astro.temple.edu/~tua26110

The journalism world is facing the same challenges as does his media outlet, albeit without adorable kitty cats, he says. The challenges have changed: once, reporters struggled to find good sources. Now, there’s so many sources, one has to filter out the best.

By way of example, let’s refer to the recent “man overboard” report on a Washington State Ferry. Within moments, Twitter was alive with real-time reports. All the news reporters had a million sources, including the US Coast Guard which was tweeting events as they happened.

But that didn’t mean they were all quality sources: yes, a report was made, helicopters were dispatched, and a search was on. But, there was no man overboard; it was a false alarm. Suddenly, the job of the news reporter changed; no longer was it “where or how can I find someone who will tell me what’s going on aboard the ferry?” Now it was: “of all these people reporting what’s happening on the ferry, who is telling the truth?”

Is crowd-sourcing alone the future, or should an editorial team help pick the best content? Should we even consult the crowd at all, or are experienced journalists best for choosing the most important content? Or is Porad dead on: should news orgs use both methods to create the best editorial product?

This post at Eat Sleep Publish, which discusses copy-editing disappearing out of the picture quicker than AOL, is scary to me. A snippet from the story:

“[B]logging mogul Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, Inc. (and now Mahalo) once pointed out that he doesn’t fix typos on his blog posts because it helps convey the immediacy of his thoughts.”

Does Calacanis, who is well-regarded as an innovator in the online media industry, have a point? Or will we end up missing out, albeit, with many people (whom don’t necessarily appreciate or care about clean copy) never realizing the loss?

The story incorporated video, flash, and HTML very well to compliment the text. The piece profiles 13 different towns across the border and the people living there. On the top of page there is a Google Maps image of each place the reporters have visited and the routes they took to get there. The links to each story are set up in same way that Google Maps would give you directions. When you click on the small blue dots you are taken to story about that particular town.

Spliced in between the text are either photos or videos. This way immediately after you read about something you are able to watch a video or see a photograph that brings it to life. Combing all these different types of media the story is able to really set the scene and capture the mood of the people living in these towns. If this story were to be presented in a traditional format there would no way they be able to present this much information in one place.

I personally feel that stories like this are going to be the future of journalism. Journalists are now able to combine broadcast and print journalism into one place. The reader now has a much greater chance to fully grasp whole story than ever before.

One of the best aspects about online journalism is the fact that readers are able to comment on the story. Literally the second after a story is posted on the internet any person from any walk of life is able to comment back and say exactly what they think about the piece without going through any filter. I feel this is a really cool way to get people more involved in the news that they read.

At my first glance I was not able to get through the entire piece because there was so much information to sift through. It is different than a lot of online journalism that you. Most of the stories online I have come across were intended for the reader to give a cursory glance and then goes on to something else. This story on the other hand is extremely in-depth and does an amazing job in capturing just how devastating this drug war is. How this whole ugly war is destroying towns and thousands of lives while the average American has no idea it is going on right under their nose.