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Active-duty Marines ‘reverse embedded’ at CNN Money, Chicago Tribune

Joel Gunter — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:17:16 +0000

Writing on the Upshot, John Cook has an interesting investigation into “reverse embedding”, a practice “which permits active-duty service personnel to serve as interns in major media companies – sometimes in an editorial capacity”.

The practice is part of the military’s Training With Industry (TWI) programme, which allows military officers to leave the service for up to a year to work for private companies in a wide variety of sectors. But Cook’s article draws attention to the problem with placing officers in media positions, alleging that they may be “gleaning insights and intelligence into how media organisations operate, and perhaps helping to shape the way they cover the military”.

The TWI operation achieved some notoriety in 2000, when Dutch and French media reported that CNN had invited US Army psychological operations soldiers into its newsroom to serve as interns. Embarrassed at having hosted military disinformation specialists, the network acknowledged that it was a mistake and said in a statement that “the intern program was terminated as soon as the leadership of CNN learned of it.”

Now, however, the program appears to have been reactivated – at CNN and elsewhere.

Full post at this link…

(via Fishbowl NY)Similar Posts:

Coders meet journalists; journalists meet coders

Judith Townend — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:02:16 +0000

Do journalists need to learn to code? Probably not, but those who can are likely to find themselves quickly snapped up by news organisations with interactive and data teams.

I have no grand hopes of learning to code properly, but I would like to feel a little more comfortable with the language and learn more about the ways programmers work and how it could help journalism.

That was one reason I went along to last night’s Ruby in the Pub informal meetup (tagged #RITP or #rubyinthepub on Twitter), initiated by journalists Joanna Geary and James Ball (even though James himself got stuck at work and missed the event).

The other reason was to meet brave souls playing in the programming-journalism no-man’s land. I think there are exciting things to come out of the programmer-journalist relationship. We’re already seeing that in projects led by mySociety and OpenlyLocal, in collaboration with bloggers and other media.

The US, of course, is streets ahead, with news organisations employing designated journalist-programmers. ProPublica, the non-profit investigative organisation, employs application developers and editors, integrated into the news team, as does the Chicago Tribune (for example). The New York Times has a dedicated interactive team – the head of which, Aron Pilhofer, came along to last night’s meet-up (he recently wrote about this new breed of ‘hacker-journalists’ at this link).

Over here, we’re seeing moves in the right direction (the Scott Trust now has a bursary for students who want to learn software development) and of course news organisations do employ developers, designers and programmers, but we’ve got some catching up to do in terms of integrating and prioritising programming skills.

[For some examples of interactives, visualisations and data-driven journalism follow this link]

So…what is Ruby? Ruby on Rails is a open source web application framework, using the Ruby language. Only a minority of programmers use it (you can see a comparison of frameworks at this Wikipedia link), but it was the consensus language agreed for the meet-up.

Developer Dave Goodchild (@buddhamagnet) was restricted by the lack of wifi, but nonetheless he did a grand job in educating us Ruby ignoramuses the very basics.

If you do decide to download RoR to have a proper play, Dave recommends building a blog – the format of which is easy to understand for a journalist – and following this online tutorial on the Ruby on Rails blog.

It was a brief introduction and the properly keen will have to do their homework to learn properly, but it’s good to hear developers explaining how they use it – and showing how quickly something can be built.

The evening was also a meeting of cultures; as journalists explained their various work brick walls and developers explained the differences between various coding languages and platforms.

Most useful for me was hearing about the projects developers are implementing in their respective organisations and the tools they are using.

Whether or not very much Ruby knowledge was gleaned by the hacks in one evening, I have great hopes for the conversation between programmers and journalists. It could result in some very innovative applications and stories that will help British journalists catch up with our US counterparts and break new ground.

If you would like to know more about interactives and data-driven journalism, check out the agenda for news:rewired – the nouveau niche (25-06-10) where these topics will be addressed. Buy your ticket (£80 + VAT) at this link. Speakers include OpenlyLocal’s Chris Taggart; the OnlineJournalismBlog’s Paul Bradshaw; and Ollie Williams from BBC Sport.Similar Posts:

New York Times/ProPublica’s DocumentCloud makes newspaper debut

Laura Oliver — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:28:57 +0000

DocumentCloud, a technology aimed at making data more accessible and helping journalists and news organisations deal with large volumes of documents, has made its debut on the Chicago Tribune’s website.

The Tribune has used DocumentCloud to publish the source documents of a news story and allow readers to browse by section and receive additional information around highlighted annotations.

The Tribune is one of 21 more than 70 news partners beta testing the technology, which is funded by a grant from the Knight News Challenge in 2009. The New York Times and ProPublica have allowed several staff to “moonlight” on the project, but is an independent organisation led by Eric Umansky, senior editor at ProPublica, Scott Klein, news applications editor at ProPublica, and Aron Pilhofer, the New York Times newsroom’s interactive technologies editor

Update: Despite this tweet from Aron Pilhofer, I am reliably informed by Amanda Hickman, programme director of DocumentCloud, in the comment below that the technology has also appeared alongside Newshour and Propublica stories too.Similar Posts:

Tribune agreement could bring bankruptcy exit

Joel Gunter — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:13:51 +0000

US newspaper publisher Tribune Company has reached an agreement with its creditors and lenders that will help it emerge from bankruptcy protection later this year, according to news from Reuters.

Tribune, which publishes the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy in 2008. The new agreement settles all potential claims stemming from the 2007 $8.2 billion (£5.4 billion) Tribune leveraged buyout by Sam Zell in 2007.

The agreement has come under criticism from a group of junior boldholders holding $1.2bn (£780 million) of Tribune debt. They claim to have been unfairly cut out of the negotiating process, and have further criticised the make-up of the creditors committee, which includes bank lenders, normally excluded from such groups.

Full story by Reuters at this link.Similar Posts:

Posthumous byline

Judith Townend — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:40:40 +0000

While pre-prepared obituaries are standard practice, it was a little surreal to see an obituary of Michael Foot by Mervyn Jones (d. 23 February 2010) in the print edition of the Guardian on 4 March 2010, the Tribune’s diary notes. An obituary for Jones, who was Michael Foot’s biographer, had appeared in the Guardian on 25 February. The deaths were so close together, the Tribune says, it had to run its own tributes in the same edition.

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Journalism Daily: Candy Box billboards; Chicago Tribune’s new innovators; VentnorBlog reports Vestas

Judith Townend — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:32:48 +0000

Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features

Chicago Tribune: Bringing news innovators on board; drawing the audience in. Journalism.co.uk talks to the team behind the Tribune’s new blog network and News Applications Team

Customer demand for fake but funny news billboards at Horsham’s Candy Box, says owner.”I enjoy making people laugh and that’s why I do it,” John O’Sullivan tells Journalism.co.uk

Ed’s Picks

Tip of the Day

Importing tables into a spreadsheet

#FollowJourn

@kmatt/head of web and data

On the Editors’ Blog

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AFP: LA Times and Chicago Tribune in foreign desks merger

Laura Oliver — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:46:44 +0000

The LA Times and Chicago Tribune are pooling their foreign reporting operations to serve all Tribune newspapers. The operation will be run from Los Angeles.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

CCJ: “When real news didn’t come to me, I decided to go get it myself”

Judith Townend — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:31:52 +0000

Jon Margolis, the former chief political reporter for the Chicago Tribune discusses what he did when ‘real news didn’t come to him’ anymore. He launched an online journal – vermontnewsguy.com. This is either a ‘How To’ or ‘How Not To’ account, Margolis writes. “Wait until you finish, then choose the option you think more accurate,” he suggests.

Full story at this link….Similar Posts:

Editor&Publisher: Tribune Co. outsourcing not finalised, says reporter on blog

Judith Townend — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:31:37 +0000

“It’s true that Tribune Co. is talking about outsourcing its national and international news coverage to The Washington Post Co.,” comments Editor&Publisher, but warns that ‘big sticking points remain and the two are not close to a deal,’ as Chicago Tribune media reporter Phil Rosenthal reported in his blog Thursday afternoon. Full story…Similar Posts:

US-based Tribune files for bankruptcy but continues operating

Judith Townend — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:16:16 +0000

More on this tomorrow, but just to link today’s (Monday) news that the Tribune Co. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as reported here by the group’s own newspaper the LA Times, as well as numerous other news sources. The group also owns KTLA Channel 5, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun as well as nine other newspapers and 22 other television and radio stations across the country.

The group’s chief executive Sam Zell said in a statement (via CNNmoney.co.uk):

“Factors beyond our control have created a perfect storm – a precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy coupled with a credit crisis that makes it extremely difficult to support our debt.”

“We believe that this restructuring will bring the level of our debt in line with current economic realities, and will take pressure off our operations.”

The groups says it is able to sustain operations while it restructures. Here, Editor & Publisher looks at concerns inside the newsroom.

Excerpts from Sam Zell’s memo can be read here.Similar Posts:

The beast is unleashed: looking at Tina Brown’s new site

Fred Friedrich — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:05:48 +0000

As reported all over the shop, yesterday saw the launch of the online news aggregator site, The Daily Beast, captained by former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair and The NewYorker, Tina Brown, and backed by Barry Diller, of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

PaidContent had managed a sneak preview, but the likes of Roy Greenslade, and Journalism.co.uk had to wait till its official grand unveiling yesterday afternoon.

Named after the fictional tabloid in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel, Scoop, Tina Brown describes The Daily Beast, on her site, as: “the omnivorous friend who hears about the best stuff and forwards it to you with a twist.”

Her motley crew boasts the satirist Chris Buckley, former McCain adviser Mark McKinnon, Project Runway’s Laura Bennett and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg.

The site’s bold red and black design has a large list of contributors and features a collection of news, opinion, blogs, links and video.

Over at Cyber Journalist Net they reckon it’s ‘about 30 percent original content’ and Gawker is having fun speculating about Brown’s spending habits.

Opinion in the US seems to be split on the site: Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke thinks it ‘sucks’, but as the New York Observer points out she said that about Huffington as well.

Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune reckons there’s irony in the choice of title but doesn’t think that necessarily matters.

With absolutely no advertising on the site, it will be interesting to see whether The Daily Beast can survive in the online jungle. It seems to have had a lion’s share of initial hype at least.Similar Posts:

Associated Press: Tribune’s out-of-date UAL story was revived by clicks on website

Laura Oliver — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:40:11 +0000

The outdated bankruptcy story that caused panic for United Airlines share-holders came back to life because it showed up on a newspaper web site’s ‘most viewed’ section.Similar Posts:

After the blogging storm

Judith Townend — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:12:20 +0000

The winds have slowed down to a tropical storm, but the Gustav blogging continues.

The mainstream media is reporting on the blogging phenomenon as well as the actual hurricane: the Chicago Tribune looks at the decision-making power of blogs and FollowTheMedia comments that the hurricane may stop print, but not the web.

Meanwhile, over at Poynter, NPR’s Andy Carvin examines the role of social media in Gustav coverage.

As we posted yesterday, this was one for the Twitterers and they tweet on as people assess the damage. A quick twitter local search shows how the twitterers regard the media professionals…

Pictures can be found easily on this Flickr search and over at gustavbloggers.com they reflect that it wasn’t as bad as they feared. Meanwhile, to prepare for reportage of the next natural disaster, the Blog Herald offers its disaster blogging tips.Similar Posts:

Chicago Tribune: Sports news a ‘website business’, says Sun-Times columnist

Laura Oliver — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:22:48 +0000

Sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times Jay Mariotti has quit the paper after 17 years, claiming sports journalism has an online-only future.Similar Posts:

Huffington Post: Social media team drives up traffic at Chicago Tribune

Laura Oliver — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:49:07 +0000

The Chicago Tribune’s move into the social media world of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter has result in an 8 per cent rise in page views.Similar Posts: