Archive for June, 2010

  • 29 Jun

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    Sports Journalism, Twitter and the World Cup

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    As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in sports journalism, I am used to the realization that, for most newspapers, the

    sports section is the most popular with readers. Sports stories drive the most hits, engage people that are only casually interested in “news,” and lend themselves well to creating promotional items that can generate extra revenue for their perspective papers.

    Europe loves its soccer (as evidenced by my picture from Real Madrid vs. Xerez in Estadio Santiago Bernabeau, September 20, 2009).

    And now I have another piece of evidence to bolster my claims—Twitter announced over the weekend that the Japan vs. Demark soccer game set a new record for Tweets per second (TPS). When the referee blew the final whistle, the Twitter crew counted 3,283 TPS (They also note that the Netherlands vs. Cameroon game ended six minutes earlier). The old record? Another sporting event, of course—3,085 TPS at the end of the Los Angeles Lakers victory over the Boston Celtics in game 7 of the NBA finals. The Twitter blog also said that, “The second week of the World Cup continued to see consistent spikes in TPS after goals that are remarkable increases over our average of 750 TPS.”

    Techcrunch.com goes into more detail:

    Last week the all time highs were in terms of Tweets-per-second took place after goals were scored in the following games: Japan scores against Cameroon on June 14 in their 1-0 victory (2,940 TPS), Brazil scores their first goal against North Korea in their 2-1 June 14 victory (2,928 TPS) and Mexico ties South Africa in their June 11 game (2,704 TPS).

    One of the most remarkable observations from this data is that none of these games involve the United States. As stateside journalists, it is easy to get caught up in our United States (note—not American) bubble. The audience for news, though, is worldwide.

    So, why is this helpful for Journalists?

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 23 Jun

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    Rolling Stone’s breaking news fail

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    Photo taken from El_Enigma's photostream on Flicker.

    Rolling Stone acted more like a 1960s rock band today than a magazine operating in the 21st century. It had a story that was bound to spark national debate—General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. military official in Afghanistan who commands the 130,000 soldiers in the NATO coalition, is not too fond of his civilian counterparts. In the profile piece, aptly titled, “The Runaway General,”  McChrystal and his aids take shots at Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan (who, by nature of his position, is the top U.S. civilian in that country) and Vice President Joe Biden, who is no. 2 in command back on U.S. soil. Can you say public relations disaster for the U.S. Goverment?

    As expected, the fallout was severe—every major news organization picked the story up, Obama ordered McChrystal back home and may fire him…and Rolling Stone did not even bother putting the story on its website until 11:00 a.m.

    What?

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 16 Jun

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    Words, Words, Words.

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    I love words. Don’t get me wrong, editing video and taking the perfectly-framed picture are rewarding journalistic activities, but I’m a writer at heart (and a good English major – bonus points if you recognized the title of this post was a quote from Hamlet). With that said, words were in many headlines last week (pun intended):

    • The Awl reported that Phil Corbett, the  standards editor at the New York Times, banned the word “tweet” from the newspaper and in online articles. Corbett put the word in the category of colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon—all pitfalls journalists try to avoid. His rationale? People who use Twitter get the verb—but Corbett does not consider Twitter mainstream yet. Corbett responded on the Times Topics blog by saying he did not ban the word outright—his memo was just a reminder that the word should not appear in hard news stories.
    • A few days before the Times was chirping about Twitter (another pun intended), The Gray Lady issued 50 Fancy Words, the list the top 50 words that most often stumped its readership. Many (okay, most) stumped me as well.
    • And finally, McSweeney’s ode to the font Comic Sans. Be warned – the language is “colorful” to put it one way. On a more serious note, font choice is a serious matter—design gurus meticulously look for just the right one. And even those famous for their style, such as The New Yorker, keep tinkering until they get it just right.

    Happy word painting. Exit pursued by a bear

    They say a picture is worth a thousand words: well, that's about one for each bike in this shot of Amsterdam

  • 10 Jun

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    The Daily Show: “Are You Journalists, Or Are You Rushing A Sorority?”

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    The Daily Show is a valuable news resource.

    While one of the basic functions of the press is to keep those we cover honest, Jon Stewart & Co. do a great job of keeping the media honest.

    In this clip that aired last night, Stewart noted that the press should be asking itself hard questions in the wake of Helen Thomas’s sudden retirement.

    • What is the line between opinion and opinion journalism?
    • When does America’s unwavering defense of Israel begin to compromise our unwavering defense of free speech?
    • Is our media demonstrating a casual bias against the Arab world and the suffering of the Palestinians?

    All are extremely insightful, dead serious questions. I, quite frankly, have not seen these issues getting much coverage in the wake of Ms. Thomas’s departure. Instead, as the clip demonstrates, most of the talk has been about who will get her front row seat.

    The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
    Press You’re Stuck
    www.thedailyshow.com
    Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party


    In addition to the media’s handling of the Helen Thomas issue, Stewart addresses another equally weighty subject—the relationship journalists have with their sources and the figures they cover.

    “It’s fun to see politicians and the people we count on to hold them accountable super-soaking each other,” Stewart dryly notes. “Are you journalists, or are you rushing a sorority?”

    The perception of bias is as damaging as actual bias. That’s one of the first things they teach in any journalism class. I’m not advocating against journalists having fun or even being on relatively amicable terms with those they cover. But journalists need to exercise extreme caution whenever they mix pleasure with business.

    Bottom line: Before you super-soak Joe Biden think, “Would this picture damage my credibility?”

  • 10 Jun

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    The Facebook Frenemy

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    I’ve spent the past few hours tinkering with my blog. Last week, when this site was still just a storyboard in my head, my buddy and fellow Poynter College Fellow Emily Ingram gave me this metaphor, which I love:

    Your site becomes your sandbox. You go play there when you want to avoid work

    Searching and test driving different plugins is an easy way to breeze through two hours. So is trying to figure out how to add my tagline underneath my name in my header :( .

    Regardless of how badly I want “Paint by Words” to show up under “Laura Keeley” right NOW, I do feel a sense of accomplishment for adding two Facebook plugins with relative ease.

    The easiest to spot is the Like button right at the end of this post. As the link shows, the code is available directly from Facebook. I went the plugin route and used the one aptly titled Facebook Like. It’s hard to believe that the Facebook Like button has only proliferated the entire Internet since this April. There are still bugs with the button—”likejacking” worms are abundant on my newsfeed—but for myself and other bloggers, this tool is golden.

    Now if a Facebook user stumbles upon my blog and likes it enough to click the button, his or her entire Facebook network will know. This has the potential to be viewed by hundreds or thousands of people, depending on the number of friends said liker has. Then one of these friends might click on the link and spread it to their friends and so on.

    Boom! Instant viral success.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 09 Jun

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    New wrapping for Twitter links

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    (Blog update: resume is live. Look for clips tomorrow)

    Twitter is the easiest way for journalists to establish a presence on the web. So when its developers announced changes to the way links are counted against the 140 character limit of individual tweets, people noticed.

    Twitter’s Sean Garrett announced the policy change today in a Twitter blog post, aptly titled Links and Twitter: Lengths Shouldn’t Matter. The official reason for the change is to foil the spread of malware, phishing and other web dangers. All links will be wrapped into a t.co URL starting sometime this summer.

    Will this announcement change the way people tweet?

    My guess: No, not really. Its biggest impact will probably be in the way tweets are displayed on screen.

    Twitter has not decided exactly what the display change will be. Garrett gives this example in his post:

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 08 Jun

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    “I’m an artist, and I paint pictures with words.”

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    Hiya! I’m Laura Keeley, Duke senior and journalist extraordinaire. I’m currently in a Madonna-like reinvention phase—the old

    Hard at work (and eating my hand) at Poynter. Photo credit Al Tompkins.

    Laura was great, but the new one will be even better!

    What I mean to say is, before my two-week fellowship at The Poynter Institute, my journalistic interests and strengths primarily involved writing. I’m an artist, and I paint pictures with words. Now, that is still true, but I want to get more involved with all aspects of journalism—audio and video production,graphics, photography and web design, to name a few. Check out my first (real) website and multimedia adventure, Skyway Jack’s.

    In this spirit of reinvention, this blog was born.

    I plan on writing about my adventures into the nebulous world of multimedia journalism and on the issues facing the press, both student and professional. I’ll leave my sports blogging for The (Duke) Chronicle’s sports blog (I’m the sports features editor for the upcoming school year) and my business reporting for Bloomberg News (I’ll be starting my internship there next Monday).

    I reserve the right to publish posts on other interesting topics as well.

    In the next couple of days, I’ll have the site running at full speed. For now, I will add pieces as I figure out what works best. I could not have gotten this far (don’t laugh) without the help of my “fellow” Poynter College Fellow Emily Ingram, and her amazing How to Build a Portfolio Web Site blog series. She’s an online goddess (and current Washington Post web producing intern).

    As a parting present (and to inspire myself to pick up a camera), I’ll end each blog post with a picture I took from abroad. Journalism is my main passion, but traveling is a close second (with sports a close third). I studied abroad at the University of Oxford (England) summer 2009 and in Madrid fall 2010. This one is of the entrance to the Parque Grüell in Barcelona, which was designed by the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí. Click to see it in its full-sized glory.