Parsing the future

JMC grad student and blogger Ryan Sholin spends a quite a bit of time thinking about the future of journalism and online news. In a recent blog post, Links that redefine news, he gives several examples of “online news sites and projects that stray from the traditional definition of news” and offer intriguing ideas about the future direction of online journalism.

Your assignment (due Thurs., Feb. 28) is to check out a few of these links, then write a blog post (250 words or so) on the one (or two) you find most interesting. Pick a link that you think offers potential for online journalism, or for the media field you hope to work in. Briefly describe why you find it interesting and what you see as its potential. Might it change even the media as we know it? (You never know!) In your blog post, I’d also like to see you relate this to your class readings, either The Cluetrain Manifesto and Dan Gillmor’s We the Media.

Also, be sure to look at the comments section for this blog post — you’ll find more links to interesting experimental news-related sites and online mash-ups for your consideration.

You might also want to read Sholin’s previous blog post, Inventing Journalism. It includes some additional links and discussion that could work well as a jumping-off point for this assignment.

Your Cluetrain Manifesto blog post

I’ve gotten a couple questions about the Cluetrain Manifesto assignment. No, I’m not asking you to read all of it. Yes, I am asking you to read the 95 Theses. And I’m suggesting you might want to look over some of the rest of it, such as the “Elevator Rap,” Introduction and Chapter 6: EZ Answers.

Once you’ve read some of it, I want you to think about it and write a blog post about it. It’s due tomorrow.

Some suggestions: What’s the most interesting thesis, idea or concept you found in the Cluetrain Manifesto? It was written about a decade ago…do you think it’s still relevant today? Does it offer worthwhile ideas about the Web for people in business and the media? Do any of the 95 Theses apply to the media field you hope to pursue?

Dueling videos…courting the youth vote

Forget the debates…the Democratic presidential candidates are going direct to potential voters…via video (virally, they hope). Here are two videos posted on You Tube that clearly target young adults, one in support of Clinton and one in support of Obama.

Please take a few minutes to view these videos and offer your comments/observations. Do you think they work? Why or why not? Post your comments here by clicking on the “comments” tag at the end of this post.

“Hillary and the Band” video created by the Clinton campaign organization:

Direct link to video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA8Wy51Ionk

“Yes We Can” video created by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas in support of Barak Obama:

This video is also available at http://www.dipdive.com/

By the way, I looked for similar online videos targeting young adults from the Republican candidates, but mostly found clips from campaign speeches, debates and TV show appearances, and television campaign ads that had been repurposed and posted online.

If you’re interested, you might want to compare one or two of these Republican videos/ads to the Democratic candidates’ videos listed above.

Here’s a link to the results of a YouTube search for “Mike Huckabee” videos.
Here’s a link to the results of a YouTube search for “John McCain” videos.
Here’s a link to the results of a YouTube search for “Ron Paul” videos.

More on the Super Bowl ads

For last week’s “Late Breaking” blog post assignment, a number of you wrote about your favorite (or your most disliked) Super Bowl ads. So I thought you might be interested in hearing what ad critic Bob Garfield of Ad Age had to say about the Super Bowl ads he disliked the most.

You can watch his scathing video at http://adage.com/brightcove/single.php?title=1402023019

Photoshop 3 exercise

I’ve posted the Photoshop #3 handout that we used in today’s class. This tutorial illustrates how to use Photoshop to combine multiple images and text in layers to create a banner header.

Here’s a link to the online version of that tutorial: http://mccune.screenstepslive.com/lessons/431

Here’s a link to a downloadable pdf of that handout: http://www.jmcweb.sjsu.edu/mccune/63/ps3_create_header.pdf

Tips for student bloggers

Here’s a helpful blog post by Karen Miller Russell, a PR professor at the University of Georgia, with tips for developing a successful student blog. It’s got some good ideas for blog post topics, and for getting your blog noticed.

Check it out at http://teachingpr.blogspot.com/2008/01/tips-for-promoting-pr-student-blogs.html.