Citizen Journalism Expert Jay Rosen Answers Your Questions

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

"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

1. 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

2. 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

3. Open your Audacity Project

4. Go to File> Export as MP3

5. 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

6. 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

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another thought

another thought on systems...

remember symbol+correlation=system

a must see:)

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

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