Friday, November 03, 2006

Omnibus post


I'm going to string together several notes and links in this post to save time. Things are popping in terms of "social networking" and it seems that MSM organizations are finally catching on to how being linked to people who are in touch with scads of their friends via Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. is a good way to build up an audience for content. Facebook is offering publishers   a button they can put on their site to link content to eyeballs via the Facebook grapevine.



The details of Jeff Rosen's new project are getting spelled out . The new words for describing the hybrid journalism that Rosen (and Suzanne McBride and I here at Columbia in Chicago) are exploring are useful in helping those who aren't familiar with all that the web affords in terms of being connected and in setting up contextual networks of people and information understand the potential and mechanisms of "pro-am journalism"



Business models and economic questions arise as the promise of new media technology comes face-to-face with corporate capitalism in the short-term. Ohmynews, which has been profitable may not make money in 2006 . Thus business writers are proclaiming that its model doesn't work, etc. My take on it is that global economics is in turmoil as corporate capitalistic systems like the one in the US (especially as our economic policies are formed with help from policy decisions by agencies like FCC, rather than in a rational or technologically determined manner) bumps up against new forces like reputation-ranking and gift economies. I'd be hesitant to condemn a project as soon as it encounters a bit of difficulty. I say give it a few years. How Ohmynews will make money is still in flux I think as is the path by which the NYTImes or BBC will make money, but it seems to those companies that UGC or user-generated content is a key element and Ohmynews has been developing UGC for some time.




Monday, July 10, 2006

Check out this way-cool app

Tabblo is a new photosharing app. It is built on Django and has better templates than I've seen in this kind of service.

Take me out to the Park

Tabblo: Take me out to the Park

Joe Crede waits fr the next play. The WhiteSox pantheon of appears behind him. Joe always wears his sox outside his trousers and up his legs. ... See my Tabblo>

Take me out to the Park

Tabblo: Take me out to the Park

Joe Crede waits fr the next play. The WhiteSox pantheon of appears behind him. Joe always wears his sox outside his trousers and up his legs. ... See my Tabblo>

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Chicago Bloggers--come out wherever you are

If you can herd cats, you can organize bloggers, right?

Actually, this is a first attempt to gather Chicago area bloggers to meet and talk about our interests as bloggers. There are at least 125 folks waiting for someone to organize a weblogger group in Chicago, so I reserved a room at Columbia, and here is a call for any interested parties to show up and see where we go from there.

On either coast and even in the hinterlands, blogger organizations exist and provide social and professional kinds of help to bloggers. Chicago is writer's town, but so far, has had no "blogger central." I am looking for other people to help me organize a loosely coupled collective and web portal to connect Chicago Bloggers to other media, to training and workshops, and to other people.

If you are a blogger, please consider coming out for this meeting. If you are not a blogger yourself, can you print/post this poster and get it out where bloggers might see it?

There is no fee to attend the meetings, but as I am going to provide some refreshments, I will accept $2.00 donations from those who care to help out.

MSM types, students, literati, digerati, podcasters, novices, vloggers -- anyone who is interested in blogging and is located around Chicago is invited.

Here are the details and a link to RSVP if you decide to check it out:

Chicago Bloggers Group
Open to any interested bloggers (or potential bloggers)
Initial meeting
12/21/05
7-8 p.m
33 E. Congress 2nd floor Room 219
(Journalism Dept. Columbia College Chicago)

Details and RSVP at:
http://blog.meetup.com/351/boards/view/viewthread?thread=1584572

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Flow Volume 3, Issue 5

Whoa blogoteers, came across this site while reasearching something else, but I was pleased to see our own Sharon has a story in there. Go Sharon. Flow Volume 3, Issue 5

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Scholar who blogged denied tenure at U of C. Was it the blog?

Daniel Drezner, an academic at U of C with a traditional record of publication and scholarship was denied tenure recently. This is an interesting discussion of the role, risks and rewards of blogging in academe, specifically in the tenure track.

It's not conclusive, as some tenure track bloggers got tenure while others were denied, but it raises questions about whether to blog, anonymous blogging, and the attitude of many universities toward the idea that faculty might be public intellectuals rather than one-track working drones.

I am going to pass it along to those on whose tenure committees I sit. However, none of tenurees is writing a blog that I know of.

I can see a day when traditional higher education institutions will experience declining enrollments analogous to the declining circulation in the newspaper business if there is a failure by these institutions to open up a bit and to adjust to the learning modalities of the ""pomo" generation.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

ABC News: What Is Blogging?

ABC comes a bit late to the blogging "party" but at least they see it as a tool....ABC News: What Is Blogging?

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Blogging Ethics

One of my email lists, the Association of Internet Researchers, just featured this post, with its useful links:

Regarding blog ethics, from the bloggers' perspective, there is a piece on CyberJournalist called "A Blogger's Code of Ethics":
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php

Blog ethics was also a hot topic of debate on www.dailykos.com, a left-leaning political blog, early this year, and probably on other blogs as well.

>From a scholarly perspective, Andy Koh et al. recently posted a summary report of a survey they conducted on weblog ethics at:
http://weblogethics.blogspot.com/2005/07/ethics-in-blogging-2005.html

And Fernanda Viegas has a recent article in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication on bloggers' expectations of privacy:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html


Posted by Susan.