Zac Echola reminded me yesterday what this blog is about and why I started it.

• 1. A networking blog should be a living document of your professional self. You should stay focused on topics that matter to people who may hire you. You should start reading blogs from people in your field.
• 2. When someone makes you think, you should think out loud on your site. Have a conversation with others. Email people questions. Chat with them on twitter. Get to know people. Working a blog isn’t much different than working a room at a conference. Stay focused.
• 3. Show off your work. When you do something good, show it off. Don’t be bashful.
• 4. SEO the crap out of yourself.
• 5. Seize every opportunity you can.
• 6. Always remember that there’s a real human being on the other side of the machine.

I’ve been really bad at updating lately, and I’m going to work hard to fix that, starting with a bunch of updates on what I’ve been doing lately. I think short posts are preferred, so I’ll split things up. Keep an eye out for stuff on Twitter, Google Maps, Django and more.

I know I haven’t been posting much lately, but I’ve been completely swamped.

Thanks to Matt Waite’s brilliance and patience, I got Django installed on my MacBook. I haven’t actually done much more than order the book and start reading through the tutorial and documentation, but I’m really excited to start learning. Right now I’m stuck trying to get MySQL onto the laptop. I’m Terminal-retarded, so this is getting frustrating. Once I get that up and running, I’ll be diving into a Django-driven class project.

My independent study project has advanced to the data cleaning stage. I’m still gathering the last bits in, but I started cleaning and organizing and staring blankly at numbers.

Life at The Alligator isn’t particularly impressive lately. We’re still mostly fixing. I slapped this little map of upcoming Gainesville shows together last week. Then I had to spend 3 hours trying to get it to work with the publishing system. It’s still kind of broken. But on the bright side, Ken Schwencke, a journalism student who is several levels beyond my programming abilities, has joined my staff.

I don’t remember the rest of the song. But that’s what was playing in my head while I read Steve Klein’s “Revenge of the ‘Web People.’” He’s writing about definitions and how “print people” and “Web people” need to be just “journalists.”

Klein argues against the concept that “Web people” are somehow inferior to “print people.”

Online journalists must have all the skills of print and broadcast journalists, as well as digital production skills. They need a far more diverse skill set than journalists who work in vertical disciplines. They must have horizontal skill sets that they then practice on an online platform.
So, any hint that an online journalist is less capable or less qualified than a print or broadcast journalist is just plain wrong and unfair. It really ruffles my feathers (do ducks have feathers?)!

I recently found out that my position at The Alligator was created after a series of editors tried to do away with the Web site completely (in the early to mid-1990s). It apparently diverted important resources from the “real paper.” Think where we’d be now if they had taken the Web seriously!

Back to my point. One of the things that pisses me off the most about the gulf between print and online is how one-sided it seems to be. I read the paper. In both mediums. I care about the paper. In both mediums. I can write and edit just as well as I can create a Google map, edit audio, or design a Web site. I just happen to work in the online department because of the linear structure of the newsroom.

Don’t pigeonhole me just because I can do some things you don’t understand. I enjoy all of the aspects of being a journalist - from finding and reporting a story to producing a Web package. Let me learn all that I can, I’ll bet you learn a few things too.

There’s a new trend in online journalism these days: Stop talking, and do it.

Stop trying to convert, stop making lists, stop fighting the print bias with words. Start doing things that will make the difference.

David Cohn wrote:

I think the time for evangelizing is over. At this point if you are in a mainstream news organization and you don’t see the need for change, the battle is lost and I’m not going to spend time trying to convince you to change the culture in your newsroom. I will simply shake your hand, wish you an honest good luck and move on…If you want to see real change - don’t tell news room editors what to do - DO IT YOURSELF.

And Zac Echola, writing about Wired Journalists, wrote:

Something happened early this year in the media blogging world. We suddenly stopped talking about what we should be doing and started talking about what we are doing. We started talking about being the change we wish to see. It was at the same time a jarring change in tone and an exhilarating one.
Now is the time to be that catalyst for change in your news organization. No more talking about it. We’re doing it. And we want you to do it too.

Wired Journalists is a social networking site set up by Ryan Sholin, Howard Owens and Zac Echola after Owen’s post on getting wired.
In a very short amount of time, the site has gained over 300 members. It opens up discussions, not on why online journalism is important, but how to start doing it. Members are both newbies and established “wired” journalists.

I realized today that consciously or not, the “just do it” trend is affecting me, too. I spent a lot of time at The Independent Florida Alligator last semester trying to win over some very print-oriented editors. I spent a lot of time making lists of projects I wanted to start. Not that I didn’t get anything done; we made a lot of progress on getting our content management system working the way WE wanted it to work.

But this semester I’ve spent more time actually ticking projects off that list. I finally got the Gainesville Explorer project running. A multimedia stringer made a map of apartment complexes in Gainesville. Yea, that’s right, I have stringers. (I think we need to change this lingo, minion is a much cooler word.) I met with some of the business staff regarding the missing alumni page. I’ve gotten the editor and managing editor for print writing blog posts. All in just three weeks.

This is a hell of a lot more fun that fighting print bias and trying to get reporters to see the light.

My first assignment for my CAR independent study was to get some data from the Alachua County Health Department.

Professor Armstrong charged me with getting all current salaries, as of Jan. 1, 2008 for nurse practitioners and physician assistants working in the Alachua County Health Department, both full and part time. It took a couple of tries to get someone on the line. Then they asked me to send an e-mail. But in 3 business days, I had the data. Much easier than I thought.

I know all data requests won’t be so easy, but it’s good practice in asking for it. The experience was similar to what I did to get a gas prices map on The Independent Florida Alligator’s Web site: Figure out who has it, find a contact number or e-mail address, and ask.

My next assignment was to decide on a story I wanted to do the data analysis for. I had a lot of trouble with this, because I had to choose something that was timely, accessible, etc.

After going through a bunch of ideas

• location trends for car accidents in the gainesville area. are holidays/game days a factor?
• something about uf sustainability. the website was basically a bunch of press releases, but i bet if i went and asked they could dig me up some data.
• I looked at http://earmarkwatch.org/ and found that all the earmarks for the state of Florida are for defense bills. UF and some other Florida universities were getting some cash too.
• go back to crime or poverty :( i’m trying to avoid these because they seem too obvious/easy.

I finally hit on something:
Given that Crist just put out the budget for public universities and UF is apparently not getting any help, I think that would be a good direction to take. I can compare funding for public universities in Florida and maybe other states, compare growth in attendance, that sort of thing. Look at how funding for UF has changed now that we have fewer people in legislature and other schools are building strength. (UCF, SFU) Is UF still the “flagship” university? I’ll also be looking at tuition.

So the next step is to figure out how far back to look. I’ll start at 10 years, hit up Lexis and see what I can dig up.

I’m much more confident now that the topic is locked down.

Gator Alumni Map

Map of Gator Alumni Associations done as part of a group project for Reporting and Writing for the Web.

UF Campus Tour

Final project from my Reporting and Writing for the Web class. A Google map of some important buildings on campus, with embedded videos. I was going to do a voice-over but ran out of time.

I’ve continued to work on this virtual newsroom idea. This is a little chart I drew up. I know it’s not very clear yet.

Here’s a text version of how I envision this working:

A reporter gets a story idea, talks it over with his/her section editor, gets the green light and starts working on the story, at the same time, the section editor talks to the web editor, so the web editor sends an online journalist to go talk to the reporter (assuming there is something web-worthy in this story) so the online journalist goes back to his/her comp and starts working on something, but is using the giant integrated system to keep an eye on what the reporter is putting together, reporter shows story to section editor, who makes sure it is really a story and has all the necessary elements, and makes suggestions, and that might go back a forth a few times, depending. the online journalist has put together a map or a database or some video or whatever and shows it to the web editor, who does the same thing the section editor does and the reporter and the online jou are tracking each others work the whole time. so then the copyeditor goes over the text to make sure its spelled right and in ap style and not slanderous and all that and then everything goes to production. production meaning that the article the reporter wrote goes to the layout people, and then to the printer. meanwhile, the web side of production figures out where and how to put the project on the website.

Ugh. I understand how it would work in my head, but I’m not doing so great on making it clear to anyone else am I?

Related to this, I had a long conversation with a friend yesterday about virtual vs. meatspace communication. He argues that assuming time spent communicating and familiarity with the technology, there is no difference. I argued that there is something to face-to-face communication that can’t be replicated online.

What do you think? I’m gonna work on these concepts some more and see if I make make it more coherent.

Every semester the board of The Independent Florida Alligator accepts applications for editor, print managing editor and online managing editor (formerly managing editor for new media). All current editors have to re-apply.

So today was the board meeting, and having welcomed a new editor and print managing editor, I moved to the other side of the table for my own interview. Happily, I was voted in again. And the board approved changing the title from “new media” to “online.”

The Alligator doesn’t publish during school breaks, so there won’t be many changes to the site until January. But today I launched a map of gas prices in Gainesville, accompanied by the 10 cheapest gas stations in town. Super cool, cause I’ve been trying for half the semester to do that.

New Student Edition 2007 Map

Published to The Independent Florida Alligator Web site in August 2007. The New Student Edition of The Alligator contains articles about where to eat, shop and have fun. I hand-coded (using javascript) and a colleague designed this interactive map of all mentioned locations with links to related articles. Driving directions are also available.