Tag Archives: cindy royal

Fed up, woman breaks up with WIRED

In an open letter to Wired magazine published on her blog, Cindy Royal, an assistant professor at Texas State University in San Marcos who teaches web design and multimedia journalism, “breaks up” with the magazine:

When I noticed this month’s issue in my mailbox, I approached it with the same breathless anticipation that I do every month. I didn’t even mind the naked picture of Jennifer Aniston on the GQ subscription insert. I mean, it’s just advertising. You’ve got to make a living, right? Then, I turned you over to see what fascinating topics I would be delighted by this month. Boobs. Right there on the cover. A pair of breasts, no head, no rest of body… just boobs. Sure it accompanied a story on tissue re-engineering, so what other possible way might you visually represent that, but with a pair of breasts? No other possible way?

This isn’t the first time. We’ve been through this before. Your covers aren’t all that friendly to women on a regular basis, and that makes me sad.

To his credit Wired editor Chris Anderson has posted a lengthy reply in the comments:

[T]his problem goes beyond women: we have trouble putting *people* on the cover. It’s the same reason: they have to sell, and what sells for us is either big ideas (sans people) or well-known, likable people with interesting things to say. The problem is that there aren’t enough geek celebrities, so we often end up going with celebrity geeks instead. Our Gates and Zuckerberg cover didn’t sell as well as our Will Ferrell cover. I’m glad we did both, but at the end of the day, we have to work on the newsstand to be a profitable business.

Cindy’s Take on Tech: ‘The Journalist as Programmer’

Cindy Royal, an assistant professor at Texas State University in San Marcos teaching web design and multimedia journalism, has shared details of her paper ‘The Journalist as Programmer: A Case Study of The New York Times Interactive News Technology Department’ in this blog post – her slideshow below, courtesy of slideshare, is well worth a look for anyone interested in how programming, news applications and data can fit into a newsroom set-up:

USTREAM.TV: Aron Pilhofer on the NYTimes’ databases and graphics

In an interview with Cindy Royal, associate professor at Texas State University, New York Times’ newsroom interactive technologies editor Aron Pilhofer discusses the Times’ graphics and data teams and being part of, what he describes as, one of the most collaborative newsrooms he’s worked in.

Video clips at Ustream

Full story at this link…