Every weekend I’m going to try to round up a few links that caught my interest as they drifted past during the previous week. Many will be related to digital journalism and writing, but they may also touch on my other interests like sports, music or life in Vancouver. Here’s the first installment:
- Katharine Weymouth, publisher of the Washington Post, reportedly expressed relief while speaking at a conference that today’s social media tools weren’t around on 9/11. To anyone who works daily in online news and can’t imagine covering a major disaster without social media, it was a reminder that people at the top of long-established news organizations still aren’t sharing their mindset — and maybe never will. Mandy Jenkins of the Huffington Post responded.
- Jay Rosen has long lamented that journalists’ obsession with balance gets in the way of their quest for truth. This week’s example is these stats showing what the U.S. public believes about climate change. The people are way out of step with the scientists who actually study the phenomenon.
- In the “new tools” department, getting the audience to contribute photos has long been a struggle for online media outlets, including mine. The New York Daily News seems to be having success with Olapic, which gave us a presentation this week. Olapic has lowered the barriers to participation as far as any tool I’ve seen, and has social media woven throughout.
- In local politics, Public Eye Online did a nice job exposing the lengths to which the NPA — and, to be fair, just about any organization with a marketing objective — will go in the social media space. They asked certain influencers to carry the social media spear for them, and the appeal apparently wasn’t welcome by all those influencers, especially after their names were leaked.
- A funny idea for a photo project by Mathieu Grac: Staged portraits of people staging their own profile pics.
- And finally, the hockey people in Minsk paid a really nice tribute to the dead players who were supposed to have been their opposition on Thursday night:
