Trying a laptop ban without being a Luddite

I love technology. This is why I am banning the use of laptops in my big lecture course, Media & Society, this coming fall.

Wait, that didn’t sound right. But it’s true. I love technology so much that I know that I would be distracted in a course should I have the choice between paying attention to the course or looking around online. I’m just a year out of grad school, and even in some of my amazing graduate courses the temptation was strong.

Now, self-discipline is the best policy, and generally I will let a student suffer the grade consequences if they want to screw around during class. So while a recent article about professors observing bad grades among students and using that to justify laptop bans did resonate, it wasn’t the bulk of why I decided to do it. Read more

We should be fighting for this mosque to get built

There’s a small tree to the left of the door outside Coppee Hall, my home building at Lehigh University. We call it the Liberty Tree, and it’s been there almost a year now. Kathy Olson, one of my journalism colleagues, worked hard to bring Ken Paulson and the Freedom Forum to campus last October to celebrate Lehigh’s commitment to the First Amendment.

I see the tree every day (it’s blooming better than the picture at the right, thankfully!). It reminds me of why I do what I do, and why free expression is so vital to a country that strives to model free democracy to the world.

We even had signs we passed out and planted saying, “I support free expression.”

I have been teaching long enough, though, to know that supporting something doesn’t really take hold until a person is confronted with it. In my Media & Society class last spring, for example, we got into a pretty spirited debate over whether the KKK has a right to peacefully march through town and air their hateful views.

I believe that nobody really understands what it means to support free expression until they have to articulate why a group they strongly dislike has the right to speak freely. That means being in a position where they have to defend the right to speak of a person with whom they disagree, sometimes even vehemently. The test of free speech is not whether we have that right in our laws, or even whether we use it. No, the test is whether we allow our political and ideological enemies to enjoy the same right. Read more

SXSW panels on the brain

South By Southwest’s panel picker opened today, so I officially have SXSW on the brain until next March. I wanted to talk a little about a panel I proposed and also plug a few others that I have voted for.

A shameless plug for our panel: If you like what you hear, please vote for us using the link a couple grafs below this one. It requires a short registration but you aren’t obligated to attend the event in Austin. Ours is the only panel tagged “journalism education” and so I think we bring a lot to the table here. Read more

Musings on AEJMC 2010

I love Denver. What a great city, and particularly what a great city for a convention such as AEJMC 2010.

This wasn’t my first AEJ rodeo (it was #6, actually), but all in all it was my favorite one so far. I’m not sure what it is about going as a professor instead of a graduate student, but I had the best networking time meeting new and interesting people. It didn’t hurt that people actually knew who the hell I was this time thanks to the fact I was honored with the Nafziger-White-Salwen Award (my remarks), but even that aside it seemed like AEJ was teeming with interesting people this year.

The best part was the good vibes. To be honest, the past couple conferences were a bit of a downer, what with the cratering of the print news industry and a solid dose of misdirected anger that sometimes pointed at new media folks. I’ve gotten the sense that a lot of academics were working these past few conferences to save the industry and restore what was. Not this year.

Thankfully, we’ve moved on. It’s not entirely about some of the new junior scholars, because a lot of long-timers are doing some innovating things both with news and in the classroom, but I think this year offered a sign that a lot of the younger guns like myself are making a mark. Maybe our research agendas are helping shift the research and teaching conversation ever so slightly toward newer forms of journalism.

Like I said, we aren’t the reason, but I felt like I was making an impact this year for once. I am not sure I ever felt that way before at an AEJ convention. My work is in areas that have had to work hard to gain even grudging acceptance at times (i.e. citizen media), but this year I didn’t feel like an outsider anymore. The conversation has shifted. Read more

My (brief) remarks at AEJMC business meeting

I wanted to share the brief remarks I had with me at the AEJMC business meeting after receiving the Nafziger-White-Salwen Award for top dissertation. This isn’t word-for-word because I got a little stage fright as usual and panicked up there (those of you who know me know that I am terrified of public speaking), but it’s the gist of what I said.

Thank you for that kind introduction and I apologize for the length of that dissertation title. This is such an amazing honor and I would like to thank the committee for their work on this award. It is so humbling to join the incredible list of past winners, many of whom I consider to be intellectual heroes and whose work I not only admire but also cite with great frequency as part of my own work.

So, I got through May thinking about how wonderful my first year was at Lehigh thanks to great students and wonderful colleagues in my department and at the University. And then when I didn’t know how much better it could get, I found out about this award and it was like the cherry on top of the sundae.

I have some people I want to thank for making this entire journey possible. First, my wife Amy. I wish she could be here to hear this, but she is an incredible support and I don’t think I could have gone through this process without her partnership. Second, I want to thank the Missouri School of Journalism. They gave me a top-notch education and introduced me to world-class people – wonderful faculty and students that give you such fertile soil for your intellectual development.

My committee deserves so much thanks. David O’Brien from the Department of Rural Sociology. From the School of Journalism, Shelly Rodgers and Clyde Bentley. Margaret Duffy, who is here – wave your hand so everyone can see you!

Finally, I am so gratified to recognize my dissertation adviser Esther Thorson. I realize I am one in a chorus of people singing Esther’s praises in this organization. We all know what an amazing scholar and leader she is in our field, but I had the special privilege of knowing her as a mentor as well. And I want to take this opportunity to make sure she is recognized for her work and passion in helping develop graduate students into thinkers and change-agents in our field. I appreciate you so much, Esther, and share this award with you.

Thank you!

Parting words for my J198 Multimedia Reporting students

This semester we took something of a leap when we introduced J198 here at Lehigh. As students in our department you’ve always had the journalism focus as part of your studies. The only thing that was narrow was the platforms you learned about: writing, photography, maybe some online work here and there.

This semester we learned (in the words of Cassie) everything. Yeah, we learned video. And photos. And Twitter. And blogging. And Web building. And maps. And a little Gowalla. And SEO. And podcasting. But there’s a common thread there. We used it to build something greater than the whole, and that something was the story. If there’s one lesson I want you all to take away from this course it’s something Steph said during her group’s presentation: When we learn the technology to the point where operating the equipment is second-hand, you realize something: It’s always about the story. Always.

You learned a lot about technology and networks this semester, and that kind of information will be vital. But now that you’re at the end of the term, zoom out and see the big picture. See how this all works together. For example, we didn’t use Twitter because it is all-important. We used it to build up networks and relationships with people, to listen to them in shaping stories and work with them to promote the work you did. We used it to get information and push information.

And it works. For example, Google south+bethlehem+arts and what do you get at the top of your search hits? Why, the very site put together by Andrew, Lauren, and Ope. Why is this? Because it was set for SEO, it had a clear title that was reflected in the URL, and it was sold in social media by both you and your followers. In other words, “everything.” All of it was pointed toward benefiting from Google’s system of rewarding clicks over big media brands. Read more

Initial iPad thoughts

I am writing this whole post from my new 3G+WiFi iPad using the WordPress app. Who says you can’t create content with these things?

The app is pretty good, though it could use a WYSIWYG interface. Formatting links and text is sort of a pain, but then again I was surprised WP even had an iPad app so quickly, so maybe the limitations are due to them just getting something out.

I played with the WiFi version at the Apple Store, but I spent about 6 hours with this thing tonight. Immediate things that jump out with the luxury of time:

E-mail is real nice on this thing, much better than the iPhone. I like the flat design, where you can see your inbox and the called up message in one pane.

The A/V is sweet. Great screen quality and robust speakers. Resolution on pictures and video is eye-popping, far better than a computer. I streamed a couple ballgames using the excellent MLB app (more on this in a second) and got uninterrupted viewing at HD quality. Amazing.

Any app that uses Web browsing within its interface (i.e. not using Safari) better put out an iPad app quickly or they are toast. If there is no iPad version it loads at iPhone size and you can blow it up, but it usually pixelates. That works ok at times for the app itself, but it kills Web pages and often makes them hard to view.

Students love it. I have let about 15 students tool around on the thing for a while. Some were skeptical of it before using, but I have yet to find a user who doesn’t love it after trying it. Better, they generally see a use for it that either is unique or inadequately filled by a device they already have. I think this thing is going to be a hit for students once the textbook market revs up in the iBook store.

My own media habits are changing. Pre-iPad, I often had my laptop out in the living room with me for media browsing (quick email checks, news, looking up things on IMDB). Now I barely pull it out, and I don’t miss it. If I need more computing power or things for work, I use the laptop. But that’s what it’s for. Regular surfing for info or quick looks is easily filled by the iPad. The laptop was always clunky for around-the-house stuff, and the iPad has simplified my life a lot. Not once have I found myself wishing i could plug in a USB drive.

Favorite app: MLB At Bat, and it’s not even close. Especially with MLB.tv streaming games. A really nice way to watch a game. Pitch speeds and types, player stats, live video, and all kinds of info at your fingertips.

Unexpectedly cool app: Star Walk, which uses GPS and the compass functions to locate constellations and planets in the sky. Really cool for star gazers or space lovers like myself. Awesome app.

Other apps: I’m looking forward to checking out the magazines on this such as Vanity Fair (not a magazine I normally read; I feel I should point this out). Twitteriffic is probably my favorite Twitter client on there, but Tweetdeck is nice too.

Overall my sense of this device is unchanged: If you understand what it is and is not, you’ll love it. Most of the critiques I read are from programming and architecture enthusiasts. Their criticisms are valid and usually true, but it’s a mistake to think these views match the general perspective. So I think public perception of the iPad depends largely on how Apple sells this thing. It can’t market it as a computer, but if it sells the value of a niche device then it has a hit on its hands. The experience is that good.

Facebook’s privacy sin: Making us think we had it

Matt McKeon’s jarring graphical look at Facebook’s privacy evolution has been making the rounds this week. If you haven’t seen it, check out the link and look through the years via the animated version. The evolution away from default private in a person’s network and toward what is now public is pretty interesting to see.

Three weeks ago I engaged my Media & Society class here at Lehigh in a discussion about Facebook and privacy. I asked them how many considered their photos, status updates, and wall posts to be private. More hands were raised than not. I asked them how many thought their email was private. All but one hand went up.

Then I asked the kicker question: Why the difference? The minute you send that message, whether it is an email or a wall post on Facebook or clicking to “Like” something, you are losing control of that information. Several students looked alarmed, but I pressed it further: the only privacy you have is in your head. The minute the things you think become the things you say, you lose control of those bits of information.

This one has been on my mind since SXSWi, when danah boyd delivered an excellent keynote address about privacy and social networks (full text). The definition of privacy, boyd argued, is having control over how information flows. Using Google Buzz as an example, boyd argued that when services take a system that is understood as private and makes the information shared on those networks public they are violating a user’s sense of privacy.
Read more

Steps forward in multimedia reporting

This semester we took our first leap into multimedia reporting here at Lehigh University. I had an amazing class of 11 students who really embraced the material with a vigor and made this a successful semester. I am having them all blog about the course and evaluate where they are with these skills, and I told them I’d do the same for myself. Again, it’s hard to teach this unless you model it.

So this is a retrospective post on the semester, but before getting to that I wanted to plug their converged semester project sites for the non-J198 class crowd:

• Bethlehem Beyond Steel: A look at how the city is continuing its economic development in the wake of Bethlehem Steel’s collapse while also preserving the history that is so closely tied to life here in the Lehigh Valley.
• Housing Market: Bethlehem’s South Side: A look at the state of the housing market in south Bethlehem both from a residential and commercial view. And gumption, with a video look at a foreclosed home.
• South Bethlehem Arts Revival: The growth of the arts culture in South Bethlehem, complete with a Gowalla walking tour!
• Lehigh Valley Homeless: A great project with some outstanding video stories that talks about how we help an invisible population here as well as available resources.

Take a chance on these sites and look around. This is the first attempt at some of this from students who have never produced stories in this type of platform. Overall I am pretty impressed. If you are interested, check out some of the students’ evaluations as they roll in from their blogs. The themes that are emerging are pretty telling. Read more

Gaming meets journalism: HuffPo takes a step

Ran across some really cool news today. Huffington Post announced that it is implementing a badge system as part of a way to build up its user community. For now you have three possible badges on the site: one for having a lot of social connections across the site, one for adding a lot of comments, and one for flagging inappropriate comments that ultimately lead to deletion.

This is huge, and I can’t state this enough. It’s taking some of the game-oriented concepts found in location-based apps such as Foursquare or Gowalla and implementing them in news delivery. These simple games build on the notion that object collection in gaming can be rewarding, and by applying them to news formats HuffPo encourages behaviors complementary to what the news site wants to accomplish.

When I got to Lehigh I hardly imagined being the guy advocating gaming concepts in news, but here I go again. I have already said quite a bit about gaming and news, such as the potential with Foursquare, Gowalla, and transmedia as a way of bringing context to our news (the latter of which is an offshoot of a great panel at SXSW), but it’s emerged as a running theme on this blog over the course of the year

This is not an entirely new idea. Gawker, for example, uses tiered comments by giving the community’s best users a star icon. Gizmodo also recently unveiled a tiered system where valued users get better placement in the commenting thread. It’s a recognition of a lesson we’ve learned in blogland: comments and community are content that should be valued in a same what that the original article should be valued.

Here’s what I love about HuffPo is doing by taking this to another level: the gaming aspect has a purpose.

The third badge, called “Moderator,” is given to those who are on the lookout for comments that clash with the site’s mission of civility. The concept of community moderation in comments is not new, of course, with Slashdot being a good example of how it can work well. The badge isn’t given for random flagging, though, but rather for flagging posts that eventually get deleted. Quality over quantity when it comes to moderation.

I wonder whether in doing it this way it also helps teach the user community about the site’s values by having people flag inappropriate comments with the site’s values and mission in mind. At the SXSW “Future of Context” panel we talked about gaming as a type of learning about the news, but this could be an extension of that by showing users what it means to be a user in a news community.

At the same time, the “Superuser” badge (boo for stealing that one so shamelessly from Foursquare) is given to prolific commenters. So right away you have two badges that work together to increase comment volume while also allowing for ways to up the quality.

There are good reasons to think HuffPo’s system is going to work. Nieman Lab noted that by emphasizing quality in comments it actually led to more and better comments in the Gawker universe of products. This makes logical sense; if I think my post is going to be buried by the community, I will try to make it entertaining, witty, insightful, etc.

The one I’m excited about is the “Networker” badge because this is at the heart of the scholarly stuff I think about. My dissertation argued a new type of social capital known as Web-network social capital, which basically consists of the networks and ties created in user communities for the purposes of building that online community. The badge looks like it has potentinal to start increasing and rewarding network ties. We’ve already started seeing people thinking about Farmville and the potential for building social ties through gaming. WNSC has the potential to explain some of what we’re seeing, and sites that look to build it are helping to create something unique in the process.

When I argued for WNSC, I was looking broadly at social networks and blogs. What excites me about gaming entering the news is that this is a further area for study and a potential growth area for news sites interested in building up communities that help serve a site’s core mission.

HuffPo says it will be adding more (my suggestion: “I’m on a boat”). Of all the new avenues I’ve seen in news this year, Gowalla tours and this effort by HuffPo are two that have my eye. Gaming holds a lot of potential for news outlets, and I hope they’re paying attention.

Gowalla: Trippin’ on journalism

A few months ago I blogged about Foursquare and its journalism implications. The post was pretty well received and it created a tremendous conversation online, but I wanted to post an update on our first foray into location-based offerings here at Lehigh.

When I was at SXSW last month I got my first look at Gowalla, which is similar to Foursquare in that it uses location services, check-ins, and little incentives for keeping you in the game. I like Foursquare’s interface a bit better and find their badge system more appealing, but Gowalla has a couple things it does better.

First, you can create trips. What this means is a user can go to the Gowalla site and create a themed trip (“top places to eat downtown” for example) that a user’s Gowalla friends can then participate in by following the trip by going to the places listed and checking in on their smart phone. I like this because it means you can have people participate in social mapping, but in a journalistic sense it also lets us put geolocation layers on stories and let the audience experience key locations in a story themselves. And Gowalla has done a great job integrating the Google map function into the application so that getting walking directions is easy. Read more

Hitler meme: What, did newspapers take over YouTube too?

Something tragic happened yesterday for those of us who breathe a little Web culture. YouTube acquiesced to a request from Constantin Film to begin removing videos that feature a short segment from the studio’s 2004 German-subtitled movie Downfall.

Not an unusual request by copyright standards, of course, but this one is personal. The segment in question fuels one of the greatest Web memes of all time: the Hitler meme.

You’ve probably seen at least one Hitler meme video. They all have one thing in common: the same climactic scene from Downfall, where Adolf Hitler learns that his rule is about to end. The subtitles take a scene full of rage and realization and apply it to a variety of things happening in society or on the Web, including politics, entertainment, pop culture, and so forth. Here’s one of my favorites, from the 2008 presidential campaign:

Yeah, OK, we’ll get it out of the way early: “Anyone who thinks YouTube’s decision to take the videos off their service is a good idea, please leave the room now.” Read more

With the iPad, you’ve gotta think about it

I’ve had a number of conversations in the past few days with people who don’t seem to know what to do with the iPad. Buy? Don’t buy? Is this going to change my life? Is it going to be a waste of money?

If you’re still confused, Guy Kawasaki posted a pretty good decision-point flowchart that might help you out. It’s pretty funny and even this Apple fanboy can admit it’s pretty right on.

I posted the other day that the iPad is a complementary device for almost everyone. You aren’t going to ditch your desktop and likely won’t ditch your laptop for it, although you might get rid of the latter if you don’t use your laptop for much more than news browsing, video/photos, and e-mail. No, the iPad is a device for consuming media while comfortable.

My wife’s latest issue of Newsweek seems to confirm this idea (pictured). The back page of the mag has an iPad ad featuring a person writing a fairly mundane e-mail. Interesting, but the feature isn’t the thing. Notice the positioning. It’s on the user’s lap, feet propped up and crossed.

Apple has a little more of a sell job on its hands than it had with the iPod and iPhone. The iPod was a breath of fresh air after a few years where tons of complicated MP3 players had flooded the market. It simplified the mobile music experience and solved all kinds of problems related to music purchase thanks to the iTunes store. The iPhone filled a similar void. A lot of smartphones were of the BlackBerry variety, with reputations more rooted in business use than personal use. The smartphone market wasn’t going to grow past the business base unless a smartphone came along that was fun and easy to use.

The iPad is different. Consumers have to think a little harder about whether this device makes sense for them. Unlike the iPad and iPhone, most people don’t have a tablet computer and haven’t thought about one. So people have to sit down and think about how they browse and use media before taking the plunge.

That’s why I think Apple has created ads such as the above. It’s selling features in a sense, but Apple also is tying it to a type of experience. In this case, comfortable media browsing. We’re going to see more of this, not less. Obviously Apple has to sell what the iPad can do, but it also has to help people imagine what it can be or what spaces in our lives it might occupy if this is going to go mass market.

iPad is impressive if you’re grounded in reality

I love it. I love the iPad.

I had some big expectations going in, but I was really blown away by the 20-25 minutes I spent with it on Saturday at the Apple Store in Whitehall. I have to admit I got a bit of iPad envy watching my friends tweeting, blogging, and Facebooking about getting their iPad, knowing full well I have to wait another few weeks until my pre-ordered 3G model arrives. Although I did receive my VGA connector by FedEx on Saturday, so I’ve got that going for me. …

So I did the next best thing, and that was to sneak in a little time to play at the Apple Store in between some other shopping. By 6 p.m. the crowds were thinned from what had been there earlier, but there were still pretty sizable crowds around the 12-or-so display iPads.

There was a lot of buzz in the air to go with the nonstop media coverage around the device this weekend. But the question is whether it’s worth the hype and, more importantly, that spare $500 that I’m sure we all have just lying around the house.

People are saying this will be a netbook killer or (even more audacious) a laptop killer. I don’t agree, but I do think it has a chance to kill something else: the iPhone.

Before I get to that, some first impressions: Read more

The press elites failed us on health reform

NYU professor Jay Rosen likes to talk about the “church of savvy” in political journalism. Diane Winston has a pretty good breakdown of the term, but essentially it describes how the journalism elite shape the news in cooperation with sources. The result is a contextless news presentation, with focus on horse race, tactics, gamesmanship, and “how will this play politically?” rather than verification and hard questions, rigorous reporting, and a focus on getting it right.

This is necessary in elite political journalism, of course. It shies away from tough questions because tough questions mean no guests for Sunday morning talk shows. Wash, rinse, repeat, frustrate your audience.

Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com likes to describe the outcome a different way, such as how he did during his SXSW panel when he argued that journalists have become “stenographers for those in power” rather than people who fact-check.

I was thinking about this as I followed the Twitter stream last night during the health care vote. The endless coverage on the cable nets had to fill airtime somehow, and so we got a fair amount of the usual stenographer action. Republicans say X, while Democrats say Y, meanwhile there’s an actual bill online against which we can check such claims. The result is repeating two contradicting statements, at least one of which by definition is actually false, rather than verifying both claims and reporting only the correct one.

In other words, the press didn’t really learn from the Joseph McCarthy problem. Read more

SXSW: “This is your tribe,” churches, and idea exchange

I already posted some of my lessons learned from my first SXSW, but I didn’t want to let the moment get away without chronicling my thoughts in general about the experience. I already said I should have done this a long time ago. I should add that I definitely will be back. This is a brain dump, in a way, trying to get at some of the sense of why I just liked being in Austin for this thing.

On the first day I attended a session called “How to rawk SXSW Interactive.” Much of it was fairly run of the mill (wash your hands to avoid the dreaded SXSW SARS, etc.), but one part stood out. They said that the best parts come in conversation, not in panels, and so doing it right means networking. A lot.

“This is your tribe,” one of the panelists said. “This is where you can talk about ideas and projects you’ve got and people won’t get glassy-eyed or want to run away.”

I thought the statement was silly. Tribe? Really?

Really. Read more

What I learned at my first SXSWi

I should have done this sooner. If there’s one lesson ringing in my head as I’ve immersed myself in the awesome experience that is South by Southwest, it’s that. Although I was a poor grad student, I should have done this sooner.

I’m back in town and have a few more blog posts bubbling about things that interested me at SXSW. But for now, since I like lists here’s my running list of things I learned at my first SXSWi …

Noobs call it “South by Southwest” or “ESS-EX-ESS-DOUBLEU.” The wily veterans call it “Southby.” I was tagged the entire time. Must spend all year practicing.

Drink. A lot. (of water) … and don’t forget to snack. Energy is vitality here.

At the same time, go the extra granola bar. Easy way to strike up conversations and network between sessions. You have to eat, but having an extra to share is good karma and will make you friends.

It pays to know a veteran. The illustrious Jen Reeves gave me great advice beforehand so I was a little more prepared, but she knows the tricks. Bring a powerstrip to charge the laptop and make some friends by not being an outlet hog. Talk to EVERYONE. She even knew where all the free food was.

Make the plan minimal. I planned a lot of panel surfing, but I found myself sticking to it less and less. Find your 4-5 core sessions and plan for those. After that, be the ball and let it come to you. Ask what sessions others are hitting

For journalists, try to stay away from panels on your discipline. Honest, most of the journalism panels su-huuuucked save for a couple. The sessions that blew my mind were in the areas of gaming, marketing, PR, social media, and augmented reality. I found threads in the keywords based on stories and storytelling, but they weren’t about journalism. And it makes a lot of sense; I’m not at AEJMC, I’m at Southby (a-ha!). I want to think about new avenues for doing journalism, not think about the same old stuff. I’m here to get my mind blown.

There are a lot of stickers here. A lot of them. This isn’t sustainable.

Talk to anyone who will talk to you. I met people doing all kinds of stuff that isn’t in my area, but that’s OK. At worst you practice networking. At best, you’re making it possible for serendipity to take over.

Know when to arrive. If it’s in a small room, get there 10 minutes early. If it’s in a big room, make it 15.

Don’t forget to blog. I had bigger plans for blogging, but it was overwhelming to find time. I finally found a rhythm with the schedule toward the end. I’ll have a better idea what is realistic next year.

Big-time everyone not at SXSWi. Make sure to mention in every conversation via e-mail and Twitter with people not there that you’re at SXSWi in Austin. Just kidding, don’t do that. That would make you a jerk. Seriously, though, totally do this.

Play! Seriously, try new stuff. Some of the most fun I had was playing with apps that were being promoted there. I did a walking tour of Austin on Gowalla and won a Hot Wheel car (and a little love on iReport). OK, so the Hot Wheel car isn’t great, but one of the nice things is that you can TRY new stuff because it’s available and companies are careful to make sure the experience is good. I got a lot of ideas for journalism courses just from doing a walking tour. Where else can you try so many things like this with a journalist’s eye?

Plan meetups. I did a horrible job at this. I met really good people and waited to catch them again to do some sort of coffee or lunch gathering. But there are thousands of people there, and the chance of running into them isn’t as good as it could be. Set up plans in advance. And maybe even organize a meetup beforehand. I think we need a journalism educator meetup for sure, unless one happened and I didn’t know about it (which is totally possible).

Look for student connections. While I was sitting in on sessions, looking through the schedule, and networking I had one of our students, Andrew Daniels, in the back of my mind. He’s a graduating senior and the current editor of the student newspaper, and I think he would thrive in places like this. There were a few people who would have liked to have gotten to know him too, I think. So I’m wondering if there’s a way to identify students who would benefit from this experience and then figure out ways to get them to SXSW (fundraiser, grant, etc.). This festival isn’t for everyone, but the ones who are interested in interactive media and have that natural curiosity that is impossible to teach would have a good time here.

Tacos! They’re excellent and abundant in Austin. Seriously. Tacos.

Transmedia stories and the future of context in news at SXSW

I have to be honest: I was pretty disappointed by most of the journalism-specific panels I attended at SXSWi. It’s not that the info wasn’t good or vital, it’s that I expected a lot more forward-looking or cutting-edge stuff. I blogged about a particularly disappointing one (not so much the panel’s fault, I think, as much as it was the tone set by the questions), but that was fairly typical. The best sessions that I could use were in non-journalism arenas such as gaming and marketing.

One panel I have been looking forward to actually exceeded my high expectations. “Future of Context: Getting the Bigger Picture Online” with Jay Rosen, Matt Thompson, and Tristan Harris was everything I was looking for here at SXSWi: important questions, big ideas, and a focus on discussion and solutions. No teeth-gnashing over stale questions like “Will bloggers replace journalists?” and other such important chatter from 2005.

I’m not going to reinvent the wheel and recap this thing. Elise Hu at the Texas Tribune did an excellent liveblog summary of the panel and discussion, and if you want to hack the raw tweetstream check out what the audience was doing with the #futureofcontext hashtag. What I want to do here is briefly sketch out the argument and where my mind has been going with this since the panel spoke.

Rosen had the best visual description of the context problem facing our journalism today. Imagine, he said, downloading a software update to your computer for a program that isn’t installed on your machine. The absurdity of such a situation should be self-evident. The update does the user no good because it’s an add-on to a program that doesn’t exist on the machine. It’s a waste of the user’s time, it’s a waste of resources, and it doesn’t accomplish the mission set out for the software patch. Read more

Shirky: A tension between media business models and human nature

The highlight of SXSWi so far for me has been Clay Shirky’s presentation “Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data“ on Sunday afternoon.

You can get a good rundown of his main points from Liz Gannes at Gigaom. My takeaway was a little bit different, but then again I’m coming at this from the side of people creating content and so I think about business models a little bit more.

As I see it, here is the thread of logic in Shirky’s presentation …

1. We are wired to share information. Shirky noted that from an evolutionary standpoint we are wired to hoard physical goods or products, things that are tangible and have scarcity. At the other end of the spectrum, we are inclined to enjoy sharing information. It comes at no cost to us, but it has value to both the person sharing and the person receiving.

2. We have a word for not wanting to share information that comes at no cost to us: It’s called being spiteful

3. Media has gone from being a physical commodity to being information. The newspaper in my hand or CD in my possession is hard to give away or even loan out. As the owner, I lose control of the product. Digital media, though, is easy to give away. You can give away copies, and thus it comes at no cost to the giver. Shirky notes that “abundance breaks more things than scarcity.” I loved his point that the original aim of the printing press, for example, was to print indulgences, something that should have entrenched the Catholic church. In fact it had the opposite effect; the abundance of indulgences led to backlash that was part of the seeds of the Reformation.

4. Media companies are freaking out about this change, but rather than realigning to a new reality they are trying to protect the old one. He noted that businesses create workarounds to problems, but part in parcel with that is that this builds in a desire to not solve the original problem lest the solution make itself obsolete. There is no profit motive in fixing something once and for all.

5. User behavior, which is motivation filtered through opportunity, is being rewritten as access opens up. In light of #4, Shirky aked a salient question in light of this: What kind of society will we create if the media companies win? If we are wired to share information at no cost, and the opposite of that is being spiteful, then in essence media companies are trying to encourage us to behave in ways that make us more spiteful through the act of denying ourselves the enjoyable act of sharing information? This comes at an enormous cost to society.

So where’s the value in systems that figure out how to use open information? It’s in the co-creation of civic goods. Shirky noted a couple examples that illustrate that thinking.

Patients Like Me is a site that crowdsources symptoms and medical ailments among a user base, and the aggregate is essentially a knowledge base that might help people better figure out what is going on with their health. This flies in the face of the U.S. medical system, which has privatized patient information and made a good living off of it (i.e. why switch doctors when they “know” my medical history and are an expert on it?). PLM is creating a public good using medical information, but Shirky argues it won’t be successful unless it completely changes the health care industry. I saw a lot of parallels between that example and media companies, and all of a sudden a light switched on. The intense fight being put up by healthcare companies in the latest reform debate is a lot like the RIAA suing illegal downloaders.

Pickup Pal was another example. It uses information sharing between users to arrange rides for people going to the same places, saving money and maybe even a slice of the environment. The service was so successful that a bus company in Canada successfully sued the site for breaking the law. You can read about the details if you want, but the general point is that businesses are going to protect their model when a new idea comes along that fixes an idea too well. Fortunately the public outcry was so strong that it changed the law.

Both examples highlight a basic point of Shirky’s talk: We use free information sharing to create public goods through better efficiency, but at some point it’s going to trip over business models that depend on the problem not being solved. Abundance of information, in this case, breaks a lot of business models based on scarcity.

The upshot of all this? Shirky says that we’re going from a society that emphasizes “doing big things for money and little things for love to point where we can do big things for love.” The best, the coolest stuff we are doing with interactive media happens when we create these civic goods using information.

This lecture drove home a number of things for me. I’m teaching multimedia reporting at Lehigh, but I’m reminded there are a wider array of projects I can be doing. What are we doing to create civic goods in the Lehigh Valley through data-driven projects that are built on users sharing their own stories?

In a larger sense, the talk crystalized the feeling I’m getting after four days here in Austin. Journalism has a bright future, but the traditional players are so screwed. They’re chasing the wrong solution. I just don’t see a future for them when they’re trying to protect information as a scarce commodity. The scarcity, in truth, is in media companies trying to create civic goods via user sharing.

The info-must-be-free thought process has been argued against for some time even though it lacks specific proponents. Shirky was not making that kind of claim about information either, although I think it might be plausible to conclude that he made a compelling argument for the info-free notion from a sociological point of view: we’re wired this way, and what are we doing to ourselves by trying to restrict this type of behavior?

Other things that stood out from the Q&A:

Innovation: If you’re a company wanting to innovate, take the person who has one big idea and lock them out of the building. Tell them they can’t come back until they have 10 medium-sized ideas or 100 little ideas. Try a lot of everything, and double down on what works. Brilliant.

Education: The same transformation happening to media companies is coming at education like a freight train (and in fact from sitting in on other sessions I think it’s happening now). Shirky noted that we have cognitive dissonance in how we sell education. We tell students they’re joining a community of scholars, and we’re telling the private sector we’re managing the student mind such that when we churn them out they’re going to be excellent creators and workers. There is an inherent tension (and disconnect) between these two sales pitches.

It was a fantastic presentation. Thanks, Clay Shirky, for blowing my mind (again).

SXSW Saturday: A day of alternative press ideas

Although SXSWi got going on Friday, Saturday was really the first full day here. I hit a number of interesting panels, all of them dealing with different ways of doing media.

“Community Funded Reporting” with David Cohn was excellent.

Cohn is the founder of the excellent Spot.Us, a site that allows the audience to fund stories that are meaningful to them. Lots of useful info here. First, I didn’t realize that Spot’s code was free for distribution, meaning that if you wan to replicate what they do then you can. And in fact Cohn basically dared someone to try this nationally, saying that it’s more lucrative than the hyperlocal project he’s doing.

The more meaningful stuff to me was how Cohn talked about the concept of CFR. He sees each story, pitched by the potential author, as a type of campaign. You’re selling the value of the idea and the audience gets to vote. It’s a model we don’t do enough in media. Second, he noted they’re working on other ways of funding, such as having users interact with advertisers so they can earn credits, and those credits are ad dollars that users can spend to fund stories. Really interesting.

The standout: Users don’t fund ideas that suck or are obvious. This is something tradmedia could do more.

“Universities in the “Free” Era” with Glenn Platt and Peg Falmon was intriguing.

They argued that as we go toward more networked ways of learning and information exchange, we are facing either a complete remaking of education or a total meltdown. The disconnect, they say, is that we sell a mountaintop-with-the-guru experience even while information and specialization are flattening in a digital world. They offered seven tips for being a new kind of professor. The standout was that professors need to be linking students with collaboration and lab experiences, and be “experience creators” with students (i.e. helping them create the education they need). And they also shredded the idea of tenure. Really fascinating time.

“Media Armageddon: What Happens When the New York Times Dies” featuring, among others, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and David Carr of the NYT

I was provoked by the panel title, but really disappointed with the questions. They spent too much time asking the stale old question “Can bloggers do investigative reporting?” types of questions that are so five years ago. I didn’t like the moderator’s questions at all. It seemed a bit dismissive of the blogosphere (typified by him referring to Gawker’s Nick Denton as a “former journalist.”). Fortunately the panel was saved by the banter between Markos and Carr. I think Carr is more new media savvy than he was getting credit for, but Markos made a good point: the blogosphere wants the NYT to survive and succeed so long as it does its job.

I have a separate post bubbling about a session on augmented reality. It was probably my favorite of the day, but I want to collapse it with another post so that is coming.

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