Invisible Inkling

Ryan Sholin on the future of newspapers, online news and journalism education.

All About research

Still wondering which online journalism skills to learn first? Glad you asked.

November 2, 2006 – 9:36 pm

Wow.
A great study by Northwestern master’s student C. Max Magee surveys Online News Association members and other online journalists to find out which skills are most important for aspiring Web-native producers and managers.
Some of the findings are pretty standard: Attention to detail, multitasking ability, and communication skills are high on the list. That [...]

Deadline Day, v1.0

August 30, 2006 – 6:10 am

Today I turn in 12, count ‘em, 12 copies of my 33-page thesis proposal. (The first draft was longer, believe it or not.)
I finished it up last night shortly before 1am, but it’s safe to assume I’ll get it back in September with conditional approval (I hope) and notes on mechanical changes, plus a few [...]

Conference call

August 3, 2006 – 4:40 am

I’ll be at AEJMC today in San Francisco, probably in the ethics and citizen journalism panel in the early morning and then the newspapers and journalism education panel at midday.
Where will I be in between? Hanging out in the hallway, talking to you.
But watch out - I’m working on a story, so I could [...]

Blog research at the AEJMC convention

July 28, 2006 – 9:03 am

For next week’s trick, I’ll be both a reporter and a student at the AEJMC convention. I’m planning on showing up Thursday morning to the citizen journalism session and later in the day for the “What’s Next for Newspapers and for Journalism Education? - A Continuing Discussion” session.
Of course, I might want to duck into [...]

Building a community with newspaper blogs

May 22, 2006 – 8:10 am

John Robinson, editor of the blog-and-citizen-journalism-happy Greensboro News & Record in North Carolina, points to Robin Roger’s UNC-Chapel Hill master’s thesis on “Creating community and gaining readers through newspaper blogs.” [The full thesis as a PDF is here.]
Robinson on the broad strokes of community-building:
“We use the blogs to help us add information, context and further [...]