Sunday, April 28, 2013

In Their Shoes: How the cover of the May issue of Boston Magazine came to be

Go here for the heartwarming story behind the Boston Magazine cover.   Here's a taste:

To me the cover is about two things: perseverance and unity. By itself, each shoe in the photograph is tiny, battered, and ordinary. Together, though, they create something beautiful, powerful, and inspirational. Remove just one shoe and you begin to diminish, in some small way, the overall effect. Collectively, they are the perfect symbol for Boston, and for our response to the bombings.
Thanks, Chelsea!  bk

Strange bedfellows? What we can learn from the news coverage of the Boston Bombings.

For the past week or so, I have been collecting links to post-mortems of the news coverage of the hunt for the Boston bombing suspects.  Rather than let the hoarding go south -- as it so often does -- I thought I might as well call it a day.

For those of you still contemplating the ways in which the intersection of social media and traditional news sources will play together in the future, here's some food for thought -- from the New York Times, Salon, Huffington Post, Poynter, Seattle Times, Newsosaur, Neiman Journalism Lab -- and on and on...

This Week in Review: Verification and the crowd in Boston 




The Pressure to Be the TV News Leader Tarnishes a Big Brand 

Citizen ‘journalism’ ran amok in Boston crisis
 
Boston Bombings Reveal Media Full of Mistakes, False Reports (VIDEO)

Lesson from the manhunt: We're all journalists now
 
A Nation of Police Scanner Rebels

How journalists are covering the news unfolding in Boston

If anything good is to come of all the mistakes, false steps, and the race to be first gone wrong, I hope it will be some critical thinking about how these new forms of media -- the interplay of amateurs and professionals --  can work together as a lens into what the newsroom of the future may look like.  As for the links, I'm sure I've left out quite a bit.  But one can only hoard so much, for so long.  Let me know what you think.  bk 

 

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Boston Globe gets it done

Want to know why we still need the pros?

Amid all the social media mistakes and journalistic goofs (multiple links TK) that came out of Boston over the past couple of weeks, the following stands out:  a harrowing reconstruction, by Boston Globe staffer Eric Moskowitz, of the night that "Danny" spent with the Tsarnaev brothers in the front seat of his carjacked Mercedes SUV.

Here's a taste:
In an exclusive interview with the Globe, Danny — the victim of the Tsarnaev brothers’ much-discussed but previously little-understood carjacking — filled in some of the last missing pieces in the timeline between the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier, just before 10:30 p.m. on April 18, and the Watertown shoot-out that ended just before 1 a.m. Danny asked that he be identified only by his American nickname. 

The story of that night unfolds like a Tarantino movie, bursts of harrowing action laced with dark humor and dialogue absurd for its ordinariness, reminders of just how young the men in the car were. Girls, credit limits for students, the marvels of the Mercedes-Benz ML 350 and the iPhone­ 5, whether anyone still listens to CDs — all were discussed by the two 26-year-olds and the 19-year-old driving around on a Thursday night.
Quentin Tarantino indeed.  Read it all here.  Whew.  bk

Friday, April 5, 2013

How do YOU define journalism?

I came across this review of Vice, HBO's edgy news show, in the San Francisco Chronicle today. These two paragraphs caught my eye:

"Traditional journalists and academics may debate the validity of "Vice's" approach to storytelling: Reportorial distance used to be seen as crucial to being able to fully report the facts on all sides of a story without bias. 

"But does reportorial distance also keep traditional journalists from either getting stories that go unreported or from getting to the real heart of the stories that do get reported? There's no question that the image of that bodiless head instantly and indelibly communicates the horror of daily life in Afghanistan, perhaps better than more conservatively selected images we're likely to see on broadcast or cable news shows.

It occurred to me that, based on the above, I am neither a traditional journalist nor an academic.  And hooray for that.  But I am always amused when folks who don't do what I do make assumptions about what it is that I do do.

Anyway, what do you think?  Does this whole business of "reportorial distance" help or hinder the process of journalism?  bk

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

State of The News Media, 2013


 Pew Research Center just released its latest report on the State of the news Media.  Basically, there's good news and bad news...

Audiences are as hungry for news as ever, but their first stop is rarely the mainstream press.  On the other hand, social media and conversations with friends and family lead many of these consumers of news back to traditional news sources to dig deeper into the stories.

The bad news, however, is that, with audiences drifting (wait, make that flooding) to digital sources, traditional news industries continue to sufferfinancially, which means fewer and fewer resources to actually do the reporting.

Another problem is the fact that when social media becomes a first source for news, stakeholders can go directly to the public with their message -- without the filter, fact-checking, vetting or context that reporters provide.

Anyway.  Go here for the overview.  bk