Save the Media

A friend, Glenn Coin, has asked me to guest lecture about the ethics of social media for his Utica College journalism class, so I figured I’d blog my lesson plan to save time — and spread the message. I thought the ethics of social media is a timely topic, given the debate over social media [...]

Here are some short-takes of interesting stuff about journalism and newspapers that I found around the blogosphere: Social media rules: The buzz over how news organizations should use (or not use) social media surfaced last spring and then died down again only to come back with a vengeance in recent weeks. The blather gained more [...]

David Pogue, technology columnist for The New York Times, recently visited my stomping grounds, Syracuse University, to talk about Twitter as part of a larger symposium on Cultural Diplomacy. I offered my newswriting students extra credit if they blogged about Pogue for Save the Media. One savvy student, Paul Kloster, took me up on my [...]

Can Twitter be a tool of cultural diplomacy? That was the heady topic New York Times technology columnist David Pogue addressed Monday during a symposium at Syracuse University in Upstate New York. He was part of a panel trying to figure out how to transcend conflict through culture. Now, the way I understood it, cultural [...]

When Greg Munno started CNYSpeaks in June 2008, he was the civic engagement editor for the Syracuse Post-Standard in Upstate New York. Inspired by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Great Expectations project, CNYSpeaks was aimed at rallying the Syracuse community around the idea of improving the city, and it included a blog, news stories and residents’ forums. The [...]

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of AnnArbor.com is its reliance on community bloggers for a large portion of the site’s content. It’s also the aspect most likely to give many journalists the heebie-jeebies. AnnArbor.com launched when The Ann Arbor News closed in late July, ending the newspaper’s 174-year history. It was a [...]

Today, I’m turning over my blog to a guest poster, Amber Hensley, who writes about the online college. Amber freelances for online education Web sites and offers some tips for social media. She welcomes your feedback at AmberHensley1980@yahoo.com.  She’s writing about one of my favorite topics: Twitter and journalists. It’s a topic I’ve written about [...]

So you’re a journalist who has just been laid off — or fear you might be. Your reporting and writing skills are top-notch, but you’re not too sure of yourself when it comes to video, blogging or social media. You know you ought to get some training. But you’re not even sure what you need [...]

WikiCity is one of the latest to jump on the hyperlocal bandwagon, which includes traditional news sites, blogs, and hybrids. WikiCity started in late 2008, but announced itself formally this summer with local content for just more than 22,000 U.S. communities. It’s a bit like CitySearch with its telephone-book-like listings of restaurants and businesses and similar to the [...]

For decades news organizations have tried to figure out how to capture those illusive female readers. A room full of editors who were by and large likely white and male would metaphorically bang their heads against the wall, trying to conjure what that confounding group that makes an estimated 80 percent of the buying decisions [...]