Posts under ‘Techniques’

UPDATED The New York Times’ David Barstow has an astonishing piece in today’s paper, “One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex,” about former “drug czar” and retired general Barry McCaffrey, one of many retired military people working as supposedly independent analysts for various news organizations but who are anything but independent. The story’s biggest surprise — perhaps it […]

Every time I load a new page on the Washington Post’s website, the following pop-over ad interferes with my reading. I keep clicking the X in the corner indicating my lack of interest in participating in the survey, but to no avail. This thing won’t leave me alone. So I guess I’ll stay off the […]

Mark Glaser: MediaShift . Can Crowdfunding Help Save the Journalism Business? Bands do it. Filmmakers do it. President-elect Barack Obama made an artform out of it. “It” is crowdfunding, getting micro-donations through the Internet to help fund a venture. The question is whether crowdfunding can work on a larger scale to help fund traditional journalism, […]

Josh Marshall observes the 8th birthday of Talking Points Memo today and suggests there’s even better to come. TPM is one of the great examples of how new media can work. Marshall is one of the best journalists of our time, helping to reinvent our craft. He deserves our continued support and praise.

Editor & Publisher: API Hosting ‘Crisis Summit’ for Newspaper Industry. The American Press Institute (API) will host an invitation-only, closed-door “summit conference” Nov. 13 in which 50 CEO-level executives will ponder ways to revive the newspaper business. The newspaper industry’s big issue is pretty simple. It’s trying to move from a monopoly position into a […]

David Cohn, one of the bright lights among new journalists, has launched Spot.us, a site that aims to persuade people from communities to send money to support excellent journalism about specific issues. I’m an advisor to this project and believe strongly that he’s onto something important. Spot.us describes itself as “a nonprofit project to pioneer […]

Take a look at the great “Video speech matching” project at TheyWorkForYou.com. They’re combining BBC video of the British House of Commons and official text transcripts, and asking people to match keywords and phrases with the videos, to create a time-stamped archive of important debates. Tom Steinberg, one of the organizers, says the community has […]

UPDATED The Dallas Morning News implores its readers, “Help us examine the lost JFK files.” Why? Given the volume, we haven’t been able to review most of the files. That’s why were calling on you. Here’s your chance to review never-seen-before materials related to the JFK assassination. This is a breakthrough in the traditional media […]

Adrian Holovaty and his team at EveryBlock (subtitle: “A News Feed for Your Block”) have launched in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. This is a solid start to a project that has enormous potential. Congrats to all…

Glenn Greenwald accurately explains the grotesque result of laws that seek to curb that amorphous problem of “hate speech” — a concept that turns free speech on its head. And unlike many of his colleagues on the political left, Greenwald explains why he’s defending people whose speech frequently deserves contempt: People like Mark Steyn and […]