The Stuart Blog

After entering “TIME.com corrections policy” in GOOGLE, I found an interesting post.

Time.com writer Simon Elegant posted a correction to a caption on a of the photographs in one of his blogs. A blog commenter that a photograph caption on Elegant’s web story about Tibetan protests was open to interpretation.

Actually, the commenter used more crass language than that. Find the comment here:

http://china.blogs.time.com/2008/07/08/blog_commenter_jong_has_pointe/

The photograph was of Tibetan protectors being arrested by the police. The caption of the photograph did not mention that the police arresting the protestors were Indian.  Commenter Jong pointed out that the caption, left up to interpretation, implied that the police were Chinese.

Here’s the photograph. Of course, with the corrected caption.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1722509,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-bottom).

Time.con uses a very basic strategy of crowd sourcing on its website. The page 10 questions is filled with questions from readers about a celebrity of choice. This week, there were 10 questions for Zac Effron:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1940696,00.html

(Side note: I really don’t understand why this article is dated Monday, Nov. 30. Time must have some vehicle of futuristic reporting strategy.. but I digress)

Now, this kind of crowd sourcing isn’t using readers to report hardcore news events.  However, it does give Time.com a chance to interact with its readers.

Here, there’s no real question of accuracy. Readers aren’t doing any  reporting. They’re just asking questions. But this method of reporting allows TIME.com to take a step back and find out what readers really want to know about celebrities and icons.

Of course, TIME.com does acknowledge the questions are asked by readers. Under each question is the reader’s name and residence.

I do have a little issue with Time.com’s 10 questions. I may just be nit-picky, but Time.com never seems to provide a descriptive paragraph about their featured celebrity. For instance, if I didn’t already know who Zac Effron was, I definitely could not find out on Time.com’s 10 questions, since it provides nary a background sentence about Zac Effron.

Cleary, the readers asking the questions know about Zac Effron and his projects.  Julie Sephora from New York City asks Zac Effron how Me and Orson Wells is different from any project he has ever worked on.

Of course, lacking any knowledge of Zac Effron’s body of work besides High School Musical 1,2,3 (and is there a 4th…) the buck stopped there for me. Personally, after reading this article, I have no further inclination to find out more about this alleged actor.

For journalists, crowdsourcing is our VISA credit card: it’s everywhere we want to be.

I’m not trying to be cliche, but journalists have to apply the same rules of credit cards  to crowdsourcing:

1) Spend wisely:

Sounds easy enough.  But like the hundreds of people who find themselves in thousands of dollars of  credit card debt each year, crowdsourcing can also be journalism’s worst enemy if we bite off more than we can chew.

Crowdsourcing can be unreliable, but like  every source we use, we have to factcheck. Let’s look at Pro Publica’s Stimulus spot check:

http://projects.propublica.org/spotcheck/

To analyze the status of stimulus transportation projects,  Pro Publica drew a random sample of 520 of approximately 6,000 projects nationwide. Then, it asked readers to help track the status of the projects in their states: whether or no the project was completed and how many jobs the company retained after receiving the package.

Not to make an understatement, but this project was a big undertaking.  Analyzing stimulus projects in a single state is one thing, but projects across the country is another.

Over the summer, I interned at 11-Alive news in Atlanta. The business and consumer reporter, Bill Liss reported a story on the stimulus packages and their impact Georgia construction projects.  While interning at 11-Alive, I had the opportunity to work with him and do a little background research on the story, including calling construction companies to find out if they were able to retain jobs or start new projects with stimulus money.

11-alive has since continued stories about Georgia companies and stimulus money. Here is another stimulus story by reporter Bill Liss:

http://www.11alive.com/video/default.aspx?playerId=newsmaker&maven_playlistId=1f23dc40ee67898d157716d17d3efded65dbd23b&maven_referrer=mrss&maven_referralPlaylistId=1f23dc40ee67898d157716d17d3efded65dbd23b&maven_referralObject=1317104107#/Stimulus+Jobs+–+Where+Are+They%3F/49268491001

Now, imagine doing this same story, except analyzing stimulus packges all over the coutry. That task is daunting and time consuming. Unfortunatley,  time is not someting we have a lot of time to consume in journalism.

2) Use cash when you can

One of the best rules  for using credit cards is only use them when you can’t pay with cash.  In the journalism word, the “cash” equates to personal reporting, or visiting the source ourselves. Crowd sourcing should never take the place of personal reporting. In the case of ProPublica’s Stimulus Spot Check, crowdsourcing was go through thousands of  documents. Crowdsourcing was also a way to connect with the public, and get them involved in the story.

Reading and conversation

Re:  Allbritton Communications

Building an audience using social media:

Online journalism requires more than just reporting across platforms.  These days, the most useful journalists are the ones who can shoot and edit video, collect and edit audio, and write and design stories for the web. We’ve moved beyond just the daily story or the daily newscast. Online and multimedia journalism is a way for reporters to expand the lines of their daily stories, and add more information to their daily beats. It’s a way for reporters to interact with their audiences besides interviewing in a crowd. Online journalism gives journalists a change to branch out of their usual reporting methods: to ask millions of people a question with a twitter update, to map put entire locations with Google map, to stay connected with an audience via a face book page. The best way to utilize the internet isn’t just with multimedia tools such as flash and JavaScript. It’s to use the internet audience as both a supplemental and parallel one.  Below is a list of suggestions for us to utilize the internet and social networking:

• Branding ourselves in the online media market:  In fashion, they have the term “pink is the new black”.  For journalism, we should make a new term “ social networking is the new meet and greet”.  Online and multimedia journalism is “a la mode” except, unlike the newest  velour poncho, this trend is here to stay. So how do we branch out and give ourselves a name amid the onslaught of social network journalism? One word: Branding. We can use social networking sites such as facebook and twitter to create and reinforce our name in the multimedia news market.
  • Look at TIME.com’s facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/time?ref=ts

Under the “Favorite Pages” section,  it links to the facebook pages of CNN, Entertainment Weekly, and People magazine. Noticing a trend here? These are all owned by TimeWarner.  Using facebook, TimeWarner has successfully constructed a network linking its parts together. Here TimeWarner is preserving its brand.

• Reaching the 24-7 audience:

Social networks like facebook and twitter have an audience that is active 24-7.  People get twitter updates to their phone, and can update their twitter and facebook accounts from their mobile phones. So, why don’t we tap into that audience?

Lets reach out to our audience so they can friend/ fan us on facebook and follow us on twitter.

Each reporter should at least have a twitter page and post updates to stories on twitter/facebook. It’s a way for our audience to know our reporters’ beat and stories outside of the newsroom.  Besides interaction with the audience, using facebook and twitter is a way for our reporters to update their stories outside the newscasts and outside the published page.

• Not just wordpress: New and Innovating blogging techniques:  Wordpress. Blogspot. By now, both of these words should be a household name. At least  in the online world.  Almost everyone has a facebook or twitter. But what about some lesser know blogging techniques.  For instance, take a look at http://www.utterli.com/.

It’s a video blogging site that allows users to post videos and audio blogs and “crosspost” i.e.  post the video to facebook, twitter, and other social network sites at the same time. Utterli is a way for us to branch out to a whole new audience of video and audio bloggers.

Despite my weekly critique of Time.com, it looks like both  Time.com time magazine make good use of Facebook.  Actually, the fan page has a number of pleasant surprises, which I”m going to list in numerical order for your reading pleasure:

1) The TIME fanpage has 78,817 fans. Way more than I imagined.  Time is a popular magazine and a popular website, but I somehow imagined the site would have closer to 40,500 fans.

2)Time has tabs. The TIME fanpage doesn’t just stop at one tab. It actually has about 6 different tabs, all devoted to a different aspect of the TIME website.  In fact, TIME  makes full use of the facebook page. The fanpage is like a mini capusule of the TIME.com website, with tabs ranging from wall posts, to twitter links, to the video page. While TIME.com may not cover the most breaking news, it’s frequently updated stories and links make it quite a force when using multimedia content.

3) TIME is a brand. What better way to market a media name than with a facebook fan page! And that’s just what the TIME fanpage does. In the “info” section of the facebook page, TIME establishes itself as more than just a magazine and website. Rather, TIME promotes itself as a brand of news analysis:

“TIME is a global multimedia brand; TIME magazine, the world’s largest weekly news magazine, with a domestic audience of 20 million and a global audience of 25 million; four worldwide editions of TIME magazine, including TIME U.S., TIME Asia, TIME South Pacific, and TIME Europe, Africa & the Middle East; and TIME’s other brand extensions including TIME Style & Design and TIME For Kids.

TIME.com is one of the fastest growing news sites in the U.S., with 7 million unique visitors per month. TIME.com is an essential destination for business decision makers and key influencers who check in throughout the day for reliable, up-to-the-minute reporting on the people, places and issues that matter.”

Of course, I would have to disagree with a few points. I wouldn’t consider TIME.com a reliable site for checking up-to- the minute reports on breaking news. However, i would check time for an analysis of a news event that happened earlier in the week. But what’s the best way to market a news site is to market it as a “breaking news” site. If TIME promoted itself as a website as “an essential destination for key influencers who check in once a week for reliable news analysis of the week’s events,” I’m sure there would be a different response.

The beauty of online journalism is the ability to do daily updates. Unfortunatley,  daily updates are also a pitfall of online journalism. Since the actual Time Magazine periodical is a weekly publication,  the website has forced Time to update and amend it’s  material daily.

In Time’s case, this isn’t always a good thing.

Looking at Time.com’s web design, it’s clear that Time.com’s writers make  almost daily updates to the homepage, U.S., Politics, and Health & Science pages.

But take a look at the Style and Design page.  The most recent post on this page is from September 10, over one month ago.

http://www.time.com/time/style_design

Now, we all know Time.com is not the haven website for style and fashion, so this lack of new material is not really suprising.  However clicking though Time.com to find  this out-of-date page amid a fleurry of more recent web content clearly hightlights the fact that Time.com has dropped the ball when it comes to posting fashion and style related content.

Time.com may not have the most up to date news stories and day to day coverage,  but Time.com can sure expand on a story. On a somewhat sensitive subject about the Western world’s  struggle with obesity, Time.com asks a provocative question: Should Morbidly Obese Kids be Taken away from Their Parents?

The website also paired the article with a very descriptive picture of an overweight child eating sticky rice:

Actually, eating may be an understatement.

Nevertheless,  Time.com builds out the article webpage with a ton of related articles and slideshows, from ” 9 Kid foods to avoid”  and “The Social Side of Obesity: You Are Who You Eat With”.

On a related content level, Time.com really knows how to pack it in (okay… no more jokes).

Despite the off color humor of this blog, Time.com does a very good job of content recycling, or using current articles and stories to link to past stories.  Some of the related articles in the obesity article dated back to September, such as The Social Side of  Obesity

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919885,00.html

but with the publication of this new online article about morbidly obese children and their parents, Time.com found a relevant way to bring that those articles back.

Master Peace Garden is part of UMD’s Engaged University.  It’s a community garden and farm in Riverdale, Maryland.

Every Saturday, students and members of the community are allowed to come and volunteer at Master Peace. Volunteers can do everything in the garden, from planting seeds to harvesting produce.

This gallery shows a montage of the pictures I took.  Below the gallery are some of the pictures I feel  exhibit  great elements of photography.

This is a great action shot. I took this photo just as he dropped the soil onto the ground. It’s a medium shot of the planter’s hand, but the photo still shows the environment around the planter. The photo also captures the textures of the garden. The different grains of soil are clear.

This little boy was like my muse.  Naturally, he ran all over the garden, so I was able to take different pictures of him doing different things.

This photo is a good example of the rule of thirds.  He’s not in the center of the action , but anyone looking at the photo can see the environment around him.

Even though it was a cloudy day, the few bits of natural light really shined though the branches of the peach tree.

Here’s another photo of him under the peach tree. I like the close-up photo of his hand on the tree branch. Again, you can see the texture of the branch in contrast with his hand.

Even though this is a tight photo, it’s another example of the rule of thirds.  It’s taken close enough to fill the right half of the photo, but you can still see the environment around him.

This photo is also an example of good natural lighting and rule of thirds. The light is shining through the lavender onto this face.  He’s takes up the entire left side of the photo, but there is still enough room for the lavender bush. The natural lighting also highlights the purple flowers on the bush and makes them stand out against the his gray hat and shirt.

Here’s an example of  different point of entry.  The flowers are less than two feet tall, but I shot them from the ground. Most people are used to looking down at this flower. This shot provides another perspective.

These are pictures I downloaded from Flickr. I’m using them to illustrate elements of photography.

There are actually two versions of this photo on flickr: one in color and one in black and white.

The glimpse of red skirt in this photograph makes it vibrant, and I wanted to draw a little more attention to it. I cropped the photograph and extended the right side.

This is a picture of a dancer of the Harlem Dance Theatre.  The picture was orginally in color and wider. I cropped the sides of the photo to elongate the dancer’s body. I think the black and white creates an artistic mood of the still. The orginal color photo was also out of focus. I really think this is a wonderful photo, and I wanted to hide the blurry parts. Washing the photo in black and white takes emphasis off the blurred subject and puts in in focus by contrasting the subject with the light.

This is an amazing movement photo. The subjects were originally centered, but I wanted to create the effect than the dancer in the long pants was pulling the dancer on the shorts but cropping the space behind the dancer in the pants.  I don’t know the real mood behind this photo, but cropping the picture  can create a different mood and leave an image up to interpretation.

So.. I’d initally intended to call this photo project “Fear all faces of the Turtle”  and shoot the Testudo and fear the turtle statues from different angles and using diffferent lighting. But on the way to my shoot, I came to closer to a squirrel than I ever have in my entire life. So my subject changed… completely.