Robert Hernandez

These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.

What if we are part of the voiceless community?

June 27, 2011
I hate hypocrites… especially when they’re journalists.

I’ve been a bit disappointed with how some journalists have been writing about Jose Antonio Vargas‘ recent announcement that he is an undocumented immigrant. Many are questioning Vargas’ journalistic credibility because he had to hide his immigration status.

As if journalists – including columnists and editors – have never lied before or broken any laws. (Just think about your college years.)

Like the communities we cover, newsrooms are filled with sinners and saints… perfectly flawed human beings.

But lies have different degrees, don’t they?

It wasn’t long ago that people had to hide, or lie about, being gay. They had to conceal a part of their true identities to avoid discrimination or to get a job, including one as a reporter.

While they felt forced to hide a part of themselves, something tells me they still made strong journalists and did not lie in their reporting.

If I recall correctly, when the gay marriage issue erupted in San Francisco, The Chronicle pulled a gay photographer off the story because editors assumed a conflict of interest. What Chronicle editors failed to note is that straight people also have opinions about gay marriage that may also pose a conflict of interest.

The bottom line is, as far as I know, Vargas never lied in his stories. And just because he had to hide about being part of a certain community, it doesn’t automatically nullify his journalistic credibility or achievements.

Being a part of a community does not disqualify him as a journalist.

Just like Diane Sawyer, for example, isn’t disqualified as a journalist because she worked in Republican Party politics before, during and after President Nixon’s administration and subsequent resignation. Same as George Stephanopoulos isn’t disqualified after working for President Clinton’s administration.

They are just two of many examples.

What has bothered me the most, really, is how journalists are treating Vargas as “other” … as if his reality is not a common one. As if undocumented immigrants, or illegal aliens or whatever label you use, aren’t part of our communities.

We are all made up of different communities, and these often are the same communities we attempt to cover through our journalism. Some communities we praise, others we tolerate and others go unacknowledged. More...

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Crowdsourced tips to landing your first, paid journalism job

June 2, 2011
Okay, chances are this didn't really happen.

I'm not sure how I heard this, but the story – false or not – stuck in my head when I was beginning my journalism career.

The story allegedly goes that a young Herb Caen, who later became the legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist, walked into a newsroom and asked for a job.

The clerk asked Caen if he knew how to type.

Caen said no… but was hired anyway.

Whether this actually happened or not, getting a journalism job these days is a bit more challenging. When I started, aspiring journalists needed to have one, big internship to get closer to landing your first job. Now, you need three or more… or, you start your own publication.

As a flood of new journalists graduate from J-School, I asked people to share their experiences in landing their first, paying journalism job and what advice they have to offer newbies looking for their first job in this great calling.

The crowdsourcing led to dozens and dozens of responses, the majority anonymous due to an early decision I made on the Google form. You can see the unedited results here and read a collection of first jobs and earlier tips here. I did my best to try to break down the diverse responses into digestible takeaways. More...

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In 'The Stream' with Al Jazeera English's social media news show

May 3, 2011
For most of us, there is no doubt that social media has lead to significant shifts in our culture, including journalism. For this week's post, I spoke with Senior Producer Andrew Fitzgerald and Co-Host/Digital Producer Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, two of the journalists behind a new social media-driven show on Al Jazeera English.

NOTE: Based in D.C., they both met me on a collaborative document, each on their own computer. You can playback the unedited conversation here.

Ahmed and Andrew, thank you both for taking the time to chat with me about your newest project. In fact, first let me congratulate you on the launch of The Stream, which officially aired Monday (5/2/11). For folks that have not yet heard of the show, please take a moment to describe the project.

Senior Producer Andrew Fitzgerald, left, Co-Host/Digital Producer Ahmed Shihab-Eldin Fitzgerald: Thanks so much for inviting us to chat about it! So The Stream is a television show and online community on Al Jazeera English. We're telling stories from around the world that are driven by and often about social media. The site compiles information from around the globe by working with our audience and then the television show is the place where we talk about those stories, bring in people (via Skype) who are involved in them, and also allow our audience a chance to be part of the discussion.

Shihab-Eldin: Thanks, we are joking here because I always feel a need to add something - and in this case just wanted to emphasize that this was conceptualized well before the Tunisian Uprising and as it has evolved, we have realized we were right to rely to a large extent on our community/audience, both online, and on TV, and across the world to inform our editorial approach.

That was one of my next questions... can you talk about how the show came about? Was this before or after the recent uprisings... obviously before. How did this interesting TV show happen? And how did you get involved?

Shihab-Eldin: The show is a product of the reality the media industry is facing, and governments for that matter, which is that conversations are happening online, across borders, across social classes, and across communities. And as we saw in the Arab world, they are powerful and have the potential to mobilize, unite and challenge - not only governments - but the collective Arab psyche and how they see their identity. More...

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Using technology to 'save' longform journalism: Q&A with Evan Ratliff, aka The Atavist

April 26, 2011
There are those who blame the digital age and the Internet as the causes of our short attention spans and disinterest in longform storytelling. Then there are those who embrace the technology and develop tools or a platform that harnesses the tech to not only coexist with longform narrative, but also advance it.

For this week's post, I spoke with Evan Ratliff, freelancer for publications such as Wired, The New Yorker, and others, turned digital entrepreneur and – if you believe some of the press – possible savior of the longform narrative with his new project, The Atavist.

NOTE: We met on a collaborative document and you can playback our unedited conversation here.

Evan, thank you for taking the time to "meet" for a quick chat about the project you are working on.

My pleasure!

So, let's start there... can you describe what The Atavist is?

Sure, so The Atavist is a kind of hybrid publication: We sit right in between magazines and books. From the magazine angle, what we do is called "longform nonfiction" or "longform journalism:" We produce stories that are 6-7,000 words and up, all the way to maybe 30-35,000. All nonfiction, all written by people who have spent weeks or months reporting them. They are published digitally, through our app for iPad/iPhone, through Kindle (Kindle Singles, which we can talk about), and Nook. From the book perspective, they are almost like short ebooks.

We also license our software, but that's our more non-journalism side of things so maybe less of interest here.

How did this idea come about? You have a background in longform storytelling... but how did the idea of an app and this "concept" of a custom storytelling platform come about?

It started with a pretty basic, and unformed, idea: Was there some way to do longform writing/journalism online? It was an idea I'd been thinking about for a while, but not doing much if anything about -- I applied for a Knight Foundation grant but didn't get it, in maybe 2008 (2007? Can't remember). Anyway, originally Nick Thompson, my editor at Wired, and I were just saying that there must be some way to do longform that was more designed for the digital world. Instead of just translated straight from a magazine. The real conceptual ideas of how it might work didn't come about until we sat down with our other partner, Jefferson Rabb, who has both the design sensibility and coding chops to actually conceive what something like that might look like. It was in talking to him that we stopped talking about the Web and started talking about an app. More...

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Q&A with the mystery man behind #Quakebook

April 18, 2011
It's been more than a month since a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, triggering a massive tsunami, the combination of which have killed thousands. And while the country is slowing putting itself together, under the looming dangers of a potential nuclear disaster, there are many organizations -- and individuals -- coming together to help in any way they can.

For this week's post, I chatted with Our Man in Abiko, an international man of mystery behind #Quakebook, a crowdsourced project to help those affected by the devastation.

NOTE: The Q&A was done through e-mail over a course of a couple of weeks.

First, for those who don't know about it, can you describe what the #Quakebook is, how it came about and your role?

Quakebook is a Twitter-sourced anthology of first-person accounts of the earthquake and immediate aftermath. It was conceived, written and ready to publish as a fully designed PDF book within a week. It has 89 contributions from "real" people as well as 4 from celebs solicited thru Twitter - William Gibson, Yoko Ono, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein.

It is not a collection of tweets, but mostly one-page essays.

I thought of it in the shower Friday morning, March 18th thinking that wouldn't it be great to do in words what mash-up videos can do on YouTube, especially @fatblueman's Christmas in Japan video. Check it out, you'll see what I mean. [The video: http://youtu.be/lmCrIZeob4w]

No-one has received a penny. We got Amazon to waive their fees so ALL revenue goes to the Red Cross. Pinch me, I'm dreaming.

Oh, my role? I'm cheerleader in chief, marshaller of the troops and getter-arounder of problems. Don't like titles!

NOTE: Our Man recently did a video recently sharing the story of Quakebook: http://youtu.be/cQ_-3-wwLKs

Once you had this idea, how did you go about starting this? Can you talk about the crowdsourcing process?

I had no plan as such. Every time I hit a wall, I asked the good folk of Twitter to give me a leg up :) More...

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Q&A with Overheard in the Newsroom's Kevin Cobb

March 22, 2011
For folks that have left the newsroom, it's become the source of our newsroom culture fix. For those in newsrooms, it's the place that confirms you are not alone and, yes, the newsroom is crazy. Awesome and crazy.

For this week's post I chatted with the creator of Overheard in the Newsroom, Kevin Cobb. We pull back the virtual curtain and learn about how the project began and how it has been an insightful barometer reflecting our industry's ups and downs.

As in other Q&As I do, we meet on a collaborative document a few weeks back and just chat-typed away.

Kevin, thanks for agreeing to do this Q&A... let's start with you talking about your journalism background. What do you do and how'd you start in the 'business'?

I'm currently a news designer with the South Florida Sun Sentinel. I first got my 'journalism itch' back in high school. I was always the kid who ended up staying after school and making sure the paper was finished. I went to Ball State University in '04 (Go Cards!) and worked at The Times of Northwest Indiana after graduation.

You're a man of many talents, including being an ordained minister... but you're best known for the site and Twitter account @OHnewsroom, which "delivers the best overheard comments in any newsroom." Can you talk about how that idea came about?

Overheard in the Newsroom launched in Jan. of '09. My entire journalism background has been focused on the print side of journalism and I wanted to 'figure out' the Web side (building a site, maintaining a social network presence). I just needed an idea. I noticed a trend among the people I was following on Twitter of sharing what was being said in their newsroom... things like "heard in my newsroom" and "my editor just said..." I had the newsroom background to know people kept quote files of the more outrageous things their co-workers said. So I launched. But what has made the site viral has been the Twitter and Facebook presence.

So it started as a site? Talk about your experience when you move to Twitter. When did you know you had something big?
More...

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Los Angeles Times: One edition, lots of great photojournalism (and stories)

March 14, 2011
My wife and I recently decided to subscribe to the newspaper again. We're 'weekender' subscribers to the Los Angeles Times. Like most papers, the size is a fraction of what it use to be, but the content is as diverse as the city it covers.

I, like most modern news consumers, have not had much time to actually sit down with the paper product, even through we only get it Thursday through Sunday.

But today, over the breakfast table, we get our fingers dirty with ink print (which I love) and dug in.

I could not ignore the great, diverse photos that filled the paper – the majority of the great shots from staff. So much so, I had to write this post.

In this one, random edition [Saturday, March 5, 2011], I found great photos throughout the sections of the paper. Check them out below... all of them but one are available online.

Back in Libya after decades in exile, a dissident takes on Kadafi
Since his return in late December, a longtime opposition group leader has become more vocal in his denunciation of Moammar Kadafi. But some experts say such groups have been gone too long to be of much help to the rebels in the streets.

Anwar Magariaf fought from abroad against Moammar Kadafi's rule for more than 30 years. (Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times / March 4, 2011)

More...

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Tips and tricks for SXSWi 2011

March 8, 2011
Robert Hernandez: Well Pekka, we are just a few days away from the SXSW / SXSWi 2011 conference ... aka Geek Spring Break. We've both been to the festival before and, for this post, are going to interview each other to share tips, experiences, goals, etc. as we do final preparations for the week. Let's start with sharing our experiences. What number is this one for you? How many times have you attended?

Pekka Pekkala: This is my number three, did first one back in '96! I was a starving student, so no Interactive tickets for me, just free music... You?

RH: For me, this is going to be my second. I was a n00b last year, a rookie. And, boy, did I learn a lot ... and think I'm ready for the coming week.

How would you describe the conference to people? Mainly SXSWi.

PP: Best place to meet people like you who are not journalists. It's really a good way to mingle with programmers and business-savvy people who understand content. And a total 5-day hurricane of seminars, meetups and parties.

RH: A 'hurricane' is a great way to describe it ... tech, smarts, hipster glasses and more. I was really overwhelmed last year, attending so many different, random sessions and meeting great people. I have really started to prepare for this year.

For me, I think it's an international meetup of innovative minds that mashup technology, business, art, culture, news and information. The Future of Journalism has been officially added as a track this year. I got inspired last year and hope that happens again. More...

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