Friday, September 24, 2010

Reading for the weekend

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)
For your mind's enjoyment this weekend:

"AOL, Journalism Schools Team Up to Offer Students Credit for Patch Work" (USAToday): I thought we had turned the corner in the debate over whether interns should be paid. But now, come to find out, a handful of journalism schools has signed on with Patch, the hyperlocal news initiative owned by AOL that is setting up shop in towns and cities across the country. And these worker bees will be working for college credit, it seems, not pay. Which kind of flies in the face of AOL's big brag that it's going to be the "largest net hirer of journalists in the world" -- when the common definition of hire assumes that pay is involved.

"The Second Great Migration to New Media" (Salon): Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University and new-media thinker, puts together an interesting piece linking the recent moves to online organizations by some well-regarded print journalists. His conclusion: They no longer want to be antiseptic in their reporting, but to add some voice. (Coincidentally, that also turned out to be the reason cited this week by a new-media hire, poached by Yahoo, in returning to his old employer, Gawker.)

Video interlude No. 1: If you've never seen Steven Johnson draw and narrate a graphic: enjoy! You also can watch his talk at TED on "Where Good Ideas Come From" here.

"You Are What You Tweet: Balancing Journalism with Social Media" (Journalism 2.0): I haven't yet gotten through the whole Ustream presentation contained here of the panel discussion in Seattle organized by the Online News Association. But its topic is related to the issue raised in Salon by Dan Gillmor: If journalists are being encouraged to engage readers on social media, how personal vs. professional should they (and can they) be.

Bonus music video.

No comments: