Fork it!
Chris Amico said: Just the right mix of programming, Freud and Monty Python to make my day.
The Unix world loves to take sides. I don’t have to blog about this; Freud already did, in 1930. He called it “the narcissism of minor differences.”
100 Days of Gushing Oil: Eight Things to Know About How the Media Covered the Gulf Disaster
The oil spill was by far the dominant story in the mainstream news media in the 100-day period after the explosion, accounting for 22% of the newshole—almost double the next biggest story. In the 14 full weeks included in this study, the disaster finished among the top three weekly stories 14 times. And it registered as the No. 1 story in nine of those weeks.
The Twitter Diet: a simple, three-point plan for Twitter dominance
Ryan Sholin said: From @mthomps at NPR's Project Argo, a strategic content analysis of @poynter and @niemanlab's tweets.
Both of these accounts are successful. 15,000+ followers is nothing to sneeze at. But @NiemanLab on the right is definitely more successful. These accounts are tweeting pretty similar types of information – news and useful information for journalists and media types. Yet @NiemanLab seems to be garnering more influence for its efforts. @Poynter has tweeted more than three times as much as @NiemanLab, but it has 10,000 fewer followers, and it’s on 1,000 fewer lists. Why might this be?
TBD debuts with no new ideas, but real action
Ryan Sholin said: Friends at @lostremote review friends at @TBD: "What’s novel about TBD is not the ideas, but the action."
These are all old ideas, quite frankly. Journalists have talked about them for years now. Others have pitched them to their bosses until they’re blue in the face. And still others have launched elements of these ideas as niche products, subsets or prototypes. But this is the first time that a local media group — especially in the TV space — has wrapped these ideas together and aggressively launched them with an investment to back it up.
Spot.Us Goes National, Gets Clay Shirky as Sponsor
Ryan Sholin said: Spot.Us goes national, with stories brewing in Illinois, Texas, Minnesota, and across the country.
It makes little sense for me to tell a good pitch from Illinois or Texas that they can't put their pitch up until we find a handful of other pitches in their region. So, as of last week, the sub-domains at Spot.Us have been removed. Trying to convince people in a specific region to use the site -- while stopping others from using it because they aren't in the right region -- is not the best use of our time or energy.
How publishers are using aggregation, curation platforms
Ryan Sholin said: Publish2, and others, feature in this @emediavitals piece on the present and future of curation and aggregation.
In the past, newspapers and magazines were islands to themselves, Karp said. “The whole business model of publishing was based on ‘you control the package,'” he said. “We believe that one of the keys to how the business model evolves is that all of these editorially brands need to become more connected to each other in terms of their business.”
Three things I dare journalism students to do before they graduate
2. Form a news startup online and compete with the student newspaper
Protests, Looting and the Media Gaze
Ryan Sholin said: "The trash can was the celebrity of the night and we were no better than paparazzi..." - @digidave's media gaze.
The trash can was the celebrity of the night and we were no better than paparazzi capturing a photograph of Brittany Spears with a shaved head.
Ushahidi, Twitter, and the future of foreign aid
Ushahidi is an open source platform, developed in the global south. Ten years ago, Africa didn’t have the connectivity to develop and distribute a platform like Ushahidi. And ten years ago, cell phones didn’t have the power or the ubiquity to make Ushahidi a useful tool.
