Shawn Smith, a Web promotion and Internet marketing scientist, wrote this post on How to Make Money with Your J-Skills:
In this post, I’ll give you an 8-step plan for getting started with skills monetization outside of newspapers and a few excellent examples for putting your skills to work. Let’s get started (which is often the hardest part).
There are some good ideas here.
Here is a great post on what is happening in journalism today. It is by SJSU Journalism faculty member Cynthia McCune and is not good news for mainstream media:
The bad news for the newspaper industry just keeps coming...
Changing from one paradigm to another is almost always seen as “bad news” by those invested in the old paradigm. It is the classic case of disruptive technologies that present new lower cost and/or more convenient solutions to problems.
The problem is, old solution businesses are often unable to compete because of their heavy investment in resources and values directed to the old solution. Their business model was shaped to answer a question, a question now starting to be answered differently.
Economic adversity just accelerates, by introducing resource scarcity, a process already underway.
Technorati Tags: J-school, Journalism, Newspapers, ssloansjca
According to Wikipedia, "Windows Azure is the name of the upcoming cloud-based operating system ("cloud" is a metaphor for the Internet) being developed by Microsoft, announced by Ray Ozzie at the Microsoft PDC on October 27, 2008.
Microsoft's Web site for Azure says, "The Azure Services Platform provides a wide range of internet services that can be consumed from both on-premises environments or the internet."
Google, and the range of Google applications, have long pointed out that the future of software is the cloud. Empowered by always on portable connected devices, like the iPhone and the Android mobile device platform. Phones and portable computers are merging into a mobile computing platform that is neither a mere phone nor a laptop computer and is more than both. Wired together, using high speed telcom technologies like 3G, and using real-time Web technologies like Jabber and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). The Web is becoming more synchronous and cloud computing is a huge part of that.
Installing software is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. There will be no need. Our applications will be in the cloud! All users will need to do is to be there. The good news is they will be. They already are.
It will be interesting to see where Microsoft goes with Azure. Educators need to watch this type of technology. It will likely be mainstream by the time today's freshmen graduate. If we are not there, where will our students be? We gotta get our heads beyond e-mail and Web pages and into and wrapped around; the cloud.
Technorati Tags: Windows, Microsoft, azure, android, iPhone, Cloud Computing, j-school, ssloansjca
Reportedly Esha Momeni, a 28-year-old Cal State University Northridge mass communications master's student from Los Angeles, arrived in Tehran two months ago to visit her family and conduct research for her thesis.
According to a, October 23rd post on a blog run by the San Diego Union-Tribune:
LOS ANGELES – A California State University, Northridge student has been imprisoned in Iran since last week after authorities discovered she was conducting research on the country's women's rights movement, the university announced Thursday.
Inside Hiher-Ed also has a post on the subject. According to that post, "The reported arrest is the latest involving scholars whose lives span the United States and Iran."
According to InDesignSecrets, The InDesign blog, Quark has just announced support for Adobe InDesign file formats:
"Given that that Quark’s flagship product, QuarkXPress, has fallen dramatically in market share, it only makes sense that they would want to expand the market for their workgroup QPS product."
Now, let me tell you MY Quark story.
About five years ago I bought Quark 6 as my wife and I were doing a book together. I loaded it on my desktop system. Suddenly my sister got very sick (she had cancer, which she later died of). I had to go and take care of her in Spokane and layout our 900+ book on my laptop.
At that time Quark was the only game in town for page layout. InDesign was a newcomer. Quark would only let you do one install on one machine. We paid about $600 for the product. I called Quark and begged, can I please install it on my laptop as well as my desktop?
They said yes, I could install it on my laptop if I paid them an additional $90 bucks for a "laptop license." Yes, they got their $90 bucks, I finished the book and they lost a loyal customer.
As soon as InDesign came on the scene I never looked back! I dumped Quark, switched to InDesign and helped my employer switch to InDesign. We dumped thousands of dollars worth of Quark product.
Never take your customers for granted.
Technorati Tags: Quark, InDesign, QuarkXPress, ssloansjca
According to The Silicon Alley Insider, The New York Times is running on fumes:
...the New York Times (NYT) is approaching the point where it will have to manage its business primarily to conserve cash and avoid defaulting on its debt. This situation will only get worse as advertising revenue continues to fall...
This follows similar concerns at McClatchy as told in the Sacramento Bee:
Fitch, the least known of the credit rating firms, downgraded The Bee's parent two notches, to "B-minus." That leaves McClatchy deeper in non-investment-grade, or junk-bond, territory.
The bad economy is not going to be kind to newspapers that were already on the ropes.
Technorati Tags: J-school, Journalism, Newspapers, ssloansjca
In April 2008 Reuters was purchased by The Thomson Corporation and it is now Thomson Reuters. The old Reuters opened the first news bureau in Second Life, Thomson Reuters is still in Second Life, reporting on news in this other world.
In Wednesday's class we will view the Reuters video as well as the DVD Second Life: A Documentary by Anders von Reis Crooks [View Trailer]. The class blog assignment for next week will be to comment on the video and look at trends in our real world as well as technology trends and share your personal vision of where you think this all is going.
Invite your friends, the class and the conversation is open. Dwight Bentel Hall room 226, 6 p.m., Wed, October 8, 2008 at San Jose State University.
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, CSU, California State University, J-school, ssloansjca, Second Life
The Inksniffer, How the newspaper industry is about to be disembowelled by the banking crisis:
SUMMARY: The debt crisis is going to create a domino-like collapse of our industry in the next six months. Who will be the first to go? And who might emerge controlling the American newspaper business?
The blog for my Fall 2008 New Media In Journalism class is here:
http://sjsumcom63.wordpress.com/
If you are reading this you are invited to check out the blog and/or the class itself! The class meets Wednesdays at 6 p.m. in room 226 in Dwight Bentel Hall at San Jose State University.
You can just show up if you like. If you have more questions you can e-mail me of course but, since e-mail is so last century, you can also text me (or call) at 408/605.0692.
I hope to see you there!
~Steve
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca
McElhatton was going to start at SJSU this fall. Previously McElhatton had been working at Valley Christian High School's Television and Communications Department. McElhatton was a television News Director and he ran the newsroom at KNTV-TV in San Jose (now NBC11) from 1989 to 1998.
According to an obituary in the San Jose Mercury News, services are scheduled for Sunday July 13th at 3pm, at Calvary Church, 16330 Los Gatos Blvd, Los Gatos. He is survived by wife, Robin; son, Chris; and daughter, Lauren, according to Valley Christian.
McElhatton was the son of longtime KPIX television news anchor Dave McElhatton.
[More information is available here]
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, J-school, Terry McElhatton, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca
Rogers Cadenhead, of the Drudge Retort, has blogged at length about the now settled conflict between him and the Associated Press. According to Cadenhead, "I got offers of help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and the Stanford Fair Use Project." In his blogpost Cadenhead said:
I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle the genie of social news. Given the publicity of this dispute, the first blogger sued for excerpting a news story will have the best pro bono legal representation that massive press attention can buy.
According to Fox News, Cadenhead's lawyer, Wade Duchene said, "I hope that any guidelines that are issued (by AP) are not interpreted as an agreed definition of fair use."
Technorati Tags: Journalism, Media Law, blogging, Newspapers, J-school, ssloansjca
Apparently the "fair use" conflict between the Associated Press and the Drudge Retort has gone away without resolution. According to Robert Cox, writing for the Media Bloggers Association, the planned meeting between AP and bloggers did not happen, or did not happen in a way that bloggers might have expected:
In what may close one chapter and signal the beginning of another, the AP and Rogers Cadenhead of Drudge Retort have come to resolution on their dispute while leaving unresolved the central source of conflict in the case - whether the verbatim publishing of an AP headline and AP lede are or are not covered under "fair use" doctrine.
Cox said, "in this area of law it is often better to leave things fuzzy because it gives bloggers a lot more wiggle room."
Scott Rosenburg wrote an excellent analysis of the related issues. Rosenburg said, "The sticking point for AP seems to be their belief that a headline-and-first-paragraph excerpt is not covered by fair use."
Technorati Tags: Journalism, Media Law, blogging, Newspapers, J-school, ssloansjca
The McClatchy Co., which owns The Sacramento Bee, announced a 10 percent companywide cut in its work force today. McClatchy is not alone in being battered by declining profits and revenue. This is the Sacramento publisher's first-ever across-the-board layoffs.
When I meet with my students next semester what do I tell them?
I can tell them about McClatchy eliminating 1,400 jobs through a combination of layoffs, voluntary departures and attrition. I can tell them the Bee, McClatchy's largest paper, announced it will eliminate 86 jobs. I can tell them the reduction will trim the paper's workforce by 8.1 percent. I can tell them that the driving force behind this is the flight of advertising to the Web plus rising costs of energy and newsprint.
I can tell them the future is the Internet, but can I tell them how to make real money there? No, I cannot. If we tell students they've got to be on the Internet, but cannot tell journalism students how money can be made on the Internet, what is the point?
Tell me, when I meet with my students next semester what do I tell them?
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, J-school, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca
Pictures from last month's JMC Giants game
Nicole and I went to the Giant's game with faculty and staff from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications last month. As well as my cameraphone Treo, I carried one of my film cameras, as I often do, and the pictures came out pretty well. I like shooting with film. You can carry a once high end film camera that takes great shots, has no battery weight and would cost only $200 to replace if someone poured beer on it. The downside is it took awhile to get the pictures developed, but that is life with film. I hope you like these photos!
Next week we are going to have a very special guest speaker in my Wednesday night class. Brian Baer, the political photographer from The Sacramento Bee, will be speaking to the class. Brian is a hot shooter. In my opinion, he has one of the keenest eyes I know of.
He is a friend and a great guy. He is an alum of our photojournalism program and is passionate about photojournalism. He has seen the transition from conventional analog to digital photojournalism. This should be a real treat! You are invited to bring friends, especially recommended for folks interested in photojournalism.
An added bonus is the inside view Brian has of California politics. This should be a great session!
I ran into Brian Baer when I was shooting the CA democratic convention on March 28-30.
It was the first time I had seen Brian for over ten years and we immediately caught up on old times. Feel free to spread the word. It is a large room!
Folks are encouraged, but not required, to RSVP. The event is at 6pm on Wednesday April 23, 2008 in DBH226 at San Jose State.
Technorati Tags: Brian Baer, Photojournalism, San Jose State University, SJSU, J-school, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca
Online journalist more positive about Internet, others negative?
According to a report from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Internet journalists have a more positive outlook on the impact of the Internet on the quality of news reporting than do older journalists from more traditional backgrounds:
Overall, internet journalists have more positive impressions of internet-driven innovations than do journalists who work for national and local print, TV and radio news organizations. For instance, only about a third of national (35%) and local journalists (36%) have a positive view of citizens posting news content on news organizations' websites; by contrast, 54% of internet journalists say this is a good thing for journalism.
Blogger and Journalism Educator Mindy McAdams comments on the report, "Here’s where an instructor can lead a good discussion about how journalism is changing — and talk about technological determinism in the bargain. Are traditional values under assault because of the medium? Or because of the media corporations’ reaction to the medium?"
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, J-school, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca
Who could say enough good things about Joe Swan? Former SJSU photojournalism professor Joe Swan, 78, died Sunday. Joe taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications from 1963 to 1991. I remember having an 8 a.m. class with Joe when I was a student at SJSU about 28 years ago, in 1980. Joe was full of great stories about his days at Grit Magazine. I doubt I was the only one in the class who had no idea what Grit Magazine was or had never heard of Grit Magazine before that class but we all listened enthusiastically because Joe was a first class story teller.
Joe was a Texan. He spoke with a Texas accent. Joe was a perfect southern gentleman. Years later; I remember walking around campus with Joe. There was a female university police officer having some issues with two males who were athletic looking and much bigger than her. Sensing that the police officer might be out matched, (despite the fact she had a gun and they did not) Joe turned to me and said, "it looks like we might have to get involved here." At that time Joe was having some health problems. Neither of us was a formidable force. Neither of us were fighters. Those guys looked a lot bigger and tougher than us! Thankfully the officer was able to handle the situation handily. That's Joe, he was not a bystander if anybody, especially a lady was, or even appeared to be in distress.
I have Joe to thank for working at San Jose State University. Before I came to SJSU I was a photo lab tech at the University of California San Francisco. I had my BA in photojournalism. Joe told me about a photo lab tech job that had just opened up at SJSU in the then Department of Journalism and encouraged me to apply. That was 1988. That photo tech job evolved into one supporting computers.
Joe had an ear to the ground for jobs for his former photo students. When I was there as a student, Jack Fields was a visiting professor. Jack taught most of my main photojournalism classes but Joe was the full time professor. Joe taught some of the other photojournalism classes as well as courses like the morning magazine class. After Jack left Joe taught all of the photojournalism courses.
Joe watched over and cared for his students like they were his own kids. Many of us owe our careers to Joe. Sometimes he knew of job openings before the people who were doing the hiring would know they had a vacancy. Joe would hear through the grapevine someone was going to leave a job. Our students and graduates would have their applications in the hands of editors before the outgoing photographer had even given notice.
Besides my current position there are two other jobs I landed that I owe credit to Joe for, including my time as a photographer for the Manteca Bulletin.
Recently the Spartan Daily ran a story on Joe. It had a photo of him in the hospital and it said, "Within the last year, Swan, 78, has had both legs amputated and has been on dialysis, a process of filtration used when the kidneys stop working, because of complications from diabetes." The photo I have above, in this blog post, is how I will remember Joe.
He was one of the nicest people I have ever known. Joe a real role model for aspiring journalism students as well as for new faculty. We lost one of the best!
About this Photo: I do not know who took the photo. It is just an old mounted print on stained mount board that was on the wall of equipment checkout room. One of the subsequent PJ instructors had decided to discard it. So, I snatched the print out of the trash after a cleanup. The actual photographer is unknown.
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, Jack Fields, Photographers, Photojournalism, Joe Swan, ssloansjca
On The Mercury News Death Dance
As a new media journalist (aka blogger) myself I have been watching the spiraling down of this once great newspaper and wondering what we of great numbers and small individual market shares might be contributing to it.
If you follow the principles of The Long Tail you understand how great entities like metropolitan newspapers are struggling to stay alive against thousands of bloggers, Facebookers and YouTubers creating content all around them, competing for their precious readers attention while at the same time disintermediating their revenue stream (through things like Ebay, Craig's List and even Google allowing sellers to connect with buyers in ways that a few short decades ago was impossible without advertising.)
As consumers of content also become producers of content (hence the term "prosumer") each prosumer clamors and competes for their own audience attention. They don't just compete with each other. Time does not expand to accommodate these new information sources. Something has to give.
Traditional mass media outlets (including newspapers) become like an elephant overcome by a sea of ants. How does a newspaper compete with a swarm, when the swarm is also their market? The time I used to spend fetching and reading "the paper" is now spent reading the blogs of friends, family members and the forum sites of my favorite hobbies. I do not even have to get off my couch to do this. (I am on my couch right now in fact!)
What is the point of all this? We have much more content available, and this content is free, mostly free of advertising and easy to get. This content is very compellingly targeted right at our favorite niches and scratches our itches. We can also free and easily produce content. It is so much fun we do this without being paid to do it. We can tap all this, do all that, but we still only have 24 hours in a day.
Newspapers cost money. Newspapers require us to make an effort to go get them. Newspapers have to create content that produces a revenue stream. Newspapers have to pay for people to produce and distribute their content. Most of the information in a given newspaper is not interesting to us. People who don't "get" texting, Facebook, YouTube and the blogosphere will never "get" what is happening to traditional journalism. This is off their radar screen. It is not just blogging and the the blogosphere, it is a the superset of Internet distributed content I call the informationsphere.
Two new contributions to this informationshpere are some recent blog posts about the most recent layoffs at the San Jose Mercury News. These posts come from Ryan Sholin and Frances Dinkelspiel. Hopefully after reading these, then writing your own blog post, then texting a few friends, then checking YouTube, then checking Ebay, Craigs List and then updating your Facebook page then, maybe then, you will have time left to read a newspaper, any newspaper.
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, San Jose Mercury News, Ryan Sholin, SJSU, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca, j-school
Spring Semester Class Blog
Here is the class blog for my Journalism New Media Class for Spring 2008. More information is here:
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca
