Danny’s Journalism Cartoons
Danny Sanchez a UF alum who I now have the privilege of working with at the Sentinel is producing journalism cartoons at Journalistopia. Be sure to check out the one about MU alum Adrian Holovaty.

Anyone wondering what it’s like to be a VJ. Here’s a story of one VJ covering another. From KGTV a station that is transitioning their reporters and phtogs to VJs. You can learn more about that at http://rosenblumtv.wordpress.com/.

This past summer I wrote a story for ABCNews.com. I wrote the story, titled “How Old is Too Old to Rock and Roll?,” because the Beach Boys were scheduled to perform on GMA as part of their summer concert series. Apparently the photo that someone picked was a photo of the Beach Boys performing for the Today shows summer concert series. I never noticed it and apparently no one did until now when it was posted on Media Bistro. I guess it’s a good thing that my story is getting more exposure, but what a cheap shot…now, almost a year later.

I’m posting this because I have brought this issue up in some political discussions and people seem to be shocked. The guys over at Freakonomics posted about a new study that show that people may now lie less about minority candidates than in the past.
Basically the idea is that people say they will vote for minority candidates in polls but when election time comes around they don’t. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that people like to say that race isn’t an issue and feel better voting for the minority candidate but in the end they don’t. Consider the case the study and the book gives:

Also in 1989, Democrat David Dinkins, an African American, won victory over Republican Rudy Giuliani in the race for mayor of New York by a slight two points, despite leading by 18 points in a poll conducted by the New York Observer a week before the election.

I also like to use this concept when talking about local news. I would venture a guess that when Nielson diary’s go out and people put that they watched all of some of the local news, they probably didn’t but they just feel good putting that down. It makes them feel smart.
Also if you haven’t ready Freakanomics you should. It’s a great book.

It never ceases to amaze me how local media outlets cover national breaking news in their backyard. We saw the Times Picayune continue to publish despite their offices being flooded by Katrina, the Collegiate Times, a student run paper, not only kept students informed about the Virginia Tech shootings but also became a source of information for people across the globe including major media outlets, and the Christian Science Monitor carefully covered the kidnapping of one of their own. In each of these cases the media outlet had the ability to draw on their vast resources they use to cover te daily stories and focus them all on the breaking news.

There are however some newspapers that don’t have a large staff, a fancy website or even access to the AP. The Kiowa County Signal learned quickly how to adapt this week.

The Kiowa County Signal is the local newspaper for Greensburg, KS, the town that a tornado destroyed this week. Howard Owens is the Director of Digital Publishing at Gate House media, the company that owns the Signal. He’s blogged twice now about how the paper has had to react.

The Kowia County Signal has since launched a new site full of information. They received permission for the AP to use AP stories. Their staff is now posting stories despite their newsroom being destroyed and Gate House Media sent reporters and an editor some who will shoot video for the website.

The site also allows citizens to submit photos. Although as Howard pointed out “given the fact that the town is devastated and residents might find it hard to participate in photo sharing, we may not get anything, but I think it is very important we make this tool available — important journalistically.”

I would assume that they are not putting out a paper right now but they still keep their commitment to keep the public informed. For that they should be applauded.

UPDATE: As Howard pointed out in the comments, they are a weekly (printing on Wednesdays) but have a special edition coming out today (Monday). Also, Gate House also owns the neighboring daily in Pratt and that is where the staff is working out of. Thanks Howard for the updates.

First off I am not sure that this rumor is anything more than a couple of excited folks on Wall Street who know some equally excited bloggers. With that said, the big question is why would a company that has made their money in aggregating content want to suddenly buy a content provider? There are many reasons:

1. Google thinks that news content providers are going to sue them for using their content or that legislation will soon bar them from using their content. I doubt this will happen and I doubt that Google wouldn’t be able to fight it. Let’s not forget the recent words of the Tribune company’s new owner Sam Zell.”If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be? Not very.” Then again I could alter his quote to “If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would the newspapers be? Not very.” It works just as well.

2. Google is looking to expand upon the way that consumers get their news. Currently almost all news organizations on the web display and produce content in the same format that newspapers did. A new news story every time something happens. Sure we link to “related stories” and we allow comments, but that’s it. Google could be working on a way to enhance this in a number of ways. For example, if every story was given a topic or number of topics. You could go to a topic page that would automatically display a time line, key players, statistics and changes in the story. In order for Google to do this they would need stories to be coded in a way that would allow them to add and aggregate this enhanced content. It’s only a matter of time before someone does something like this, so why not Google.

3. Google isn’t buying Reuters. I’m leaning towards this one.

So really I stumbled across this theme and liked it. I will be changing the header picture to something more…well me. Any suggestions?

UPDATE: Here’s what Mark suggested as a header. As much as I like it, I’m not sure I’m going to use it.