Second anniversary

JPROF celebrates its second birthday today. This is one of those things that "the world will little note nor long remember" (Abraham Lincoln, a big supporter of JPROF). Still, we pause for a moment. I've had a lot of fun putting this thing together and then adding to it over the last couple of years. The best part is the many folks who have said they looked at the site and liked what they said. Some have even recommended to others, and a few cruel folks (including me)have made their students spend a few moments here. Some kind of audience for this site exists out in the world. I'm not sure who they are or why they come, but they seem to be showing up regularly and growing. The number of daily visits -- whatever that means and for whatever that's worth -- grew seven fold this year. At least, that's what my stats say:



I have other counters assigned to the site, but I'm not sure what those numbers mean either. I like these because they are the biggest ones, and they make me feel better on days when the ego is shrunk.

Besides, as Casey Stengel, the old perfersser, says, "You can look it up."

So, in addition to celebrating the New Year, take a moment to celebrate with me. 2006 was a good year in lots of ways. One of the big things for me was taking a position at the University of Tennessee where I have had the chance to get a new news web site started for the School of Journalism and Electronic Media there. The site is called the TennesseeJournalist.com (TNJN.com), and I'll be writing more about that shortly.

I'll stop now. Party on.


Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Photos you can use

One of the first topics that JPROF.com tackled (which is coming up on its second birthday in less than a week) was that of how a news web site that didn't have access to syndicated photos could stay visually current. There are a few sites that provide free photos, such as DefenseLink, that we pointed to at the time that could help in this regard.

Today, two years later, the situation is much different. Photo editors can use this simple formula to help illustrate their site with news photos:

Flickr + Creative Commons = Photos you can use

Flickr is the photo web site owned by Yahoo.com. Anyone can get space on Flickr, and uploading photos -- lots and lots of photos -- is relatively easy. Many people have taken advantage of Flickr to store their photos and share them with friends.

And a lot of those people have placed their photos under a Creative Commons agreement. Creative Commons is the idea that the creator or originator of a copyrightable work can automatically license that work for non-commercial use. (JPROF has a short piece about Creative Commons here.)

How can you find these photos on Flickr that have been licensed under a Creative Commons agreement? That is the easy part. You simply go to the advanced search function of Flickr and along with your search terms, click on the box next to Creative Commons. Some topics may not yield much, but if you are creative and expansive, chances are you will find something that you can use.


For instance, on the day that I am writing this (Christmas Day, 2006), the big news story is that James Brown, one of the greats of rock 'n roll music, has died. As an individual running a news web site -- or as a student running a news web site -- I probably would not have any pictures of James Brown that I could use if I wanted to post something about him.

When I searched through Flickr for "James Brown" and used the Creative Commons filter, I came up with more than 1,000 that people had decided to share. Not all of those photos were good, or even usable. But my search turned up an excellent set of photos by someone who identifies himself as ShanghaiStreets, who took photos of a concert that Brown gave in Shanghai in February. The content of these photos was excellent, and the photographer has posted technically high quality images, so getting the photo itself and working with it was easy enough.

It's not a bad idea to get in touch with the photographer to let him or her know that you are using the photograph and to ask how that person wants to be credited (as I have done in this case).

Mark Glaser, once a regular contributor to the Online Journalism Review and who now runs the web log MediaShift, has an excellent article about using Flickr for this purpose. Anyone who wants to use this method and understand the ideas behind it should take a close look at this article.

I plan to require this article for my JEM 422 (Managing News Web Sites) class in the spring, and we will be spending some time on the proper way to extract and use photographs obtained by this method. If you think photos are important to the presentation of news and information (and you're right -- they are), this is an excellent resource that, if used carefully, can add immeasurably to your site.

Remember the word "carefully."

Not everything that everyone puts on Flickr is on the up and up. Photos can be stolen or faked, and a photo editor who is not cautious can be easily fooled. Here are some precautionary steps:

• Get in touch with the photographer. If there is any doubt,ask about the photograph, where and when it was taken and under what circumstances. People who post photos on Flickr often do not include a lot of information.
  
  
• Look at other work the photographer has put on Flickr.
  
  
• Sometimes photos will contain restricted material. In that case, don't use them. In looking for the James Brown photo, I found that someone had posted a photograph of James Brown on a television set. That one -- besides the fact that it was a bad image -- was off limits.
  
  
• And when in doubt, don't use it. Better to forego the photo than to get into trouble or violate someone else's right to control their work.
  
  

Check out Amy Gahran's post on Poynter's E-Media Tidbits about protecting yourself when using photos from Flickr. This will also be required reading for my students.



Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

A personal note

It has been several weeks since any new entry appeared on this site. That's certainly not due to a lack of issues and events to write about. It's more a case of my inefficiency -- and the fact that we have been busy at the University of Tennessee launching a news web site for the School, the TennesseeJournalist. It's live, and I invite you to take a look.

But for now, we'll take a break from things journalistic, and you can, in your mind's eye (and with the aid of YouTube, iPhoto, and various other devises), travel down to Blount County, Tennessee, to see what a beautiful late fall day we had on Saturday.

Enjoy.

The Iraq war is like . . . a comma

Once again, commas are in the news.

Well, make that once in a blue moon.

In a speech the other day, George W. Bush said that eventually the war in Iraq would be seen as "just a comma" in the history books. He didn't offer any explanation for what he meant, and his detractors have pounced, claiming that he is trivializing a war that he began and that has cost the lives of more than 2,500 soldiers. (Here is the Washington Post story on all of this.)

I'm not sure what he meant either, but as a card-carrying grammarian, I'm pretty sure that commas are important -- probably more important than Bush or his detractors seem to think.


Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Redundancies in the air

If you're a collector in the word game (as I am), keeping your redundancy box full is a fairly easy matter. All you have to do is pay attention occasionally.

That's what I was doing when I was driving along yesterday, listening to story on National Public Radio. The story was on the opening of the new Supreme Court term.

The anchor was interviewing a law professor about the various cases the court would be hearing this year.

At one point in the interview, the anchor -- in response to something the prof had said -- cut in with "Well, that's the key central point, isn't it?"

The law professor, who may find redundancies the elixir of life, repeated the interviewer's words.

"Yes, that's the key central point," she said and continued with her comment.

I hope that both of these intelligent people have some regrets. Meanwhile, I have a new redundancy for my collection.

Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Editing for the web

The web is a different medium.

Then why do we keep seeing so much shovelware -- articles that were written for print -- on news web sites.

One reason, of course, is that news organizations (particularly newspapers) do not invest in enough people who can change print stories into web-friendly packages.

Another is that editors do not understand the needs or possibilities of the web. To get my students shifted from print to the web, I have developed this example of how a print story can be turned into a web story.

Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Another Football Saturday . . .

And another offering from

First Inning Artworks

Check out the offering on EBay.

Today's Word on Journalism

"In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, French commentator on the American experiment, 1835



That quotation comes from Ted Pease's Today's Word on Journalism, a daily email that contains a quotation about some aspect of journalism. Ted is a professor at Utah State and has a world-class sense of humor, particularly when he directs it at himself. His email is always a delight to read. You can subscribe by sending a "subscribe" message to Ted at tpease@cc.usu.edu. (The drawing to the right is de Tocqueville, not Ted.) More quotations about journalism -- many of them coming from Ted -- can be found at this page on JPROF.




Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Couric takes over

In the long history of the CBS Evening News, there had been only three permanent anchors: Douglas Edwards, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. Now there is a fourth. Katie Couric CBS biography) debuted as the newscast's latest anchor last night. Couric is a legitimate journalist who was part of NBC's news team covering the Pentagon and the Gulf War in 1991. For the last 15 years she has been the host of NBC's Today Show, and her work has not been considered to be on the front lines of reporting. Her main job at CBS is not to deliver the news but to deliver an audience (preferably one that is a little younger than the one CBS has). Here are a few stories and reviews of her first night: New York Times, Washington Post, NPR.



Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

The iconic image

Few of us get to leave the impression that Joe Rosenthal did.

Rosenthal was the 33-year-old Associated Press photographer who took the picture of Marines raising the flag during the fierce battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific in 1945.

That image struck an instant chord with viewers, and it has been stuck in our consciousness ever since. It has been reproduced millions of times in many forums and is the basis for the giant Marine memorial that overlooks the nation's capital.

Rosenthal was an excellent photographer during his entire career -- not just a guy with a camera at the right place and time. He died on Sunday at the age of 94.

(Check out what the San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper where he worked for many years, had to say about him; also take a look at the retrospective at Poynter.)

Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

News orgs discover web's immediacy

A couple of stories from Romenesko’s blog on today show that big time news organizations are discovering the immediacy of the web.

One comes from Westworld, which reports that when the Denver Post stumbled onto a scoop last month about beer magnate Peter Coors being arrested for drunk driving, the Post nailed the story and then put it on the organization’s web site – despite some grousing from the traditionalists. These folks thought a story like that should be saved for print first, which was several hours away. The paper’s managing editor said the web would be “our breaking news platform.”

Then there is the story about CBS streaming its nightly news program simultaneously with its over-the-air broadcast. This, apparently, has come about only after painstaking negotiations with affiliates.

One is tempted to ask: “Where have these folks been for the last 10 years or so?”



Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Seeing and believing

This week's incidents of photo-doctoring of pictures from Lebanon that have been published by some news organizations have provoked a good deal of outrage and hand-wringing.

So they should.

Changing a photograph in a way that alters its meaning -- even if only incidentally -- is not a good thing for journalists or journalism. We have been reading about this sort of thing far too much these days, and unfortunately, we will probably continue to hear about such behavior.

But in an article in Slate ("Don't Believe What You See in the Papers"), Jim Lewis has some valuable perspective on how we view photography. A photograph has power because we believe it; we think that if we had been standing beside the photographer when it was taken, we would have seen the same thing. That's not true, and Lewis does a good job of reminding us of that fact.

Lewis also links to a "rogue's gallery" of digital manipulation put together by Dartmouth's Haney Farid that reminds us that this sort of thing happens on a regular basis.



Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.