You can’t visit Cedar Rapids, Iowa without learning at least a little about the unbelievable flooding that occurred there last year. If you hang out with folks who work at the newspaper like I did, you learn a lot. I had glanced through their flood coverage online. But only after visiting the area couild I […]
Archive for the ‘It’s worth noting’ Category
Mark Briggs 
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January 6th, 2009
Newspapers: utility or entertainment?
Are newspapers and magazines more of a utility or merely entertainment? Naturally, the answer depends upon whom you ask (and which publications you’re referring to). I ask because I’ve been using a nifty online personal finance tool called Mint that allows you to quickly categorize your spending. Newspaper subscriptions (I have two) go under Entertainment. […]
January 4th, 2009
Why it’s a good time to be journalist
It’s good to be digital. That’s the overriding theme in the exams I just finished reading through for the distance learning course I’ve been teaching for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. The first question on the exam was “why is it a good time to be a journalist?” Call it “forced optimism” […]
December 31st, 2008
2008′s new technologies journalists should be using
Reading Wired.com’s 6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now, I wondered what the list would look like if tailored to journalism. As the Wired article admits, some great technologies that are critical today have been around longer, but rose to prominence in ’08. All are important for Journalism 2.0, some more than others. […]
December 24th, 2008
Merry Christmas
I hope you have a great Christmas and enjoy the holiday weeks ahead. It’s a great time to look back on memorable events of the past year and look forward to opportunities in 2009. For me, 2008 will be remembered as the year I turned the page and set out on my own, leaving my […]
December 23rd, 2008
Are the holidays making people crazy?
I know it’s the holiday season and people are tired, broke, weather-weary and ready for a vacation. But I don’t know how to explain the collection of wacky ideas and decisions that surfaced yesterday. • In Twin Falls, Idaho a newly appointed Idaho lawmaker and former newspaper publisher “may introduce a bill in the 2009 […]
November 10th, 2008
It’s a festival, not a conference
I’ve spent the better part of two days at the Danish Media Festival, so I’m compelled to log a bit of my experience. First, it is a festival, not a conference, as the conference director Esben Orberg reminded me at dinner. The purpose is to explore the practice of media with challenging discussions, then come […]
November 9th, 2008
Is Web 2.0 killing journalism?
That was the the title of a discussion/debate staged at the Danish Media Festival today. In one corner, the self-described anti-Christ of Silicon Valley, Andrew Keen, and in the other … me. (On a side note, the Danes really know how to throw a conference. There’s a live band, a speaker’s lounge, a bar and […]
November 8th, 2008
Passion is shared even if language is not
Journalism is an international passion and pursuit and I had the pleasure to experience this first-hand at an investigative journalism conference Friday in Lisbon, Portugal. The one-day conference drew 120 reporters, editors, students and professors to a museum of communications history, an appropriate setting indeed. Journalism 2.0 was translated into Portuguese last year, but not […]
October 11th, 2008
Osder: Be relevant and useful versus arrogant and entitled
Digital technology hasn’t just changed the way we do journalism. It has created a new information ecosystem. Journalists today need to be navigators in this realm. And to navigate, one has to know the lay of the land and be comfortable operating in it. I previously wondered what online journalists need to know now. I […]
