthia McCune's Library tagged journalism →  View Popular

I don't use the word "media." I don't use the word "news." I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.

When deadly riots broke out in the western province of Xinjiang last week, the Chinese government sprang into message control mode. It choked off the Internet and mobile phone service, blocked Twitter and Fanfou (its Chinese equivalent), deleted updates and videos from social networking sites, and scrubbed search engines of links to coverage of the unrest. At the same time, it invited foreign journalists to take a tour of the area.

That's right, it slammed the door in the face of new media -- and offered traditional reporters a front row seat.

Here are a few tips from Bradshaw for how teachers can encourage social media experimentation:

- Use the tools themselves to teach the class. Use them in any setting possible.

- Do it publicly and socially. For example, Bradshaw paired students up with “Twentors” to help students that were new to Twitter.

- Less talk, more action. Put the students out there and get them using the tools one by one.

• The syllabus, including all assignments, is here.
• The students’ Soundslides are here.
• The students’ videos are here.

Re: Box.net - They say we can:

“Create hundreds of accounts instantly by importing a list of users from Excel. Assign variable user privileges from ‘view only’ to full editing rights.” (View PDF for info.)

I don’t know about your IT folks there, but I could not get this kind of support or flexibility here.

The group rejected the notion that charging for online content was the answer and pledged to come up with some new advertising models to support quality journalism by the end of the day. They divided their efforts into four areas:





1. Build an effective advertising model for news content delivered on smart phones, such as Apple’s iPhone.
2. Create a better CraigsList.
3. Show newspaper-centric companies how they can better meet the advertising needs of small- and medium-sized businesses.
4. Re-imagine the homepage and display advertising.

I view popular bloggers in two groups: Sensationalists and Specialists.

The Sensationalists tend to have little regard for accuracy, facts, and contextual data which affords an accurate big picture. They appeal to readers who get an emotional charge and ammunition for their particular point of view or preference for viewing the world.

The Specialists, are people who educated, likely degreed, in the area on which they blog. This group not only provides factual data and context for that data, but often a world view and values which they believe the data and facts support.

Here’s the Alerts services you should try out:



• Google Alerts
• Yahoo! Alerts
• TweetScan Alerts - Get alerted when your keywords are tweeted