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  • 7 Ways News Media are Becoming More Collaborative

    news collaboration imageWith the turn of the decade, the news media are seeing shifts from hyper competition to collaboration. News organizations are partnering to produce the news, while journalists are working with the audience to bring them content that they demand.

    Media mavens too are hoping for more collaboration in the coming year, perhaps with more action from media executives as well. And though old media may be slow to change, there are a few glimpses of tools, partnerships and models that show how news media are becoming more collaborative.


    1. Curating and Filtering the Stream


    Hourly Press Image

    We’ve already talked about the importance of journalists being curators and contextualizers using collaborative tools like Publish2. News consumers have created a social link economy from sources that they trust: their friends. The editor has been replaced by a friend on Facebook or someone you trust and follow on Twitter.

    Lyn Headley and Steve Farrell developed The Hourly Press, which uses Twitter’s API to track popular stories of the hour based on link sharing from a “publisher’s” or user’s select group of “editors” that they follow on Twitter. It helps filter the noise and see what the people of your choosing find important.

    “We’re at the intersection of a more traditional, top-down editorial model and a direct democracy or crowd-edited approach,” Headley said.

    The Hourly Press also gives the user a way to catch up on news they might have missed without having to read a lot of tweets, Headley said. Because “editors” are selected by a user, it lets people know who the influential people are in a community. Right now Hourly Press is available per request.


    2. Working With the Audience


    explain this image

    Journalists are relying on the former audience more than ever to create content and curate the news stream. But perhaps a move toward creating a more established collaborative relationship with the audience is in order.

    Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, sketched out an idea for ExplainThis.org, where readers ask questions that can be answered by journalists through reporting. This isn’t just a search or a Yahoo! Answers kind of service, but ones that take “real journalism” to answer the question well, Rosen said in his outline. Users would not only be asking the questions, but part of the process. This is also content that is completely based on what users want and are looking for.


    3. Collaborative Tools like Google Wave


    Google Wave Interview Image

    Google Wave is beginning to change the way newsrooms create news and the way we consume it. But it is also allowing the ability for news organizations to collaborate with the “former audience.” Robert Quigley, the social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, said he sees comments on stories becoming a “living, breathing thing with people jumping into a breaking story with live updates and thoughts.” He said he’s big on Google Wave, in part, because waves can be embedded and have the potential to serve as live wikis.

    Mathew Ingram, the communities editor at the Globe and Mail, said Google Wave is another tool that makes it easier for people “formerly known as the audience” to take part in the news gathering process.

    To drive collaboration as a point, I used Google Wave to collaborate, interview and discuss some of these ideas (and others) with most of those mentioned in this post. I outlined some starting discussions of trends that are emerging, which served as a launching point for discussion. The Wave generated more than 100 wavelets, or messages. The format worked well (aside from Wave crashing several times).


    4. Social News Partnerships


    Fark Image

    One form of collaboration that is becoming more prevalent is news organizations partnering with other companies or institutions, including social sites. We’ve seen this with the MSNBC deal with the @BreakingNews Twitter account and a partnership between Fark and USA Today.

    These partnerships, in part, stem from news organizations realizing what they do well and collaborating on the rest, said David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us.

    “Could USA Today build its own Fark-esque site? Yes. Would that be ‘doing what it does best?’ No. Hence, they should work together,” Cohn said.

    Andrew Nystrom, social media editor at the Los Angeles Times, said that Fark partnered with their news organization too because they decided they weren’t very good at reporting “straight, hard news,” and so they worked with the LA Times on a custom feed of the funniest LA Times headlines.


    5. Large News Partnering With Blogs


    We’re also seeing more larger news organizations partnering with smaller organizations that cover specific subjects or communities really well. News organizations are hungry for more content and are trying to move further into covering local communities.

    Paul Bradshaw, course director of the MA Online Journalism program at Birmingham City University noted the example of the Guardian’s move to build up its local news coverage by hiring local bloggers and sites like MySociety.


    6. Local News Organizations Team Up


    Climate Pool Image

    Local news organizations are also beginning to work together as they cut back on budgets and look for ways to fill in the gap in content. We’ve seen this between local TV stations and newspapers, but now there are examples of longtime newspaper competitors sharing sports coverage and news organizations sharing one another’s space and resources. There’s also the example of the Miami Herald creating a network of community news sources and republishing the stories on one another’s sites.

    In some cases news organizations are even pooling resources to contribute to social media. Eleven international news media, for example, joined to collaborate on updating a Facebook page dedicated to covering United Nation’s climate conference in Copenhagen.


    7. University Partnerships


    Bay Area News Image

    University journalism programs are also playing a bigger role than just educating journalists, but producing content creators while they are still in school. Carrie Brown-Smith, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Memphis, also points to the collaborative efforts between universities and news organizations, such as the Bay Area News Project, a partnership between Berkley’s Graduate School of Journalism and a public radio station.

    “However, I’ve found that, understandably, ceding even a modicum of control to students/professors does not come easily, even when news organizations are facing down a situation in which there are a serious deficit of boots on the ground,” Brown-Smith said.


    More journalism resources from Mashable:


    - 10 News Media Content Trends to Watch in 2010
    - 8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist
    - 10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media
    - The Journalist’s Guide to Twitter
    - Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media
    - Social Journalism: Past, Present, and Future
    - Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I learned in J School
    - 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy

    Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Warchi


    Reviews: Facebook, Google Wave, Twitter, iStockphoto, news

    Tags: business, collaboration, journalism, media, News

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  • Confessions of a Public Speaker Demystifies Your Fear of Public Speaking [Public Speaking]

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    Our Pal Scott Berkun's New Book Reviewed >>>

    Getting up on stage, taking a microphone, and facing an expectant audience scares the crap out of most mere mortals. Scott Berkun's new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker, explains why, how, and what goes on before and after a great speech.

    Rock star public speakers from Al Gore to Tony Robbins inspire and inform thousands of people with their talks–-and charge $30,000 an hour to do so. Berkun's book makes a little more sense of their seemingly superhuman skills.

    "Good public speaking is based on good private thinking," Berkun writes in Confessions, where he recalls years of his own successes and failures traveling the country giving presentations. Preparation is the key to reducing your anxiety about public speaking, Berkun says, as is the awareness that humans are literally wired to fear the situation.

    Our brains, for all their wonders, identify the following four things as being very bad for survival:

    • Standing alone
    • In open territory with no place to hide
    • Without a weapon
    • In front of a large crowd of creatures staring at you

    In the long history of all living things, any situation where all the above were true was very bad for you. It means odds are high you will soon be attacked and eaten alive. Many predators hunt in packs and their easiest prey are those who stand alone, without a weapon, out on a flat area of land where there is little cover (e.g. a stage). Our ancestors, the ones who survived, were the ones who developed a fear response to these situations.

    Just knowing that I had sweaty palms, a pounding heart, and a serious adrenaline rush up on stage at Web 2.0 Expo because the primitive cave woman version of myself thought I was about to get eaten alive made the situation more amusing than desperate-–which relieved a lot of the tension. In Confessions, Berkun outlines practical advice for softening your body's natural fear response to speaking situations, as well as how to write and prepare your material so that you can up your chances of nailing it.

    If public speaking is a part of your job–-and it is, in some capacity, whether or not you're Barack Obama–-this book is a worthy read. It's converted at least one person who has turned down speaking engagements because the idea was too scary to someone excited about getting better at a special and important skill.


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  • America can't make things because managers all learn finance instead of production

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    Curious Hypothesis On Management's Role in Decline of American Manufacturing >>>

    In a provocative New Republic article, Noam Scheiber proposes that the collapse of American manufacturing is due to a general shift in management to people who have MBAs, and to a shift in MBA programs to an emphasis on finance instead of production:


    It's not obvious that you would. Since 1965, the percentage of graduates of highly-ranked business schools who go into consulting and financial services has doubled, from about one-third to about two-thirds. And while some of these consultants and financiers end up in the manufacturing sector, in some respects that's the problem. Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM's top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background. (Outgoing GM CEO Fritz Henderson and his failed predecessor, Rick Wagoner, both worked their way up from the company's vaunted Treasurer's office.) But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost. As Khurana quips, "That's how you end up with GM rather than Toyota."

    Upper Mismanagement

    (via Making Light)

    (Image: Venn Diagram - Happiness in Business a Creative Commons Attribution image from budcaddell's photostream)


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  • Who Says You Can’t Make Money on Youtube? [YouTube]

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    VIDEO: When Robotz Atack! Fun short clip lands film deal >>>

    I'm sure plenty of you have seen the amazing "Ataque de Panico!" video from Fede Alvarez by now, but here's how it paid off. His $300 video landed him a $30 million contract with Ghost House Pictures.

    That (understatement)very lucrative(/understatement) contract is with Sam Raimi's studio. That's right, a $300 video on youtube and a boatload of talent can score you a job in Spidey's house. So next time anyone tells you that uploading your filmed-off-the-mirror practice videos for the next American Idol audition isn't worth the time or embarrassment, show them this story.

    And congrats to Fede. Work this great deserves it. [Yahoo! Movies, Thanks jesuswhammy]


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  • Implausible Digital Forensics in TV and Film: A Medley [Enhance!]

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    Awesome Inventory of Phony "digital enhancement" Scenes From Movies >>>

    Pull up the security footage from sector 4B. Unsharp mask. Zoom. Gaussian blur. Undo gaussian blur. Lasso tool. Adjust contrast. Reduce noise. Filter. Zoom. X-Ray. Enhance. Enhance. Enhance. Enhance. [Enhance]


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  • Iraqi insurgents hack US drones with $26 software

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    Glad to See Those Madrassa Schools Are Teaching Solid Tech Skills >>>

    Video feed intercept

    Updated Iraqi militants are intercepting sensitive video feeds from US predator drones using $26 off-the-shelf software, and the same technique leaves feeds from most military aircraft vulnerable to snooping, according to published reports.…

    What is your recession sales strategy?

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  • Giant Mysterious Spiral Takes Over the Skies of Norway [Science]

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    Perhaps Someone Was Beaming Home? >>>

    People are freaking out all over Norway because of what you are seeing here. According to Norwegian news outlets, the spooky giant spiral was seen, photographed, and recorded on video from all over the country. Updated with video

    Could it all be a hoax? Maybe it's a massive joke, but all kinds of Norwegian news sites are reporting on it. According to NKR—Norway's national TV channel—it could be related to a rocket fired from a Russian submarine in the White Sea. The Russians are denying any part on it at this at the moment. Nick Banbury, a witness located at Harstad, described how it all happened:

    We are used to seeing lots of auroras here in Arctic Norway, but on my way to work this morning I saw something completely unexpected. Between 7:50 and 8:00 a.m. local time, there was a strange light in the sky. It consisted initially of a green beam of light similar in colour to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end. This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to the earth.

    As hard as it is to believe, you can't dispute the fact that the strange spiral was witnessed and recorded by thousands of people from hundreds of miles away, which means that the phenomenon occurred at a very high altitude. Even Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy agrees that this is real, and says that it was probably a rocket out of control.

    So barring any epic group joke, expect your new alien overlords to arrive at any time now. We can only hope they are all peace-loving voluptuous blondes with blue eyes. [Altaposten, VG, NRK via SpaceWeather via Universe Today—thanks Gonzalo Oxenford]

    If you know Norwegian and have any information, contact me on AIM or by mail.


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  • AutoZone Settlement Agreement Filed With the Court: It's The End To All That

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    If you've watched this incredible software licensing legal saga from the beginning, your response may likely be the same as mine: "Thank heck Darl McBride and the horse he rode in on got sent packing for once and for all..." He's name shall live in infamy for the legal ass-hattery of suing his own customers for using his company's products >>>

    The AutoZone settlement and release agreement has been filed. Or as the song says, it's signed, sealed and delivered:

    12/08/2009 - 119 - STIPULATION of Dismissal (Stipulation and Order of Dismissal With Prejudice As To All Claims) by Plaintiff SCO Group, Inc.. (Pocker, Richard) (Entered: 12/08/2009)

    Here's what that type of agreement and release looks like. As you can see, the release part means that whatever they accused each other of, it's settled and neither can bring it up again or ask for anything associated with that claim to time indefinite, even forever.

    Unless it's SCO, under new management, and they line up some folks who heard talk by the water cooler that they didn't really mean it to mean *forever*. Kidding. It means forever, unless the lawyers goofed and wrote it so badly that some fancy pants lawyer sees an opening twenty years later. So this is The End to AutoZone's nightmare. Yay!

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  • Yahoo Will Divulge Pretty Much Anything for $60 [Security]

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    YAHOO! sells all it nows about you to cops for $60 )))

    On one hand, it's reassuring to know that Yahoo will work with law enforcement to bust criminals, digging through their private messages to get the job done. On the other, $60 is a low price for our privacy.

    (Click on the chart for a bigger version.)

    For $20, Yahoo will give authorities your basic user ID information. For $30-$40, that jumps to the contents of subscriber accounts, including email. And for $60, police basically own the place. Full contents and logs of Yahoo Groups are at their disposal.

    Of course, it's good that Yahoo keeps these prices in check, only charging authorities cost for retrieving records (meaning your taxes pay Yahoo less than they could). Then again, it's flat-out alarming to consider the data trail we all leave, its surprising permanence and the ease with which it can be accessed.

    And if you really want to be freaked out, Cryptome is assembling these lawful spying policies by company. Their list already includes communication providers Cox, SBC, Sprint and AT&T.

    What do you have to use this day and age to be dishonest? Snail mail and walkie talkies? [Cryptome via Slashdot via boingboing]


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