Knight News Challenge Winner Will Make Oral History App

January 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment

A more public form of oral history, sure, but JFK found his roots in ancient forms. (Flickr Creative Commons: State Library and Archives of Florida)

We know the tumultuous start that the Twitter video app Vine had with their infusion of porn. With the Internet, journalists have infinite opportunities for trial and error in creating apps and programs for expanding their abilities to tell stories. Perhaps the most ancient and ingrained human form of storytelling is oral history. Many books have adapted this strategy to capturing the essence of an era or situation.

Now, Knight News Challenge winner TKOH wants to create an app to apply to this ancient form. Like Vine, TKOH’s app will benefit citizen storytellers as well as so-called “professional journalists,” those who will be dedicating themselves to such a stature in the future.

“It’s a need we all have,” Kacie Kinzer, of TKOH, told Justin Ellis of the Nieman Lab. “There’s someone we know, a friend, a family member, who has incredible stories that must be kept in some way.”

The app will be for mobile devices.  TKOH, a design studio in New York, won $330,000 from the Knight Foundation.

Filed Under: The Repeater Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Journalists Worry About Publishing Too Much Information

January 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

(Wikimedia Commons)

Jeff Jarvis tackles the question of how ethical and shrewd it is for the media to publish things like a map of gun permit applicants.  Some journalists, like David Carr and Jim Wilse (who Jarvis says is the “best American newspaper editor [he's] ever worked with”), have felt uneasy about such releases.

Jarvis comes to a different conclusion: “It is not up to journalists to decide what gun permits are public information.  It’s up to us as citizens to decide that, as a matter of law.  If there is something wrong with that, then change the law.  If society is not comfortable with making that information public, then don’t try to make it somewhat public, public-with-effort…There’s no half-pregnant.  In the net age, there’s no slightly public.”

 

Filed Under: The Repeater Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chris Chase the Determined Blogger of the Future?

December 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

(Wikimedia Commons: Cortega9)

Online journalists take a special kind of abuse, especially when they willingly throw around controversial opinions like elbows.  CJR discusses Chris Chase, who they dub “the most hated blogger in America.” Chase, 31, a former elementary school teacher, writes about sports differently than other sportswriters (if you want to call Chase a sportswriter instead of that derogatory term “blogger”).  He writes, for instance, about Tim Tebow’s muscles.

“Chris Chase is the Nickelback of sportswriters,” one of Chase’s critics wrote.  “He is this polarizing force of terribleness that no one can get rid of.”

While print journalists have always insulted each other, the Internet gives us the opportunity to field abuse from the hoi polloi. Abuse, you might say, has no constructive purpose. The complaint about the blogosphere has always been that it allows for too many feeble writers to spout off at will. But perhaps Internet trolling helps to weed out those “bloggers” who don’t have Chase’s fortitude. After all, solid journalism comes in no small part from determination.

Filed Under: The Repeater Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »