Megan Taylor

Next week I will be speaking to the students of the West Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative about online journalism and the future of news.

The West Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative is a weekly program offered to sophomores, juniors or seniors from Bronx high schools.

Students will learn the fundamentals of writing, reporting, and photojournalism through classroom instruction but, more importantly, through hands-on reporting in their own neighborhoods. We will take them on field trips - including the newsroom of a daily newspaper. They will learn about community activism and civic responsibility, how their neighborhoods work (or don't), who has power, who doesn't and why.

I'm nervous, because I'm really horrible at public speaking. But also because I have no idea what these kids know.

What's the level of computer/Internet proficiency? Do they have access to computers at home? Do they read news online, have blogs, read blogs?

James Fergusson, the program coordinator and Editor of the Mount Hope Monitor, has told me that they have not discussed online journalism in class.

I got some great advice from Mindy McAdams, who told me not to assume that the kids are technologically ignorant. Even if they don't have computers at home, the public libraries offer free access.

She also suggested that I show "Not Just a Number" and "The Mac" as examples of stories told by people about their own communities.

I can probably spend a few minutes at first figuring out what they know without looking like a total hack. The problem is how to adjust what I want to say to their level. After beating college reporters over the head with the "good news" for two semesters, I'm not sure how to condense the message to half an hour.

Any advice? What should these high-schoolers know about online journalism? What do I tell them about the future of news?

Somehow, not being in school anymore just makes me more interested in the evolution of curriculum at journalism schools.

No, it's not a subconscious desire to teach. I've not the temperament for that.

But I've been collecting information about what's being taught, perhaps in the hopes that they'll teach something I don't know, thereby giving me an excuse to go back to school.

My, that sounds arrogant. But I only mean that I've been through the traditional journalism curriculum, took some online media courses and taught myself a hell of a lot in my spare time.

Bryan Murley updated his syllabus for the multimedia course he teaches at Eastern Illinois University.

Most of the syllabus is the same as it was during the last semester, however, I’m spending much more time on audio and video, with lots of repetition and building upon core concepts.

Also, I should note that we’re using Final Cut Express this semester instead of iMovie. I’m done with iMovie until it is more stable and edits audio easier.

Andrew Dunn reports changes to the curriculum at the University of North Carolina, which now requires a class called "Audio-Video Information Gathering." The UNC curriculum includes specializations choices of Multimedia and Electronic Communication (whatever that is).

Through University of Florida fact-finding professor Cory Armstrong, I found out about a new course at UNC: Public Affairs Reporting For New Media.

As near as I can tell, students in the course pick a topic for the semester and do some in-depth research, including multi-media elements, to develop a package.

The professor, Ryan Thornburg, is blogging about the class.

This is one that I'm really interested in, since I did something similar as an independent study with Professor Armstrong.

Fred Stutzman, also at UNC, has been teaching Online Social Networks for several semesters now.

This course is a primer on the study of online social networks. We will explore the theory, methods and findings of a growing literature on the topic. We will also explore applications and use cases, particularly in the context of education and library/information services. While online social networks are but a subset of social software, this course should provide you a strong set of fundamentals for exploring the multiple facets of our pervasive online sociality.

Mindy McAdams is teaching a new multimedia reporting class at UF as well as updating her Flash class (Advanced Online Media Production).

Students taking Multimedia Reporting will learn to:

• Gather digital audio and upload it to a computer
• Edit digital audio and produce an MP3 file
• Edit, crop and resize photos; optimize photos for online use
• Create an audio slideshow using Soundslides
• Shoot simple video suitable for online distribution
• Edit video with a simple editing program
• Prepare video for online distribution

Lastly, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, changes are planned.

The new, proposed curriculum shift places a deeper, more thorough emphasis on awareness, understanding and application of online journalism skills and the training begins in the freshman year.

Stories CoJMC students write, photographs, advertising, marketing campaigns, video news reports and documentaries will be produced by hundreds of CoJMC students for the NewsNetNebraska Web site.

For those of us no longer in school and feeling left out, Dave Lee wrote about how journalists can continue their online education, well, online.

(Note: I wrote this a few months ago and forgot about it. I found it while cleaning off my hard drive today. Oops!)

I got a Blackberry Pearl about a year ago, and while I have access to Google Reader and Twitter, (my main sources of news) I just haven't gotten out of the habit of reading off the larger screen of my laptop.

Many media outlets are pursuing the possibilities of mobile news, having learned from their mistake with the Internet. As mobile phones get more advanced and more people use them, there is an opportunity to capture an audience.

Problems

One issue to address when setting out to get news on mobile phones is the variation in technologies used by different phones. Many phones can play video or view websites. All phones can receive text messages, but that can be costly to the user.

Viewing websites on a non-iPhone is a ghastly business. Tiny screens, poor rendering of CSS, graphic-heavy or Flash-based websites, they all make information harder to get at. One solution here is to create a mobile stylesheet that the phone browser will detect.

Another problem is content. Just as people don't read off a computer screen the way they read a print product, no one wants to read a lengthy feature article on a 2-inch screen.

What kind of content might one want to see on a phone?

Weather and traffic alerts, events, and big, huge, breaking news. Seriously, the feature article can wait till I get home. But if a criminal is running around my neighborhood with a gun, I'd like to know, ASAP.

What about multimedia? I don't see myself using my phone to go through a complex multimedia package. A video or slideshow, maybe, if I'm really interested. But phones are about "right now" communication. That should be reflected in how news companies approach them.

It may be that the only real solution for phones is better phone software. It doesn't have to be iPhone quality, but the ability to add "news" to your basic menu would change everything. You could do any kind of feed you want then, while not having to go three steps in just to open a browser.

Examples

The Associated Press launched the Mobile News Network. The view on a phone is pretty nice, with a top news home screen, categorized story feeds (you can pick the general topics, and a "saved" category for custom searches). You can set preferences for location and the types of news you want to see. They also do video pretty well, providing various formats. They have applications for Blackberry/iPhone/iPod Touch users.

CNN's mobile offerings include a Java application, SMS alerts, live TV (for certain providers), and downloadable videos.

The BBC actually explains how they set up several different versions of their mobile site and let your browser choose the best one.

The New York Times offers a mobile site where you can read the NYT blogs, see most e-mailed articles, get alerts for topics or keywords, and browse real estate listings, stocks and weather forecasts. You can also choose to have news sent to your phone via text message. Customers of certain providers can also get access to crossword puzzles.

Fox News provides live video, streaming video clips, the requisite mobile site, and text alerts. Something a little different: they also offer an audio version of FNC, for a monthly fee.

Real World Use

The people most likely to have a compulsion to check the news every few hours, no matter where they are, are journalists. So I rounded up a few and asked about their mobile news habits.

Greg Linch sent me an e-mail after I asked for responses on Twitter.

I check Gmail on my smart phone (an AT&T Tilt), where I might have a New York Times, Washington Post or Miami Herald breaking news e-mail. After checking Gmail, I look at Twitter for other news and any interesting conversations. I also get Miami Herald breaking news text alerts, which include big national and local news.

If I'm away from the computer for an extended period of time -- or if I'm bored somewhere -- I'll check Google Reader on my phone. If I just want a quick peek at the latest headlines, I'll go to the mobile version of a site such as CNN, NYT or the Herald.

Kyle Mitchell is a music writer. He carries an iPod Touch. In an IM conversation, Kyle told me about his news habits.

NYT is one that keeps going down all the time. AP Mobile News is absolutely fantastic: runs fast as hell and top news never contains any bullshit like celebrity news. I check that a few times a day. Google News has a similar setup, but it's much more clunky.

Brett Roegiers associate producer at CNN.com said

On my phone, I consume the news via Google Reader and Twitter.

Brett volunteered some advice to media outlets:

I'll tell you what news organizations should pay attention to: location-based web apps. I click 'restaurants' or 'bars' and it shows me what's in my area without me having to input where I am. I guess I'd say try to take advantage of the platform in some way and not just show the latest headlines.

Lyndsey Lewis has an older Nokia, but checks the news on her iPod Touch.

I don't use my phone, because I have a shitty Nokia phone and it's hard to read stuff on it. But, I also own an iPod Touch, which I bring with me everywhere and use for news. I have the New York Times app on it and use that almost every day.

So what applications are you using to get the news on your phone? What do you think media outlets should be doing to get people's attention? What can manufacturers do to make phones easier to use in this context?

I don't remember people's reactions when Clinton was elected. I remember being angry, in a trendy "Everyone hates on Bush" way, after the election in 2000. In 2004, I almost left the country. But in none of those elections did I understand, as I only begin to now, the chain of events that starts with this one crazy night. I wanted to try to document the range of emotions I've seen people around me go through as the election ended and in the past day or so.

The day of the election, while I was bouncing off the walls with excitement and anxiety, people at the office seemed really calm. Someone even said to me, "I wonder who will win, but really, it's not like it can get any worse."

When it was all over, I could hear people outside my apartment screaming, honking, and generally celebrating. Even though you could see the same happening on the TV, it was cool to know that people around me were so emotionally involved in this election.

Yesterday a friend told me that when he looks at the people around him, they seem happier. They have hope.

This morning I got into a conversation on the train with a middle-aged black woman. She spoke about how she never thought she would see a black President of the United States. About what this means for everyone, "but especially for minority kids." She was practically glowing as she spoke of a friend who is 106 years old, and has lived through so much radical change.

I often hear people complain about how hard emotions are to read off a computer screen. I find it rather easy. Everything I read seems to be charged with the energy of change. Whether its because he's black, a Democrat, Internet-savvy, or just the lesser of two evils, a lot of people seem to be thinking happy thoughts.

Now all we need is some pixie dust.

Last night was one of most exciting of my life. I got to watch America do something special.

I got home around 6:30, right after the first polls closed. I stayed hooked to television and computer until just after President-elect Barack Obama's acceptance speech. It was an amazing experience.

During past elections, information was sought largely from television news. This time, I paid more attention to a large selection of Web sites than to the obnoxious commentary of political analysts. Apparently, so did a lot of other people:

According to Akamai, which is the content delivery network for most major news sites including CNN (which had a record day on its own), NBC, Reuters, and the BBC, global visitors to news sites peaked last night at 11 PM with 8,572,042 visitors per minute.
That is double the normal traffic level, and 18 percent above the previous peak of 7.3 million visitors per minute achieved during the World Cup back in June, 2006. (The third biggest peak to news sites was last March during the first day of the U.S. college basketball playoffs when it hit 7 million visitors per minute).(TechCrunch)

Most of the links below aren't to news sites, though. These are passionate and creative people who found different ways to reflect on what we all saw last night. A little bit of meta-coverage, if you will.

Mark Luckie put together a time-lapse video of the NYTimes home page from last night. It starts while voters are still at the polls and ends with Obama's victory. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" was an inspired musical choice.

Mark Newman and his cartogram software showed how skewing the normal red/blue map according to population or electoral votes is a better graphical representation of how America voted.

Daily Kos collected headlines and newspaper front pages in the US and elsewhere. Excellent collection with some really creative designs.

My friend Matthew Gonzalez grabbed some screen shots from news Web sites' home pages. I really love the NYTimes treatment.

Designer Robb Montgomery collects his best picks of front pages. I have to agree, the Chicago Sun-Times front is amazingly powerful. He also brings us "a video tour and spot critique of top U.S. media Web sites and their election graphics at the moment when Sen. Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election."

ReadWriteWeb put together a really cool slideshow of election coverage online, showing resources from Twitter to Ustream, news sites and more.

Mindy McAdams put together her own slideshow of voting maps and home pages.

Ever since I made my relationship with journalism official - I finally committed on paper as a junior in college - I've been trolling JournalismJobs.com. That obsession only grew when I graduated 2 months ago.

I keep an eye out for opportunities for myself and people I know, but also for trends: what skills are wanted, what kinds of jobs are open, where papers are hiring.

The first two things I noticed were that the average years of experience desired had gone up, and there were more upper-echelon jobs open. Years of experience went from 2-3 to 5-and-up over the past year or so. Just out of college, that's not good news for me. I also see a lot more ____ Editor jobs - not counting the ubiquitous "Web" or "online" editor position (usually a cut-and-paste job!) - and sports writing positions. Why are there so many sports positions open when that's one of the most popular beats in the newsroom?

More interesting than the job titles are the job descriptions. Lists of skills and vague descriptions of expected duties tell us almost as much about the state of journalism as the recent spate of layoffs.

My favorite job description is the search for "computer jesus". These are the job descriptions that list 100 programming languages plus multimedia skills. Yea, right. Am I running the entire news site and producing content all by myself?

Then there's the "we don't know what we want you to do but we're supposed to hire an online person" job description. This one, from The Times-News in Idaho, actually made me want to cry:

Must have visual design skills and be knowledgeable on Internet concepts and the latest developments on the Web. Must be proficient in PHP, HTML, Javascript, XML, Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Writing skills are a plus. (emphasis added)

Writing skills are a plus? Are you serious? Hiring a journalist - you're doing it wrong.

I realize that a lot of these are written by people who really don't know enough to narrow down what they want. And I'm not trying to put those people down. But between this post on putting together a Web team and this one on journalism job salaries, I thought there was a place for a little something on the chaotic state of journalism job descriptions.

The online capstone course, Applied Interactive Newspapers, is built to work like an internship.

There are 6 students in the class this semester. Each of us is responsible for pulling in 7 stories each week, from The New York Times or AP wire.

These stories are published on Newszine, the Interactive Media Lab's news Web site.

Recently, in addition to the 7 stories, we were assigned a multimedia requirement. Each week, 2 Soundslides and 2 videos will be published to the site along with our stories, with labor divided among the staff.

It was my turn to do a video this week. I chose to do a video tutorial for using Soundslides. I wrote out my script and talked to my partner, Matt Gonzalez, about the shots. We set the camera up and also set the editing computer up for screen-casting.

Then I did my thing. I'm not particularly pleased with the outcome. I get massive stage fright as soon as the camera's watching, even though I'm only on the screen for a few seconds.

But I learned a lot from this. I should have run through my actions a few times before I did it for the camera. It also could have done with a little more editing.

In any case, I'm learning a lot about video and editing, so by the time I graduate I should be pretty good at this.

I've been working at The Independent Florida Alligator since the beginning of the summer. And I've learned a lot about the Web, news, multimedia, design, and programming.

Perhaps the most important area in which I've grown is how I deal with others on a day-to-day basis.

I have a pretty short fuse. I get frustrated easily, I have a big mouth, I love to complain. I curse at the computer regularly and will talk to anyone for hours about how much I despise our content management system. I spend way to much time in front of a computer, so I can be a little socially handicapped.

That's no excuse. Coming from a manager, the people I work with don't take all this as just blowing steam. It makes them more reluctant to work online. It keeps them from suggesting new projects because they don't know how far we can push the limitations of the CMS.

So I'm learning, slowly, about diplomacy and silence and waiting until I'm alone to scream and tear my hair out. It's really hard. But worth the effort. The less I kvetch, the more people wander past my desk and ask what I'm doing for such-and-such an article.

It's important for online journalists to be visible and positive about what they do.

I survived. Again.

As usual, the first week of school was accompanied by lack of sleep and an increase in Mountain Dew purchases.

I find myself in a position to look forward to a time beyond school; I will graduate at the end of this semester. As I said to several people during the week: "I look forward to a time when I'm only doing one job." Juggling the roles of student and employee, especially with multiple points of employment, is more tiring than spending the same amount of time on one area.

This semester I am taking an independent study on Computer-Assisted Reporting. I blogged about this last week, but to recap briefly: I will be learning how to find, clean and analyze data. At the end of the semester I will produce a data-driven story package.

I'm also taking the online capstone for the journalism program at UF. This class will focus on interaction with a CMS and producing video, as well as an independent project (I am hoping to start working with Django here). And just to get past the part-time student level, I am also taking a professional practice class (a.k.a. how to get a job, negotiate salary, etc.)

While I am continuing as Managing Editor at The Independent Florida Alligator, my title is not the only difference from last semester. (We changed New Media to Online.) Many people this semester are new either to The Alligator or to their positions. Although we got off to a rocky start, I think everyone is becoming acclimated and it can only get better. As for the online staff, two out of the three are back, and a total of nine responded to a call for more staff members. This is the most interest that has been shown in a long time.

I am also continuing to update the Citizen Access Project Web site, as well as preparing a newer incarnation for launch. Over the break I started working at the Admissions office at UF, recoding their Web site.

Just writing about my different responsibilities makes me look forward to May. But I know I'll enjoy every minute that I'm learning, creating or teaching something.

I'm doing an independent study on Computer Assisted Reporting with Professor Cory Armstrong in the Spring. I was told at a couple of job interviews that I need CAR experience, but the University of Florida takes data no further than the Fact Finding class.

So I'm going to find a dataset, explore it, and hopefully be able to produce a story package.

Right now I'm doing some research on different datasets currently available, but I'm having trouble narrowing down my subject.

I've been looking at some PEW studies for ideas on what sort of data to look at, as well as the IRE Database Library.

Some ideas so far:

• Campus Crime: compare Florida colleges or SEC colleges or just look at UF crime
• Walter Reed: I'm not sure how to find this data, or if it is readily available. But it was one of the seriously under covered stories listed by PEW. This could be taken more broadly: reduced funding in VA hospitals, funding vs. number of troops vs. number of living vets, 2001 to present for all kinds of money issues, number of wounded, currently enlisted, vets no longer enlisted, maybe also insurance
• Fluctuating Gas Prices
• Tasering Cases in Florida

Edit: I'm also trolling the Sunlight Foundation's "Insanely Useful Web Sites."

That's it so far. (Thanks to Mindy for the help.)

Picking a subject has always been the hardest thing for me. I just want to look at everything!

Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

with Adrian Holovaty! This is the highlight for me, since my background is more programming and I'm defenitely a huge geek. Seeing Adrian speak was the deciding factor in coming to SND.

How to take data and make it efficient in terms of how the hypertext is laid out. Example: Wikipedia = Serendipity

Journalists are essentially collectors of data.

Rant #1 No serendipity in online journalism. Bullshit!
Data browseability: people want it and expect it. (IMDB, Amazon.com)

Serendipity increases stickiness and usefulness.

It all starts with structure. Have a structured list of data (facts) like an Excel spreadsheet. Journalists take clean data and turn it into a story. Computer programs can't read the story. News orgs have the infrastructure to collect data, edit and verify the data and get the data to people. But they don't leverage the data!

Lesson #1 Structure your data
Everything has structure. Sports. Obits. Even photos: subject, photographer, where, when, camera, size, colors (Flickr)

After the structure, the easy part.

Lesson #2 Give your data "the treatment"
Example: crime data
Step 1: lists fields (date, time, type, address, location, arrests, case number)
Step 2: key concepts (what data is useful? date, time, type, address, location)
Step 3: make breakdowns (list all possible values for each field)
Step 4: make list pages (pages for each value in each field)
Step 5: detail pages (pages for each crime)

Things to note
- Permalinks for concepts (distinct URL) linkability/bookmarkability
- SEO
- Serendipity

Example sites: chicagocrime.org, Faces of the Fallen, Video Game Reviews, Mixed Messages.

with Nick Bilton and Michael Rogers from the New York Times R&D team.
R&D: Engineers look ahead (18 months to 5 years) for new technological advances. R&D is a state of mind and a commitment of resources.
"I always wear a tie because with a title like 'futurist' you need all the credibility you can get."

How will content be delivered?
- Paper is hard to compete with as a display device.
- E-Ink: flexible, long battery life, no energy to display page, can hold 180 books, only black and white
- Polymer vision: about the size of a cell phone, updates wirelessly
- OLED: OLED screen is vibrant, great with color
- Google vision

The next audience: Millennials
Fears: a) no interest in news, b) no interest in paper
Were you seriously following the news at age 17? College students read campus news on paper: its still convenient.
Millennials have no habits that revolve around news. They have mobile phones!

Wireless everywhere!
- WIFI: laptops shipped with it
- 3G
- WIMAX: wifi on steroids, global standard

Devices?
Laptops will get smaller, smartphones get better, until they merge. Times Reader: Windows-only right now. Navigate, resize, edit and annotate text, send annotations to others. Lays itself out to fit size of screen.

Print to Mobile
- Reefers
- Interact with paper via text messages
- 2d barcodes for cellphones to Web site
- shifd.com: communication between phone and TV, phone and computer

Devices are becoming more aware of our location and the content we seek. More and more data comes in automagically tagged with extra info (Geotagging).
How do we create new value out of existing content without expending human effort? (Algorithms, Google Earth!)

Virtual News Delivery: SecondLife

Jared Novack and Mike Swartz talking about taking a print publication online.

"How to make an extra $10,000 at your first job and not get laid off 3 years later" is the title of their presentation.

First step is to establish a Web identity. Look at the flags from established, important newspapers and then check out their online representations. Ew. You already have a print identity. Use the same logo, carry your brand over isntead of creating a new one.

WEB DESIGN IS NOT PRINT DESIGN ON A COMPUTER. amen.

Remember:
hierarchy content placement
teasers and reefers more important
columns and grids
design fundamentals
ads are content too
scannability (provide a buffet of info..I'm hungry!)

Forget:
large amounts of real-estate
large amounts of copy
overdesigned logos

Design it once: modular design

Online typography: Only a few typefaces to work with. Make the best of it with CSS. Check out A List Apart. Typography is what users interact with most on your Web site.

Three tips:
Play with letter-spacing
Play with line-height (approx 130% of font size)
Use font size for hierarchy

Newspaper Sins:
Flashturbation: Hell to make and update, hell to link. But, Flash can do the work for templated packages.
Blog Jammin': Why are so many newspaper Web sites inundated with blogs? Rife with: non-information, uninteresting and mundane, not current or neglected, leftover stories. When they are extremely targeted, have organized information and are used as an easy portal to content, they can be good. Good idea: crime blog.
Podcasts: enhance content by providing a primary source, don't just read the headlines.
Video: YOU ARE NOT TV and that's a good thing.

Use Google Analytics. Use SEO.

One of the most important elements of Web design is typography. It's hard to read any long block of text off a computer screen, so the text must be made as easy to read as possible. On the other hand, you want to have a little individuality and make the text attractive as well.

My favorite way to explain the importance of typography is through a few videos I've found in the past (and posted here) that use typography to convey emotions.

Today, via Information Aesthetics, I found a slew of such videos.

My favorite is the Bob Dylan video. Which is yours?

I love lists. They give me direction, options, and when completed, a sense of accomplishment.

Bryan Murley recently reposted his checklist of things college media sites should consider. Of course my first thought was to see how my own college media outlet is doing:

* Have you got your news org. online?

The Alligator has been online for a while, although until recently the site left much to be desired.

* Do you have a content management system?

We just launched the new Alligator site with a content management system and a new design. Yay!

* Have you posted any videos online?

Yes we have. In fact, on Thursday two reporters handed me video - a first!

* Have you included any audio soundbites in a story?

I have the soundbites on my computer...they just haven't made it to the correct format for the Web site yet.

* Have you done a photo slideshow?

Yes, several.

* Have you put up an audio slideshow (perhaps using Soundslides)?

Yes.

* Have you done a map?

Yes.

* Have you used weblogs on your site?

Like the soundbites, this is in the works.

* Have you uploaded source documents (PDFs, excel spreadsheets, etc.) to accompany a big story?

YES! Even on the old site, documents were often uploaded when provided by the reporters.

* Have you used social media (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube) to market your stories?

There is an Alligator Facebook group, and individual articles on the new site now feature sharing tools.

* Have you tracked what others are saying about you via Technorati or Google Blogsearch?

Nope.

* Have you used the web site to post breaking news online FIRST?

Still trying to figure this one out. We have put a couple f breaking sports stories up before they went to print though.

* Have you moved the online editor out of the back office and into a position of authority?

Well, I guess we kind of moved ourselves out of the back office.

* Have you allowed comments on your stories?

Yes. I have been pleasantly surprised with the intelligence of many of the comments posted to the site. We decided not to review comments and to remove them only if a complaint was lodged, or if we saw a "flame war" starting up.

* Have you encouraged writers to write for the Web and include hyperlinks in their stories?

I'm hoping this will go hand-in-hand with blogging. Right now, when we are putting up new stories, if we see an opportunity for a link, it goes in.

* Have you tried something experimental?

We've got a few projects in the works, but right now energy is tied up in making the workflow efficient and working the kinks out of the new site.

So far, I think we're doing pretty good! Of course, in this case, the "checklist" is never really completed. But I'll be happy if I can get out of the office by 1:30 a.m. every night instead of 3 a.m.

Applied Fact Finding was a great class for me.

In class we reviewed news stories that were seeded or based entirely on analysis of public records. I learned how to find local and state records on all topics: "campaigns and elections, property, business, health care, court procedures, environment, education, online and library research, FOIA requests, computer-assisted reporting, and Excel." (from her description of the class)

I was amazed and a little perturbed by how many parts of people's lives are available through public records and how easy they are to find once you know where and how to look. I'm all for open access, but not to my life.

I love nothing more than to think of a question and use the Internet to find an answer. For this class, my questions were more specific, and limited to the life of one person (who despite numerous marriage licenses was extremely boring). And occasionally, we had to use actual books.

I was further intrigued by the possibilities for journalism that can come from analyzing and tracking public records.

But my favorite segment of the class focused on Web search. Of the two choices available for a book review assignment, I read John Battelle's "The Search". I now recommend it to my friends along with "Atlas Shrugged" and "Stranger in a Strange Land".

This is a class I would take over again if I could. In my mad rush to learn everything, sometimes I'm unable to slow down and pay attention to something that needs and deserves a little patience. Because of this class, there are randomly scattered CAR (Computer Assisted Reporting) -related Web sites among my del.icio.us bookmarks and Google Reader. I only wish there was as much emphasis on CAR in journalism education as there is on multimedia.

Here's the resource Web site from the class.

Al Tompkins posted this great interview with David Simon, assistant city editor at The Frederick News-Post, about the Forgotten Soldiers project.

The project tells the stories of soldiers who have been unaccounted for in 5 wars.

The project began with a simple press release about an American Legion dinner to honor the county's sole Vietnam War veteran who remains unaccounted for. He's been featured in our paper a number of times, but we began wondering if veterans of other wars might be unaccounted for.

The interview is inspiring, and the project is very comprehensive, if a little disorganized.

The entire project includes maps, databases, articles, timelines, individual stories, a guestbook, AND a pretty big multimedia package.

Like most huge projects, there's an organization problem. What do I click on first? Where do I start, where do I finish? How do I know if I've already read this part? Etc.

It makes me want to go digging around in public records and databases. I just need a topic to start with.

Two recent events set off a discussion among the journalists whose blogs I read to the effect of: Do journalists need to be programmers?

Adrian Holovaty got a grant to go off and spend his days working on EveryBlock, and Northwestern University got a grant to provide scholarships to computer programmers who want to learn journalism.

Of course, this discussion has occurred in classrooms and newsrooms already, but this was the first explosion on the subject online. At the root, the problem is that in order to create great online content, SOMEONE in the newsroom needs to be able to work with databases (PHP), ActionScript (Flash), and CSS. But newspapers aren't hiring, or programmers don't get involved in journalism, or something occurs that prevents the newsroom from having access to someone who can write some code.

Here are some of the opinions that have appeared:

(A lot of people are differentiating between Programmers and programmers, Writers and writers. That's why I use upper- and lower-cases differently.)

Matt Waite: In 2 separate posts, Matt explains the reasons newsrooms need programmers and who should/shouldn't be learning it. His position is not that all journalists should learn to code, but that the people who have an interest in both writing and programming can bring more to the table. Ultimately, "Journalism needs all the innovators it can get."

David Cohn: David, clearly on the side of journalists learning to code, asks where the scholarships are to teach journalists to program, and points out that the hot players in geek journalism are journalists turned coders, not the other way around.

Dan Gilmor: Journalists don't need to learn to program, they need to learn how to work with programmers.

William Hartnett: "Journalists need to know programming. Not all of us, but some." He differentiates between Programming and programming, and argues that some programming can be considered journalistic tasks, "clean up dirty personnel records from the school district or parse some messy addresses in crime data from the sheriff’s office."

Scott Rosenberg: Scott supports the idea of journalists learning programming, but they don't need to Program. More important, they need to understand the technology available for storytelling online.

Howard Owens: Howard is a journalist/programmer himself. But he recommends that journalists learn new skills that compliment their talents and individual situations. And these new skills should be applicable online. In a later update, Howard says the instead of all running off to learn to code, journalists should "figure out the niche your employer needs filled, and fill it."

To me, online journalism encompasses all of the aspects of the Internet, be it code or multimedia. I'm not sure you can call yourself an Online Journalist if your Web page is all HTML tables and a few lines of PHP make you quiver like Jell-o. If you don't feel comfortable writing code from scratch, you should at least be able to edit it.

I'm definitely in favor of a scholarship for journalist/programmers and programmer/journalists. I feel like some journalism students are afraid to learn code because it is associated with, or feels like, math. I'm no math genius, I never got past statistics, and the only math I've come across so far is adding up margins and padding in CSS and adding seconds for audio in ActionScript.

I may never be able to build anything as cool as chicagocrime.org. But I enjoy coding, in the same way that I enjoy writing. So scholarship or not, I'll learn how to manipulate database information, build time lines and maps in Flash, and anything else that looks like a great way to spread information online.

Edit: Matt can’t seem to keep his site up and running, so you'll have to search archives.org for his post.

Last year, productivity blog Lifehacker declared that MSN Autos had the best gas price comparison.

So what makes MSN so great? First, they use the Oil Price Information system which contains more data in almost real time compared to volunteer "spotter" based sites like GasBuddy.com. Second the gas prices at MSN were listed in order from least to most expensive, were the most expansive (in personal tests), and included an interactive map, as well.

I just got my driver's license and a car, so now I care about finding the cheapest gas in town. I haven't seen any further comparisons or analysis, so I'll let that stand.

Which brings me to Local Gas Prices, a gadget for your Google homepage that uses MSN Autos to find the cheapest gas in your area. Granted, I still have to plug the addresses into Google Maps, but at least I can get an at-a-glance idea at how many hours I need to work this week.

This is definitely not the most exciting thing to come my way this week. But I stuck around for a while because I love finding ways to use information that's already online. Why should I have to build a whole new database when I can yank from someone else's? (Let's not get started on the legal aspects of this, that's a whole different blog post.) I'd love to see a newspaper Web site build something like this (maybe even a Facebook app?) and do it well: on a map.

As far as web geeks go, I may be a little anti-social. I visit Facebook once a week, at most. I don't even bother with Myspace anymore unless someone else calls my attention there. I don't have many photos to post to Flickr, I don't usually recommend links via Del.icio.us (mostly because the people I'm networked with usually beat me to the link), Digg is no longer even an RSS feed and I post to Twitter only once every few days.

But I maintain these connections, cause you just never know.

For example, I'm a "twitter-follower" of the NYT. I get instant messages with links to new stories. I've found that this means I actually read them, instead of skipping over the headline and lede in Google Reader.

Last week, the Orlando Sentinel made an account with Twitter, and used it to track and update the launching of Atlantis. The best part is, they didn't just "tweet" shuttle-related updates.

"Fours hours until launch and all anyone is talking about is Paris Hilton's meltdown in court and her return to jail. Sigh."

So having resisted Twitter, finally given in, and being a lukewarm user at best, why does this rock my socks?

Because I wasn't within reach of TV or computer on Friday. I got those updates as text messages on my phone. And being addicted to being in the know, that just made my day.

The lesson here is that some weird and funky things take off in the online world. News outlets should join in the fun.