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October 2005
New writers' directory site launches
2005-10-03By Jason Bradley: The Article Dashboard has launched, and writers may now submit their articles for publishing.
Article categories include Arts and Entertainment, Business, Communications, Computers, Disease and Illness, Fashion, Finance, Food and Beverage, Health and Fitness, Home and Family, Internet Business, Politics, Product Reviews, Recreation and Sports, Reference and Education, Self Improvement, Society, Travel and Leisure, Vehicles, and Writing and Speaking.
If you are a writer and would like to become a contributing Article Dashboard author, you can do so today by visiting the website at http://www.ArticleDashboard.com
Religion news site a useful teaching tool for USC prof
2005-10-04By Heather Hart: "No one is asking the right questions about religion; everyone tiptoes around the subject because they are afraid of offending someone," said Diane Winston, Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and a contributing writer to The Revealer, an online review of religion in the news.
The Revealer, published by New York University’s Center for Religion and Media, was designed as a forum to critique the media’s relationship with religion and is mostly utilized by journalists, students and academics. Since its debut two years ago, the site has steadily gathered a base of loyal readers and contributors, Winston said.
The review is open-ended in nature, with articles critiquing pop culture, such as the movie The Da Vinci Code and the media's reception of Christian pop singer Amy Grant’s new television show. But it tackles more serious issues as well, like the lack of coverage about religion’s role in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.
Winston became involved with the publication when she was with the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"This is something that was sorely needed," she said. "It is important for journalists to be knowledgeable about what they report. ... When it comes to religion, everyone just accepts what they are told."
Winston has encouraged her students to submit to The Revealer and other such online publications because she said they provide an opportunity to be more self-critical than in conventional journalism, where there is no real dialogue between journalist and audience.
"It’s also great for the students to see their work published," she added.
But Winston said the site’s benefits extend beyond the world of academia, and she believes the site and media review forums like it are wonderful teaching tools for all journalists.
"It is a great way to explore your own biases and see where they come out in your writing," she said.
So. Cal. radio station explores online broadcasting
2005-10-05By Vojtech Horna: KNX 1070, a Southern California news radio station, recently made its program available over the Internet, with streaming content in March and podcasting in late August.
Howard Freshman, director of marketing and promotions at KNX, said that the station is in an exploratory phase, learning more about the possibilities of both fairly new technologies.
Site visitors must register to begin streaming, a process that allows the radio station to gather some valuable statistical data about its general audience. According to Freshman, the tabulated information shows that listeners who access the streaming online at KNX1070.com "are not demographically much different from those who listen to the AM station."
"Most of the online listening occurs Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.," Freshman said, noting that their listeners often use the Internet because they cannot get an AM signal in their office.
As for podcasts, KNX1070.com offers KNX 1070 News On Demand, which Freshman calls "a 5-minute recap of the headlines" that "allows the users to get a grip on what is happening."
The station podcasts other shows such as "Eyes on Computers with Jeff Levy," and it makes available several special series including interviews with commentator Michael Jackson.
Freshman told OJR that the station plans to prepare a special online-only program available through podcasting. The station is also is debating whether to offer archives of old podcasts and just how long the podcasts should be available online for downloading.
Freshman acknowledged that both technologies are still developing and said that in the near future, it is possible that there will be one or more full-time employees who will be responsible solely for these Internet broadcasts.
Well over a million people tune to 1070 AM every week, and KNX.com's podcast audience is steadily growing, Freshman explained. Around 3,000 subscribers utilized this feature on the site after three weeks without any promotion, while online streaming averaged 50,000 sessions a month.
Washingtonpost.com Opinions section boasts new features
2005-10-06By Kelly Winslow: By giving more power to readers and editorial personalities, the redesigned Opinions section at the washingtonpost.com will become more functional and interactive, according to Hal Straus, Opinions Editor for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the subsidiary of the Washington Post Co. that publishes its online content.
"We think the feature highlights some of the Post’s most interesting thinkers and personalities," Straus said of the site's Opinion section.
The Opinions section will also offer Web-only content, he added.
"The Post newspaper provides an incredibly deep and smart opinion report. The Web-only content supplements that with some different voices and with work that responds to the Internet’s continuous news cycle and is more focused on Internet information sources," Straus said.
Straus said he and his colleagues hope the changes will not only promote discussion about issues and ideas but will also enliven the site and its appeal to viewers.
"There’s an enormous audience for people who want to interpret what’s going on around them and who really enjoy the give and take of debate on political and cultural issues," Straus said.
"We think our new design and features make the opinions area a more useful and provocative place for the readers to visit," he added.
New features in the redesign include Emily Messner's The Debate, which hosts a variety of opinions revolving around one controversial issue and Reporting for Duty, which publishes comments from a washingtonpost.com staff member who has been deployed to Iraq. And to complement the lengthy articles, the Toles v. Toles section will showcase published cartoons alongside Web-only sketches from cartoonist Tom Toles.
New blog for music journalists
2005-10-09By CJ Chilvers: The publication of record for music journalism is now also a blog. The Association of Music Writers and Photographers is proud to announce the launch of MusicPressReport.com, a daily blog featuring headlines, articles, links and resources for the music press.
Thousands of music journalists and photojournalists already rely on the weekly Music Press Report for coverage of all the latest happenings in the music press community. Now readers will have a chance to voice their own opinions and interact with guest posters, editors and long-time contributors who promise to keep the new blog buzzing daily.
Decision to start podcasts at DenverPost.com a 'no-brainer'
2005-10-10By Sarah Kim: For Gil Asakawa, executive producer of the DenverPost.com, the decision to begin offering Post Podcasts was easy: "It seemed like a no-brainer," he said, particularly since the Post has a "commitment to incorporate new technology" in order to bring the news to a wider audience.
Like many newspapers and media outlets, the Denver Post started podcasting to offer listeners who lack the time to read a newspaper the chance to download audio content and catch up on the latest news and features on their MP3 players.
But just because the jump to podcasting was a no-brainer doesn’t mean it has been easy. Compared to the podcasts of major news organizations like CNN and ABC, Asakawa said that the Post’s podcasts are still "rough."
Denver Post’s "Pod Squad," Ian Neligh, Noelle Leavitt and Armando Manzanares, wake up at 4 a.m. to select and record the top five stories from each section on the website, explained Asakawa. They then package and produce the podcasts at home using freeware on their personal home computers. They have the podcasts uploaded to the site by 7 a.m.
Podcasts include: Daily Top Headlines, Entertainment Beat, and Events & Features Podcasts. Features podcasts include brief descriptions and are sometimes accompanied by a video or a photo slideshow.
Offered exclusively online, the Post’s features podcasts give listeners an opportunity to experience major events and news through sound from interviews and background ambient sounds. Some examples include a visit to a Harry Potter book release party at a local bookstore, speaking with a Children’s Hospital volunteer and an interview with a photographer who volunteered to rescue animals in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Online editions for print journalism have been slow in taking a serious look at podcasting, Asakawa said. Many are only now seeing some of podcasting’s potential to reach new audiences.
Future plans for the Post’s podcasting, Asakawa said, include adding more Web-only available content such as the features podcasts; Scenester, which lists upcoming entertainment events; and weekly movie reviews by the Regular Guy movie critic.
Meta-grad: USC alum serves up Metascores to entertainment lovers
2005-10-10By Briana Monahan: Metacritic.com, with its unique scoring system, offers consumers compilations of reviews for films, DVDs, music, games and books, all on one comprehensible website.
Co-founders and editors Marc Doyle, Julie Roberts and Jason Dietz aggregate reviews from critics as well-known as Roger Ebert to provide a thorough look into the entertainment industry's latest. With different sections for each genre, readers can read full-length reviews from critics or simply glance at the item's "Metascore."
A Metascore is a score of 1-100 averaged from the critics' ratings. Readers can view ratings of individual critics that have been converted to the 1-100 scale or the cumulative Metascore averaged from all of the critics' ratings and reviews. Reading an item's rating is simple -- the higher the Metascore, the better the reviews the listing has received.
Metascores were formerly posted as single digit ratings, but the editors, with the help of renowned critic Roger Ebert, converted them to the 1-100 system they currently use to give their readers more specific ratings. According to Doyle, Roger Ebert told Metacritic that the single digit ratings were too imprecise and that the 1-100 system would require less rounding when averaging the Metascore. The change went into effect about three years ago.
CNET spokesperson Martha Papalia said staff members at Metacritic.com "enjoy a regular dialogue with the critics, who do not hesitate to contact them when they think an individual score that is assigned to their reviews should be adjusted."
The main goal of the site is "to educate people on the best way to use their entertainment dollar," Doyle explained.
Over 120 critics' reviews from publications like The New York Times and Rolling Stone are quoted on Metacritic. Doyle says that one main objective of the site is to provide the public only with critics that are reliable and can be taken seriously. The Metacritic staff takes the prestige of a critic's publication, the critic's caliber of writing, and the critic's reputation (gathered by talking to other people in the industry) into consideration before posting their reviews on the site.
After its launch in January 2001, Metacritic began generating revenue with advertising, licensing its reviews to companies like AOL and other Internet providers and through affiliates like Amazon.com. The site gets about 210,000 page views a day -- 42,000 of which are registered users, according to Doyle.
These numbers could grow given that Metacritic was recently acquired by CNET Networks. Already changes to the site are underway, with a soon-to-be-launched TV review section in the works, according to Doyle.
Doyle, a graduate of USC's law school, is slated to be featured in the November issue of the USC Trojan Family Magazine.
Gillmor at Annenberg: Blogging a 'kind of wonderful noise'
2005-10-12By Diana Day: The internet has evolved from a read-only medium to a read-write medium, journalist Dan Gillmor said Tuesday at an informal presentation at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.
"Blogs are the first instance of this read-write phenomenon, but it’s not the last. There’s more coming," said Gillmor, a blogger at Bayosphere.com and the author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.
"Journalism is changing from the lecture mode … to a conversation or a seminar where we take the publication and move on to something better," Gillmor explained.
Gillmor discussed his well-known credo "my readers know more than I do." This is true for all journalism, he said, and instead of being viewed as threatening, it should be viewed as an opportunity.
An example of community members sharing their knowledge with others would be Wikipedia.org, which Gillmor called "the most important experiment today in bottom-up content. ... I’m in awe of what these guys have accomplished." In fact, Gillmor, noted for his dedication to grassroots journalism, said: "I go to school there to learn about community online."
"Making sense of this global conversation is really difficult," Gillmor said, but ultimately, "[Blogging is] a kind of wonderful noise, and I love the noise," Gillmor said. Journalism should be a clear signal above the noise, and the challenge is to get people to pay attention to it, he added.
Gillmor urged responsible practices in participatory journalism and blogging. On his own site, he has citizen journalists sign a pledge where contributors agree to work in the community interest. In addition to asking for people’s real names, the pledge states that accuracy, thoroughness, fairness and transparency are expected standards.
Mosaic: A voice from the Middle East
2005-10-13By Janelle Morgan: "We are always looking for a diversity in sources and stories that are important to viewers," said David Michaels, director of current affairs for World Link TV.
One source that World Link felt was not getting enough coverage was the Middle East, and so in December of 2001, Mosaic: World News from The Middle East was born.
Mosaic offers an online video feed of news broadcasts from more than 15 Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia. It compiles news segments from 15 to 20 private and state-sponsored broadcasters and puts together a half-hour episode every Monday through Friday.
Each broadcast included in the episode is presented in its entirety, allowing viewers to obtain information without it being filtered, Michaels said. When necessary, the segments are also translated into English. Past episodes are archived on the site dating back to 2003.
In April, Mosaic was one of 32 winners of the 2005 Peabody Awards. The awards are presented to electronic media that provides a public service.
According to Michaels, 40 percent of the U.S. population is concerned about a perceived hatred of Americans in the Muslim world. Mosaic makes it easier for Americans to understand the issues that are most important to those living in the Middle East, he explained.
"By watching Mosaic viewers are able to decode the messages of the Middle East through its own voice," he said. "By increasing communication between the U.S. and the Middle East there is a decrease in this perceived hatred."
Webby Awards now taking entries for 2006 contest
2005-10-14By Robert Niles: The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences has opened the application process for the 10th Annual Webby Awards.
This year, the Blog category has been split into three categories, for Business, Political and Cultural/Personal Blogs. In addition, the awards this year feature a new category for podcasts.
The fee is $195 per entry ($95 in personal and nonprofit website categories) for entries submitted by October 28. The final entry deadline is December 16. The awards will be presented in June 2006 in New York.
OjodePez: Promoting documentary photography
2005-10-17By Elizabeth Waugh: "The point of photography is a kind of democracy in the subjects," said Frank Kalero, creator of OjodePez, a documentary photography website that accompanies an annual magazine of the same name.
The bilingual website promotes the work of photojournalists online, offering documentary photographers the chance to exhibit their work to the public. On the site, photographers present series of still photographs, occasionally in conjunction with text, concerning a broad array of social and cultural issues.
Kalero, who is based in Berlin and Barcelona, noted that "any photographer can promote his own work, or the work that he likes" on the Internet, thus creating a more democratic array of subjects and information.
OjodePez and sites like it fill an increasingly important role in online media, Kalero said. Whereas fifty years ago mainstream magazines like "Life" stressed the importance of photo essays, documentary photographers today find their print outlets much more limited.
OjodePez features photo essays by photographers from around the world. The essays tackle a variety of subjects, from opinions on American culture in Mathis Braschler’s "About Americans," to the unique inner workings of a Swiss retirement home in Andreas Reeo’s "Old People’s Home for Farmhands".
Nine photo essays are currently featured on the site. Articles accompany five of the photo essays, allowing for an informative as well as visual experience. OjodePez exhibits images selected by a different photo editor every year. Andrea Gothe of the German magazine Stern selected this year’s images.
News Hounds: Sniffing out the FOX
2005-10-18By Jonathan Solis: "We watch FOX so you don't have to," write the News Hounds on their FOX News Channel watchdog website.
The News Hounds are a group of eight media activists who decided to band together after wrapping up work in 2004 as unpaid volunteer researchers for Outfoxed, a documentary about the FOX News Channel by director Robert Greenwald. The expose took an in-depth look at FOX News and the dangers of media conglomerates taking control of the public's right to know.
Working on the documentary behind the scenes, the Hounds, according to their Manifesto, were "appalled" with their findings regarding the inconsistencies in FOX's self-proclaimed mission of fair and balanced reporting. In light of this, they decided to "go outside of their own lives and do something," according to Christina Bradley, one of the original eight News Hounds writers.
"What I saw on FOX News was so totally the opposite of what I’ve been taught to believe was journalism," said Bradley, who also writes under the pseudonym Marie Therese.
"A year and a half later, I believe none of them. I don’t think any of [the mainstream media] are practicing real journalism anymore," she said.
The website hosts blogs posted by the Hounds, forums on various issues and events and articles about other news networks -- all of which users can comment on. Also featured are links to numerous media resources, blogs frequented by the News Hounds and other news sources.
When asked how they separate themselves from astroturf, Bradley replied by noting two factors: the thriving readership -- 300,000 unique visitors -- and the connection to the Outfoxed documentary, which Bradley said brings credibility to the site. Bradley also expressed her suspicion of any site that refuses to allow debate.
"We really, really feel the difference between us and [other sites] is we allow conservatives [to participate in discourse]," Bradley answered in response to the question of debate forums.
"If you look through our banning list, it’s tiny," she said. "It’s a free country."
Internet governance: Who should control the Net?
2005-10-18
By Maritess Go:
In a presentation Monday at USC's Annenberg School for Communication, Peng Hwa Ang, a member of the Working Group on Internet Governance that was appointed by the U.N. Secretary-General, discussed the issue of who will control the Internet.
"Internet governance is basically rules made by government, private sector and civil society concerning the Internet," said Ang, the Dean of the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and graduate of USC's communication management program.
Because civil society is one of the stakeholders, Ang said, this means that academics can take part in the decision-making process that will help shape the Internet of the future. With this in mind, the WGIG developed a process in which all stakeholders participate on equal footing, Ang said.
Ang also stressed that the ideal framework of Internet governance should be "multilateral, transparent and democratic." In other words, it should involve countries worldwide; be open enough to let the internet community see any changes and developments; and give voice to everyone’s input.
The WGIG created several models on Internet governance with the government, the private sector and civil society playing varying roles. One model proposes a Global Internet Council with governments as members and the private sector and civil society as advisors. The Council would report to the U.N.
Another model suggests forming an International Internet Council in which governments would still play a leading role, and the private sector and civil society would play an advisory role. This time, however, the Council would not be under the U.N.
These models are just recommendations on ways to regulate the Internet. But if the WGIG’s basic formula of including governments, the private sector and civil society is part of the process, good Internet governance can be established, Ang said.
Citizens put on detective caps at Chicagocrime.org
2005-10-19By Elizabeth Held: Chicago has a multitude of news media outlets that notify people of major crimes, but in a city this size, it’s unlikely that the media will report every single incident. That’s where Chicagocrime.org comes in.
"I thought the site would be a nice public service," says Adrian Holovaty, a native Chicagoan with a background in journalism who developed the non-profit website.
Chicagocrime.org is designed to inform Chicago residents about recent crimes all over the city. It allows site viewers to search for crimes in specific crime locations, types, wards, zip codes and date ranges. Viewers can even create routes with the help of interactive city maps.
Through a process called screen scraping, the website downloads reported crimes once a day from Citizen ICAM, a site maintained by the Chicago Police Department. It then allows Internet users to browse through the crimes with Google Maps, creating an interactive and customized search process. Chicagocrime.org allows Chicago residents to learn about crimes occurring in their area that they may otherwise never hear about.
"I’m always working on projects, mostly little scripts that improve sites for personal use ... Chicagocrime.org is this on a bigger scale."
Holovaty says he does not include advertising on the site so that chicagocrime.org can continue to function as an intellectual service and that he plans to add more features to chicagocrime.org in the near future.
The next step for the site, according to Holovaty, is to integrate Chicago Transit Authority bus routes so that viewers can search for crimes along these routes.
"I plan to deduce the CTA route by looking at the location of the crime," said Holovaty. He also intends to add a video map to make the site even more interactive. This will allow viewers to enter search parameters and watch the map play over a certain time period.
Chicagocrime.org recently won the grand prize in the Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism. This $10,000 award is given by J-Lab, which looks for "novel approaches to journalism that spur non-traditional interactions and have an impact on a community," according to J-Lab's website.
"Thanks to the prize money, I can afford bigger and better servers [for the site] to add extra features that I have previously avoided," said Holovaty. "I’m really excited."
With all the success of chicagocrime.org, Holovaty has been contacted by other police departments with requests for websites for their departments and has started working with them as well. He is also currently working on a follow-up site to chicagocrime.org that will provide local data about Chicago -- though he says he can’t reveal more details yet.
"[Chicagocrime.org] is just the first step in the Chicago media empire," he said.
Study: Teens shape the netscape
2005-10-20By Kamara Colson: "[Teenagers] no longer care about 15 minutes of fame, but rather 15 megabytes of fame," said Jeffrey Cole, Director of the Annenberg School of Communication’s Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California.
In honor of USC’s 125th birthday weekend, Cole gave a speech entitled "The Impact of the Internet on Our Social, Political and Economic Fabric."
Cole shared his recently completed research study "Ten Years, Ten Trends," which monitored the Internet usage of 2,000 people over a period of five years. Cole said his findings suggest that the only major factor affecting Internet use is the user’s age.
The impact of the Internet comes mostly from teenagers, he said. Cole's study shows that 98 percent of teenagers go online and will continue to use the Internet for the rest of their lives.
"This generation of teenagers does not read newspapers and never will. They go online instead," he said.
His study also concluded that poverty is no longer a major factor in people not using the Internet and that 74 percent of Americans now have the Internet.
"Cost barriers have effectively disappeared as the Internet has become more affordable and accessible than ever before," Cole said. "The majority of the people not going online do not want to go online. These people simply see no use for it in their lives," he explained.
Cole said he sees the Internet as enabling users to scrutinize stories in the media closer than ever before. People no longer have to take stories at face value; they now have the resources to look deeper into issues and get a more complete picture of stories than newspapers and broadcast news previously allowed, he said.
Cole plans to speak at the Google Zeitgeist '05 in late October and at the Cyberspace 2005 conference at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic in November.
Potter site developed by a muggle, for muggles
2005-10-20By Kate Crisalli : It’s a strange coincidence that Emerson Spartz, webmaster and founder of Mugglenet.com, the largest Harry Potter fansite in the U.S., looks eerily similar to the boy wizard whose adventures he’s been following since his early adolescence. At first glance, his picture on Mugglenet.com could easily be a promotional shot for one of the Potter movies: he’s lanky, scruffy and surprisingly young to be at the center of such a phenomenon.
Spartz started the website when he was 12, because "I was bored out of my mind, basically." A home-schooled student with too much time on his hands and a great enthusiasm for the early Harry Potter books, he started fiddling around with Web design, "something I knew absolutely nothing about."
Spartz said he entirely wrote, edited and designed the site’s earliest iteration, a blocky and clearly homemade page.
The site and the popularity of Rowling’s books, however, grew in synch with each other. People who saw the website and liked it e-mailed Spartz, sending in articles or asking him to take them on as staff members, Spartz said.
"My parents realized I had something really big on my hands before I did," he recalls.
It wasn’t until two years ago, when Mugglenet officially became the most heavily trafficked Potter fansite on the web, that the success really struck him. Now, the site receives more than a million hits a day, according to Spartz.
Spartz attributes the site’s success to his own competitive streak. "I just got really motivated, and I kept wanting make it bigger and better," he said.
With a staff of more than 25, most of the writing and technical work on the site is taken care of these days, while Spartz’s role is primarily administrative. He has met with Rowling twice, most recently at the release of her sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Rowling called personally and invited Spartz to attend the book's launch party and gave a private interview to him and Melissa Anelli, webmaster of The Leaky Cauldron, another major Potter fansite.
A freshman this year at Notre Dame University, Spartz is majoring in management and plans to continue with a business career after he graduates.
"This is what I’ve been doing with the site all along – management – so it makes sense to continue," he said.
A few concerned fans have asked Spartz if he will shut down Mugglenet after the seventh and final book of the Potter series is released, a suggestion that makes him laugh.
"Mugglenet’s not going anywhere," Spartz said.
More than a cornfield, downtown art project takes an online form
2005-10-25By Jennifer Haughton: Los Angeles artist Lauren Bon and her team of web developers set up NotaCornfield.com to explain the purpose behind what appears to be, on first observation, a misplaced cornfield in the heart of Los Angeles. Earlier this summer, 875,000 seeds of corn were planted in a field just north of downtown Los Angeles in an effort to utilize the derelict area and attract community interest. The website is an online expansion of the project, which was funded by the Annenberg Foundation.
The decision to set up a website to raise public awareness of the 32-acre urban art installation was made early on in the process, said Steve Rowell, the website’s designer and developer.
"We knew that the vast majority of people would not be able to visit the actual site of the cornfield, so this offers another version of the project that is more accessible, both to locals and people in other areas of the country," Rowell said.
The website also offers interactive features, including a live web cam with an audio feed, for people who cannot visit the cornfield itself.
"The website can’t duplicate the experience of being at the cornfield," Rowell said, "but it is certainly an alternative."
Weekly events are posted on the site so local residents can participate in the project through planting, campfire evenings and Halloween night celebrations. All events are free-of-charge and accessible to the handicapped. The website’s blog section then covers the events.
"At the beginning we offered an anonymous response option in the blog section, but there were instances of racial slogging so we decided to take that option off because we didn’t want it to get out of control," says Rowell.
The project will be completed this harvest, but the website will continue to run.
"There will be a ‘blue-light’ phase, when the empty field will be lit up by blue light. After that the website will keep up-to-date with the drying out process, keep up-to-date on the exhibition process and may continue running in to the summer of next year," says Rowell.
Site provides an anime education
2005-10-25By Maritess Go: At first glance, Anime Academy seems like one of the many anime review websites that have popped up since Japanese animation gained popularity in the U.S. in the late '90s. Take a closer look, however, and you’ll see that, just as its name implies, Anime Academy is more of a place of learning.
"A university setting only seemed logical as our purpose was and still is to be a place where people can learn about anime," said Tony Yu, co-founder and co-administrator of Anime Academy, commenting on the school website theme.
But what is anime? The uninitiated may think these shows are just cartoons. Make no mistake about it, these are not your ordinary Saturday-morning variety. The kinds of settings, characters and styles from series to series range from comedy to drama to horror and even showcase more adult themes.
Since its inception in 2001, Anime Academy has steadily gained popularity, particularly in the anime convention scene. While contributors, referred to on the site as 'professors,' still continue to offer reviews on anime series in a comprehensive Library, Yu says they have expanded and now offer "an extensive database of anime and Japanese-related articles, a well-trafficked message board, merchandise and the occasional contest."
Among the articles the site offers are those geared specifically to viewers who may not be aware of the cultural significance of certain elements in anime. For example,
"Holidays and Events in Japan" explains the importance of celebrations like the cherry blossom festival and the Japanese summer festival, clarifying the reasons why the characters in some shows say and do certain things.
Anime Academy also offers news from major events like Anime Expo 2005 and Otakon 2005. Besides reporting on what went on, the administrators and professors interview and profile the anime insiders at these conventions. Some interviews hosted on the site include chats with director and character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto and singer and voice actress Maaya Sakamoto. Also featured are profiles on composers like Yuki Kajiura, whose music can be heard in the .hack//SIGN series, which aired on Cartoon Network.
Even as the site’s unexpected popularity grows, Yu is keeping it all in perspective.
"The satisfaction I get from working on the Anime Academy is that the knowledge and experience I’ve gained over the years is helping to steer a new generation of anime fans in the right direction ... Knowing that all of our hard work is being put to good use, that’s enough for me," he said.
Scientists get news, connect online at PhysOrg.com
2005-10-26By Neha Kashyap: Andrew Zi and Alexander Pol were Ph.D. students in the Netherlands when they realized they felt isolated from their colleagues.
"We ... felt a lack of scientific news websites for professional scientists," said Zi.
So the duo created PhysOrg.com, an online scientific community where professional scientists and students can discuss their research and receive the latest news and information in their fields.
"Throughout this year PhysOrg has significantly grown to become a serious project," Zi said.
Along with physics, nanotech, science and space news sections, it also provides information on the latest technology and electronic devices.
Zi and Pol work closely with universities around the world, most of which are American. They also utilize news organizations such as United Press International and Agence France-Press. About 10 freelance writers provide not only up-to-date information from academic journals and trade publications, but also unpublished research.
PhysOrg boasts nearly 5,000 registered members, with 4,000 more subscribers to its newsletter. It already has a readership of 1.5 million a month, Zi said. About half its monthly readers have a college degree, according to a recent survey conducted on the site. Forty percent work in a science- or technology-related field, while 20 percent are students.
"The results far surpassed our expectations," said Zi, referring to the rapid growth in readership over the last year.
PhysOrg recently began offering a free magazine section for readers. In the future it plans to cover even more scientific disciplines – including health and medicine -- through a partnership with www.HMnews.org, a website specializing in health news.
Chiefs fans find a home on the web
2005-10-27By Nicholas Kump: For Kansas City Chiefs fans perhaps no website offers more features than www.kcchiefsnews.com, with its interactive forums, links and up-to-the-minute news.
According to its 20-year-old webmaster Ryan Luis, the site offers fans "everything one needs to know in one place," with links to more detailed stories and sites when necessary.
"I’m glad to see that the Internet has become such a convenient tool for those seeking very specific information," Luis said. "I think it’s important for people to have access to news in this day and age, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it in my own little way."
KC Chiefs News has been able to attract so many fans partly because it offers a broad view of the Chiefs' world, with over 70 links allowing its users to access everything from official player fan pages to the NFL Hall of Fame’s website.
Luis said he updates the site with opinion pieces written by himself and other moderators, and he changes the links to new stories in the online sports world at least three times a day. The forums available to users are not moderated, making the site different from many others.
"[The forums] are completely led by the fans," he said. "These are die-hard fans that have opinions that do not get published very often, and I’m glad to be able to offer an outlet for their passion."
Luis said he has been an avid Chiefs fan his entire life and was glad to find a way to marry his web design skills with his love of sports.
Luis launched the site earlier this year and initially got less than 50 hits a day. Now, he said, he is getting hundreds of hits, not to mention offers from ad companies looking to put links on his page.
NYT publisher: Handling of Miller hurt paper's reputation
2005-10-28By Robert Niles: The publisher of the New York Times acknowledged that his paper's handling of controversial reporter Judith Miller has hurt the Times' reputation. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. responded to a question from OJR during his keynote address at the sixth annual Online News Association Conference in New York this morning.
"There's no question that the Times has suffered in reputation," Sulzberger said, after initially replying that he did not believe that the paper's not firing Miller had in itself harmed the Times' credibility.
Miller has come under fire for misleading her editors at the Times while maintaining close relationships with White House sources alleged to have been involved in the illegal disclosure of a CIA agent's identity. The agent, Valerie Plame, is married to Joseph Wilson, who wrote in the Times criticizing the administration's sloppy investigation of what turned out to be nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Miller reported extensively for the Times on WMD, relaying administration claims that the Iraqis were pursuing and developing the weapons.
"Clearly, looking back, we were too slow in correcting the WMD coverage," Sulzberger said. "But that was not Judy Miller's failure alone. It was an institutional failure."
"It's an evolving story," Sulzberger said. "While our reporter is in jail, there are constraints. Our reporter is no longer in jail, so the constraints are off."
Miller was jailed for contempt of court for 85 days for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak. She relented once she received permission to talk from her confidential source, according to the Times. Former Vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter' Libby Jr. now faces charges of obstruction of justice and perjury in the case.
Before responding to questions about Miller, Sulzberger said that news organizations must develop a better understanding of new forms of conversation online and do a better job of embracing new online communities.
"Readers are interested in information that is more varied and granular than the Times could ever become."
Sulzberger said that the Times is exploring the idea of using its website to become a "convenor of communities." But the publisher said the Times would restrict its use of grassroots content, taking a swipe at the Los Angeles Times' recent experiment with reader-written wikitorials.
"We're not going to open our pages to random people without our having looked at it."
International panelists share multimedia success stories
2005-10-29By Diana Day: "Broadening the Bandwidth," the international panel at the Online News Association's New York conference Friday, was an opportunity for journalists from Spain, Brazil, Germany and the U.K. to share and discuss cutting-edge online news developments in their respective countries.
Alberto Cairo, assistant professor of infographics at the University of North Carolina and infographics editor of Elmundo.es in Spain told the audience that he considers himself a journalist, not a designer. “I went to school for journalism. I moved to [interactive graphics] later.”
Cairo is currently on leave from Elmundo.es to teach at UNC but took time out to come to ONA and share some of the infographic features he designed for the news site, which has 6 million unique users.
Cairo said Elmundo.es has a commitment to visual journalism and that Spain has long been a leader in the creation of powerful infographics.
At Elmundo.es, they produce their own infographics and also do their own reporting, rather than relying on the work of print reporters. Infographics can stand alone, Cairo reminded the audience, making them a unique information-sharing device.
Elmundo.es is trying to move away from print-inspired graphics to a more multimedia model that includes audio and video, like the Deep Impact story.
Cairo’s co-panelist, Marion Strecker, is cofounder and director of Univierso Online, Brazil. Strecker explained successful interactive features at UOL.
To attract a younger audience, Strecker said, UOL asked Marcelo Tas, an actor, videomaker and multimedia showman to create a satirical blog about the 2004 local elections.
This blog led to a spin-off project where the website did live coverage of the opening of a satirical play written by Tas called The History of Brazil by Ernesto Varela. Ernesto Varela is a character Tas created to play a reporter who asks bold questions everyone wants to ask, but no one dares.
German panelist Guido Baumhauer, editor in chief of Deutsche Welle, emphasized the site's availability in many languages and also discussed Deutsche Welle's forays into producing content and multimedia for mobile phones.
BBC Interactive deputy editor Paul Brannon read a few of the 20,000 plus e-mails the BBC received the day of the terrorist attacks on London's transit system. The e-mails gave the news service reports of events all over the ctiy and conflicted with the authorities' reports that there had been an electrical explosion on one of the trains.
Brannon also showed audience-supplied photographs of the attacks and reminded the audience that "we are all reporters now."
ONA panelists share successful models of participatory journalism
2005-10-30By Diana Day: At Saturday’s Online News Association New York conference, Moderator Kinsey Wilson, vice president and editor in chief of USATODAY.com, introduced Will Femia, blog manager at MSNBC.com; Robert Niles, editor of Online Journalism Review; and Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage, both of iBrattleboro.com, as exemplars of participatory journalism.
"I’m not necessarily a citizen journalist evangelist. ... I have a pragmatic feeling about it," Femia said.
He explained that prompting responses is helpful but gave examples of times when this has gone awry, like when they asked readers "What would you ask Condoleeza Rice? What would you ask if you were on the 9/11 Commission?"
They got back many off-topic posts like, "Why do you have the flip in your hair?" Additionally, the volume of e-mails can be uncontrollable, Femia said. For example, during Hurricane Katrina, MSNBC received about one e-mail every 10 seconds.
As examples of MSNBC’s offerings, Femia showed the audience a section called Citizen Journalists Report and another called The Red Tape Chronicles.
Participatory journalism is about "using the tools of the Internet to do a more thorough job of journalism," Niles said. Niles invoked Dan Gillmor’s familiar reminder, "My readers know more than I do" and explained that soliciting reporting from readers is simply a way to gather more information and more sources.
"Don’t get hung up on the tools. Think about the goals," Niles suggested. He said to keep an open mind about new ways to gather information from as many sources as possible.
Niles recently used a wiki format on Online Journalism Review for an article with content he’d like to update over time, but at a static URL. He called this "a fundamentally different concept of how to handle information."
Participatory journalism works best on niche topic sites, Niles said, where people feel like part of a community and will "take a sense of ownership and participation in the site."
iBrattleboro.com is an example of a site where the readers have an investment in the site's content. The site serves an important purpose because the community of Brattleboro, Vermont was not being adequately served by larger media.
Site editor and developer Lise LePage said that the project has "been successful beyond our wildest dreams."
LePage and partner Christopher Grotke said they started the site in February 2003 using open source code and that they advertised the launch with fliers they distributed in town.
They seeded the site with content to encourage participation and to serve as a model and then watched as their readership slowly developed. Soon, LePage and Grotke said they’ll be turning to advertising to help pay for the site.
Grotke and LePage said the natural evolution of the site has led to a soon-to-be-released policy about what can and cannot be posted.
Currently, they moderate content and take down "ad hominem, name-calling, nasty things." They have not banned anyone yet, but said that there are some readers in danger of being excluded from the site.
Niles summed up the relatively new practice of participatory journalism by saying: "We’re still doing the same thing we’ve always done. We’re still reporting information to an audience."
Blogosphere's 'Irish Trojan' explains the urge to blog
2005-10-31By Haley Poland: Avid blogger Brendan Loy, a 2003 USC graduate who calls his website the The Irish Trojan's blog, says that a passion for writing and a yearning for communication with a wide audience both fuel his healthy addiction to blogging.
Currently in his second year at Notre Dame Law School, hence the title "Irish Trojan," Loy estimates that he spends up to six hours a day working on the blog he established while at USC. Although balancing blogging and school can be difficult at times, he says that the benefits of maintaining the blog far outweigh the burden.
"It's worth the time spent because it provides an outlet, it allows me to think about things analytically and intelligently, and it allows me to create a community and keep people in touch with each other," Loy said.
At USC, Loy studied print journalism and political science, while contributing to the Daily Trojan student newspaper. A self-taught blogger, he said his transition to a media form that can update and archive so rapidly was inevitable: "I've always had an undeniable urge to publish, even if that meant taping the latest news updates to my binder in middle-school."
Though Loy's blog reflects his many interests, including politics, media, sports and astronomy, his passion for meteorology recently brought him and his blog into the national spotlight. Loy's non-stop blogging about the status of Hurricane Katrina and the dire consequences it could have for New Orleans rapidly gained attention online, and the Irish Trojan's blog became the most visited blog source relating to Hurricane Katrina, according to Intelliseek's Blog Pulse. Loy was featured on MSNBC and in the New York Times for his coverage.
The traffic on his blog has settled since Katrina, and Loy said he has tried to revert back to a more general purpose blog, though his site now has a larger weather-related audience than before the storm.
"Traffic is a fickle and addictive thing," said Loy. While he admitted that catering to a certain segment of his blog audience to maintain high traffic is tempting, Loy asserted that his blog exists to reflect his interests and ideas.
"The essence of blogging is very pure and very democratic," he said. "It doesn't depend on someone or something endowing you with the power to publish. People think you are interesting and spread the word, and that is the appeal."
IJNet connects journalists from around the world
2005-10-31By Laura Ybarra: The International Journalists’ Network is a website designed to connect journalists and track media systems around the world.
IJNet serves as an online source for news media by providing news information and links relating to media assistance, training materials, media laws and code of ethics, according to Joe Stange, the site's editor.
By way of weekly e-mail bulletins, IJNet connects journalists, sending them updated news and information about training events, Stange said.
"We have two related goals. Our main goal is to help connect journalists in countries without a history of press freedom. We also track media systems around the world and help develop news media in that field," Stange said.
"Although every country differs, the biggest obstacle journalists face is a lack of legal protection," Stange explained. "They become the targets of lawsuits or can be imprisoned for publishing information powerful officials don’t like. There is also a lack of training and a lack of education in journalism," he added.
IJNet is operated by the International Center for Journalists, a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 to improve journalism around the world. The IJNet site was launched in 1998, evolving from a newsletter ICFJ began to monitor emerging media systems in Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War.
Today, IJNet covers the regions of Latin America, Eastern Europe-Central Eurasia, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and the Pacific.
IJNet is used by journalists around the world, Stange said. He noted that journalists from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, as well as many Western countries visit the site.
"We're [also] growing in the Middle East," Stange said, pointing out that Arabic was added to the website earlier this year, becoming the fourth language the site operates in alongside English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Stange said IJNet hopes to add French and Russian sometime next year but noted this addition is dependent upon funding.
In January, IJNet will launch a revamped website. "It will be easier to navigate and let journalists interact better," Stange said.