January 2008
Bird watching →
"We don’t know if it will last forever" →
Michael Miner’s Hot Type column this week (the last good reason to still read the Chicago Reader) looks inside the Chicago Tribune through the eyes of the paper’s rank-and-file. With its profiles of a guy who hands out the free commuter paper, of two men who drive paper routes, and of a foreign correspondent, it’s well worth a read, if for no other reason than as an artifact of...
Old Fence Wood, Perfect for burning Man →
Help your self 350’ of fencing free Check the calendar: It’s January. Having driven through a scorching Nevada a week before Burning Man last year, I can tell you without hesitation that it’s not for nine more months. Moving out here right before that godforsaken event, Craigslist was full of garbage for sale for Burning Man (broken bikes, broken tents, stained carpet, ripped...
the tragic poetry of web 2.0 →
The systole and diastole of history has us opening and closing like a flower: escaping our fortresses and enclosures into the open fields, and then building hedges, villages and cities in which to imprison ourselves again before repeating the process once more. The internet seems to be following this pattern. (via Rough Type)
Learning numbers →
Waiting for the library to open →
taking a one-way trip to tobaccoland →
At one point in history, someone thought this was a wonderful way to sell cigarettes—exotic and worldly.
Whoops.
thinking differently at the BBC →
The BBC has taken a page from Google’s 20% time concept (where all engineers at the company get to spend a day a week on their own projects) and is allowing certain staffers (sounds like mainly their new-media folks—why not spread it through the whole newsroom) to spend 10% of their time working on new ideas. It’s a brilliant idea that has already produced one concrete product...
The Chicago Sun Times is a Canary in the Coal... →
With the news announced last week that the Chicago Sun Times will be laying off 20% of its newsroom staff in order to cut costs (this in addition to reducing the physical size of the newspaper to pay less for paper), many are saying that the fate of the paper reflects the fate of the industry, hurt by shrinking ad dollars and declining readership. A story in competitor paper the Chicago Tribune...
Graphic Designer / Web Producer / Web 2.0 →
Opportunity to leverage your design skills and create your own niche in an exciting media mashup widget platform company.
All those buzzwords crammed in at the end! “Widget Platform Company” rolls off the tongue so easily, doesn’t it? It’s like a game of Silicon Valley telephone. You almost expect to find “purple monkey dinosaur” stuck in there somewhere. They...
Back to school →
Analyzing Analytics →
“Under the new rules, the commercial value of specific editorial offerings is estimated with precision, rewards and punishments doled out accordingly, and coverage cut to fit,” Edward Wasserman writes in an op-ed in the Miami Herald. He’s talking about the brave new world of what he calls “Calibrated Journalism”—the ability to track and analyze readers and page...
chicago grl needs ride from SF to LA →
i know its way early, and ill probably have to post this like 3 more times before something reliable. but, im going on a vacation from chicago to sf. and then i need to get to la to meet my best friend in the whole world up. i could put in 35 dollars for gas and possibly some greens?
Do you think she means Chard? Maybe Kale? Because who doesn’t like a nice plate of steamed Kale when...
Karp's Year Ahead →
Publishing 2.0’s Scott Karp offers an exhaustive look at how various Journalism blogs are framing the rapidly approaching future: This is the year that the journalists who will embrace the challenge of transforming journalism for the digital age will be separated from those who are waiting to take the buyout. This year will break the back of the old newsroom culture that was supported by...
Something New for the new year
I’m ringing in the new year by creating a more dynamic version of the Metablog. Instead of the static feeds of yore, the metablog now features full-text feeds from the original sources, thanks to the blogging application Tumblr.
taking the shirt off your back →
While the web is certainly the space where most people are experimenting with new forms of journalism, it’s always nice to see a new idea take place back in the physical world as well. It doesn’t get much more physical than Swedish magazine T-Post, which prints a news story on the inside of a T-shirt, then asks an artist to interpret the story for the art on the front of the shirt....
Our backyard creek is now a raging river →
Rainy day →
"Self Publishing is the New Blogging" →
Seriously, that’s the name of a blog entry by web designer Jeffery Zeldman.
Welcome to the party Zeldman, but there’s nothing left but little chip crumbs at the bottom of the bowl. You should have come earlier—Seth Friedman was doing cannonballs into the pool and Darby Romeo was passing out jello shots.
