Citizen Journalism Learning Blog

Revolution, Facebook Style

2009-01-24T20:41:00.001+02:00

Can social networking turn disaffected young Egyptians into a force for democratic change? Esraa Rashid, center, was jailed for helping to organize protests online.

Read the whole NY Times article here.

Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World

2008-11-03T20:27:00.002+02:00

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Oct. 19, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president during the taping of “Meet the Press” on NBC. Within minutes, the video was on the Web.

But the clip was not rushed onto YouTube; it was MSNBC.com, the network’s sister entity online, that showed the video hours before television viewers on the West Coast could watch the interview for themselves.

Old media, apparently, can learn new media tricks. Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them.

For many viewers, the 2008 election has become a kind of hybrid in which the dividing line between online and off, broadcast and cable, pop culture and civic culture, has been all but obliterated.......

Read the whole NY Times article here.

How to create your own Blogger theme.

2008-10-01T05:35:00.004+03:00

How to create your own Blogger theme this tutorial is practical in each step and easy to follow.

Download it here:

http://jonathansadler.net/idebate/Creating your own Blogger theme.zip

Know Uganda

2008-09-28T16:10:00.003+03:00

An audio podcast by Shelby Surdyk.

Graffiti Removal in New Orleans

2008-09-01T04:32:00.005+03:00

An interesting piece of art as advocacy:

British Street artist Banksy, whom we have previously discussed, has recently been active in New Orleans. One recent piece seems to comment on the city's strict anti-graffiti policy:

This is certainly an interesting commentary on the practice of graffiti removal. But it gets more interesting. Someone, presumably a city worker, found the piece. This is what they did to it:

(Ignore the difference in brightness/contrast. The two shots are the work of different photographers.)

What is this? Simply a case of graffiti removal left unfinished? Is it subconscious art? Or is it a far more intentional modification?

Resources

Here is the original Gawker gallery of Banksy in New Orleans.
And here is the Gawker post regarding the modification. (The comments at the bottom of the post are worth skimming. While some are stupid, there is an interesting discussion about Cubism.)

Picasa Photo Uploader

2008-08-23T20:27:00.001+03:00

Now available for the Mac!

http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_us/web/mac_tools.html

Bulent, Man of Rural Turkey — a video by Ance Zemzane & Forest Kvasnikoff

2008-08-13T01:09:00.001+03:00

A short video piece by Ance Zemzane (Latvia) and Forest Kvasnikoff (Alaska) about the life of Bulent, a man struggling to survive in the economy of Bademli, a small village in rural Turkey.

Bulent — Man of Rural Turkey from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

A Day in Bademli — A Movie by Chen Ying

2008-08-13T01:08:00.000+03:00

A Day in Bademli, Turkey from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Worldwide Change — a PSA by Megan Waggoner

2008-08-12T22:17:00.000+03:00

Worldwide Change — a PSA by Megan Waggoner from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Media Influences You — A Video by Aleksandrs Potaicuks

2008-08-11T14:56:00.002+03:00

Media Influences You from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

The Difference Between Kids & Adults — a video by Pan Di

2008-08-11T14:56:00.001+03:00

The Difference Between Kids & Adults — a video by Pan Di from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

China? — a video by Effie Wu

2008-08-11T14:55:00.000+03:00

Just how accurate are popular images of China as we head into the 2008 Olympics? Watch this video by Effie Wu.

China? — a video by Effie Wu from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Education — A PSA created by Ania Gateau

2008-08-11T14:53:00.000+03:00

Education from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Water Pollution — PSA by Pavel Cerbusca and Hojadurdy Gurbanov

2008-08-09T23:19:00.002+03:00

A PSA by Pavel Cerbusca (Moldova) and Hojadurdy Gurbanov (Turkmenistan), students in the Intensive English program.
Audio: "Water Music" by George Frideric Handel.

Water Pollution from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Homeless Children — a video by Fleurantin Chrismedonne

2008-08-09T01:08:00.001+03:00

A PSA about the situation of homeless children internationally, created by Fleurantin Chrismedonne from Haiti, a student in the Intensive English track.

Homeless Children from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Debate Promotion

2008-08-09T01:04:00.001+03:00

A video created by Madina Dzhumaeva (Tajikistan), Irana Mirzoeva (Tajikistan), Azhar Akmoldina (Kazakhstan), and Maisa Babayeva (Turkmenistan), students in the Intensive English track.

Debate Promotion from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Child Abuse Awareness — a video by Asja Boric

2008-08-08T22:50:00.002+03:00

A short video on the issue of child abuse by Asja Boric (Bosnia Herzegovina), a student in the Intensive English track.

Child Abuse Awareness — a video by Asja Boric from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

Discrimination Against Roma People

2008-08-08T19:03:00.001+03:00

A short video piece by students in the Intensive English track: Melinda Jusztin, Georgiana Enache, Julieta Evtimova, Vergil Hasan Ibryam, and Alexander Iordanov.

Discrimination Against Roma People from Citizen Journalism Institute on Vimeo.

The Lazy Man's Guide to Web 2.0

2008-08-07T04:22:00.004+03:00

FriendFeed crawls Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube so you don't have to.

No, I don't want to use Twitter. I'm way too busy—and, let's be honest, too uninterested (and uninteresting)—to spend all day thumb-typing status updates from my cell phone. That's the problem with Web 2.0 services like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, and the rest: They expect me to eagerly upload, type, click, and tweet my life onto the Internet so these tidbits can be served to others. What I really want is to be able to reap the advantages of these sites without having to lift a finger—to see what my friends are up to without having to write anything myself.

The problem is my friends are spread across dozens of different sites—Picasa, Pownce, Plurk, Pandora, Polyvore—and that's just the Ps. Most of them publish to two or three sites at minimum. Figuring out how to navigate each site is more work than I have time for. My fellow tech pundit Robert Scoble posts movies, photos, and text to more than a dozen sites. Can't I just get one page that lists everything Scoble did today?.....

Click here for the whole article.

Will Global Warming Revive Good Journalism?

2008-08-02T22:53:00.001+03:00

from the Center for Media and Democracy - Publishers of PR Watch by Sheldon Rampton

"Media coverage of climate change is at a crossroads, as it moves beyond the science of global warming into the broader arena of what governments, entrepreneurs, and ordinary citizens are doing about it," reports Cristine Russell. She points out that the growing global warming beat offers "countless" angles for reporters to explore "on a story that is only going to get bigger and more complicated in the decades (yes, decades) ahead." Journalists, she writes, "will play a key role in shaping the information that opinion leaders and the public use to judge the urgency of climate change, what needs to be done about it, when and at what costs. It is a vast, multifaceted story whose complexity does not fit well with journalism’s tendency to shy away from issues with high levels of uncertainty and a time-frame of decades, rather than days or months."

Click here to read the whole Columbia Journalism Review article.

4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images

2008-08-02T22:49:00.001+03:00

If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists — too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts — the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers....

Read the whole NY Times article here.

Who is doing real journalism?

2008-08-02T22:39:00.002+03:00

So much of the real journalism that is occurring isn't from TV and magazine stars but largely from severely under-paid advocates at public interest groups and anonymous government whistle-blowers who aren't even meant to be "journalists"....

Read the whole Salon.com article here.

The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn

2008-08-01T01:01:00.001+03:00

When Brad Pitt tells Eric Bana in the 2004 film Troy that “there are no pacts between lions and men,” he is not reciting a clever line from the pen of a Hollywood screenwriter. He is speaking Achilles’ words in English as Homer wrote them in Greek more than 2,000 years ago in the Iliad. The tale of the Trojan War has captivated generations of audiences while evolving from its origins as an oral epic to written versions and, finally, to several film adaptations. The power of this story to transcend time, language and culture is clear even today, evidenced by Troy’s robust success around the world.....

Read the whole Scientific American article by clicking here.

Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

2008-07-27T08:26:00.001+03:00

The Future of Reading
Digital Versus Print

This is the first in a series of New York Times articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read.

Read the first article here.

My Son, the Blogger: An M.D. Trades Medicine for Apple Rumors

2008-07-22T21:36:00.002+03:00

For eight years, Arnold Kim has been trading gossip, rumor and facts about Apple, the notoriously secretive computer company, on his Web site, MacRumors.com.

It had been a hobby — albeit a time-consuming one — while Dr. Kim earned his medical degree. He kept at it as he completed his medical training and began diagnosing patients’ kidney problems. Dr. Kim’s Web site now attracts more than 4.4 million people and 40 million page views a month, according to Quantcast, making it one of the most popular technology Web sites.

It is enough to make Dr. Kim hang up his stethoscope. This month he stopped practicing medicine and started blogging full time....

Read the whole article here.

Gore Wows the Netroots Crowd

2008-07-19T22:00:00.001+03:00

AUSTIN — Former Vice President Al Gore surprised a convention of bloggers here, appearing on stage after Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, held a question-and-answer session that included tough questions on the wiretapping bill....

Read the entire NY Times article here.

Basics of Video

2008-07-19T13:19:00.002+03:00

PART I

PART II

PART III

Wikipedia Goes to Alexandria, Home of Other Great Reference Works

2008-07-18T11:24:00.000+03:00

More than 600 Wikipedia contributors, administrators and fans from 47 countries gathered Thursday in Alexandria, Egypt — home to the world’s greatest library about 2,000 years ago — for their annual gathering to marvel at what they’ve accomplished, fret over what’s gone wrong and plan for the future.....

Read the whole NY Times article here.

Who is this??

2008-07-18T11:12:00.002+03:00

Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Reduce Vandalism on Pages

2008-07-18T11:10:00.001+03:00

Wikipedia is considering a basic change to its editing philosophy to cut down on vandalism. In the process, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit would add a layer of hierarchy and eliminate some of the spontaneity that has made the site, at times, an informal source of news....

Read full NY Times article here.

Web 2.0: Using The Internet Intelligently

2008-07-18T10:52:00.001+03:00

Digital Photo Tools and Extensions

2008-07-17T19:19:00.002+03:00

Promoting your Blog.

2008-07-17T16:33:00.002+03:00

So now that you have finished putting up content on your blog it's time to make it known to the world.

1) The first step is to recheck the your content for spelling, grammar errors and just make sure your putting up what your trying to convey. The reason you want to be this accurate is because if you do make errors and then you fix them it may take sometime for the search engine to re-index your page thus your site in the page rank page of google might show inaccurate descriptions even though you may have fixed the error. So for every post always wait until you have everything. It is better to post nothing at all if you haven't finished your content rather than publishing half baked content.
2) Get your site listed on google
Go to
http://www.google.com/addurl/
to do this. Google is where almost everyone first goes to search for a topic so your aim for each blog post is to make the post high on google's page ranking page.

How does the google page ranking system work?

Well the page ranking system is run by an algorithm (an equation run into a computer to produce an output). The exact algorithm is not known and it changes all the time. But the creators of google have released the following information that the system is run like the citation system of academia. Basically lets say you have 3 research papers one was on breast cancer published from the US another on lung cancer published from Denmark and another was on skin cancer from Japan and they all cited for one of there sources Dr Breken then Dr Breken would become more credible. It’s the same with websites the more websites that have links to your site the higher you'll be in the page rank of google.

3)So how do I get my links into other sites?
Submit your blogs and news articles to sites like
digg.com
newsvine.com
slashdot.org
i-am-bored.com
isnare.com

These are directories, forums or news portals. There are many of them but digg is the top one.

You could also start a group to promote your blog in your favorite online social network like facebook here is an article on that:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/25/using-facebook-pages-to-promote-your-blog/

4)How else do I get people to view my blog?
a) Go around view websites, blogs and forums and then comment on topics. Leave constructive feed back not fluff. Sign your name and blog address at the end of the message maybe the owners of those sites come to your blog.
b) Promote your blog in real life print some flyers throw a party.

5)Change your content regularly.
Google likes when you change your content regularly more topics made equals more search hits equals higher page rank.

A lot of what I'm saying can be summarized in the site

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/28/19-strategies-for-finding-readers/

So I hope this helps,

Happy Blogging

CJ Staff

5 tips for blog beginners

2008-07-17T16:17:00.004+03:00

Nice post for blog beginners:

5 tips for blog beginners

Alternative Web Browsers

2008-07-17T12:17:00.002+03:00

How to use Flock Web Browser?

Collaborative Workspaces

2008-07-16T23:00:00.006+03:00

Hey everybody, yesterday we learned about collaborative workspaces. We looked at four main tools:

Wikis, e.g. Wikipedia and Debatepedia. To learn more about WikiMedia or to create your own wiki (it's really easy!) go to the WikiMedia homepage. You all got to experience how easy it is to edit wiki pages without knowing any code, but if you do want to learn more about editing wiki pages, check out these links: Editing Cheatsheet and Editing Tools.

Google Docs. Use Google Docs! This is one of the easiest and most useful collaborative workspaces on the internet.

Forums. We showed you KARL, which is OSI's content managemnt system (CMS). It is not open source and it can only be used by people who are invited by OSI employees. It's a good example, however, of how forums can be better communication tools than email when dealing with lots of people. Don't forget our class has its own KARL community, complete with blog and wiki. If you want to create your own forum community, the best place to do it is probably Google Groups, especially because it will work well with all of your other Google tools and accounts.

Moodle. You saw Moodle, a free, online curriculum software. Creating your own Moodle course is easy. We will also be putting the Citizen Journalism curriculum on Moodle, and as soon as that is complete, we'll give you that link.

Remember! The internet was invented so that people far away could share information with each other. In that sense, the internet's future will be the same as the past. Use collaborative workspaces to connect people and to create new information together with them.

Photo Lesson: Lighting

2008-07-16T22:42:00.008+03:00

Light can be a confusing subject. A lot of the terminology carries over from film technology, and different digital cameras use different sets of terms.

ISO (also called ASA or EI)
ISO is a measurement of your camera's sensor's sensitivity to light. Below are the ISO settings available on most digital cameras. As the number doubles, so does the light sensitivity. But as light sensitivity increases, the graininess ("digital noise") of an image increases.

100 - Very crisp image, very low light sensitivity
200
400 - Decent image clarity, decent light sensitivity.
800
1600 - Very noisy image, very high light sensitivity

I do not recommend shooting at an ISO above 400 unless the light conditions make it absolutely necessary. Most simple digital cameras severely decrease in image quality after ISO 400.

Shutter Speed
Very simply put, shutter speed is the amount of time your shutter is open. It is the amount of time the image sensor is taking in light. Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. For example, "60" actually represents 1/60 of a second. A slower shutter speed (lower number) takes in more light than a faster shutter speed (higher number).

When photographing a moving subject, a slow shutter speed will lead to motion blur:

A high shutter speed will produce a more "frozen" image:

Aperture (F-stops)
Aperture is, simply put, the size of the hole that lets in light when the shutter opens. F-stops are the basic measurement of aperture, but most point-and-shoot digital cameras do not use f-stops. If you wish to learn more about f-stops, please read this article.

What To Do If Your Camera Does Not Have Aperture/Shutter Speed Settings

Many point-and-shoot digital cameras do not allow you to control aperture and shutter speed. Instead, they combine the two into a single setting called "EV" (Exposure Value) or "Exp." In these settings you will see a readout somewhat like this:

< -2 . . 1 . . 0 . . 1 . . 2+ >

By default, the camera will be set to the midpoint 0. Pushing it up to 1 will double the amount of light. Pushing it to 2 will quadruple the light. Likewise, moving down to -1 will cut the light in half, and -2 will divide it by four.

White Balance
When your camera takes a picture, it compresses the raw data that the sensor receives into a jpeg file. When it does this, it decides what color in the image is white, and all of the other colors are decided in relation to the color white.

While it all light may appear to be the same color to the untrained eye, different light sources the sun, flouresent bubs, etc.) have different hues. White balance is used to make white objects appear white, and the other colors appear natural as a result.

You camera has several white balance settings, usually including Auto, Sunlight, Cloudy, Florescent, Flash, Custom (and often others). Automatic white balance is often inaccurate, so it is worth trying one of the other settings. Take a picture or two to see how the image turns out.

For the most accurate color, use Custom (Manual) white balance. This setting allows you to set the white balance based on on actual white object. To do so, place a white piece of paper directly in your light source. Point the camera at the paper and make sure it fills the frame (you should see nothing but white, and no shadow). Select the Custom/Manual white balance, and then hit "OK" (called "Func." on some cameras). You white balance will now be set perfectly for your lighting conditions. Remember: if the light changes at all, you will need to reset the white balance.

Supplementary Materials

The Exposure Triangle (an explanation of the relationship between shutterspeed, ISO, and aperture)
ISO Settings in Digital Photography
Introduction to Aperture in Digital Photography
Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography
Introduction to White Balance
Expressing Motion In Photography (This article discusses different uses of shutter speed to display motion)

Adding a News Feed to your Blog

2008-07-16T20:49:00.000+03:00

• go to http://news.google.com/
• Click on Edit this personalized page
• Click on Add a Custom Section
• Type in keywords related to the theme of your blog
• Specify number of stories
• Click on Add Section
• Back in Google News, click on section title (e.g., Uganda)
• Click on RSS in left frame
• A new page pops up. Click on Add to Google Reader
• In Blogger, go to Layout
• Click on Add a Page Element
• Now here's the tricky part. To add this feed to your blog, instead of going to Feed, go to Blog List and click on Add to Blog
• In the Configure window, delete the title unless you're going to have more than one news feed
• In the bottom window click on Add a Blog to your List
• Click on Import Subscriptions from Google Reader
• Find your feed and click in its box and then on Add.
• Click on Save
• Back in the Blogger layout page you can rearrange the order of the items in the right frame if you like
• Save your changes and view post

here's one for you

2008-07-15T17:56:00.003+03:00

can u decorate and at the same time addvocate or does decorate exclude addvocate?

Positive Thinking

2008-07-15T16:20:00.001+03:00

Here is a post that I liked on my friend's blog. Positive Thinking

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Stephen Colbert on Wikipedia

2008-07-15T15:02:00.006+03:00

Click here to read how Stephen Colbert got blocked by Wikipedia. Click on the links below to view the videos.

Wikiality

Wiki Lobbying

Interview with Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

_______________

And click here to see Colbert's incredible speech at the Correspondent's Dinner where he attacked George Bush, who was sitting a few feet away.

Web 2.0 Photo Tools

2008-07-15T12:22:00.004+03:00

Students: This blog post is not finished. I posted this version so we would have the links in class. A more thorough post will soon be available.PICASA WEB ALBUMS

Let's do this.

GEOTAGGING

You can easily geotag your photos using Picasa and Google Earth.

Publish and map your photos with Picasa (Picasa Web Albums and geotagging with Google Earth)
Embed a Google Map in your website.

PANORAMAS

STOP MOTION

Free time lapse footage at openfootage.net
How to assemble a stop motion movie in Windows Movie Maker.

PHOTOSTREAMS CHDK

CHDK Wiki (Includes list of supported cameras at left)
CHDK Guide from Lifehacker
A more thorough guide to using a CHDK-equipped camera from Hack-A-Day

FIREFOX (AND FLOCK)

Tweak Firefox to display "true" color (by recognizing color space)
View photos with Piclens.
BREAK!
Use Greasemonkey to customize other websites
Better Gmail and Better GReader

SMART PEOPLE USE GOOGLE

This is not your daddy's search engine. Do not type full sentences into Google.
Use search modifiers (Google Cheat Sheet)
Ten Obscure Google Search Tricks from Lifehacker's Google School
Use Google Alerts to have Google email you search results for a certain term.

GMAIL IS ALSO GREAT

Use labels and filters to organize your email (manually and automatically!)
Search within your mail with modifiers to find anything.
Use Quick Links to find your media .

WEB 2.0 - FEEDS MAKE EVERYTHING ADAPTABLE

Grammar check example

2008-07-15T12:16:00.003+03:00

I thought it might be useful to show the power and the limitations of grammar checkers.

Let's take the following paragraph written by a non-native writer:

And anyway these kind of youth activities is good way how to understand how people are living in different countries. Understand the way how they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for her – Europe. Czech Republic, Prague, small villages in France and Latvia is that what had attracted the attention of young Chinese girl.

If you run this through Microsoft Word's grammar checker and accept their changes, you get the following:

And anyway these kinds of youth activities are good way how to understand how people are living in different countries. Understand the way that they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Pandy conquers almost all China. She has traveled in most parts of the China. She has even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for her – Europe. Czech Republic, Prague, small villages in France and Latvia is that what had attracted the attention of young Chinese girl.

Here's what the grammar checker changed:
• singular kind to plural kinds
• the way how they are thinking is changed to the way that they are thinking
• passive voice of Almost all China is conquered by Pandy replaced by active voice of Pandy conquers almost all China.
• Incorrect verb tense of She have traveled is replaced by she has traveled.
• Incorrect verb tense of She have even been is replaced by she has even been

Although I actually prefer the passive voice in the "conquered" sentence above, the other Microsoft Word edits are correct and will improve your writing. However, to convert this to English that is more grammatically correct and more idiomatic, I would rewrite it as follows:

These kinds of youth activities are a good way to understand how people are living in different countries, the way that they are thinking and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all of China has been conquered by Pandy. She has even been in Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit brand new places in Europe: Prague in the Czech Republic and small villages in France and Latvia are what attracted the attention of this young Chinese girl.

Note the deletions as much as the substitutions. The original version is 94 words; mine is 85.

Finally, the open source program Language Tools only made the following three suggestions, which are basically just one suggestion:

Use third-person verb with 'She': has, hasn, hast, hath or was.
... and behaving. “I'm crazy about traveling!” Pandy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take...
Use third-person verb with 'She': has, hasn, hast, hath or was.
...ndy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for...
The pronoun 'She' must be used with a third-person verb: has, hasn, hast, hath.
...ndy says. Almost all China is conquered by Pandy. She have traveled in most parts of the China. She have even been in the Africa. But now she is going to take her camera and visit most brand new place for...

Oh, well, not too useful, eh? See for yourself at: http://community.languagetool.org/

Grammar Checkers

2008-07-15T08:52:00.004+03:00

We all know about spell checkers, but fewer people know or use grammar checkers. There is one built into Microsoft Word. The only open source program I've found is Language Tool. I tried the practice window on their web site and the results, unfortunately, were quite poor, clearly worse than Microsoft Word's grammar checker.

The algorithms that go into these programs are by nature inexact, as it is very difficult for the computer to know the writer's intentions. Probably half of the suggestions are just plain wrong. However, the ones you can use may prove valuable, especially if English is not your first language.

Citizen Journalism Expert Jay Rosen Answers Your Questions

2008-07-15T07:27:00.002+03:00

Good discussion of issues affecting citizen journalists.

"This is a "must read" for anyone interested in the growing "citizen journalism" movement either as a writer/editor or as an audience member -- and please note that Rosen and many others say, over and over, that one of the major shifts in the news media, especially online, is that there is no longer any need to be one or the other instead of both." [from intro]

Click here.

Photo Ethics

2008-07-14T11:52:00.009+03:00

"Any change to a news photo - any violation of that moment - is a lie. Big or small, any lie damages your credibility." --John Long, NPPA co-chair

Recap

We spoke in class the other day about ethical photography and photo editing. Together, we looked at and discussed some examples of unethical photo manipulations throughout history. Here are a couple definitions I want to make sure you understand:

Imposing Meaning
The act of manipulating or altering a photograph in a way that adds a message that is not already present in the image. This typically occurs during editing, but can also occur during shooting.

Obscuring Meaning
The act of manipulating or altering a photograph in a way that intentionally masks or obfuscates the information present in the photograph. Again, this can occur in editing (for example, cropping out a person who is affecting the behavior of another person in frame) or during shooting (simply by not including important elements in the frame, or by framing a photograph in a way that creates a relationship between two unrelated subjects).

So what can you change when editing a photograph? You may adjust brightness and contrast, or "dodge" and "burn" (darken or lighten areas of the photo). But you may only do so slightly, in a way that clarifies the image. You must not use these techniques to make a photo appear more dramatic (as in the case of the TIME Magazine cover featuring O.J. Simpson). You may crop a photo, but only if you do not remove any important information. Cropping is extremely dangerous territory. You are better of avoiding cropping all together. During our lesson, Pasqual mentioned that he only crops when he did not have time to switch from a wide lens, and thus the important information (the subject) is obscured (too small).

Homework

I would like you all to read Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography by John Long of the National Press Photographer's Association. Although it was written nearly a decade ago, the piece is still relevant. Long makes an interesting (and important) distinction between matters of taste and matters of ethics.

Resources and Supplementary Materials

Written Materials:

Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography (Read all the sections at on the left. If your internet connection is running slow, there is a plain text version here, but it lacks the example photos)
DigitalCustom Model Ethics Guidelines (A detailed set of guidelines on photo ethics from a company that specializes in professional photo editing)
The New York Times: Guidelines on Our Integrity(The section on photography is at the very bottom, but the whole thing is worth reading, as you all write as well)
"The Camera Never Lies, but the Software Can" (A 2004 New York Times article about photo manipulation, in response to the fake John Kerry/Jane Fonda photo)
"Research News From Applied Cognitive Psychology Suggests Photos Can Change History" (A news piece about the ACP study I mentioned in class. The actual study is not yet available online.)

Photographic Examples:

Photo Tampering Throughout History (A timeline that includes several of the examples we viewed in class, as well as an example from this past week!)

Exporting MP3's in Audacity

2008-07-14T11:21:00.003+03:00

Download the LAME encoder For Audacity For Windows: http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/
1. Save the file to the libmp3lame-win-3.97.zip file to the desktop
Open the Zip file and extract it to your My Documents folder.
1. Double click on the libmp3lame-win-3.97.zip file on your desktop
2. Click on Extract All Files on the left to open the extraction Wizard
3. In the Extraction Wizard, make sure that your files are extracting to your My Documents folder
Open your Audacity Project
Go to File> Export as MP3
Audacity will ask you to locate the LAME encoder (lame_enc.dll)
1. Find the lamd_enc.dll file in the libmp3lame-3.97 folder in My Documents and open it
2. Unless you move or delete this file you will never need to do this again when exporting MP3
Fill out your ID3 tag information
1. This the in formation that will show up in iTunes, people's media players and iPods
  - If you dont fill this out most players will just display the file name
2. I suggest putting in the following information
  - Title: The Title for this interview
  - Artist: Your name
  - Album: The name of your blog
  - Year: the year of you posted this pod cast
  - Genre: Speech
  - Comments: A brief summery of what your interview is about

Photojournalism Slideshow for BorFest

2008-07-12T18:31:00.002+03:00

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another thought

2008-07-12T14:50:00.004+03:00

another thought on systems...

remember symbol+correlation=system

a must see:)

2008-07-12T13:38:00.003+03:00

http://www.rototype.org/kompozicije_an.html

The link to the page of one of my professors. Jaka Bonča. He's a Slovene architect that works with symbols and fonts. and the biggest influence for my work and theories, next to NSK (laibach); their link was published on the blog be4. His work is very visual orientated but still works on mathematical principals. Just to get u thinking in terms of connecting visual to language

Cosmopolitan

art as advocacy

2008-07-12T13:31:00.001+03:00

So dear visual communicators:)
We have only one lesson left and after that it's all about finishing the projects... So don't forget that u still have some assignments to finish:)

So in the next 2 days, till Monday you should all have a clear idea about what the visual orientated project is going to be. So far you were supposed to come up with solutions for the handouts that I gave u now it's time to work on your own projects. Think in thermos of what could add to your topic and think how to incorporate the things that you worked on so far. Plus don't forget to finish the assignments that were given to you so far...

So it's visual time everybody... until next time:
Cosmopolitan

Bob Herbert columns

2008-07-11T17:09:00.008+03:00

Bob Herbert is a columnist for The New York Times who frequently uses human interest stories as part of his opinion pieces. Here are two such pieces:

The Man in the Room
Who was the tall young man, the quiet guy with the small wire-rimmed glasses, who was spending the entire day, every day, with the badly wounded soldier in room 5711 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center?

Letters From Vermont
Despite the focus on the housing crisis, gasoline prices and the economy in general, the press has not done a good job capturing the intense economic anxiety — and even dread, in some cases — that has gripped tens of millions of working Americans, including many who consider themselves solidly middle class.

Go to the complete archive of Bob Herbert articles by clicking here.

Writing Assignment #6

2008-07-11T15:50:00.004+03:00

For this assignment you will be writing a feature article profiling one of your classmates (see list below). Please follow these steps:

1. Read the article in the post below this one on feature story writing.
2. Read the stories you all wrote for your previous writing assignment.
3. Interview your subject with an eye toward getting essential information and uncovering interesting stories.
4. Make notes and an outline until you have determined your story angle.
5. If you have any further questions, ask them!
6. Write an article profiling your subject with an emphasis on "human interest" and storytelling. Use at least two photographs and make use of storytelling elements whenever possible.

Who to write about:
Aleksey write about Ance
Ance write about Sally
Sally write about Forest
Forest write about Murad
Murad write about Megan
Megan write about Aleksandrs
Aleksandrs write about Pandy
Pandy write about Shelby
Shelby write about Tonny
Tonny write about Effie
Effie write about Sierra
Sierra write about Aleksey

Feature Story Writing

2008-07-11T15:43:00.002+03:00

by Jeffrey Romanow

Some of the basic elements of a feature news story:
a. Focus on less timely subject matter
b. Use creative leads rather than straight news leads
c. Use many sources, lively quotes, creative endings, and descriptive writing to tell their story.

1. Creativity
• All good writing springs from creativity, including feature and news reporting even though it is more formal in style than other programs:
Creativity involves:
• Selecting specific details that paint pictures and allow the reader to imagine what is being described.
What to Say: Finding the Angle
• The first step in developing a story is to find the angle, or the main point of the story. One way to find the angle is to clarify the facts and then ask the question, "So what?"
• To answer the "so what?" question, you need to understand who the readers are. What news interests them? What information is relevant to their daily lives? What are they worried about? What do they feel strongly about?
• The answer to "so what?" will lead to the story angle.
The necessity of an angle
• The angle is what makes readers say, "Oh, that's important," or "That's interesting."
• Identifying the angle helps to sharpen focus for the story and leads to clearer writing. A story without an angle that covers every aspect of an issue will be confusing and lose readers

Finding the angle
While reviewing a story idea, ask:
• What is happening or what has been happening?
• Why is the story important?
• Why will readers care about this story?
• What will readers want to know?

Think about:
Readers
a. Who are they?
b. What will make them identify with the story and find it relevant and interesting?
c. What do they already know or think about the issue?
d. What other questions would they like to have answered?
e. Why did the event occur?
f. What do people think about the event that occurred?
g. Who is involved in the event and why?
h. Will something happen in the future as a result of the news event

How to get a podcast into blogspot.com

2008-07-10T17:13:00.002+03:00

Sorry, your browser doesn't support iframes. You need a newer browser to view this page.

Podsafe Music

2008-07-10T09:19:00.001+03:00

Citizen Journalism: Photojournalism

2008-07-08T18:00:00.002+03:00

CJ Writing Assignments #4 and #5 — due this Thursday

2008-07-08T08:01:00.006+03:00

Assignment 4: Web Research
Do some web research and find at least one good article from a reputable source that relates directly to the subject matter of your blog. Write a short intro to this article (a few sentences) and then provide a link to it. For example...
________________________
Harsh treatment awaits children fleeing war and persecution
In this article from The Guardian (London) dated June 3, 2008, the reporter follows the lives of children fleeing the horrors of war and civil turmoil in such places as Afghanistan and the Congo to their arrival in Greece, where they are liable to end up in abysmal conditions, housed in detention centers alongside hardened criminals.

Click here to read the whole article.
_________________________

Reminder: to create a link to the article, do the following:
• copy the URL of the article to the clipboard
• back in the Blogger "New Post" window, highlight the word or words you want them to click on to get to the article
• click on the link icon (= a chain) in the tool bar at the top of the New Post edit window
• paste in the URL you just copied

Assignment 5: Storytelling
Telling a good story is not just for movies and novels, it's also a key skill for the journalist. Your first storytelling assignment is to simply tell a story in a page or two. You can tell any story you want. It does not have to have anything to do with your blog or to be "newsworthy." All stories will be read aloud in class!

Some key components to consider:
• characterization
• visualization of their world
• conflicting forces
• dramatic tension
• empathy
• building our interest (the un-inverted pyramid!)
• playing with expectations; plot "twists"
• the ending offers a payoff

Interesting Example of Investigative Reporting that Mixes Traditional and Citizen Journalism

2008-07-07T19:07:00.005+03:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/04/zimbabwe1?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

I think this is an interesting example of the blurring lines between traditional and citizen journalism. This is a professionally produced piece that relies heavily on a citizen journalist whose video footage was recorded with a camera the Guardian supplied him. Clearly, there were professional reporters involved in the production and editing of this piece. However, without a citizen journalist willing to work with new media, the Guardian would have been unable to produce this piece.

Furthermore, it’s a piece produced by a newspaper that relies on heavily on video footage that readers of the print edition would only be able to view over the Internet. I suspect that this report is featured in today’s print edition of the Guardian. The eyewitness account of voter fraud that Mr .Yuda provides likely wouldn’t have been printed were there not the accompanying video.
Sadly, this piece will likely have no effect whatsoever on the mess that Mugabe has made of Zimbabwe, but it’s nonetheless an interesting example of the mixture of old and new media.

—Noel S.

Podsafe Music

2008-07-07T17:38:00.001+03:00

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Blogging Homework Assignment 3

2008-07-07T15:26:00.001+03:00

For those of you using your own laptops in class please install
itunes:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

you will need it to distribute your own podcasts (which I will teach you how to do in my next lesson) and listen other peoples podcasts.

For those of you using the idebate (OSI) laptops don't worry itunes will be on them by tomorrow.

Good Luck,
Jonathan Sadler

The Facebooker Who Friended Obama

2008-07-07T14:06:00.002+03:00

An interesting article in today's New York Times about the 24-year-old co-founder of Facebook joining the Barack Obama campaign:

Read it here.

Conducting an Interview

2008-07-07T10:20:00.005+03:00

Overview

Interviewing is a tricky, often overlooked skill. An interviewer must coordinate several things at the same time: Listening, observing body language, taking notes, planning ahead, recording good audio, and still making the interviewee feel comfortable. Like an actor, an interviewer must coordinate several processes, all the while attempting to appear natural. The good news is this process will become more instinctive and natural the more you practice conducting an interview. At its best, an interview should feel like a conversation. And the more your interviewee feels this way, the more they feel engaged, the better the interview will go.

Tips For Conducting An Interview

Make sure your equipment works BEFORE you get to your interview.
Be prepared for your interviewee. Do research. If they have been interviewed for a public media source before, be sure you have read/seen this interview.
Make sure you know how much time you have to conduct an interview. Don't ask for too much, as you may intimidate the interviewee. Don't ask for too little, or you might not get enough out of the interview. Remember: If an interview goes well, the interviewee will probably let it run on longer.
Use an icebreaker, a question that has nothing to do with your interview topic, to get interviewee comfortable. For example, you can ask them to spell their name (and check your recording levels as they do so).
Write your questions in advance. Write them in a logical order, so that one question flows into the next.
Ask open-ended questions. Do not ask yes/no questions.
Listen to your subject during the interview. Don't just wait for later to
Do not be afraid to stray away from your questions and your order of questions. And...
Improvise. Ask follow-up questions.
Don't ramble on when you ask questions. Keep your questions short.
Don't cut your interviewee off. If they say something that raises a question in your mind, write it down and ask it later when they are finished talking.
Use silence. Sometimes the best way to get a person to talk is to remain silent when they pause, and...
Make eye contact. This is key to making the person feel like the interview is a conversation.
Don't state your aim. You risk alienating your subject if you ask this. Use this question as a LAST RESORT. Ask it at the end of an interview in order to get any information you may have missed.
Instead write oblique questions that will cause your interviewee to talk about your aim without you actually stating it.

Supplementary Materials

Writing for WEB (Video)

2008-07-07T10:18:00.001+03:00

2008-07-06T15:43:00.011+03:00

George Orwell

Politics and the English Language

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.
Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.
Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)

3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?
Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)

4. All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.
Communist pamphlet

5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream — as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!
Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.

DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e., e. g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers(1). The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

MEANINGLESS WORDS. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective considerations of contemporary phenomena’ — would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry — when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech — it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: ‘[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’ You see, he ‘feels impelled’ to write — feels, presumably, that he has something new to say — and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence(3), to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.
To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.

—1946

Good Writing — Something We Can All Do

2008-07-06T15:12:00.004+03:00

This is my presentation from earlier in the week on good writing, with a few changes for the better. This was created on the Mac using Keynote, but you can also export as Powerpoint. I actually exported as a .pdf because that seemed to work best for uploading it to slideshare.com, the youTube of slideshows. (Thanks to Jumbo for the alert!) Once it's up on Slideshare, you can copy the embed code into the html of your blog post.

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2008-07-06T11:13:00.007+03:00

Writing

John's Lecture

Citizen Journalism: Writing (Jesse's Lecture)

2008-07-05T19:01:00.005+03:00

Citizen Journalism: Writing(Jesse's Lecture)

Citizen Journalism: Writing (Jesse's Lecture)_1

Audio #1: DO NOT BLOW INTO THE MICROPHONE!

2008-07-05T09:53:00.002+03:00

Hi Guys! This is all the stuff I talked about yesterday for your reviewing pleasure. Good luck with your interviews today and don't forget it's always better to get it right the first time than to try to fix it later.

DO NOT BLOW INTO THE MICROPHONE!
- This will damage the microphone
- Use the wind screen to reduce potential damage to the microphone
When you turn the recorder on:
- Make sure the quality is set at 44.1k (3)
  - 44.1k = CD's, music recording
  - mp3 = low quality, small file size
  - 48k = DVD, for synchronizing with film and video
  - 96k = Only liars can hear the difference between this and 48k
- Make sure the Recorder is in stereo mode
  - the mode light is on
  - Up to 2 external microphones can be connected to the recorders on the bottom, but this is not necessary for our purposes
DO NOT BLOW INTO THE MICROPHONE!
- This will damage the microphone
Put headphones into the PHONES jack
- Do not use the LINE OUT jack. It will be too quiet for you to hear. It is designed for connecting the recorder to speakers.
When recording press REC once to check your level
- level should peak between -12 and -6 on the meter
  - every time your hit 0 you will get distortion
  - If we were using analog tape you would get partial distortion when ever you get near 0.
  - Because we are recording digitally your sound will become totally distorted if your signal reaches 0
- use the MIC switch on the right to adjust microphone sensitivity. MEDIUM is recommended.
DO NOT BLOW INTO THE MICROPHONE!
- This will damage the microphone
Press REC again and recording will start
- notice fill name STE-000.wav
  - I advise you to keep a log of which files contain which interviews. It will make things much easier when it comes time to edit.
Stop recording by pressing REC again
DO NOT BLOW INTO THE MICROPHONE!
- This will damage the microphone
Listen to what you have recorded by pressing up on the menu button
- This will loop all the recordings on the recorder
- Press the menu button right to skip ahead, hold to fast forward
- Press the menu button left to skip back, hold to rewind
When recording you want people to talk ACROSS the microphone NOT directly INTO the microphone
- hold the microphone just below the mouth
- Holding the microphone too close to the mouth causes Proximity effect
  - Proximity Effect causes extra bass frequencies on your recordings
    - It may sound cool sometimes but too much bass (as well as extremely high frequencies) can cause ear fatigue and people will turn your show off
DO NOT BLOW INTO THE MICROPHONE!
- This will damage the microphone

Blogging Homework Assignment 2

2008-07-04T20:50:00.003+03:00

For those of you using your own laptops and not the idebate ones you must install the following software so you can edit your blogs properly.

The first software is called firefox:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

(it is a internet browser)

the second is called flash
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

(it is a plugin that allows you to view video over the internet)

Finally visit and look at your classmates blogs
http://cjlearning.blogspot.com/2008/07/cj-buddy-list.html

If you have not emailed your blog address yet that is why it is not up there.
Please if you have not done it as yet do it as soon as possible

If you do decide to change your blog address you must email me the new one so the teachers can look at it and it can be posted on the buddy list so the other students can see it.

Good Luck,
Jonathan Sadler

Photography Lesson: Basic Shot Composition

2008-07-04T20:06:00.007+03:00

Basic Shot Composition

Citizen Journalism: Art Lesson

2008-07-04T10:25:00.004+03:00

Citizen Journalism: Art Lesson from Mite Kuzevski on Vimeo.

Bor/Nat Art as Advocacy Lesson Recap and Homework

2008-07-04T10:19:00.007+03:00

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful." --John Cage.

Recap

Today we took a look at what it is that makes a "beautiful" or "ugly" image. We started by looking at a project by the Russian emigrant artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid called "The Most Wanted Paintings." In this project, the artists conducted surveys regarding what people like and dislike about art, and created the "Most Wanted" and "Least Wanted" paintings for several countries, and the web.

We talked about whether or not we liked the images. Some students enjoyed the "most wanted" paintings, others hated them. Komar and Melamid's site has a section of letters they have received in response to their project, which is worth looking at. People seem to hate the project!

We also talked about the web's least wanted painting (above), which contains intensely layered art- related signs. This is worth thinking about: Why would people hate this art-referencing image so much?

We discussed what the results of the survey tell us. Megan suggested that people like images that they are comfortable with. We then briefly discussed how we can play with people's "comfort zones" to get our message across. I showed a couple examples from the British "street artist" Banksy:

We discussed what out own "least wanted painting" would be. Some students spoke more of the ideas behind the art they like and don't like. Others mentioned specific visual elements. It seemed that some students' least wanted visual elements sounded attractive to other students.

We talked about about decreased attention spans in society, and ways that you might try to hold people's attention. Bor pointed out that the way art is displayed greatly affects the way it is perceived. He showed this photo of an exhibition by the group NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst):

Homework

Your assignment (due Monday) is to create an image that you hate. You may use any medium or combination of media, (drawing, photography, collage, etc.) to create your own "Least Wanted" image. You must be sure that you do not like your final product.

Supplementary Materials

More from NSK: Was Ist Kunst? (What Is Art?)
Two documentaries on NSK: Predictions of Fire and Laibach: A film from Solvenia-Occupied Europe NATO Tour
Salvador Dali's Christus Hypercubus (seen in the web's least favorite painting) and some other interesting Dali paintings:

Tonnie said he liked art that allowed him to imagine the artist painting it. This might not be what he was talking about, but it made me think of these images:

The Human Condition by Renee Magritte
Drawing Hands by M.C. Escher

A few more images to consider:

Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon (The Prostitutes of Avignon)
Manet's Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe (Lunch in the Grass)
This picture by Daniel Mercadante
This photo and this photo of an installation by Pixnit
Courbet's L'Origine Du Monde (The Origin of the World)
The Holy Virgin Mary, by Chris Ofili (a Black Virgin Mary splattered in elephant feces).

Writing Assignment #3

2008-07-04T08:24:00.003+03:00

Department of Redundancy Department

Here's an exercise to practice writing more concisely.

First read the following short article, Writing Shorter Sentences.

Next, read the paragraph below and try to identify:
• its main ideas
• inefficient language

While in many nations of the world, its beleaguered and downtrodden citizens are at the present time engaged in a struggle fighting in order to win democratic voting rights, in the United States less than half of the adult American population bothers to vote on election day on account of the fact that they do not really care about the outcome of the elections or who wins. However, it should be noted that this current year we may all see a real change in the political situation in the United States, home of voter apathy, thanks in no small part to the exciting and dazzling primary campaigns waged by Hilary Clinton and her ultimately triumphant opponent, the victorious Barack Obama, which let’s face it attracted far more voters than ever before in the long history of these United States. In conclusion, things are definitely looking up for those of us who care about such matters as these.

This paragraph has 157 words. Your assignment is to rewrite it in 100 words or less, retaining all essential information. Submit your version by posting a comment to this blog. Please complete by tomorrow (Saturday).

Addendum:
Word count tools are now a standard feature in word processing programs. Here's what it looks like in Open Office:

Citizen Journalism: Introduction Unit#2

2008-07-04T00:42:00.002+03:00

They write better by writing shorter.

2008-07-03T15:58:00.002+03:00

Click here for this Slate article on "the best writers at the NY Times."

50 Open Source Resources for Online Writers

2008-07-03T14:26:00.000+03:00

Via Job Profiles.com, a list of 50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Online Writers.

How We Read Online

2008-07-03T13:57:00.002+03:00

from: http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/

Via Slate: Lazy Bastards: How we read online.. It's based on Jakob Nielsen's principles, and it's old stuff to veteran webwriters, but it could be useful in explaining to others why some webtext succeeds and other webtext fails.

In this connection, see also Is Google Making Us Stupid? in the July/August 2008 Atlantic.

Blogs About Writing

2008-07-03T13:53:00.001+03:00

BlogCatalog.com has a directory of blogs about writing.

You can find it here.

Writing for WEB

2008-07-03T12:07:00.002+03:00

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Photojournalism Lesson #2 Recap & Homework

2008-07-03T10:43:00.001+03:00

In Lesson Two, we discussed the concepts of lookspace and candid vs. posed photography. We also discussed methods of shooting people in public, such as: zooming in from afar, getting close and zooming out, and keeping the camera in front of your face after you take your shot. Then we headed outside to practice shooting people.

Here are some definitions and resources:

Lookspace
Space left in the photo in the direction the subject is facing.
A brief lesson on this: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/give-your-subject-space-to-look-into/

Candid Photograph
Any photo in which the subject is unaware that their picture is being taken. Candid photos are used to capture natural behavior and events as they occur unaffected. The majority if news photographs are candid.

A few tips for shooting candid photos:

Stand far away and zoom in
Stand very close and zoom all the way out. Do not point the camera directly at the subject
Turn off all camera sounds
Do not use flash (sometimes you might need to, but remember that you will only have one chance)

Posed Photograph
A photograph in which the subject is aware of the camera and presents his or herself. This sort of photo is often used to accompany a profile piece or an interview.

HOMEWORK

Take 5 candid photos of 5 different subjects.
Approach 5 people you don't know and ask to take their picture.

Homework Assignment - Principles of Journalism

2008-07-03T10:04:00.003+03:00

Please read the below text and post any questions you have about it in the "comments" section.

Today we learned the basics of structuring a straight news story. Unlike feature stories or opinion stories, news stories are objective reports of the fact. For this reason, as journalists, we should follow some basic principles.

Four guiding principles to keep in mind when writing news stories:

Objectivity. When reporting on the news, it is important to remain objective. Many blog writers choose to insert their opinions into their news stories, but it is also important to be able to write completely objectively, especially if the story is controversial or extremely important.
Integrity/Honesty. Remaining honest is essential if you want your readers to believe what you write on your blog. The most obvious way to do this is to never lie in your stories. And if you do make a mistake, tell your readers and apologize in a future post. To maintain your integrity, you also want to avoid reporting on people and events that you are involved with, unless you clearly state that you are biased in this situation.
Present Both Sides. There are two sides to every news article. Even if you think one side of the story is more important, that may be your own bias. You should always strive to include both sides of the story, because it is more honest, it provides fuller information, and it makes the story more interesting. One way to avoid writing one-sided stories is to never publish an accusation without offering an interview to the person or people being accused.
Use Quotes in Proper Context. Quotes serves as the primary evidence for most news articles. They also make the story more interesting by adding other people's voices to your own. But remember, you have to be careful when using quotes. Here are two rules to follow:

One of the easiest ways to lose your integrity as a journalist is to publish a quote out of context.
Whenever you include a quote, read over the paragraph more than once to make sure that, in the new context of the news article, the quote still has the same meaning as when the person said it. To maintain objectivity you should almost always introduce your quotes with "said." If you try to use more interesting words like "interjected" or "demanded," then you risk inserting your own bias into somebody else's quote.

Legal Death for a Journalist
Below are two legal terms that pertain to journalists that you should know the meaning of. In order to maintain your integrity as a journalist, avoid these problems at all costs:

Libel. "False, written defamation of a person or group." In simple language, that means: writing bad and untrue things about a person or group. If you can prove that what you have published is true, then it is not libel.
Invasion of Privacy. "Published statements that, while true, have a negative effect on an individual or group, and does not affect the general welfare." This prevents journalists from running pieces that attack people for no reason. For example, "Area Man Cheats on Wife." If, as a journalist, you can argue that society should know about this story, then it may be okay to publish an almost identical story. For example, "Bill Clinton Cheats on Wife."

Remember, if you have any questions about this stuff (there's a lot of it, and some of it is pretty confusing!) please ask your questions in the comments section. Thank you.

Structuring a News Story Pt. 2 - The Inverted Pyramid

2008-07-02T23:50:00.006+03:00

The most basic guideline for how to structure a news story is the "inverted pyramid." We already learned about the "lede," which introduces the story. The lede is written so that if the reader stops after the lede, he or she will have gotten the most important information in the article. The inverted pyramid follows that logic, and just says that as the article goes on, the information presented should get less and less important. That way, if, for example, the reader stops reading halfway through the article, he or she will have gotten the more important half of the information. Here are some graphic illustrations of the inverted pyramid:

The Inverted Pyramid - Complex Version

The Inverted Pyramid - Simple Version

In-Class Assignment:
Use the story information from the lede-writing exercise to write a full-length news story. Remember, this should be as short as possible while including all of the necessary and interesting information. Feel free to discard information that you think should not make the story.

Structuring a News Story, Pt. 1 - The Lede

2008-07-02T23:44:00.005+03:00

We already talked about the lede (also spelled "lead"). The lede is the introduction to a news story, and it contains the most important information in the story. It is also the hook of the story, and so it should make the reader want to read on. It is usually the first paragraph of the story, though it can be as short as one sentence and as long as two short paragraphs.

In classical journalism, the lede includes the five W's and the one H:

Who
What
Where
Why
When
How

This is, however, somewhat old-fashioned and outdated. Today most ledes only include some of that information. When writing your lede, you should think about which of those types of information are most important for the story that you are telling.

Here are some example ledes. The first set is taken from recent headlines. These ledes are from hard news stories, they are very straightforward, and they make sure to include the essential information:

"Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans held by rebels in Colombia have been rescued by the Colombian military." --From BBC News, which puts its ledes in boldface.
"A Palestinian man has driven a bulldozer into a bus and several cars in Jerusalem, killing three people, before being shot dead." --From BBC News
"A 19-year-old man suspected of killing a Prince George's County police officer was strangled in the county jail two days after his arrest, the state medical examiner's office concluded yesterday." --From the Washington Post

The next example is also from a straight news story, but it is a little more catchy and imaginative, if less informative:

"Jason Lezak broke his American record in the 100-meter freestyle on Wednesday, then lost it before he could catch his breath." --From the New York Times

The last examples are from features, and they are examples of ledes with little information, but which are written with the intention of getting the reader hooked:

"The best burrito in town is Chinese." --From a food review I wrote.
"Black black black, black, black black, black black, dead." --From an art feature I wrote.

In summary, the two aspects of a good lede are:

The essential information. If the reader only reads the lede, he or she should usually be able to understand the story on its most basic level.
The hook. Ideally the lede is also interesting enough to get the reader hooked so that he or she wants to read on, hopefully until the end of the article.

In-Class Exercise:
Below is a list of information for a news story. Use the essential information to write a lede.

Maria is 14 years old.
Maria is top in her class.
Gloria won second place at the county swim meet.
Maria won the county swim meet.
Maria’s parents are doctors.
Gloria almost won, but Maria passed her at the end.
Maria set the county record for the 2-kilometer race.
Maria goes to Greenland high school.
Gloria won first place last year.

When you are done, please post your lede in the comments section of this blog post!

Introduction Unit Video#1

2008-07-02T00:38:00.001+03:00

Introduction Unit Video

2008-07-01T16:43:00.004+03:00

Finally after many tries I managed to upload one video. This 4 minute video is from the Introduction Unit where everybody introduced him/herself to the group.

Writing Assignment #2

2008-07-01T16:27:00.003+03:00

Please complete this for Thursday.

Write the opening article for your blog. Length can be whatever you think is appropriate to provide essential background and explain your plans for the blog. Try to be persuasive; you are selling your blog in an attempt to attract readers.

Some guidelines:
• Begin with a "lead" that you think will grab attention.
• Explain your personal involvement with the subject matter.
• Make a case, with evidence, for this issue being important.
• Outline the kinds of news that will appear on the blog.
• Spell check your work (Firefox has this feature built in) & proofread it yourself.
• Have someone else read it for clarity.
• Read it out loud for sound & imagery.
• Try to say things your way = development of personal style.

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter

2008-07-01T16:13:00.003+03:00

Check out this blog post for more on this quote and some interesting commentary. — Riley

Blogging Homework Assignment 1

2008-07-01T13:33:00.002+03:00

1) Edit your about page to include more details about yourself taking elements from your resume and past achievements.
2) Make your first post an overview for your main topic for the citizen journalism track. Make it one to two paragraphs. Remember at anytime you can change your individual posts so don't worry if you haven't come up with a fully formed idea yet. John Towsen will help you finalize your idea through writing class.
3) Email the link to your blog to Jonathan at sadler_jon@hotmail.com

Due: Today Tuesday by 4pm

Feel free to go beyond this assignment and make as many posts as your like.

Resources:
What is a Blog?
http://jonathansadler.net/Blogs%20in%20Plain%20English.wmv
right click and save this link

Viewing class surveys, creating your own.

2008-07-01T10:51:00.003+03:00

If you want to view class surveys (or edit yours), you can log onto Survey Monkey as me:

web site: surveymonkey.com
user name: towsen
password: cj

Then click on My Surveys and then on Analyze, then on View, then on Find.

You could also use this web site to create your own surveys for your project!

What is a Blog?

2008-07-01T09:48:00.002+03:00

This is a video explaining what a blog is. (Right click on link and save it, to get this video to your desktop)

Seven Types of Bad Writing

2008-07-01T08:10:00.002+03:00

Riley found this good article on bad writing:

Seven types of bad writing

Photojournalism Lesson #1 Recap & Homework

2008-07-01T01:06:00.019+03:00

Today we went over the 6 basic framings of a photograph, the 3 (or 4!) different angles, the rule of thirds, and headroom. Here are the examples of each. Click on the photos to see a bigger version.

The Extreme Long Shot

The Long Shot

The Medium Shot

Medium Closeup

The Cloesup

The Extreme Closeup

High Angle

Low angle

Eye level

Rule Of Thirds

Using the Diagonal

Examples of Unconventional Framing

The right to blog: freedom’s next frontier

2008-06-30T22:25:00.008+03:00

Noel recommends the following timely article on blogging and the Citizen Media Summit held in Budapest just a few days ago:

The right to blog: freedom’s next frontier

Art As Advocacy Lesson #1: Homework

2008-06-30T18:24:00.001+03:00

Assignment: Create a reaction to this image. Write about it, draw on it, cut it apart, manipulate it, change it, or do whatever else you feel is appropriate to display your reaction.

Photography tips

2008-06-30T17:46:00.000+03:00

Lot of tips for beginner and advanced photography:

Homework #1 — Two Surveys

2008-06-30T11:32:00.004+03:00

Please fill out following two surveys online today. Be as thorough as possible!

CJ Student Questionnaire
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GsLpLQfO70vaZTGicOuCzg_3d_3d

Blog Brainstorming
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5iOToywyQjUMcfje_2bOceeg_3d_3d

Informative videos

2008-06-29T16:48:00.004+03:00

Many to Many - Filmmaker Martin Lucas presents a short video showing the new and growing promise of the “blogosphere.” This is more than individuals publishing their thoughts, it’s a veritable global, public conversation.
How Not to Make a Documentary - Video that shows what you should avoid when you're making your own video. It's useful for any kind of video not just documentary.

Ourmedia Learning Center

2008-06-29T16:13:00.006+03:00

Text tutorials and how-to videos from Ourmedia Learning Center:

Citizen Journalism in Plain English

2008-06-29T15:17:00.006+03:00

Those videos are good starting point for understanding Citizen journalism tools. Click on the links to see them.