Tag: Media Theory
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Building a community with newspaper blogs
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…
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Serendipity on the Web
Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You, makes an effort to do away with the vicious rumor that the Internet, Web, RSS, blogs, etc. have killed serendipity. For the uninitiated, or those who merely like words such as “ephemeral” or “paradigm” but try not to get bogged down in definitions, serendipity is…
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Student media under fire
I’ve got a guest column in today’s Spartan Daily that elaborates on the dangers of the Hosty v. Carter decision, what State Assemblyman Leland Yee wants to do about it, and why we’re actually pretty safe on public campuses in sunny California. Here’s an excerpt from the column: “College newspapers often boast that they are…
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Notes on the perils of constructed objectivity
I mentioned objectivity a few posts ago, with the promise that I’d get around to putting up something I wrote on the topic for a class. I’m not going into the details of “What’s a literature review?” and I’m certainly ignoring the question “What’s a mini-lit-review?” For your enjoyment, here’s my short literature review on…
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The print edition – y’know – for kids
Fellow SJSU grad student Patrick Dwire has a great cover story in this week’s Santa Cruz Good Times, one of our intrepid alternative weeklies here in the Cruz. Patrick takes a look at what newspapers all over the country are doing to try and hook the 18-24 set. (Note to self: I’m not the target…
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Who Needs Ink? A panel discussion on the Future of Newspapers
Commonwealth Club event at San Jose City Hall: Who Needs Ink? Who’s here? Ex-Mercury News tech writer Dan Gillmor, currently of various citizen journalism initiatives Jerry Ceppos, ex-Knight Ridder news executive (and Merc alum) Peter Appert, a Goldman Sachs analyst Joan Walsh, Salon‘s editor-in-chief Jim Bettinger, communications prof from Stanford (and Merc alum) is moderating…
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The audience question
At some point, I realized that someone other than my mother might actually be reading this blog. If we choose to accept that as a fact, then the following question presents itself pretty rapidly: “Who the heck IS reading this?” Please, don’t answer that just yet. The real question, of course, is “Who am I…
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The editors are blogging – and they have opinions. Should they?
The Santa Cruz Sentinel is running a pair of blogs. (Full disclosure: I live in Santa Cruz, and rarely purchase a print edition of any of the three papers I can easily find at the corner store.) One of the blogs is an “Editors’ Notebook” written by Editor Tom Honig and Managing Editor Don Miller.…
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An interview with John McManus of Grade the News
As promised, loyal readers (both of you), I tracked down John McManus, director of Grade the News, to follow up on a report in the Palo Alto Weekly that the five-year-old media watchdog group was in danger of losing its funding, and thus, its life. Truth be told, McManus isn’t that hard to find. He…
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Save Grade the News
Palo Alto Weekly is reporting that Grade the News, currently headquartered in Dwight Bentel Hall in a room just outside the photo studio/student lounge, is out of cash, and about to be out on the street. The article in the Weekly says that the content analysis watchdog group needs $180,000 — its annual budget —…