I found this via Journerdism via Lost Remote, but it struck a personal chord. File it under “unexpected media initiatives in a town where I once played soccer games.”
Does this make me nervous about being replaceable? Only a little. I’d be truly surprised if such an initiative could completely cover a community a bit bigger. Or Spokane. Or Seattle.
This is Main Street, Orting, Wash., U.S.A. Nice mountain view.
My friend Ben over at Palewire responded to my second post about information overload. I thought his little plug was worth breaking out.
I’ll let Ben speak for himself here, but essentially what he has done is steer all his syndicated news sources on the Internet into one feed to help avoid overlooking things. Here’s what it looks like.
Ben must read a lot more efficiently than I do to keep up with the result, because I quickly bogged down as I watched my vertical scrollbar get smaller and smaller. But I consider him a good guide to worthy reading material on the news industry and current affairs, so I’m keeping news.palewire.com in my rotation.
There’s an astounding investigative piece in the New York Times today about who the Pentagon used the analysts hired by TV networks to control the messages about military affairs in the post-Sept. 11 world.
In many cases, David Barstow documents, these retired officers echoed Pentagon talking points on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and other networks. In exchange for their allegiance, the analysts were given royal treatment at the Pentagon, special tours in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, and extensive access to contacts within the military. As many of the analysts received income from firms involved in military contracting, such contacts were likely quite lucrative.
It’s a compelling story with a good outrage factor. But the Times also did a tremendous job putting together multimedia to accompany it. (Click here to check it out.)
I like that the presentation, divided into three chapters, forms a narrative. Occasionally, flash-based presentations leave me trying to piece together a story from linked video, audio and documents. Here, David Barstow walks viewers through one part of his story: the Pentagon’s response to so-called Generals’ Revolt against then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Narrated by Barstow, the piece combines static images, video, audio and documents to good effect.
I would love to be able to pull this kind of project off someday.
How should the media cover bomb threats at schools and other public places? Should different mediums use different standards?
This question arose among editors yesterday morning. And I, in my role as online ACE, inadvertently provided the impetus.
Backstory: Two weeks ago, a late afternoon bomb threat led to the evacuation of Eastern Washington University’s library. The event was creating buzz around the newsroom, so I had the cops reporter make some calls and post something online. We kept it to a brief inside the next day’s paper, but TV stations led with it that night.
Fast forward: On Thursday afternoon, we learned about a similar threat at EWU via KREM2-TV’s website. One of the city editors, who had been on vacation during the last threat, remarked that we don’t usually cover such things. Again, we had found out about the threat from KREM’s website, and the cops reporter had started making calls – after a second city editor asked her to look into it. In the confusion of apparently diverging instructions, I had the reporter go ahead and post the story.
Aftermath: On Friday morning, Editor Steve Smith initiated a discussion on our bomb-threat policy at the budget meeting. I won’t go into details; you can find an in-house account here and Smith’s previous policy explanation here, but we concluded that times have changed and it’s time to alter our approach.
The main reason we hadn’t covered threats such as those at EWU before is that they almost invariably turn out to be false. And by the next morning, a false threat that caused two hours of disruption for a hundred or so people the previous afternoon has very little news value, so there’s no point in wasting space and ink in the paper. Also, we didn’t like to give the people making the threats the publicity they craved. Television stations, who have the advantage in timely reporting, have long approached the matter with a different philosophy.
But consensus emerged Friday morning that the Web changes that. When news of a bomb threat breaks, posting that information online tells people what’s happening and where while the event is unfolding. People who might be affected can learn what’s happening and act accordingly. When no bomb is found, a revised post can provide that information and close the story loop. And unless the threat caused a disproportionate amount of chaos, the event is absent from the next morning’s paper.
This policy makes sense to me, and not just because it validates how I responded during the EWU bomb threats. I understand that using the Web to report threats provides that previously scorned publicity. But in terms of prominence, an item that’s online for a few hours is far different from an item printed in the newspaper for the historical record.
So, growing audience, what say you?
It’s hard to innovate when you’re exhausted.
This week I began an extended stint as the morning online ACE. That’s a 7 to 4 shift, which didn’t seem like a drastic change from starting at 11.
Oops. Three days in, I still haven’t slept more than five hours a night, despite going to bed earlier and earlier. OK, it’s not just the shift change. Getting used to new routines and responsibilities has always kept my mind whirring at inopportune times. And maybe I’ve been a little preoccupied by the astoundingly bad news that keeps coming from all quarters of my industry. (The latest: layoffs in Seattle, buyouts in Tampa.)
But still, it’s weird trying to fall sleep at 9 or 10 p.m. for a guy who got used to crashing at 1 a.m. and rising whenever he wanted for more than two years as a copy editor.
So in the spirit of better sleep, I present a couple of pages from a wiki I just discovered. You’ve probably heard it all before; here it is in an easy-to-swallow, non-drowsy formula.* Because it’s hard to become a master of anything new when you can’t get enough sleep.
*I don’t vouch for the science, but most of these tips are commonsense. Just pay extra attention to the one about checking with your doctor if you’re a wiki skeptic.
