10,000 Words: 12 Things to tell your tech-impaired editor
Saturday, 2 August 2008, 08:34
My personal favourites: "If you're going to triple my workload, you're eventually going to have to pay me more" and "The web is not a dumping ground for stories."
10,000 Words: 12 Things to tell your tech-impaired editor
Saturday, 2 August 2008, 08:34
My personal favourites: "If you're going to triple my workload, you're eventually going to have to pay me more" and "The web is not a dumping ground for stories."
Sunday, 13 July 2008, 07:28
Comments
"We’ve improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. … In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we’re also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files…"
Thursday, 15 May 2008, 08:49
Comments
Google introduces Google Maps API for Flash.
Saturday, 15 March 2008, 14:50
Comments
"[On Thursday, the BBC] launched embedded media (see an example here) across the BBC News and Sport sites. … you will eventually be able to syndicate and embed BBC video in your own sites."
Tuesday, 22 January 2008, 13:32
Comments
"I took all the online job descriptions on JournalismJobs.com from this year, omitted the non-technical words (like "editor", "seeks" and "self-starter") and built a tagcloud out of the rest. Here’s what it looks like…" (via Mark Hamilton)
Tuesday, 8 January 2008, 17:58
Comments
"Google is using Adobe’s Search Engine SDK technology, a new set of optimization opportunities opened up. That fairly definite confirmation of how Google reads text within Flash files makes it possible to create Flash .swf files with some level of search
Monday, 31 December 2007, 09:00
Comments
FT.com’s Cynthia O’Murchu explains how they produce multimedia feature packages: "Readers online don’t want to be forced to follow stories in a linear way".
Saturday, 17 November 2007, 08:44
Comments
"[M]alware-spiked ads have been spotted on various legitimate websites, ranging from the British magazine The Economist to baseball’s MLB.com to the Canada.com news portal. Hackers are using deceptive practices and tricky Flash programming to get their ad
Friday, 15 June 2007, 08:17
Comments
A rumour that iPhone won’t support Flash comes "just days after the latest iPhone commercial depicted a happy, errorless loading of the New York Times’ Flash-enabled site "
Thursday, 12 April 2007, 08:38
Comments
A very impressive interactive infographic from the New York Times.
Tuesday, 10 April 2007, 18:21
Comments
Ryan Sholin looks at the skills that newsroom photographers, graphics artists and reporters need to learn.
Skillset of the journalist of the future
Sunday, 4 March 2007, 11:19
The Chicago Tribune’s interactive division is hoping to hire a journalist specialising in interactive database production of the sort Adrian Holovaty has been advocating.
The requirements for the job are pretty demanding:
- 2-5 years’ experience with databases, preferably in a newsroom
- Bachelor’s degree in journalism, English or related discipline
- Computer-assisted reporting background or similar
- Demonstrated knowledge of statistics, statistical analysis, etc.
- Strong oral and written communication skills
- Experience in database content entry and management
- Broad experience with data sources, data mining and database
concepting - Familiarity with database interfaces and web presentation layers
- Basic knowledge of HTML and Flash required; advanced skills
desirable
A journalism or English graduate with quantitative and technical skills to go with a deep understanding of how the web works. There aren’t many people with that skillset.
What’s worse, I can’t imagine how anyone would obtain those skills through conventional journalism education.
I can’t think of any journalism course in Britain that prepares students for a career path that might eventually involve applying for a job like this — although I’d love to be corrected if I’m wrong.
Update 9/3: There has been a lot of activity on this topic since I posted this. Adrian Holovaty is hiring at WashingtonPost.com, while Matt Waite counsels newspapers stop looking for the next Holovaty and to concentrate on finding these skills among existing staff. Meanwhile, Mark Glaser of MediaShift has a great report on what various other US newspapers are doing in this area.
