Three days unplugged

I spent last weekend on the West Coast and had basically five days with sparse internet access. Little on e-mail, less on Twitter or Facebook.

I realized how wired I am and how weird it feels to be unplugged. I have to say, I didn’t like it. The lack of social connection – even while spending time with friends and family – was a new sensation.

I might try the email fast sometime this summer. I’ve been kicking around the idea for a while, but I might want to take it to a new level and see what happens.

Innovating while there is time

Facebook went live with its redesign this week, and if I may take a moment to be a bad researcher and generalize from a small sample, everyone hates it. This is probably an exaggeration, but then again I can confirm that I’m the only one I know who likes it.

I like what they’ve done by making the home page a live feed of what people are doing. The ability to filter by user-created groups helps cut down on some of the noise, and it will probably hasten the use of this feature by people who didn’t know it was there before the launch.

It looks like Twitter, and I think there’s a reason for that. Twitter, while claiming less than 1/1000 of Facebook’s users, clearly is on to something with its rapid growth. And it is more mobile friendly right now than Facebook. This appears to be a case of Facebook tapping a good idea and also trying to stay ahead of the competition before it loses market share. Read more

Off topic: No Line On The Horizon review

“I had driven to the scene of the accident
And I sat there waiting for me”

- From “Unknown Caller”

If America, in its 2009 version of endless-war haze and economic malaise, wanted to sound the notes of regret for what we have become, what would it look like? Would it take the shape of the boundless optimism of a world view that says all can be conquered? Or would it resemble dark brooding of a soul that is reflecting on a life that piled up bad choices upon bad choices until the result was a restless kind of ruin?

Critics and anti-fans can excoriate U2 (and specifically front man Bono) for many things from hubris to self-righteousness, but it would be hard for them to argue against the notion that each new album the band produces reflects the times. Just scan the band’s past five offerings. Achtung Baby (1991) and Zooropa (1993) touched on the postmodern reverb that reflected the hope and crisis of a world without the Berlin Wall. Pop (1997) was the seemingly fruitless search for the real treasure amid consumerism’s trash amid the dotcom boom of the Clinton ’90s. All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) was an earnest attempt to refocus on the things that matter, the things you can’t take with you, and was highly relevant in a world that was about to deal with the aftermath of 9/11. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004) continued that theme against the backdrop of the war on terror, arguing that beauty, love and truth were the tonic for a world gone mad.

In particular, the band’s past two efforts were an attempt to call attention and focus on the stuff that matters in life. The Irish quartet’s latest effort, No Line On The Horizon, is reflection on a world that didn’t listen to that message and an answer to the question that opened this review. Read more

We can’t go back

Clay Shirky’s post that examines the historical underpinnings behind the current newspaper collapse is making the rounds today on all my social media channels. It’s longish, and a pretty detailed, but if you’re concerned about collapse of this medium in your community it is worth the time.

As I read it, I am reminded that as much as I loved the good old days, we aren’t going back. The model between information access, publishing ability, advertising, and economics has shifted too radically. It doesn’t mean newspapers are going to die, but it does mean that the old business model is only going to work in some types of settings (small rural towns come to mind). By extension, though, it means that more newspapers are going under if they don’t radically shift gears. The model just isn’t sustainable in certain community types.

I am glad that Shirky offered a road map for the way forward. A cynic would say he’s being vague, but at this point I’d settle for a vague set of principles to guide innovation. We’re still at that stage. Anyone claiming to have the answer is being dishonest.

JOUR 7700: Summer ’09, Week 1.1

A lesson learned, hopefully

In case you missed Jon Stewart’s brilliant interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer yesterday, I’ve embedded part of the clip above. But I would go to DailyShow.com to see the full episode and even to watch the full unedited interview, because it is a fascinating peek at what journalism sometimes is missing in financial coverage.

In case you’ve missed the news coverage this has gotten (CNN / NYT / WaPost), Stewart took Cramer to task for the fact that he and his network essentially cheered on a bubble built on working class dollars while hedge fund managers and Wall Street insiders cashed in.

If the pundits only focus on how entertaining this was (and it was entertaining), this is a missed opportunity. Stewart’s interview not only exposed the culture of CNBC’s reporting habits, which are filled with conflicts of interest, but also showed how it’s done in an era where expert pundits often are fresh off the payroll of the industry they’re covering. Read more

Charging (off a cliff)

New York Times media writer David Carr penned an interesting piece that has gotten some play in media circles today. Summing up the feelings of a lot of my fellow journalists, he modestly proposes that newspapers get together and end the free ride on the Web for both readers and aggregators.

In other words, charge.

Carr notes that for this to work it’s going to take some collusion among newspaper companies, which is probably illegal and would require antitrust law changes to make it happen. A lot of what he’s saying is a rehash of what others have suggested, but it’s a pretty solid summary of the camp that wants to charge now and often. Read more

Citizen fandom

ESPN recently launched a site devoted to sports fans’ travels to sporting events, and it’s pretty slick. In addition to offering travel guides for fans looking to attend faraway events such as spring training, ESPN Sports Travel also gives fans a chance to upload content and memories from their trip (such as photos) under the Passport menu.

It also gives fans back a little bit of power to rate many different aspects of the sports fan experience.

Better, the site is cross-branded using a sponsorship from Orbitz, giving the site a sponsorship that both makes sense and connects to the actual content. In addition to giving sponsorship for the site, Orbitz travel deals are prominent on the page and give fans a resource looking for travel deals. Read more

Teaching standards without killing their spirit

I’ve been teaching a large lecture class this semester, my last one here at MU before I start at Lehigh in the fall. It seems like the lessons I’m learning as an instructor are much different than mid-size classes, and I’m not sure if it’s because a 200-student course means different challenges or if I’m just noticing issues more because the problems are being multiplied by 10.

I should preface anything here by saying I love being a teacher and enjoy being in the classroom. I know I’m not great at it yet, but I’ve learned a lot in six years of doing it and relish those moments where you feel like you’re breaking through with students and helping them develop as thinkers. A great question in class yesterday, for example, where a student on their own connected free speech issues to the Jena Six problem (showing curiosity and application) was one of those moments that gets you high.

Still, I’ve struggled with one part of the class, and that is enforcing standards. The students are required to do five participation events in the semester, which entails them going to an approved event (a lecture or civic meeting of some sort) and writing an essay that is pretty wide open in terms of format (personal reflection, recap, news style, etc.). The one thing we’re asking is the essay quotes someone who was at the event and that they list their contact information on the essay. We do this because we are verifying the students actually attended. Read more

Anonymity and free speech

We’re going through free speech stuff in JOUR 1100 this week, and Hans Meyer’s recent post about a court decision regarding free speech and the Net got me thinking a little bit.

I’d recommend reading the story and Hans’ post, because the combination of the two raise serious concerns about what happens when courts force site operators to release the names of contributors in cases of libel.

The thing I’m thinking about in the wake of this decision is that it’s really time for us to step back and think about what it means to associate online. This is really the heart of my dissertation, because we don’t think enough about what it means to talk together in online formats. Read more

Gearing up to retrain

This summer, I’m going to help my students brand themselves.

In about three months I’ll get my second go-round here at Missouri with Online Journalism, the online-only course we teach our masters students through Blackboard. I taught it last summer and had a great experience and am looking forward to doing it again.

The MU Direct program tends to attract journalists looking to get their M.A. while retraining for a new set of skills. Last year we focused on blogging early on, perhaps a little too much. The student reviews, while positive, reflected a desire to do more. In fact, it was a hunger. Read more