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May 2006
Organic gardener turns blogger
2006-05-01By Laura Ybarra : Organic Gardening News tries to spread the word about organic agriculture on a home scale, according to the blog’s creator, Scott Supak.
The blog, started by Supak in 2002, features the latest organic gardening news and views about organic gardens, farming and sustainable agriculture.
The blog appeals to "organic gardeners and hippies," Supak said.
Supak posts "anything that has to do with organic gardening or agriculture, especially if it’s something that makes me want to draw attention to it," he said in an e-mail. He added that he'll also post news items if they're "really cool, like someone doing something that's very helpful to the environment through organic farming or ranching."
Supak uses various news wires and Pesticide Action Network North America to find news items.
The posts on Organic Gardening News range from a Maine restaurant that serves mostly organic food to a site that sells pesticide-free flowers.
Supak, who has had an organic garden for over 20 years, first became interested in organic gardening as a child. He remembered an incident in which his step-father used pesticides to kill aphids and tomato horn worms that were pestering his tomato plants.
The young Supak noticed a "bunch of dead ladybugs" and began doing research and learned that ladybugs eat aphids. He also learned that the pesticide his step-father used killed parasitic wasps that lay eggs on horn worms and eventually eat the worm.
"I found a book in the library about beneficial insects, and it mentioned organic agriculture. I’ve been into it ever since," he wrote.
Today, he has an organic flower garden with roses and "thousands of bulb flowers" in the Los Angeles suburbs.
In the future, Supak wrote, he hopes to add flavor to Organic Gardening News by convincing organic gardener Mort Mather to begin posting his articles on the site.
Error watchdog blogs media (in)accuracy
2006-05-02
By Geoff Rynex:
To err is human, but that's not acceptable to freelance writer Craig Silverman, editor and founder of Regret The Error.
Established in late 2004, the blog-centric website runs selected corrections from North American print, online and television media outlets. Despite the efforts by the media to amend their work, Silverman finds that many of their corrections fail to really, well, correct.
"It really does drive me crazy. ... For the people who actually do make the effort to read the correction, to not give them the information that’s just logical and necessary, it’s something that I particularly find really frustrating," Silverman said.
The site also includes links to corrections and ombudsmen pages of major news outlets across North America, as well as a list of media that lack correction pages.
The corrections range from the amusing -- one paper mistakenly labeled one unlucky woman as a socialist instead of a socialite -- to more serious errors, such as those having to do with plagiarism.
Silverman said he hopes that Regret the Error will create an outcry among the online community and force the media to respond.
"The larger issue here is about making journalism better, and it’s about embracing the changes that are being brought forth by new technology, by new ways of scattering, and receiving, and disseminating information ... and to put out a better product," he said.
The amount of positive feedback from readers, especially those in the journalism community, has surprised Silverman somewhat. He said he had well over 100,000 visitors in about two weeks after he published a review of 2005 errors and corrections last December. Some of his colleagues at newspapers around North America even take the time to send him their corrections themselves.
"Talk to any journalist at any reputable publication or television station or radio station, and for them, getting it right is one of the things they’ll mention right away when they talk about their goals," Silverman said.
Next up for Silverman is a book slated for publication next year. It will highlight how accurate the media is and has been historically, and the most common kinds of errors and their possible unseen consequences.
After the book Silverman says he plans to expand the website to include more research and a possible collaboration with a journalism school.
Outdoor blogging technology: The blogosphere goes organic
2006-05-03By Micah Ailetcher: StreetMessenger, a new platform by the Massachusetts company LocaModa, allows an individual’s mobile phone to communicate with large screens in public spaces and the Web by posting messages.
With a variety of possible uses ranging from socializing to marketing to advocacy, VP of Sales for LocaModa, Bill Nast, sums it all up as "the Web outside."
According to Nast, the inspiration came to founder and CEO Stephen Randall on a visit to Ground Zero in New York. He wanted a way for people to display their thoughts instantly in a public location. At the same time, he wanted others online to be able to see what people in that location were thinking.
With StreetMessenger and its text messaging based application Wiffiti, short for "wireless graffiti," users are able to send text messages from their mobile phones to large screens in networked locations.
Such locations are already up and running, like at the Someday Café in Somerville, MA.
Each location’s screen has a unique ID to which users send text messages that are limited to 160 characters. The messages are then displayed on the screen and other users may respond to their message or make their message gradually fade out or grow larger. The entire message board is then available for viewing on the Web alongside message boards from other locations through LocaModa’s Wifitti site. According to Nast, this process can be thought of as "an outdoor blogging network."
Each individual screen will have its own "client," a company or organization which will serve the screen itself while LocaModa runs the software. Each client will have a text jockey who will be able to post messages and "engage people in a dialogue."
While the Wifitti software will automatically filter out certain profanities, the text jockey will also be alerted to certain words that are questionable in different contexts such as hate, kill and bomb. The jockey will have the ability to censor these words.
LocaModa’s first client, the American Legacy Foundation, known for its youth anti-smoking campaign, truth, already has two message boards up and running. LocaModa sees a potential for Wifitti with marketers as a way for them to build their brands, with opportunities like community building and online polling, which Nast feels "has a huge opportunity for [them] to get a feeling of what’s going on."
In addition to opportunities for marketing, LocaModa also sees opportunities for issue advocacy among other areas. Nast sees Wifitti’s message boards as “a living, breathing entity.”
"What we’d really like to see is for the blogosphere to become organic and to have [Wifitti] become a community-supported development," he said.
Quit the day job to blog? Not so fast, says USC football blogger
2006-05-04By Heather Hart: When Scott Schmidt graduated from University of Southern California in 1996 with a Master's degree in Public Administration, he never imagined he would become a big-time blogger starting a new business geared toward supporting new media.
In fact, he did not even know what a blog was.
"There just weren’t that many blogs" back when he started blogging as Boi from Troy in 2003, he said.
"Where else could a gay, Republican football fan say whatever they wanted and see it get picked up by national media? Now that there’s 17 million blogs ... it’s really hard to start something these days and get it noticed," Schmidt said.
Though his blog is Technorati’s No. 2 rated USC blog, Schmidt says that he could never think of supporting himself as a full-time blogger.
"I’d need eight to 10 times the traffic I normally get," he said of quitting his day job, "but more and more people are starting to look at it as a business."
"I get one dollar for every thousand views of a particular ad, but a site that isn’t a blog will get $10. It would be a lot easier to think of it as a business if blogs could make that kind of money."
Helping new bloggers get their foot in the door and helping more established bloggers become more successful is what Schmidt’s new business RSC Partners, Inc. is all about.
"Until now, it’s kind of been like the wild, wild west out there," Schmidt said. "Now there’s starting to be more discussion about ethics and the future of the medium. Bloggers just don’t get the respect that the mainstream media gets," he added.
Schmidt cannot even get the USC Sports Information Department to give him access to the football team for his stories anymore, since they're exclusively for "those associated with ‘national media outlets.’"
According to Schmidt, this is a big mistake, especially as blogs grow more and more influential in this new era.
"They’re missing out on a lot of opportunities, there’s a whole lot of people out there that never get a chance [to get the information they want to]," said Schmidt.
Schmidt's company is out to harness the influence of new media, primarily blogs, to help individuals and companies leverage blog-power to supplement their public relations.
"Public relations people today just don’t get it," said Schmidt. "They don’t include any links in their e-mails. A blogger gets their credibility from their sources – in what they link to. If [PR people] don’t understand that, then they can’t get the rest."
Schmidt expects to see a lot of segmentation in the blogosphere in the coming months and years and anticipates changes in his own life as well.
"It used to be kind of a hobby," Schmidt said of his blog, "but now that I’ve gone out on my own it’s become kind of a chore. My content may shift; I have considered bringing on other like-minded people, but they’re hard to find. I’m trying hard to keep it alive."
BBC News leads Webby Award winners
2006-05-09By Robert Niles: BBC News won top honors among news sites in the 10th annual Webby Awards todays, earning both the Webby and People's Voice Award in that category.
The Webby Awards are presented annually by the The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which describes itself as "a 500-member body of leading web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities." In each of 50-plus catgeories, a panel of judges selects the Webby Award winner, while Internet users vote on a People's Voice winner from among the judges' selected five finalists.
In the Newspaper category, the judges gave the Webby to the U.K.'s Guardian Unlimited, while readers picked WashingtonPost.com.
NY Times leaves backdoor open on new politics blog?
2006-05-09By Robert Niles: Thanks to Lisa Stone for this tip:
Daily Gotham publisher Liza Sabater discovered an unreleased New York politics blog being developed by the New York Times's website. How? The new blog includes a link to Sabater's site and she found it by checking her referrer logs. (If you publish a website, you *do* check your referrer logs on a daily basis, right?)
But... The Times web staff did not configure its new blog, which apparently runs on the WordPress platform, to keep outside readers from claiming writing privileges. So Sabater was able to log in and post to the Times' blog. (She describes the incident in full on her CultureKitchen website. She posts it as a blind item, but the included screen shot makes quite clear that the site is the New York Times'.)
"You've overlooked what I would consider a huge detail in blog development : You never, ever leave the login permissions open while mired in testing and development," Sabater wrote to The Times in a message she republished on her site.
Politics continue to pop as Chideya's online magazine moves to USC
2006-05-10By Alexis Johnson: The offices of the popular and innovative website Pop and Politics will be moving to the University of Southern California in the near future.
The move, according to founder Farai Chideya, is spurred by a change in monetary support for the site.
Currently supported by San Francisco State University, the site offers news and political commentary for young people. Many of its articles are written by students across America.
With Pop and Politics, Chideya said, she is striving to achieve a two-fold vision. Pop and Politics aims to "train the next generation of political and cultural journalists" and "become a well-known and credible news source for the 18-29 demographic," she said.
Chideya started the website in 1996 as a prototype blog, and it eventually evolved into an online magazine.
The site "began organically as an outgrowth of my access to the political process," said Chideya. Chideya said she wanted to make her proximity to politics available to others. She had been sent to cover the events of the 1996 presidential election and began blogging about her reporting.
Readers can be involved in the site on many levels, Chideya said. They can write full articles, become a member of a group blog or just comment on blog articles that have already been posted by others. Regardless of how one participates, the main goal of Pop and Politics is to encourage that involvement.
The site is cultivating young people’s "sense of politics and their investment in its progression," said Chideya, who noted that the project aims to be diverse ideologically and ethnically.
Pop and Politics is also becoming technologically diverse by incorporating podcasting. The website recently began podcasting 15 minute radio shows for its subscribers, opening another door for interaction.
"It’s something about the texture of the show that involves the listener," Chideya said. It is a form of commentary the editors want to develop for the site.
But like many other Web endeavors, money is the biggest obstacle for the site, Chideya said.
"People will pay for their entertainment but expect their news for free," she said.
Pop and Politics is constantly looking for new contributors in its efforts to engage and invest its readership in the political process.
Newspapers shrink as their websites grow
2006-05-10By Robert Niles: An article in BTBOnlibe details the incredible shrinking newspaper, with a look at examples of major U.S. newspapers moving their content from print editions to the online counterparts.
The most cited example is stock tables, which papers such as the Los Angeles Times have cut back and that the Seattle Times has eliminated on Sunday entirely. And other papers are reducing their physical size, such as the Wall Street Journal, which shrank earlier this year from a 60-inch to a 48-inch web.
Veteran photography writer brings print work back to life on the Web
2006-05-11By Kevin Ueda: Photographer Michael Reichmann had his first gallery show when he was 19. He made his first steps into the online world when he was about 55.
The Luminous Landscape was created in 1999 as a way to for Reichmann to share his photographs and shooting tips and to sell his instructional media. The site, he said, allowed him to be his own editor when it came to writing columns.
Reichmann has been a photographer for more than 40 years and is a contributing editor to Photo Techniques Magazine. As a photojournalist, professional photographer, columnist and product reviewer, he has delved into virtually every medium — from books to magazines, video and DVD.
"I had quite a number of magazine articles, where the rights [to the articles] reverted back to me," Reichmann said, adding that he decided to bring his print work back to life by making it accessible on the Web. Reichmann also uses his site to write reviews of cameras and related equipment. He notes that his Web site allows him to write a review of a bad product, something he says he couldn't do for a magazine.
"If [a product] is really just nasty, my chances of writing about it [for a magazine] would be slim,” he said. "A magazine won’t be interested [in publishing a review of bad equipment]. On my Web site, I have the freedom to say if something is really nasty. I’ve written many articles, but have never been censored."
The Luminous Landscape gets about 750,000 to a million hits per month, from countries around the world, Reichmann said.
"There are literally tens of thousands of sites where people put their photography up and that’s great," he said.
But despite the popularity of online photography sites, Reichmann said that digital photography on the Internet just doesn’t compare to large prints in galleries.
"The problem with publishing photography online is it absolutely cannot compare to seeing a very well-done, well-produced, high-quality print with good light on it," he said. "The Web is like shaking hands with gloves on. The aesthetic pleasure to that is missing on the Web."
"With a gallery, you see others peripherally in a body of work," Reichmann said. "The problem with the Web is you’re looking at essentially one image at a time."
Reichmann said that he didn’t believe he was in a position to offer much advice for other photographers who may want to start their own websites, but said that each project must start with a unique vision and a passion.
"If you want your work to be seen and appreciated, I think what the photographer has to do is have a unique vision," he said.
"Don’t just put out dozens or hundreds of photographs: Choose your best work that is unique, that says something unique that has your signature attached to it, whatever that might happen to be."
New award offered as Online Journalism Awards open for entries
2006-05-12By Robert Niles: The Online News Association and the USC Annenberg School of Communication (publisher of OJR) will open the annual Online Journalism Awards for entries, starting Monday, May 15.
The entry period will close on June 15 and the awards will be presented at the ONA's annual convention, in Washington, D.C. this fall.
This year's awards include a new category, the first to pay a cash award. The $5,000 Knight Award for Public Service will honor the use of journalistic resources, digital techniques and public information that produces compelling coverage of a vital issue and engage a geographic community.
"While the online world allows people to form virtual societies divorced from geographical limitations, this prize acknowledges the power of digital news media to move citizens to improve the physical communities that still define their democracy and their day-to-day lives," the ONA said in a statement.
"As more Americans receive their news and information online, it remains critical that online journalism be held to the highest standards of the profession. We are delighted that Knight Foundation continues to support outstanding journalism and look forward to using this award to spotlight the best online journalism that serves its readers and the public at large," Michael Parks, director of the School of Journalism at USC Annenberg, said.
For more information about the awards, or to enter, starting Monday, visit http://www.journalist.org/awards/
The Tranquilo Traveler: Adventuring in the blogosphere
2006-05-16By Laura Ybarra : On The Tranquilo Traveler, Joshua Berman blogs his 16-month around-the-world trip and extended honeymoon.
"The blog is a fun way to connect with people — other writers and travelers, long lost friends and new readers," Berman said in an e-mail interview.
"Ultimately, I hope the content will serve as raw material for a book about this trip," Berman said. "It also serves as a way to further brand myself as a writer, to build an audience."
After traveling to Paris, Dubai, Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, Berman says the Hunza Valley in Pakistan stands out.
"The Pakistan Himalaya, or the ‘Roof of the World’ has had very few foreign visitors since 9/11. We spent two weeks in Karimabad, drank dood chai with the Mir of Hunza, and trekked across glaciers and into a tribal shepherds’ village where a ram was slaughtered in our honor," Berman said.
Although the blog doesn’t make money, Berman said he’s been contacted by editors which, in turn, has led to writing sales.
"If you do strange, extraordinary and scary things, you’ll have strange, extraordinary things to write about," Berman said. "Next is learning how to play the game: how to contact editors, where to publish for free, how to get your name out there. I talk about this more on my FAQ page."
Berman said the BootsnAll Travel Network helps him support the site.
"In addition to hosting and including me in their massive network of traveler, they provide excellent technical support. Very low-key and friendly," Berman said.
Berman said he uses the latest version of Moveable Type. He admits to tweaking some details since the blog launched in May 2005, but says he likes the current structure.
"The ‘scheduled post’ feature is nice, where I can post future entries on an assigned date, in case I know I won’t have access for a while, like during my 10-day meditation retreat in Bodhgaya, India," Berman said.
As for dealing with technology, Berman offers this advice: "If you’re planning on putting any amount of serious time into your blog, bring a laptop, digital camera, and several USB flash cards—especially if traveling to less developed parts of the world."
WiFi is a "rare treat" that is found in capital cities, and broadband ports are "increasingly available," he said.
The trip will end this August in Colorado where Berman hopes to start a writing fellowship.
Grist Magazine: Online enviro journalism with flair
2006-05-19By Heather Hart: After seven years online, Grist Magazine is known for its in-depth coverage of environmental issues -- and its tongue-in-cheek humor.
Bringing humor to the headlines was "a late-night, fevered, overworked idea, but now it’s kind of become our signature," said David Roberts, a Grist staff writer.
Based in Seattle, Washington, Grist began as an alternative to the stuffy sources of environmental news that existed at the time.
"There’s just so much bad news and ... fear and angst out there that it causes a lot of people to tune out. A lot of people have actually expressed relief."
Roberts started working at Grist nearly three years ago with very little formal training in journalism. He said that helped him bring a fresh perspective to both journalism and environmentalism.
"People get stuck in that old-fashioned, formal style of journalism and they can’t see past the inverted pyramid. There’s great value in that kind of traditional journalism, but it just doesn’t always fit with online. Our readers are younger, they skim a lot and have less patience for that," he said.
"At Grist, we attempt to balance formality and keeping things sounding personal while still maintaining trust and keeping our facts straight," Roberts said.
Roberts spends most of his time working on Gristmill, the site’s blog, but also occasionally contributes stories and columns. Aside from Roberts and "muckraker" columnist Amanda Griscom Little, Grist relies on submissions from freelance writers for much of its content.
In just the two years since Roberts started working at Grist, the online magazine has grown by leaps and bounds, doubling their monthly traffic – now about 600,000 visitors a month – and nearly tripling the staff.
"We’re trying to speak to a younger generation" in order to get them interested in preserving the environment, Roberts said.
Online is the future of the news media, according to Roberts. "All major print media outlets are aggressively moving online. In the next two to three years it looks as though their online operations will be more important than the traditional print medium."
Online journalism is still a relatively new and untested medium, Roberts said, so it will still be a long time before it will realize its full potential. In the coming years, he predicts that online journalism will "continue diversifying. It looks as though it will become much more community-based with a lot more multimedia, allowing more interaction from readers and minute-by-minute accounts. Online has the benefit of moving much faster than traditional outlets, even TV."
The publishers of Grist have also been turning their eyes to the future, said Roberts.
"It’s tricky to keep what works and what people like and also evolve with the changes" in the medium, he said. But the future of Grist will probably include a lot more community involvement and multimedia and adding more impromptu and spontaneous elements to the blog.
"Even with all of that, though, I don’t think we’ll ever really lose that tight, old-school, heavily sourced and fact-checked style of magazine writing. There’s a certain credibility and more trust that comes with that kind of journalism."
Court protects bloggers, reverses ruling in Apple case
2006-05-27By Robert Niles: A California appeals court has overturned a ruling that would have forced bloggers to turn over to Apple Computer the identity of sources that leaked information about upcoming Apple products.
The Mercury News provides initial coverage. The court rejected the lower court judge's ruling that California's trade secrets law trumped its shield law, and went further to refuse to draw a distinction between people publishing news via blogs and those who publish in newspapers or on TV.
"We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes 'legitimate journalism,'" Justice Conrad Rushing wrote for the court. "The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here. We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish 'legitimate' from 'illegitimate' news."