Category Archives: Journalism

When nobody controls the cameras

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NYTimes.com: "When Congress adjourns, so do C-Span’s live broadcasts because the sole cameras that record the sessions of the Senate and the House of Representatives are controlled by the members of Congress.

On Friday, when several dozen Republicans decided to stay on the House floor and discuss energy legislation after the House adjourned for a five-week summer recess, the cameras and microphones were turned off. So the first source of video was a congressman who streamed live pictures to the Internet using his cellphone camera."

Just one more (small) example of how things are changing. If any feature prompts me to break down and buy a real mobile phone, it will be the ability to stream live video when there’s no wifi.

Journalism in the 21st century

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“A lot of the discontent with traditional journalism is because too many reporters have forgotten that the highest calling of journalists is to ferret out the truth, consequences be damned. Unfortunately, this is a concept that has fallen out of favor with too many journalists, who are obsessed with a false view of “balance” and “objectivity” and have become addicted not to the tireless pursuit of truth, but to the tireless promotion of the misguided notion that every story has two sides. And that the truth is supposed to be found somewhere in the middle. But not every story has two sides and the truth is often found on one side or the other. The earth is not flat. Evolution is a fact. Global warming is a fact. And there are definitely not two sides to the proposition that Iraq is our generation’s greatest foreign policy disaster. It is. Period.”

–Full interview with Arianna Huffington at Poynter Online

Reality spill on aisle six

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“Janet Coats, editor of the Tampa Tribune, sat down in her newsroom to tell the staff about layoffs, reorganizations, new ways of doing business, and harsh realities and an intern named Jessica DaSilva recorded the event with appropriate admiration.

My favorite bomb: “People need to stop looking at TBO.com [the newspaper’s affiliated web site] as an add on to The Tampa Tribune. The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.” — Jeff Jarvis’ Buzz Machine

If this is true for newspapers today, will it be equally true for TV and radio tomorrow? And when that day comes, what will it mean for networks and others who provide programming (content?) for those stations.

“Computer Jesus”

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“Sure, it would be great if you could hire one single person who could do everything. We call that “computer jesus” — and you need to accept the fact that there really are not many people in the world who can walk on water.

— Mindy McAdams on setting up a team for online journalism: