Twitter's death watch trumps Gannett's

Forget blogging about their layoffs. Twitter has a feed called The Media Is Dying that keeps people informed of the industry's latest casualties. The feed - which is both saddening and oddly fascinating - has more than 1,200 followers and, at this point, 138 updates.

All The News That's Fit To Aggregate

NYTimes.com introduced "Times Extra" this morning, a version of the site that links to related news stories and blog posts below New York Times news stories. Does this trial balloon represent a tentative step toward an aggregated home page for the stately news giant?

Utilizing tools from its 2007 acquisition of BlogRunner, stories and posts from a selected number of outlets are dynamically linked to feature news content and NYTimes.com blog content.

Responding to readers' questions earlier this year, Marc Frons, New York Times Company Chief Technology Officer, spoke about the upcoming Times Extra features.

"Later this year we will be releasing a version of our home page we call Times Extra that will contain links to other news sites and blogs alongside the articles we publish. The page uses a technology called BlogRunner that we purchased a few years ago ... The idea is to give our readers as complete a picture as possible of the coverage around the Web on the stories our editors think are important."

It's not a full leap, however: Users must choose to 'opt-in' to Times Extra and they will be automatically returned to the standard version of the site within 24 hours.

Regardless, it's a big step for a company that - despite expanding its online coverage model at a steady pace - has not until this time fully embraced a portal mentality. Time will tell if this version of the page is a success for its audience.

Blog roundup on Times Extra:

• The New York Times Clutters Up Its Homepage With Links From Elsewhere (In Beta) (TechCrunch)
  
• NYTimes, Now Also in News Aggregator Flavor (Mashable)
• Read All About it (Subtraction)
  

The media 'is' out to get us?

Or is that 'are' out to get us? Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield of On The Media reminded listeners this week that 'media' is the plural of 'medium'.



But has popular usage irrevocably changed its definition? As the title of this post suggests, it's commonplace to find references to a singular, monolithic "media", which Gladstone suggests stems from a perception of corporate concentration and 'group think' mentality.

"Do we [On The Media] say, for example, “The media is out to get us” or “The media are out to get us?” We chose “are.” Grammatically it’s a no-brainer... The singular of “data” is “datum.” The singular of “media” is “medium.”

Guilty as charged. How commonplace is the singular usage though? The popular use of a word often portends the future for that piece of dialect, even if the arbiters of proper definition trail behind.


To find out, I conducted a highly unscientific analysis of both Google Trends and Google search results. The singular won both: Google Trends shows the singular used 4-5 times as often in queries and Google search results show the singular with over 11.2 million results to the plural's meager 4.7 million.

On The Media's guest Jeff Jarvis goes on to suggest that the singular is appropriate not because of consolidated corporate control, but because mediums have coalesced to the point where a distinction is no longer relevant.

"Now, still photographers can now do video on their still cameras. Print reporters are doing video as part of their stories. TV reporters are doing video and text and graphics and everything else. So it all becomes one... We all own it now."

Public opinion and arguments about a convergent future noted, Gladstone and Garfield remain unswayed, wrapping up the piece declaring, "are." They are right - for now - just look it up in the dictionary. But the future of "media" is clearly up for grabs.

Really Sad Post

I really don't know what to say to this story. I guess this is reality and Amy is right on, we are very smart to be in school right now. I don't like the headline either but I'm posting it as a I found it: Watch Gannett Layoffs in Slow Motion.

Journalists, Technology, Jail?

On Nov. 24, Philadelphia anchor Larry Mendte was sentenced to six months house arrest, three years probation, 250 hours of community service and fined $5,000 for hacking into his co-anchor, Alycia Lane's email accounts. The Philadelphia Inquirer detailed the case about the dueling anchors.

Lane had been in the news for more than a year. First she sent photos of herself in a bikini to a married NFL Network anchor (whose wife found the pictures). Shortly after Lane was arrested for punching a female cop in the face. Philadelphia Magazine wrote an in-depth article about Lane's shenanigans. Lane's life became the stuff of tabloid fodder. She was no longer just reporting the news, she became the news.
As a result, she was fired.

But if Lane wasn't already going through enough heartache, she learned her co-worker, the man she reported the news with nightly, had secretly been reading her private emails.

Mendt confessed in August to hacking into Lane's three email accounts and leaking information to the press.

How did Mendt get into Lane's email accounts? What does this say about privacy? Will access to technology change as a result of cases like this?

Journalists have used technology to improve their craft.
In this instance, technology was used in an evil and dishonest way.

Today, both Lane and Mendt are both out of a job.
They became the news. Bad news.

Why is Twitter so hard to use?

Because that's what makes it fun. It's easy to post your first few tweets, set up a background image, and start following a few of your peers. Beyond that, it's actually pretty hard to master (at least for me). I've posted 83 tweets since I signed up August, and I still have a lot to learn.

First of all, not unlike the middle school lunch room, there are social norms--"twittiquette"--to adhere to. Here's an article about 14 ways you might accidentally annoy people. It's easy to remember not to post while drunk, but some of the tips, like "plug modestly" are more subtle. I set up an account for my magazine the other day, with the sole goal of roping in new readers. But no one will follow you if you're a robo-flack, so how do you get around that?

The best thing to do is to make your tweets as interesting and useful as possible, which isn't always easy in a 140 character post. That's where this article: "101 Ways to Rock and Be Rocked by Twitter" comes in. It encourages people to start using all of the cool applications that have popped up, like Group Tweet, which lets you add multiple contributers to one account. It also taught me that I made a mistake by starting an account for my magazine under its name, instead of my own.

Trying to get good at Twitter is time-consuming and sometimes frustrating. But even as a newbie, I've already seen a lot of benefits. It's made me one of the first people to know when a major crime happens in my city, and it keeps me up to date on media trends. Plus, it gets me a chance to communicate with reporters and editors who wouldn't have had time to talk to me otherwise.

Is Media Responsible for Black Friday Death?

The New Times has a perspective piece today from David Carr claiming the media is just as responsible for the trampling death of a temporary Wal-Mart employee on Black Friday as retailers: Media and Retailers Both Built Black Friday.

He argues that all the pre Black Friday pieces like Newsday’s Black Friday blueprint, which lists store openings and touts deals so shoppers can “plot strategy”, are pumping up consumerism and driving the public to the become the deadly shopping-crazed mob.

“It’s convenient to point a crooked finger in the wake of the tragedy at some light coverage of some harmless family fun. Except the coverage is not so much trite as deeply cynical, an attempt to indoctrinate consumers into believing that they are what they buy and that they should be serious enough about it to leave the family at home.

Media and retail outfits are economic peas in a pod. Part of the reason that the Thanksgiving newspaper and local morning television show are stuffed with soft features about shopping frenzies is that they are stuffed in return with ads from retailers. Yes, Black Friday is a big day for retailers — stores did as much as 13 percent of their holiday business this last weekend — but it is also a huge day for newspapers and television.”

I agree with Carr to an extent. The media needs to cover Black Friday, especially in times of economic distress. It is important to note the outcome for diligent business reporting. But providing a blueprint and encouraging shoppers to “sharpen their elbows”? It’s a good perspective piece and made me think. I would love to hear your viewpoints.