Month: May 2007

National Writers’ Workshop in Fort Lauderdale

writingFresh from my inbox: Registration for the National Writers’ Workshop in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. is open!

The workshop, hosted by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, is part of a series by the Poynter Institute with six stops across the United States. The writers workshop is definitely one of the top conferences as far as bang for your buck goes. For a measly $110, you get to rub elbows for a day and a half with some of the best wordsmiths out there.

Here’s the info:

2007 National Writers’ Workshop
Sept 29 & 30, 2007
Fort Lauderdale, FL
For more information on speakers
and to register online go to: www.sun-sentinel.com/writers

Registration: $110 until July 31. Lunch included Saturday and Sunday. Student rate just $50.

All sessions will be held at the beautiful Hyatt Pier 66 Hotel and Resort
on the water in Fort Lauderdale. This four-star hotel is giving us the
bargain hotel price of $129/night plus tax.
Questions? Email Gail Bulfin at gbulfin@sun-sentinel.com

A special Friday night networking party will be held under the stars
on the veranda of the Panorama Room of the hotel, 7-9 P.M.

Dozens of award-winning journalists and authors including:

John Grogan, best-selling author of Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog. Former columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Philadelphia Inquirer.

Brad Meltzer, best-selling author of The Book of Fate, The Tenth Justice, Dead Even and more. Co-creator of the TV show Jack and Bobby. (NOTE: He’s also the writer behind DC Comics’ Identity Crisis)

Leslie Bennetts, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and author of The Feminine Mistake, Are We Giving Up Too Much?

Paul Grabowicz, director of the New Media Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

[Photo by ebertek]

Online tools for freelancers

toolboxLifehacker highlights a great list of 100 free or low-cost tools especially made for freelancers. The list includes project management tools, financial services, online storage/data transfer space and professional social networking sites.

Missing from this list are a good RSS reader (I recommend Bloglines or Google Reader), Media Convert, a site that easily converts all sorts of file formats (text, images, audio, video), and Emurse, a powerful resume-building site.

I’ve also been on the lookout for some free or inexpensive project management software. If anyone has any recommendations, please share! You can drop a suggestion in the comments or message me at dansanufATyahoo.com.

[Via Lifehacker]
[Photo by Zak Hubbard]

Google launches new maps blog

Google Maps LatLong Blog logoGoogle announced today a new blog called Google LatLong dedicated to providing updates on their Maps, Earth and Local services.

“As web mapping (dare I say “the geoweb”?) matures, we’re finding that we have a lot more to communicate about new developments in Earth, Maps, Local, and our APIs,” writes Google Maps/Earth director John Hanke. “Our goal is to help foster the ecosystem of geo development across the web.”

If you’re interested in creating Google Maps from scratch, make sure to follow this blog. Google’s engineers are making the API easier and more flexible to use every day. No word yet on whether the Google Maps API Blog will soldier on.

Lastly, make sure to check out the Google Maps Mania blog, THE best source for cutting-edge map ideas (such as the ridiculously cool ’24’ Jack Bauer tracker).

Media executives rip into Google

A panel of leading media executives took a combative tone against search engines during a panel discussion at the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Reuters reports.

“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation,” Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said.

“They will lose this war if they go to war,” Parsons added, “The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

Them’s fightin’ words. See the full report here.

Under the hood of Observer.com

New York Observer tag cloud headsThe New York Observer underwent a redesign using Drupal as its content-management system. The project leaders have posted an article on Drupal.org about how they redesigned the site, shoveled over 22,000 old articles and overcame the challenges they faced while doing it.

They also include details on how they built the interesting variation of a tag cloud, which uses illustrations of subjects’ faces instead of text (XML file here).

[Via Steve Yelvington]

Don’t learn the book, just do

books.jpg
[Photo by VJL]

Mindy McAdams tells the tale of a student who recently came in wanting to become an independent video journalist. The problem: She doesn’t know a lick of HTML.

See her advice to the student.

Some like to take the tack of sitting down with a book and going chapter-by-chapter. Well, feguddaboutit. If you want to learn HTML/CSS, Flash, databases or any other technology, you have to set a project goal for yourself:

-I want to shoot a video about a local character and upload it to a blog.

-I want to start a blog about college baseball.

-I want to make a Google Maps mashup of local Indian restaurants by hand.

-I want to display the results of a database of politicians on the Web.

-I want to make a Soundslide about the local dog park.

Take that goal, and then use that book selectively to find the skills you need to accomplish what you want to do. If not, it’s like trying to memorize the user manual of a video camera instead of just running around filming interesting stuff.

If you try to swallow that whole book in one shot, there’s a good chance you’ll kill your enthusiasm and never learn.

NPPA Conference June 1-2

The 2007 NPPA Photojournalism Summit will take place in Portland, Oregon this year, and the speakers list features a who’s who of online talent.

The list of multimedia speakers includes:

  • Rich Beckman, professor of multimedia design and production at the University of North Carolina
  • Andrew deVigal, multimedia editor for The New York Times
  • Seth Gitner, multimedia editor for The Roanoke Times and Roanoke.com
  • Dirck Halstead, editor and publisher of DigitalJournalist.org
  • Richard Koci Hernandez, deputy director of multimedia and photography for The San Jose Mercury News
  • Tom Kennedy, managing editor for multimedia at Washingtonpost.com and Newsweek Interactive
  • David Leeson, executive producer for video and new media at The Dallas Morning News
  • Judith Levitt, Photo Producer for The New York Times
  • Regina McCombs, The Star Tribune
  • Jim Seida, multimedia producer for MSNBC
  • Brian Storm, president of MediaStorm
  • Joe Weiss, Creator and Developer of Soundslides

Also, make sure to catch me at the Online News Association conference in Toronto on Oct. 17-19. I’ll also soon be swinging by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, featuring plenty of online workshops on June 13-16 in San Jose, Calif.

[Hat tips to Will, the esteemed conference co-chair, and Bryan for reminding me about NPPA.]

Digg embroiled in user revolt over DRM postings

digg.gifThe popular news ranking site Digg is currently undergoing a full-scale revolt of its users after someone posted the copyright encryption code for HD-DVD discs.

After Digg pulled the posting with the key, users soon got wind and flooded the site with Diggs on the encryption code. Digg has apparently backtracked now and posted the code (it currently has a staggering 29,721 diggs) along with this message:

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”

There’s a lesson here: determined users now have a greater voice and power to make information widely available almost immediately. For better or worst, information –once released– is like Pandora’s Box on the Web. And the masses are using non-traditional media and methods to get that information out there.

Online journalism to-do list

Bryan Murley over at Innovation in College Media has a great checklist of online-related tasks that college publications should be doing. But the list is also a good guide of tasks for those who want to get started in online media.

Every web editor and producer should at least be familiar with how each of these tasks are accomplished. The act of learning how to produce a Soundslide or contribute effectively to a blog will make you that much more useful in producing a great site.

So here’s Bryan’s list:

    • Have you got your news org. online?
    • Do you have a content management system?
    • Have you posted any videos online?
    • Have you included any audio soundbites in a story?
    • Have you done a photo slideshow?
    • Have you put up an audio slideshow (perhaps using Soundslides)?
    • Have you done a map?
    • Have you used weblogs on your site?
    • Have you uploaded source documents (PDFs, excel spreadsheets, etc.) to accompany a big story?
    • Have you used social media (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube) to market your stories?
    • Have you tracked what others are saying about you via Technorati or Google Blogsearch?
    • Have you used the web site to post breaking news online FIRST?
    • Have you moved the online editor out of the back office and into a position of authority?
    • Have you allowed comments on your stories?
    • Have you encouraged writers to write for the Web and include hyperlinks in their stories?
    • Have you tried something experimental?

See more of Bryan’s work at Innovation in College Media.