Felix Salmon on Blogging

Felix Salmon is a blogging editor for Reuters news service. His background is mainly in financial reporting for news wire services and magazines. He has an interesting Q&A blog post about the differences between print and online journalism.

How Blogs Have Changed Journalism

The Newspaper Industry and New Media

The newspaper industry is struggling to regain lost readership.



Here's a link to another graph at theawl.com

GROUP #1

Explore some of former reporter Dan Conover's thoughts about the issue. His blog posts are very dense with links. Click through on a at least a few of the links to read some of the background information. Here are links to his blog posts.

10 reasons why newspapers won't reinvent the news

The paid on-line subscription pipedream

Another post about the difficulties of the newspaper business

Here is another former reporter's thoughts about the issue

Seven reasons charging for content won't work

When did newspaper circulation begin to decline? Why?
How did newspapers respond? Were they successful?

These links are a few years old, but things haven't changed that much.

Here's a more recent link that considers the impact that the iPad will have on newspapers

This is an article that examines the issue of the New York Times recent implementation of a paywall. Here is another.

I found some interesting articles about the New York Times new paywall which just started this past month.

From the Christian Science Monitor

From PC Magazine

GROUP #2

Listed below are some political web sites and celebrity gossip sites.
Feel free to find others yourself....

americablog.com
redstate.com

talkingpointsmemo.com
politico.com

huffingtonpost.com
drudgereport.com


Celebrity Gossip Sites
Gawker

tmz.com

What audience is the website addressing?
Is there advertising on the site? What kinds of ads?
How big is the staff? Is there a masthead? Who is listed there as being in charge?
What kind of print media do you think this is comparable to?


GROUP #3

Check out some of these local media sites:

St. Louis Beacon

MinnPost

Voice of San Diego

West Seattle Blog

Eastern Iowa News

The Batavian

Feel free to find others yourself....

What audience is the website addressing?
Is there advertising on the site? What kinds of ads?
How big is the staff? Is there a masthead? Who is listed there as being in charge?
What kind of print media do you think this is comparable to?

Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan

Topics from Friday

Journalism Ethics

http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

http://www.concernedjournalists.org/what-are-elements-journalism

http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/president/?p=370

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/everyday-ethics/talk-about-ethics/1750/ask-these-10-questions-to-make-good-ethical-decisions/





Twitter Wikileaks Tunisia Egypt

http://mapsof.net/uploads/static-maps/north_africa_map.png

Former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak had been in power for 30 years and was preparing to install his son Gamal Mubarak to follow him in office.

Newspapers and Digital Media

"When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem."

-Gordy Thompson, retired Internet services manager for the New York Times

Thompson was referring to the fact that a 14-year old who was a big fan of the writer Dave Barry was posting Barry's columns on usenet and violating the syndication agreements that had been established in the era of print media.

Laptop Surveillance Settlement

The Lower Merion School District has settled the lawsuit filed by student Blake Robbins.

Robbins will receive about $175,000, a second student who also sued will receive about $10,000 and the lawyer representing both of them will be paid $425,000 in fees.

This ties a nice neat bow in the story except for the fact no one ever answered any questions about what the school district was doing photographing its students at home and who specifically authorized this.

Another interesting fact is that many of the articles dealing with these issues have been removed from the Philadelphia Daily News website. I find this interesting because it further obscures the fact that nothing was resolved in this situation - there was no fact-finding or deposition of responsible parties in the case.

The school district paid out some cash and it all went away...even the newspaper articles detailing the fact that the head of technology for the school district refused to answer questions when she received a subpoena, pleading the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination.

The Associated Press articles on these subjects have also been deleted.

Here are a few links that still work

From The Week:
http://theweek.com/article/index/202105/Outrage_update_When_school_laptops_are_bedroom_spies

From The Inquisitr:
http://www.inquisitr.com/70250/school-admin-in-webcam-spying-case-invokes-5th-amendment/

From PC Magazine:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362791,00.asp

Lower Merion School District Laptop Surviellance

In recent news regarding the high school laptop surveillance case in suburban Philadelphia, the school has hired a law firm and a computer forensics company to investigate the policies of the school district with respect to the surveillance capabilities of the school issued laptops.

From the Philadelphia Daily News:

The long-awaited report, conducted by the Ballard Spahr law firm and a computer-forensics company, was released last night after investigators reviewed about 500,000 pages of documents and interviewed 42 witnesses, in addition to the data collected by Lower Merion's laptop-tracking software.

Investigators retrieved from the district's databases nearly 58,000 webcam photos and screenshots, many of which were captured by laptops that had been found after having been reported stolen or missing.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The report, released Monday night, found that the software activated by the district in the last two years captured nearly 58,000 images, mostly from lost or stolen laptops.

But because employees frequently failed to turn off the tracking system, more than 50,000 of those images were taken after the computers had been recovered and given back to students.

So, apparently the surveillance technology was often deployed when a laptop was reported lost or stolen, but then not turned off once the laptop was recovered. This is one of many unanswered questions - Why was the surveillance kept up when laptops were returned or recovered?

It's also important to note that this investigation report was prepared by the law firm that the school district has hired to defend it in the lawsuit:

Though billed as an independent investigation, the report was prepared by lawyers from Ballard Spahr, the law firm the district has hired to defend it in the lawsuit filed by Harriton sophomore Blake Robbins and his parents.

There are other questions left unanswered by the report:

According to the report, Robbins borrowed a laptop from the school last October because the one he had been issued was damaged. A technician turned on his Web cam after officials realized he had taken the loaner computer off-campus - and that he had not paid the $55 insurance fee required of every student.

But investigators said they had conflicting accounts from assistant principal Lindy Matkso and technician Kyle O'Brien about who ordered the activation and why.

They kept tracking Robbins' laptop even after one technician e-mailed O'Brien to say that the laptop had been located. The teen's computer was "currently online at home," the e-mail said...

Reports of stolen or missing laptops triggered the vast majority of activations of the tracking system, investigators determined. But they were stymied in 16 instances - 10 for students' laptops, six for teachers'. The report labeled these as "Activations for Reasons Unknown..."

The Philly Daily News also notes:

O'Brien, the district technician, has testified that Harriton High Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko had told him to activate the tracking on Robbins' computer, but Matsko testified that she never gave that order, according to the report.

The full text of the report is posted at the school district website here.