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Here is a very interesting documentary on the future of journalism. It’s called “Orwell Rolls In His Grave.”

Orwell Doc

A supercool New Yorker article about the evolution of spam and the corresponding war against it. I read it a long time ago, but this is one of those articles that stick. Unlike spam, which merely congeals.

The Chicago Tribune has rolled out Chicago’s Best Blogs, a collection of local- interest blogs organized by topic and profiles of local bloggers. The feature is run by Daniel Honigman (MSJ ‘07).  Check it out for inspiration and links for your own blog roll.

In his latest article for The New Yorker, Eric Alterman charts the decline of the American newspaper as we know it. He finds some reason for journalistic optimism in the work of the more successful news blogs including The Huffington Post. But, he posits, where would such blogs be without the traditional news outlets to feed them material? Will blogs and other news Web sites step up to fill the gap in serious reporting or will they continue to play off the work of others? Some other interesting ideas here, too. Post your comments by noon, April 7.

In 1945, The Atlantic Monthly published an article by Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. Bush called on his fellow scientists to develop new tools to record and organize the wealth of their knowledge.

Bush wrote: ” The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.”

What do you think of Bush’s ideas? What technologies did he anticipate with accuracy and which would be useful inventions today? Have we developed adequate tools to access and evaluate new scientific developments? Or is our world closer to what Bush saw in 1945, too much information, poorly organized.

This article is available for student access in Blackboard/Documents/Week One. Please post your comments on this article by noon, Monday, April 7.

In his article, “The History of Online Journalism,” David Carlson traces the roots of digital news from Britain’s “teletext” system of the 1970s through the dawn of Yahoo!, AOL and the rest. What were some of the keys to success for those technologies that survived? Did Carlson leave out any key developments?

Much has happened in the field since 2003 when the article was first published. If you were to continue the history from 2003-2008, what would be the highlights? How do you see online journalism changing in the future?

This article is posted on Blackboard. Post your thoughts here as a comment and aim to play off the ideas of those who post before you.

Here’s an excellent five-part guide for promoting your blog from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. In his week-long series of posts, Darren covers guest posting, networking, advertising, social media and viral content. Thanks, Rich for passing it along.

So I wrote an article that was in this week’s Time Out on micro-celebrity. And it just fit to our class so perfectly that I decided to be totally indulgent and post it.

Almost Famous: They’re not on the paparazzi’s radar, but these Chicagoans have inspired a cult following

with stars in her eyes

Maude

This article in the Reader reminded me of our discussion last week:

Movies: Undead in the Information Age

- Brenna

Freeconferencecall.com
Sign up for an account (by providing a name and an e-mail address) and you will receive an e-mail with your account information. To set up the conference call, you must use the conference dial-in number and the provided access codes for you and your interview subject. You will obviously need to send the dial-in number and the access code to your interview subject in order for them to participate in the conference.

When the call is in progress, you can begin recording by pressing *9 and inputting your subscriber PIN code that was included in the initial e-mail from freeconferencecall.com. After inputting your PIN, you will be returned to the call and alerted that recording has begun. To stop recording, press *9 again.

You can log into freeconferencecall.com and download the audio file of your recorded phone conference. Use Audacity to edit the file. Export your edited version in MP3 format and upload it to your site by following the handout on Blackboard.

Anarchy Media Player Plugin
Download and install this plugin to allow your audio assignment to open in a nifty little embedded media player when users click on it. See the “Posting Audio” handout for more details.

Feedburner
Your blog’s RSS feed is an important tool for delivering your content to subscribers in a quick and convenient way. WordPress automatically generates the RSS feed for your blog. Depending on your theme, you may have to add a widget to give users a link to your RSS feed. This is something you definitely want to have in a prominent location on your site to encourage repeat customers. Once  The Feedburner service allows you to customize, optimize and receive statistics for your RSS feed. This is optional, but encouraged.  See the post on installing Feedburner for complete details.