dangerous tweets

When I heard about Twitter my first thought was "why do we need it?" This semester we've found dozens of answers to that question - Twitter is used by journalists, friends, bloggers, scavenger hunters, state governments, and newspapers. This week the New York Times presented another possible use.

The United States army is investigating the possibility that terrorists could use Twitter to plan attacks, and communicate strategies and information. They realized the website's potential after political activists used it to plan their protest at the Republican convention in St Paul (world's best city). The range of possible uses from a website that seems so ridiculously simple is unbelievable.

What new possibilities do you think twittering might have for journalists that we haven't seen yet?

Read the article here.

The Onion Reports - "Swaggering Down 87%"

"A wide-legged gait accompanied by an overconfident smile and a jauntily raised eyebrow may soon be a thing of the past due to recent economic turmoil." - The Onion





















Ever since I started thinking of bloggers as journalists and of the Daily Show as a news broadcast, my idea of the media has completely opened up. My latest interest is The Onion. The newspaper calls itself "America's Finest News Source" and they make fun of almost any topic - lately there have been frequent articles parodying the election and the economy.

While their articles are clearly satire, they are usually based on an element of truth, and they portray the truth in ways you would never see on the news. Can anything be gained from this type of comedy? Do they ever give the public truth that they couldn't find on the evening news?

for sale: sturdy cardboard box, $5

Since I started looking for new housing a couple weeks ago, I've become a hundred times more interested in a former source of income for newspapers - the classifieds. But, bad news for newspapers - I haven't used them once. It's all about craigslist.com.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that newspapers are trying to catch up. I recently received a tip that KSL.com has an online classifieds section. Genius. My hometown newspaper has one as well, although theirs isn't nearly as popular as the Utah one.

It's necessary for newspapers to switch online classifieds, but there is no way they can charge anyone for the service anymore. I wonder if there is anything they can do to get back that revenue? Probably not. Craigslist is phenomenal.

Hopefully my housing situation doesn't get so desperate that I have to settle for the title of this blog post.

From the front lines of the News War

I didn't make it to watch our journalism movie during class time, so I brought the call number to the library over the weekend to check it out. The girl at the LRC lookd at it and said "Sorry, I think you had the wrong number. This is a movie called News War, it doesn't look very interesting."

On that note, my favorite ideas from the movie:

Acts of Journalism
I loved the concept of "acts of journalism" - that anyone can do journalism without being a journalist. They may not do it all the time, they may not be a journalist at all, but they still might perform the occasional "act of journalism." Besides bringing new meaning to the idea of the news, this phrase can also become an interesting part of your vocabulary: "I passed by the library today and performed an act of studying."

We've never given journalism much thought
One of the creators of Rocketboom, a video journalism podcast said: "We've never been interested in journalism, or even given it much thought." Rocketboom has as many viewers as some cable news shows.

So journalists are no longer interested in journalism, but non-journalists are performing acts of journalism? Is there any hope? Can one be a journalist without giving it much thought?

I was happy to tell the LRC employee how wrong she was about the movie.

It's love

I think the new Chicago Tribune redesign is pretty fabulous.

This might sound crazy, but it looks more like a website than a newspaper to me. All the images, the bright colors, and especially the way each page is divided into sections. The way "Chicago Tribune" was printed in the top corner made me want to click on it to go to the home page. Phenomenal.

golf ball sized hail

The video we watched this week talked a little about news websites featuring reader-submitted photos and videos, and it just so happens that StarTribune.com has a section for that on their website.

In the Your Photos + Video section Minnesotans can post images of local news, scenery, sports, history, and of course weather. Now anyone can be a photojournalist.












Reader-submitted photo of hail from killer storm this summer.