Megan Taylor

When I first saw Tom Scott's Journalism Warning Stickers, my first thought was that surely, by the next day, someone would have written a bookmarklet for them.

I haven't seen one yet, so I'm taking a stab at it myself. (I've never written a bookmarklet before, so we'll see how this works out...)

The idea: Create a bookmarklet that will open up a j.mp or Publish2 style sidebar overlay. From here, you can select which sticker to overlay on a web page, and create a URL for the page WITH the overlay to share on Twitter, FB, etc.

So far, I have the script that will overlay an image on a website:

javascript:
(function(){
  document.body.innerHTML+=\'<img src=\"http://www.megantaylor.org/jwarnings
/jwarnings_02.gif\" style=\"position:absolute; left: 200px; top: 150px; z-index: 1000\">\';
}
)();

The image URLs are jwarnings_02.gif, 03.gif, etc.

I tried to link the bookmarklet here, but I think WP is messing with my code. Here's a quick example of the output:

I'm gonna keep working on this, but if anyone wants to give me a hand, or point me in the direction of some useful code, I'd really appreciate it.

In my quest to keep learning and doing while unemployed, the hardest obstacle to overcome is that of working alone. It's uninspiring and demotivating.

So I joined a Meetup group.

Ruby Nuby is "a soon-to-be non-profit dedicated to teaching the first year of Ruby Programming, Rails Framework and Related Technologies to professionals who then learn better by teaching at-risk, disadvantaged youths and helping Nubies become professional Rubyists."

Why Ruby?

Honestly, it didn't matter to me which language I pursued, because it's fairly easy to learn new languages once you've delved deeply into one. This was just the group I felt best matched my needs.

At last night's meeting, we discussed the curriculum going forward. We'll be using railstutorial.org to start with, and building from there with supplemental or more advanced books. I got my Ruby install up to date and also installed Rails.

Malcolm Arnold, the organizer, put a lot of effort into researching Ruby and Rails and how best to teach them. He's got a well-thought out plan for us, and I'm really excited.

I'm gonna try to post what I learn here, starting with how to install Ruby and Rails on OSX 10.5 (Leopard):

Installing Ruby, Rubygems, Rails, and Mongrel on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

Yes, I'm just posting a link. It's a really easy-to-follow tutorial that gets the job done. What more do you need?

P.S. If anyone wants to sponsor the group or teach a session, please contact Malcolm from the Meetup.com page.

My most recent bout of unemployment has now lasted about four months. A friend asked me the other day how I avoid going insane with boredom. This post is my answer.

1. Job Hunting - This eats up a couple of hours every day. I go through my job search results via RSS, check Craigslist, email past freelance clients, write cover letters, fill out online forms, etc. I've been going light on this because of my upcoming wedding (see below), but will jump right back into the fray when I get back from the honeymoon.

2. Exercise - You know, that thing you never have time for because you have a full-time job? I try to do an hour a day of cardio (sometimes running through Central Park with friends, other times running at the track near Yankee Stadium by myself or using my elliptical machine while watching TV at home). I also do yoga at home twice a week, and do body strength workouts every other day. I keep track of my eating habits and and workouts with DailyBurn. (This has nothing to do with my wedding, by the way, I just feel better when I blow off steam.)

3. Keeping Up - Just because I'm not in an office doesn't mean I'm not paying attention to what's going on in offices all over the place. RSS and Twitter give me plenty to read and think about.

4. Learn Something New - At least once a day I come across some code or tutorial I want to try out. Lately, I've also been learning how to cook! A few months ago, I could barely make scrambled eggs. Husband-elect would get home from work and we would scrounge up whatever was ready to eat for dinner, or order in. Now, I try to make dinner a couple times a week. Even when I screw up, I learn something.

5. Planning a Wedding - I'm getting married in less than a month (Sept. 7!) and for the past 2 months, the planning has been a major part of my daily schedule. Even though it's going to be a low-key affair, I still had to send out invitations and find a place to party.

6. Gaming - Mmm, timesuck.

How could I possibly be bored with all this stuff to do?

Umemployment sucks on a whole lot of levels. Boredom does NOT have to be one of them.

Ever since I first heard about Tumblr, I've wanted to integrate something similar here. It took me a while (hah!), but I finally did it, following these great tutorials at Digging into WordPress: How to Implement Tumblr-Style Links for Posts and Feeds and How to Design a Tumblelog Theme for WordPress.

It's so easy, I feel silly for not doing it a year ago.

I haven't had a whole lot of time yet for styling these posts, but they are for now, while pretty ugly, easily distinguishable from regular blog posts.

Hopefully this means I will be posting more frequently.

I woke up today and decided to try something new. I want to meet as many people from my online community in person as I can. The impetus? It already started to happen on it's own. So far this year, I've met 5 or 6 people in person that I only knew online before. I really like being able to put a face, voice and body language behind an account.

There are a couple of other things behind this. I've lived in NYC for 2 years now, and have found it ridiculously hard to meet people who might become friends. I'm also kinda bad at getting out of my apartment, especially when it's 90 degrees outside. It's helpful to have the draw of company.

There's some stuff to be examined here about taking web-only relationships to the real world. How does the relationship change? Positively or negatively? How much do people act in person the way they do online? How do my perceptions change, and how do the perceptions of others change?

If you want to have lunch, coffee, or just take a walk, I'm game!

Yesterday I showed up for my first UnThursday meetup with Dave Winer at NYU.

I was a little apprehensive, because there hasn't been any information coming out of those meetups and I wasn't sure what the agenda was.

Turned out to be a really cool night. It was a small group, which I liked because as a newbie I could ask meta-questions and figure out what was going on. Richard Ziade, of Arc90 and Readability, told us the story of the bookmarklet and discussed Safari's use for Reader.

During the meetup, I spent some time going through Arc90 Lab, where there are a bunch of code examples that look pretty useful.

I'll definitely be a regular for these meetups, and I'm really excited about finding a bunch of cool, smart people to play with.

I've been mostly ignoring Internet Week, because the sessions look like a bunch of schmoozy marketing crap that doesn't interest me. And for the most part, anything I really am interested will be streamed or blogged about or something.

But I did want to go to the Sources Go Direct panel at NYU, because I've been hearing this idea from Dave Winer (via blog and podcast) for a while, and I thought it would attract fewer "social media douchebag" types.

As described by Dave Winer:

Techies call it user-generated-content. Journos see a crowd. But when the news system reboots sources will go directly to the people who are increasingly thirsty for information, expertise and perspective.

On Wednesday our focus will be on how news and perspectives flow from the source, the person with expertise, to the destination -- the people who want to be informed.

In the past, all news flowed through a chain of intermediaries who were selective in who they heard and added opportunities for distortion. On the other hand, as our contrarian Nick Denton is likely to argue, how do you find the good stuff in a sea of garbage? Our two true-believers, Wilson and Sterne are likely to have ideas about this.

Our discussion will be Internet-style, with a microphone that moves through the room. You may make comments, not just ask questions. The room will be packed with people with active roles in this area, and active minds. You don't necessarily have to raise your hand to be asked to participate, so pay attention!

The panelists were Nick Denton, Gawker Media, Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures and Rachel Sterne, GroundReport.

Notes from the panel:

(I tried to rewrite them a little to make sense...)

OLD WAY: PR + execs + analysts + companies try to move IDEA (fact or point of view) from company to public

NEW WAY: Sources Go Direct

Fred Wilson reaches 125k ppl a month, 10k a day with his blog. Much of the clubby, private world of VC is now open, power shifted away from money to IDEAS. FW can get ideas out, and also gets them back through comments, reactions, other people putting stuff out. Big question: How to get ideas to market on larger scale than before?

Nick Denton: New elite of people actually publishing, not that different from old elite. Different people, different titles, same system.

Rachel Sterne: Gatekeepers replicate journalism power structure. Motivation: ego. People use Ground Report to promote themselves, advocacy, company, encouraged as long as transparent. Traditional outlets all have some agenda. Fred Wilson said GR should be great source material for mainstream journalism that can't afford to get international news.

Lots of talk about startups, gatekeepers, media coverage. "Is Michael Arrington a nutcase or just entertaining?"

Dave Winer: Is it possible to get around gatekeepers?
Audience: gatekeepers have a legitimate function, earned the right for more important opinion
DW: maybe gatekeeper position is inevitable

And this is sort of the point where I think the panel started to go downhill. Some weird tangents, not a lot of buy-in to the topic from panelists or audience.

Search Twitter references with #sourcesgodirect.

After the panel, I got to meet some cool people I've been in touch with online for a while, but never met face-to-face. I always really enjoy that, because even though most people have photos of themselves posted online, it never quite matches the IRL experience.

I got asked this on Twitter the other night, as I was posting about Game 4 in the Stanley Cup Finals.

bergus @selfmadepsyche What's a Floridian living in New York doing rooting for the Flyers?

After a glib, 140-character response, I got to thinking about it more seriously.

I grew up in Miami, Fla. I have only been to Philly a couple of times. I've never really been into sports, and never thought of myself as an athlete. So why am I so in love with a sport and a team so far removed from most of what I grew up with?

My introduction to ice hockey came when I was about 3 years old, and my dad taught me how to ice skate. My siblings and I held almost every birthday party at the rink. We'd often see local youth teams practicing for hockey games.

When I was 6, my parents got tickets to Florida Panthers games. Between the excitement of actually winning the Stanley Cup of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, (Evan correctly points out in the comments that they didn't win the Cup, oops) and the awesome rubber rats that were handed out (and subsequently tossed onto the ice or used to terrorize my siblings), I was sold.

The rat story: On the night of the Panthers' 1995–96 home opener, a rat scurried across the team's locker room. Mellanby reacted by "one-timing" the rat against the wall, killing it. That night, he scored two goals, which Vanbiesbrouck quipped was "a rat trick." (Play on "hat trick", when a player scores three goals in a single game.) Two nights later, as the story found its way into the world, a few fans threw rubber rats on the ice in celebration of a goal. The rubber rat count went from 16 for the third home game to over 2,000 during the playoffs. [Wikipedia, hat trick explanation added.]

The sport is a mix of grace and violence that really appeals to me. It's really hard to play. It moves fast, but scoring is actually difficult. I hate watching most other sports, though I like playing pick-up games of just about anything, as long as no one expects me to actually be good at it.

But I was the only one in my family who really fell in love with the sport. I didn't grow up watching sports at home; we were allowed only minimal amounts of TV a week. And my violent reactions to hockey got the game pretty much banned at home. (I didn't do anything uncommon among a group of guys watching an American football game, but apparently that was enough.*)

In high school, my love for the game was reignited by a boyfriend whose parents were from Pennsylvania. Huuuuuge Flyers fans. I finally had a "safe space" to watch hockey. By then, the Panthers had been traded into suckitude, and I adopted the Flyers as my team.

I'm also a big fan of cheesesteaks (especially from Pat's), early American history, Pennywise (the Flyers goal song has been Bro Hymn since 2007) and the Reading Terminal Market. I've watched almost every game since 2002, and I really, really want to see the Flyers win the Stanley Cup this year.

*The Husband-Elect is a football (soccer) fan, so the distinction must be made.

This week, Publish2 announced the launch of the Publish2 News Exchange at TechCrunch Disrupt.

It's being billed as "Craigslisting the Associated Press," a reference to Craigslist's effect on the former monopoly by newspapers of classified ads.

From the Publish2 blog:

With Publish2 News Exchange, newspapers can replace the AP’s obsolete cooperative with direct content sharing and replace the AP’s commodity content with both free, high-quality content from the Web and content from any paid source.

With Publish2 News Exchange, we’ve created what the AP should have become, but can’t because of a classic Innovator’s Dilemma. The New AP is an open, efficient, scalable news distribution platform. We’re enabling newspapers to benefit for the first time from the disruptive power of the Web, and from the efficiency of content production on the Web.

It's a great idea. Everybody says so.

I'm going to nitpick a little bit. Kool-Aid is delicious, but too much will make you fat. Mind you, I've been using P2 to aggregate awesome links to journalistic stuff for over a year now, and I know a bunch of people on their team. I think they're great.

But somebody has some splainin' to do.

× Mr. Karp, you have a great company and a great team. Please refrain from the obvious butt kissage. TechCrunch approval is not worth your debasement.

× It was disappointing to hear Karp say that the end game would be an advertising network. Watching news websites flail to make ads work online is getting pretty old. I'd rather see the smart people at P2 find an innovative way to make money and to help news organizations do the same.

× Popular journalism blog Romenesko at Poynter Online posted a quickie on the new direction P2 is heading. What's interesting is a comment left on the site that points out a major aspect of AP's business that P2 might not be disrupting.

To paraphrase:

The AP is not just a news exchange, it also provides original reporting from all over the world to it's members.

I hadn't seen anyone else mention this, and I'm glad someone did.

Ryan Sholin, Director of News Innovation at P2, responded to this comment - sort of.

"There's currently no easy way for newspapers in a state or region or reporting on a certain topic in common to share their stories with each other with any degree of efficiency.

Or there wasn't, until now.

And there hasn't been any easy way at all for newspapers to bring the wide variety of high quality content available on the Web to their print readership.

Until now.

P2X bridges the gap between print and the Web by connecting natively to print publishing systems. We're doing it using familiar standards and formats that already plug straight into publishing systems.

There's no barrier to entry, and no cost.

Try asking a newspaper editor what they think of that."

eMedia Vitals does a better job of addressing this:

One feature of News Exchange that fell under the radar at TechCrunch is a story ideas database – basically an RFP for story assignments. Editors can post a request for coverage; other members can respond with an existing article or a commitment to write something.

It’s a good way for resource-constrained editors to pool resources to increase the breadth of coverage. “They can say we can’t cover this story ourselves, but if someone else is covering it, we will run it,” Karp said. “Editors at other publications can see that request and ask for the story as well.”

× One last thing: I don't understand exactly where the money goes in this thing. The best explanation I've seen so far also comes from eMedia Vitals:

Initially, the News Exchange will enable newspapers and content providers to freely exchange content, with no fees to Publish2. Newspapers can also use the service to extend existing paid content relationships through a “white list” feature in which a publisher defines who has access to its content.

As the platform scales, Publish2 will begin charging for its service in two ways: for paid content, it will take a portion of the revenue. For free content, it will charge a software licensing fee. Karp wouldn’t specify what Publish2’s cut would be, saying “the market will decide what percentage we charge.”

Bad survey stories are my pet peeve.

First of all, a journalist who copies numbers off a press release and does a quick rewrite without looking up the actual study is not doing her job.

I suspect the reason that this happen is that 'journalists are afraid of math.' This second part makes me furious. If someone as bad at math as I am can understand statistics (nothing too complex, but I was a psychology student for at least 4 years before I got into journalism) then ANY journalist should be able to understand percentages and ratios.

So I was thinking about how the way survey stories are done can be challenged.

538

Someone has already made a start on this: FiveThirtyEight is a blog with the mission of:

Most broadly, to accumulate and analyze polling and political data in way that is informed, accurate and attractive. Most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections.

It is written by Nate Silver, who follows a published methodology in his analysis and does his best to stay unbiased. Every journalist who writes about numbers or politics should be reading this blog.

Error Reporting

MediaBugs is a project for correcting errors and problems in media coverage. The site is currently in beta, focusing on the Bay Area. They have a section for reporting "faulty statistics or math" (though nothing has been reported to that section yet).

But I would like a more aggressive approach.

Doing it Right

What about a site where survey stories that had been published were analyzed along with the original data and methodologies from the surveys?

There are dozens of questions that can be asked about a survey to find out how valid it might be. But honestly, I'd settle for describing the results of the survey correctly. And it wouldn't hurt to point out that a sample of 3,000 women who walk into a particular store or buy a particular product is NOT a sample of all the women on Earth. It's barely an acceptable random sample of women who shop at your store or buy a product!

It might be easier to clone Mr. Silver and create sites on various subjects, since his currently focuses on politics. Easier than teaching journalists a little stats, a little scientific method and a little self-respect.

But I think it would be more fun to build a site where crap surveys can be exposed as, well, crap. And good surveys can be lauded. And the results can be reported CORRECTLY. Shoot, I bet we could even get all kinds of college students to help crowd-source something like this.

Worst case scenario, I guess I'd have to do it myself. After I take a refresher course in social sciences.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Introduction To Survey Research (slideshare.net)
• Getting What you Need From a Survey A Primer on Using a Survey to Gather Information (questionpro.com)
• Ethical and data-integrity problems in a study of mortality in Iraq (stat.columbia.edu)
• Study: public relations more important than ever in the new newsroom (newswire.ca)

I've been floating some ideas on Twitter lately, and wanted to get them down clearly in more than 140 characters.

I don't think very many people outside the news industry realize how many people meddle in the run-of-the-mill article before it gets published.

Sometimes, multiple reporters are involved. An editor, maybe more than one. Copy editors. Headline writers. Production staff. Etc.

First, why might it benefit people to know who had a finger in the pie?

My instinctive response was to yell "TRANSPARENCY," and leave it at that. But that's not good enough without explaining how this particular transparency would be useful.

When I ran this idea by Twitter, I got several responses:

@greglinch "I wonder if crediting editors/copy editors would have any effect on the number of errors."

@madshrew "Imagine a wire story. There could be upwards of 8-10 names on it by the time someone reads it. Not sure that would be fix."

@westendorf "I don't think it would be useful. I think it would only satisfy the egos of former copy editors, copy editors assns, etc."

The first idea comes closest to my original train of thought. The purpose of transparency is accountability, and if copy editors (production staff, etc.) had to put their names on everything they edited, maybe there would be fewer errors.

The second is a design problem, for sure, but I think it can be solved.

Solutions proposed:

@greglinch "What if the names appeared at the end, similar to how contributors are listed?"

@ahemphill "Metadata!"

As for the ego issue, as unappreciated as copy editors etc. often feel, what's wrong with a little ego boost?

There was a second motivation for the idea though: to increase the concept of journalism as a collaborative work, rather than an individual one.

As journalism becomes more participatory and collaborative, the trend is encouraged by giving credit to all who are involved in the process.

Related Reading:

• Collaboration is Queen
• News Organizations: How Transparent Can We Be?
• Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture

What do you think?

After almost two years of web searches, guides, tutorials and mucking about, I finally have a stable install of Django on OSX. For anyone who has gone the painful route of trying to get Django running smoothly on a Mac, I highly recommend free and open source Bitnami DjangoStack, which installs and is ready to go in just a few clicks. The stack includes Django 1.0.2, but will be updating to the latest release shortly, as one of their developers told me after I posted about the stack on Twitter.

Unfortunately, my adventures with Django only lasted a couple of days, as I was tossed into the deep end of the pool with Drupal this week. I'm working on building an e-commerce site, but the theme system in Drupal has my brain tied in knots. That's what I'll be working on for the next couple of weeks.

In other news, music is the future of journalism. Or Google Wave. Or tablet computers.

About a month ago, I traded my brick of a Creative Labs Nomad Zen Mp3 player for a Sony E Series Walkman. My Nomad lasted more than 4 years. If my Blackberry had better audio output (the volume on the Blackberry Pearl doesn't go loud enough to be heard over the sound of the subway) I'd have used that, but I heard about the Walkman from Dave Winer's Scripting News blog, and I love it. No, it doesn't sync with iTunes, but I don't want it to. The Walkman makes it easy to take in the podcasts I love while I'm walking or on the Subway. That's all I want it to do.

On the subject of podcasts, I regularly listen to Dave Winer and Jay Rosen on Rebooting the News, Dave Stanton & Co., on Journalism Now, as well as some basic news analysis like Talk of the Nation, NOW on PBS and On the Media. I also listen to the New York Times Front Page podcast, just to see what the Grey Lady thinks is important today.

I also discovered that the New York Public Library has a great digital collection that can be checked out and downloaded online. My recent bedtime stories (audiobooks have been my salvation from insomnia since I was very young) have been the works of Orson Scott Card. I read the Ender's Game series when I was in middle school, and again in high school, and again in college. But I never read Card's less famous work. I've enjoyed Lost Boys, Hart's Hope, Enchantment, and the Alvin Maker series immensely. Just my brand of fantasy+philosophy+sci-fi. I'm currently listening to Songmaster.

I realized something recently about my reading habits online. I use Google Reader to collect most of my news and information. Sometimes, I don't have enough time to read everything, so I "star" things that I want to read later. The problem is, sometimes when "later" arrives, instead of reading and synthesizing something, I just bookmark it in Delicious. So now I have over 2,000 bookmarked items, a large part of which I haven't even read. Lame.

In the same vein, I've been thinking about how I use Publish2. Most of the things I link to on P2 are blog posts and news articles relating to journalism. What people are doing and thinking and seeing for the future of the industry. I want to be able to share more fluidly, and while P2 can import shared items from Google Reader, not everything I share among my GR social circle is P2 material. At the same time, maybe I should go back to the slow method, take my time to add comments and quotes and tags, so my links will be more valuable.

On the subject of links, I have to confess that one of the reasons for this blog post was to test out Apture, a plugin that lets me add videos, images, Wikipedia, links, maps and more with just a few clicks. I have to say, I'm likin' it. Another reason is that I've been out of the blogging groove for a long time, and this is yet another attempt to get back into it. I've been busy, and sometimes Twitter is so much easier, but I really think that it's important to maintain the practice of long-form writing.

I think this blog design is one of the problems, though. It's intimidating to think that I have to find images of a certain size for each post. And the design makes me feel like each blog post has to be an essay, instead of a few short paragraphs of thought. I'm not sure what the solution might be yet, but don't be surprised when things start looking different around here.

I should say, I re-caught the bug.

From September 19 - 25, I spent most of my time volunteering for MediaStorm's Advanced Multimedia Reporting Workshop.

I teamed up with Paolo Black, Melissa Pracht, Scott Lituchy and MediaStorm Producer Bob Sacha to tell a story about two young men who have made a career out of street entertainment. My role was to transcribe all the audio that was collected during shows and interviews.

I got to sit in on training sessions and lectures, and watch the MediaStorm team work their magic. And it was absolutely magical.

Talking the story over with the team showed me exactly how powerful a story like this can be and how we can learn from each other during its production. We all had our strengths and points of view, which contributed to a stronger piece than any of us could have produced individually.

I got home each day ranting about some new insight: interviewing techniques that get the subject to respond in complete sentences or the beauty of the extreme close-up. I looked at other MediaStorm projects, watching for the details we had talked about.

When I saw that my name was going in the credits for the project, and that I made a cameo in the Behind the Scenes production (at about 8:08) the grin on my face was big enough to fit an XL pizza.

There are parts of the experience I don't want to remember. The ringing in my ears and the ache in my neck after transcribing for hours at a time. The frustration I felt as I watched the other members of the team working with high-end gear I can't even dream of having. That doesn't mean I won't volunteer again. But next time, I'm taking a bottle of Aleve with me. And a point-and-shoot.

I started taking photos and shooting amateur videos long before I fell in love with journalism. In college, I took photography classes, including a study abroad trip to Berlin. I also did some independent study and in-class work with videography. Not to mention my work with both mediums at The Independent Florida Alligator, as I struggled to get reporters to get video and create audio slideshows along with their text articles.

So I caught the multimedia bug long ago. But once I lost access to the SLR and HD cameras, it got harder to be interested. I'd see a cool photo opportunity, but I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't afford to buy my own gear.

During this time, I turned to programming. I became more interested in data and applications and code than I had been with framing and sequences and lighting. Programming is a cheaper pursuit, and I've always been geeky enough to find the resources and teach myself.

Now, though, I catch myself walking around and seeing everything through a camera lens again. I wish I could afford even some low-end gear, because I know that otherwise, my interest will wane again. I will miss out on an aspect of storytelling every bit as important as programming or writing.

And although all the industry advice, including what I learned at MediaStorm, pushes specialization, I still want to know how to do it all.

Clearly I graduated too early. I can't apply for this class, but maybe you or someone you know can.

Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), in partnership with Education Writers Association and the Student Press Law Center, is launching a program to share investigative reporting skills with college and university students that they can apply to covering campus issues.

Seventy-five students from around the country will be selected to receive full scholarships to participate in the Campus Coverage Project.

You'll learn how to:

• Use the Internet as an investigative reporting tool.
• Read budget documents and find the stories that matter.
• Prepare for tough interviews and come away with the information you need.
• Analyze your school’s performance to see how it measures up.
• Examine athletic programs—and their funding.
• Use legal tools to pry open foundations, auxiliaries and other secretive campus institutions.
• Examine issues on your campus in the context of national debates on higher education.

Qualified students are those with experience reporting for campus-related news outlets who have at least one year of coursework remaining.

Apply by Oct. 12, 2009 for a full scholarship to attend a three-day Campus Investigative Reporting Workshop and participate in a year-long program that offers ongoing training and opportunities to learn from top reporters from throughout the country. Space is limited.

For more details and an online application, go to www.ire.org/campus.

I got an e-mail yesterday from The Daily Reviewer congratulating me on being added to their list of the top 100 journalism blogs.

The Daily Reviewer selects only the world's top blogs (and RSS feeds). We sift through thousands of blogs daily to present you the world's best writers. The blogs that we include are authoritative on their respective niche topics and are widely read. To be included in The Daily Reviewer is a mark of excellence.

They even sent me this nifty badge:

The Daily Reviewer looks a lot like Alltop, down to the grid of RSS feeds. But the first thing I noticed wasn't the content. It was the ugly ads. At least Alltops ads kinda blend into the page.

This month, TNTJ (a blog ring for young journalists around the world who debate a topic each month) is asking for help. Over the last few months, postings have dwindled, and it's time to get people motivated again.

The problems that TNTJ faces are not unique. It is the problem we face every time we try to create a community. Look at all the Ning communities that have been created for journalists. How many are still active?

Last month's topic was "Have you fallen out of love with blogging?" There were a couple of responses, most of which seemed to say "We like blogging, but Twitter is faster and easier."

I totally sympathize, as my own blog has been neglected. But I don't agree. Blogging is for long-form discussion, rather than the short bursts of lazy links we all get on Twitter. (Mind you, I'm not hating on Twitter, but it is hard to get ideas into 140 characters.)

Other topics have been:

• What advice would you give to a student or recent graduate who has a summer/job internship?
• Tips, knowledge and experience are essential — but how do you get them? Where do you look?
• What are your summer (internship) plans? And, if you’re graduating, what are your job prospects?
• What traditional skills are we ignoring, or letting slip? What’s the downside of new media?”

I don't think I've ever seen more than 5 or 6 responses to a TNTJ question in a given month. Unfortunate, because I would love to get to know the other participants and hear what they are working on, learning and thinking. I haven't responded every month myself, either because the topic was narrowed to students or I didn't want to be repeating the same obvious answers.

I think that the topics have been lukewarm and mostly aimed at students. I don’t know how many students make up the TNTJ circle, but those narrow topics make it hard for graduates and out-of-work journalists like myself to contribute. Some of the topics have also been so narrow that the responses are kind of obvious and predictable.

TNTJ is also considering adding a podcast to the mix. Again, the success of this endeavor will rely entirely on the community. Will enough people be able to contribute? Will people have different opinions that will make these discussions interesting?

If the topic were interesting, I would listen. I would definitely participate in any discussion I thought I could contribute to.

What else can TNTJ do to stimulate discussion?

I think one of the major problems is the lack of mission. What is TNTJ trying to accomplish? Just gathering young journalists together isn’t enough of a mission statement. We need something to work toward.

What are we, as young journalists, trying to accomplish?

I believe that like most journalists at this time, (indeed, most people) we are trying to make places for ourselves in a changing world, while exerting what effort and influence we have to make that world better.

There are two major parts to this: seeing where we are, and seeing where we will go. That is what we should be discussing every month.

Some ideas for future topics:

* What new projects and experiments are you watching or working on?
* What technologies are emerging and how will they affect journalism?
* What are you learning?
* What are the elements of journalism that we should expand upon in order to do our jobs better?
* What business models might support journalism in the future?