New Newseum worth a trip

The opening date still isn’t set, but the Newseum is shaping up to be a must see for journalists in DC when it finally does open this spring. The “interactive museum of news” on Pennsylvania Ave. will be ten times larger than its predecessor in suburban Virginia, which closed in 2002. I [...]

TV getting into the cell phone game?

The Associated Press reports that TV stations will be ready to start transmitting signals for portable electronics like cell phones next year.
The technology represents a “chance for broadcasters to challenge cell-phone carriers, who are trying to sew up the market for mobile TV with their own transmissions,” in what is turning out to be an [...]

Making the most of numbers

Everyone knows that people who go into journalism aren’t any good with numbers, right? I often joke that if they were, they’d be in a more remunerative line of work. But however math averse most journalists are, they have learn how to deal with data because it’s the root of so many great [...]

Learning from TV news

Finally! A newspaper editor has acknowledged that “still folks” can actually learn something from TV photojournalists. And he’s done it in public, no less. Colin Mulvany, the new multimedia editor for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., writes on his new blog that newspaper photojournalists can learn how to tell a more effective story [...]

Managing user-generated content

How much attention should a news organization pay to the comments on its Web site? Should comments from users ever drive coverage? Is it ever appropriate to shut off comments altogether? BBC news manager Peter Horrocks raises these questions in a thoughtful examination of the issues surrounding user-generated content. Horrocks [...]

Remembering Ray Farkas

Legendary. Pioneering. Irrepressible. Ray Farkas was all of those things, and more. He died of colon cancer January 4, 2008; anyone who had the good fortune to know him will miss him terribly. Ray had a long career with NBC News and then launched Off Center Productions, producing a series [...]

Advice for online news sites

Get a breaking news blog and learn to love widgets. OJR editor Robert Niles offers those two suggestions and more in his summary of lessons learned in 2007. Niles says coverage of the Southern California wildfires made the case for blogs:
Blogs are the ideal format for breaking news, as they allow newsrooms to [...]

Shooting in HD

High-definition television promises better images, brighter colors and more detail, so how does shooting in HD change the job of a photojournalist? Al’s Morning Meeting provided Q&A with two photojournalists who are currently working with high-definition video - Richard Adkins of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C., and Manny Sotelo of KUSA-TV in Denver.
Some of the [...]

Archives pose digital dilemma

How should news organizations handle requests to alter their online archives? Most just say ‘no,’ according to a survey of newspaper executives, which found that 95% of respondents consider their print and digital archives to be a “historical record” that should not be changed. As one respondent put it:
There have been several cases [...]

Overused and abused

Every year since 1975, Lake Superior State University has put out a list of words that should be banished for misuse, overuse or general uselessness. The school accepts nominations through its Web site and a committee selects the final list in December.
The winner (or loser?) for 2007: perfect storm. “Overused by the pundits [...]