Picking the best in online journalism

Here are the finalists for the 2009 Online Journalism Awards by the Online News Association.

Close to 100 sites are on the finalist list under dozens of award categories, from major news organization sites (bbcnews.com, nytimes.com, Wired.com, washingtonpost.com) to individual stories and multimedia presentations, all organized by topic and size.

Candidates for the Knight Award for Public Service include one site I've blogged about before, The Chauncey Bailey Project, named for -- and continuing the work of -- a former newsroom colleague of mine who was murdered while on the job in Oakland, Calif.

Other public service nominees are Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong at The Seattle Times, for Culture of Resistance, The Toronto Star, for Crime and Punishment, and The Wisconsin State Journal for Down to a Whisper: State's Native Languages Threatened with Loss.

ONA says many of the finalists are "pushing the envelope of innovation in digital storytelling and information sharing."

Student online journalism projects up for awards are:

Small Team

• Joy Lewis, Western Kentucky University, Sister Wife
• Lisa Pickoff-White, University of California, Berkeley, It Happens at Midnight

Large Team

• University of Miami School of Communication, Special Olympics Live
• NYCity News Service/City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, Election 2008: A Date with History
• UNC-Chapel Hill, Andaman Rising
• Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, South Africa: At the Crossroads of Hate and Hope

The winners will be announced at the 2009 ONA Conference and Online Journalism Awards Banquet on Oct. 3, at the Hilton San Francisco. The organization's partner in the awards is the School of Communication at the University of Miami.

More information about the awards, judging and organizations is available in the ONA press release.

Maybe I need a new look, with fewer words

My home page has grown and grown since its early incarnations at UNC and Mindspring. I really should break it into a less verbose, multi-page, standards compliant, CSS supported, thoroughly modern website. But it works as-is, even on my Palm TX and my OLPC XO, and there are so many other things to do... including teaching a couple batches of students to do a better job of staying up to date.

But I did try pumping all that text into Wordle to see what would happen, as a "cool Web 2.0 tools" demo for my class. The result isn't bad as a self-portrait, but I think it needs more music and dancing. Kinda like my life.

Are you a Web designer? Sure.

Just in time for my fall course on Web design, author, Peachpit book-publishing company blogger and Web designer Jason Cranford Teague has a nice overview of the state of site-building today, under the title "Everyone is a Web Designer."

He lists skills Web designers do and don't need today, differences between being a "Web designer" and a "professional Web developer," and the need for designers to "understand what a developer does and how they are doing it."

Something similar is going on at online newspapers and related forms of journalism: Depending on the size of the organization, one person doesn't always have to do everything. But team members need to know each other's abilities, responsibilities and needs. Some are Web designers, Web developers, database-savvy journalists, "backpack journalists" with multimedia skills, or editors responsible for quality control and pulling it all together.

Speaking of backpack journalism, here's an online example of what a couple of "text-oriented" journalists accomplished in their first day using an inexpensive audio recorder and digital camera, a free audio-editing program (Audacity) and an inexpensive slideshow-creation program (Soundslides). Their (ok, our) training was part of a Freedom Forum Diversity Institute "bootcamp" earlier this month.

Also just in time for my new Web design course, I stumbled on a Ze Frank video from a few years ago that you might call "a meditation on contemporary Web aesthetics." I call it "don't be ugly."

Online college media sites and resources

With a new semester rapidly approaching, here are a few links I hope the editors of student media websites already have on their bookmark lists. A few are old friends; the others are places I'm just starting to explore. I may add a few more over the next week. Quoted comments are from the sites themselves:

Society of Professional Journalists

"The Society of Professional Journalists is the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization, dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior." (Annual convention coming up Aug. 27-30 in Indianapolis. Also see its Student Resources page.)

Innovation in College Media

"The Center for Innovation in College Media is a non-profit think-tank that was created to help college student media adapt and flourish in the new media environment." (Also see this MediaShift column by founder Bryan Murley.)

Journalism 2.0

"Mark Briggs coined the term Journalism 2.0 in 2005 when he was invited to write a book about digital literacy for journalists based on a training program he had created at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. Mark is currently working on an updated version of the book, to be published by CQPress in fall 2009." (The original is still online here.)

ReportingOn

"A professional reporting community for journalists... helps journalists of all stripes find peers with experience dealing with a particular topic, story or source."

Collaborative Journalism | Publish2

"Link Journalism: Bring the best of the web to your readers. Complement your reporting with links to relevant and interesting content." (Newest feature: Social Journalism.)

CoPress

"CoPress empowers student newsrooms to hack the future of journalism." It has a blog, forum and wiki as well as selling hosting service to college newspapers.

Associate Collegiate Press

"ACP is the oldest and largest national membership organization for college student journalists. Since 1921, we've offered our members resources to help their publications - newspapers, yearbooks, magazines, broadcast programs, and online publications - improve."

Education Writers Association

"The Education Writers Association is the professional organization of education reporters and editors. We support the ongoing professional development of journalists as part of our mission to help improve the quality of education reporting in the United States." (That's a link to its higher education resource page; the group also offers $30 memberships for students. Faculty have to pay $100!)

HigherEd Watch

"Analysis, reporting and commentary on the world of higher education, with a focus on college access, affordability, and quality." (A blog at the New America Foundation.)

The Chronicle of Higher Education

"the No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators. Based in Washington, D.C., The Chronicle has more than 70 full-time writers and editors, as well as 17 foreign correspondents around the world." (Long-standing place where professors look for jobs. Some content is free with registration, some for paid subscribers only.)

Inside Higher Ed

"Inside Higher Ed is the online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. Whether you're an adjunct or a vice president, a grad student or an eminence grise, we've got what you need to thrive in your job or find a better one..." (All free... challenging the Chronicle since 2004, without killing trees.)

Global Student Journalists

"...an online meeting place for student journalists from around the world. Students currently enrolled in a recognized post-secondary Journalism program, anywhere in the world, can create a profile and begin connecting with other student journalists. Members can network, share ideas, upload projects and receive feedback on their work." (New, started by journalism students in Canada.)

... and, last only because I've mentioned Mindy's RGMP recently:

Teaching Online Journalism

"Notes from the classroom and observations about today's practice of journalism online," by Mindy McAdams, including her Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (RGMP).

Watchdog leaves Hartford Courant, growling

One of the first reporters I worked with has just landed in The New York Times, but it's not good news. The headline is Hartford Courant Lays Off Consumer Columnist, and the story starts like this:

"The Hartford Courant and its former consumer columnist, George Gombossy, agree on one thing: that Mr. Gombossy was laid off this month. But was it because he would not stop unfavorable articles about advertisers, or because his job was simply eliminated?"

George became the Courant's Willimantic bureau chief 40 years ago this summer, the same week that I became "the other guy in the Willimantic bureau." I went on to be a bureau chief, too, and made it to education editor before leaving the paper to go into education full-time, one way or another. George did a lot more at the Courant -- went on to be its business editor for a dozen years, among other things.

He has held out through two corporate takeovers (Times Mirror, then Tribune Corp.) numerous buyouts, layoffs and shrinkage at "the nation's oldest newspaper in continuous publication." The most recent cutbacks included bringing the paper and a Tribune TV station under the same management.

These days, most readers know George as the Courant's consumer watchdog. It looks like he's done good work following-up reader complaints, keeping a good relationship with the state's attorney general, exposing faulty products and questionable business practices, and saving people some money.

Now he's started his own blog as CTwatchdog.com and is talking about making it a nonprofit operation, and about suing the paper, the more civilized equivalent of "going to the mattresses," in the Corleone family. He's quoted by the Associated Press as saying new managers are "destroying the Courant instead of saving it" and that he hopes to stop them.

In a more mundane sense, George says mattresses played a part in his leaving the Courant. Here's the AP version: Hartford Courant columnist alleges his departure tied to critical column about advertiser.

The advertiser in question was a big mattress store, the kind that places big ads in newspapers and television, and sometimes draws consumer complaints about bedbug infestations.

The Courant's memos about George's departure are on his blog, headlined "Courant Spin on Watchdog departure."

Along with his remaining Watchdog columns on courant.com, you'll find "The Watchdog's Consumer Resource List," which I'd recommend to journalism students interested in following in watchdog pawprints, looking for local equivalents to the Connecticut offices on his list.

Finally, if you're itching to find out more about bedbugs and mattresses, the "Is this really a new mattress?" question has been the subject of consumer complaints and news investigations for more than a dozen years. A Times story a few years ago pointed out that even new mattresses from reputable stores can pick up bedbugs if they spend a day in a delivery truck carrying away other customers' old mattresses... Those are not the kind you'd want to "go to."

Quite a Rugmap: Do it yourself multimedia journalism education

For her online Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency, University of Florida journalism professor of Web wizardry Mindy McAdams has spent six months compiling a terrific collection of links, lessons and sage advice for would-be multimedia reporters and producers.

(She abbreviates the heading "RGMP" at the top of each page, which I either read as "RCMP" and expect the Mounties, or want to pronounce "rugmap." hence the odd headline on this item. Come to think of it, we've been weaving the World Wide Web so long that we might call it a World Wide Rug.)

The 15 RGMP pages are part of her Teaching Online Journalism blog, where the concluding episode landed today: RGMP 15: Maintain and update your skills.

A key quote:

"... let go of your self-defeating ideas about how you are 'not a computer person,' or how 'computers don't like me.' These attitudes are killing you and your future in journalism."

As she mentions, many well-known practitioners and teachers of online journalism skills have learned how to do what they do on their own, or informally -- from other Web sites, online tutorials and workshops. Even today, when most journalism programs have courses in digital media, every formal college class has to stop somewhere -- but the technology keeps going.

Part of the agenda for digital media students has to be coping with change -- new technologies, new versions of old ones, and new stories to tell. With all of the new things Flashing and Twittering and Huluing around, Mindy makes an especially good point about setting priorities, weighing what to learn. She suggests asking yourself these questions about that shiny new thing:

• What will you use it for?
  
• How well does it fit with your other skill sets?
  
• And above all — is it a skill that is going to be relevant for a long time?
  

The topics discussed on her 15 RGMP posts are the basics of multimedia -- Web publishing (with a blog), digital audio editing and publishing (with a podcast), photography and basic photo editing, video and low-cost video editing, and putting it all together to tell stories. Take a look, starting at the beginning:

• RGMP 1: Read blogs and use RSS

For the list of all 15, see the last episode:

• RGMP 15: Maintain and update your skills.
  

Guiding journalists into social networking

The Journalist's Guide to Facebook is the latest in a series of compilations about online social networking for journalists at the "Social Media Guide" website called http://mashable.com.

Among the others (also listed at the end of the Facebook article) are:

• 10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media
• How Social Media is Radically Changing the Newsroom
• 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy
• The Journalist’s Guide to Twitter
• Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I Learned in J School

Speaking of online journalism, congratulations to the Roanoke Times (http://roanoke.com) for being cited by the Associated Press Managing Editors Awards in the "convergence" category for its interactive tour of new $66 million Taubman Museum of Art. The announcement is here on page 2 of the award story. (Roanoke Times editor Carole Tarrant's name is at the top of that page because she was a judge in another category of the competition, listed on the previous page.)