Luckie Shares Tips for Open-Source Newsroom

SAN FRANCISCO -- The open-source newsroom of tomorrow has arrived.

Mark Luckie, a veteran journalist and expert in using new media tools, provided journalists with a smorgasbord of open-source technology they can use to improve they way they gather, process and distribute news to their readers. Luckie, creator of the popular "10,000 Words" blog, spoke Sunday during the "Journalism Innovations III" conference at the University of San Francisco.

All the tools he demonstrated can be downloaded for free or purchased for less than $10. Luckie uses many of the tools regularly in his job as a multimedia producer at CaliforniaWatch, a project of the Center for Investigative Journalism.

Declaring himself at "PC guy" at the outset, he noted that he uses Macs at work and all of the software he demonstrated can be used on either system.

These days, he added, journalists at large, medium and small organizations as well as those flying solo are using these tools to better organize information, tell stories and serve readers.

Here is the list of tools he discussed during his presentation (See http://10000words.net/ji3 to link directly to all these tools):

Content Management Systems/Collaboration
WordPress
Drupal
Buddy Press
Google Docs

Audio/Video Editing
GarageBand
iMovie
Audacity

Photo Editing
Splashup
Fotoflexer

Creating Maps/Interactive Graphics
UMapper
Map Builder
PhotoPeach
Dipity

Wikis/Collaboration
MediaWiki
CoverItLive
UStream

iPhone Apps
WordPress for iPhone
FourTrack
Pano
AudioBoo

Luckie has written about most of these tools on his 10,000 Words blog.

The conference was sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, and Independent Arts & Media.

For more information, Luckie invited e-mail at mluckie@10000words.net. Or follow him on Twitter -- http://twitter.com/10000Words.

-rp-

Journalists Highlight Violence Against Overseas Media

Teru Kuwayama is one of a declining number of photographers and reporters working in war zones. He has covered conflicts in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to name a few. Here is an example of his work from the front lines.

Photo courtesy of Teru Kuwayama

SAN FRANCISCO -- Photojournalist Teru Kuwayama spent a week being shuttled from one Tajik military base to another after he was apprehended and detained by Tajikistan soldiers on the border with Afghanistan. Eventually, the U.S. journalist was freed with the arrival of U.S. Army and State Department officers.

Kuwayama was fortunate, however. He had the might of the United States backing his standing as a freelance photographer in war zones from Pakistan and Iraq to Afghanistan. He knows many others, especially those in-country contacts (e.g. drivers, translators and other foreign journalists) who died pursuing stories, photos and the free flow of information in their homelands.

During a discussion Sunday titled "International News in the 21st Century" at the University of San Francisco, Kuwayama and other panelists lamented the decline not only in the number of foreign correspondents and photographers working for mainstream U.S. media organizations, but also the escalating violence against overseas journalists and those who help them report what is going on.

The talk was part of the "Journalism Innovations III" conference co-hosted by the Society of Professional Journalists and Independent Arts & Media. Joining Kuwayama on the panel were Ricardo Sandoval Palos of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., along with SPJ National President Kevin Smith and Ronnie Lovler, international news editor for Newswire21, based in the Bay Area.

The panelists agreed that the alarming decline of foreign journalists employed by U.S. media has been part of a precipitous decline in foreign news-gathering. At the same time, the absence of U.S. journalists has emboldened foreign governments and warring factions to step up killings, kidnappings and threats against those who report the news and others who assist in news-gathering, also known as "fixers." Fixers are critical in providing logistical support, including travel, food and shelter, to foreign journalists.

They are the "undocumented labor force of international journalism," the people who do the heavy lifting, Kuwayama noted.

Sandoval Palos alluded to the growing violence in Mexico and Latin America, which has claimed the lives of several journalists and numerous threats based on stories they either have published or are reporting.

Smith, president of the largest organization of journalists in the United States, said SPJ is stepping up lobbying efforts, urging the State Department and other agencies to defend the work of foreign journalists. SPJ also is partnering with overseas journalism organizations such as the International Federation of Journalists.

Overseas, Smith added, the United States remains the "guiding light" for a free press and democracy. However, violence against journalists is on the rise, threatening the free flow of information and the pursuit of democracy around the globe.

Asked about the shrinking pool of foreign correspondents, Kuwayama described himself as a "hybrid, freelance war tourist." He has worked for a variety of news organizations, including Time magazine.

Unfortunately, Sandoval Palos said, fewer people such as Kuwayama are doing the important work of reporting news in foreign lands, particularly war zones. And those who are, need all the support they can get.

"If we don't do it," he said, "we have fewer voices that will be heard."

-rp-

LB's Student Journalists Head to SF Conference

This weekend LBCC's student journalists will mingle with the pros at the Society of Professional Journalists regional conference at the University of San Francisco. Titled "Journalism Innovations III: The New Business of the News Business," this Region 11 SPJ gathering will focus on new ventures in the "changing mediascape."

"Journalism isn't dying, it's on the cusp of a new era," declare the organizers. I couldn't agree more.

This year I've got 14 students signed up to attend workshops such as "The New Student Journalism," "Committing Acts of Journalism and Public Health," "New Media, New Ethics?" and "Building the Open-Source Newsroom." Among the other attractions is the premiere of a new documentary: "A Fragile Trust: Jayson Blair and the New York Times."

The conference runs April 30-May 2.

-rp-

Jeff Jarvis Explains It All!

At long last, here is that Jeff Jarvis lecture in the spirit of TED.

As noted a several weeks ago ... it's an interesting speech on education, media, innovation, Google, collaboration ... and it starts with the "What Would Google Do?" author declaring, "This is bullshit."

Here's a couple excerpts from the rest:

I tell media that they must become collaborative, because the public knows much, because people want to create, not just consume, because collaboration is a way to expand news, because it is a way to save expenses. I argue that news is a process, not a product. Indeed, I say that communities can now share information freely – the marginal cost of their news is zero. We in journalism should ask where we can add value. But note that that in this new ecosystem, the news doesn’t start with us. It starts with the community.

And...

We must stop our culture of standardized testing and standardized teaching. ... In the Google age, what is the point of teaching memorization?

We must stop looking at education as a product – in which we turn out every student giving the same answer – to a process, in which every student looks for new answers. Life is a beta.

Why shouldn’t every university – every school – copy Google’s 20% rule, encouraging and enabling creation and experimentation, every student expected to make a book or an opera or an algorithm or a company. Rather than showing our diplomas, shouldn’t we show our portfolios of work as a far better expression of our thinking and capability? The school becomes not a factory but an incubator.

It's a good speech that picks up on many of the concepts Jarvis continues to tout on BuzzMachine, his various talks and, of course, in "WWGD?"

-rp-

Twitter in Real Life?

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Next week, the Media and Society class at LBCC will examine new technology and the Internet, including social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and blogging. Here's a fun video about Twitter from College Humor.

-rp-

Newspapers Add Value with "Unexpected Relevance"

When we get to the newspaper unit in LBCC's Media and Society class, one aspect of newspapers we agree that we like is how you happen upon stories, photos and other items that catch your interest as you turn the pages. You learn about things that you weren't necessarily looking for. You become engaged with something you didn't expect.

In a new blog post, new media expert Jeff Jarvis discusses this phenomenon: "Serendipity is not randomness. It is unexpected relevance."

He goes on to explain:

There’s a reason we find value in the supposedly serendipitous. ... When we read a paper and find a good story that we couldn’t have predicted we’d have liked, we think that is serendipity. But there’s some reason we like it, that we find it relevant to us.

Maybe that relevance is the unknown but now fed curiosity, maybe it’s enjoyment of good writing or a certain kind of tale, maybe the gift of some interesting fact we want to share and gain social equity for, maybe it’s a challenge to our ideas, maybe an answer to a question that has bugged us. In the end, it has value to us; it’s relevant.

To me, this discovery of something new waiting within the pages is one of the top reasons I keep buying and reading newspapers, and why we will always need editors and others to bring these gems to our attention.

As Jarvis notes, this wondrous sense of serendipity is one of the things that many media observers believe will be lost with the decline of newspapers. I agree when he suggests a somewhat similar sensation occurs through the use of Facebook and Twitter, where we're constantly discovering something new.

But it just doesn't feel the same as that comfortable encounter with the inky printed medium.

-rp-

(Photo credit: "Surprise from above" by zetson, courtesy of Flickr.com/Creative Commons)