http://willsommer.com Journalism's Radical Reconstruction Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:53:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Whether you're a college journalist or covering higher education for another outlet, the first thing you should find  is the university's record retention policy. The document, sometimes called the record management policy, handles what document is held by what department and for how long. Getting it online, through a FOIA request, ... http://willsommer.com/2009/03/29/the-1st-document-to-find-when-covering-a-college/ This sounds delicious: The BBC has created a series of global journalism training sites as part of the launch of its Virtual College of Journalism, scheduled for six weeks time...The sites will give public access to BBC training resources and guides. The main BBC College of Journalism site (expected to launch ... http://willsommer.com/2009/03/14/bbc-to-open-up-thousands-of-training-documents/ No need for this with public documents My tour of journalism books continues with William C. Gaines's Investigative Journalism. Gaines is a more exciting writer than Ullman, the last author I read, and he wisely steers away from technology issues that will soon become outdated. My favorite part of Investigative Journalism, though, ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/24/guidestar-and-the-joy-of-990-forms/ After I went after Alvin Chang, I feel like I should point out I wasn't mad because he said the emperor has no clothes. The journalism industry is in for a shake-up, and I don't think there will ever be as many jobs as there are now. Before I say ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/23/the-journalism-job-market-after-the-recession/ I haven't delved into The New Republic's Politico article yet, but TNR's blog The Plank has a delicious memo full of advice on Politico's style. The Politico folks may be tools, but they were the biggest media story of the election season until Nate Silver came along, so their method ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/19/politico-memo-shows-what-questions-lead-to-quality-content/ Bring your books because you're gonna get schooled! The best part about study abroad at the American University of Cairo is the awesome collection of journalism books in the library (that and, you know, culture or whatever). Georgetown doesn't have many books about reporting, since we don't have a journalism major. ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/18/interviewing-tips-from-john-ullmans-investigative-reporting/ Oh f*ck Terry Heaton posited that the internet means advertising will never achieve equilibrium. It pointed the way for where news sites need to start looking to stay solvent (hint: not display ads). The most sobering part of Heaton's post was the above chart. For a while, I have been hanging my ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/18/news-site-ads-drop-display-move-to-e-mail-and-video/ Scott Karp, one of the journalism blogging kingpins behind link journalism site Publish2, announced a Publish2 project called Digital Sunlight to help newsrooms and citizen journalists pool resources on covering the stimulus. It's not ready to go yet, but here's Publish2 friend Howard Weaver describing it: Using Publish2's free system, individual ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/17/publish2-launches-digital-sunlight-to-cover-stimulus/ Soon, you'll be slinging information like this guy Brian Murley at Innovation in College Media is trying to put together an informal list of online journalism ideas that could help improve a college paper's website (or any news site, really).  They're arranged in descending order of difficulty. He hasn't added resources for ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/17/24-ways-to-improve-your-news-site/ Forget the micropayment debate--the real backward-looking talk in journalism is coming not from the oldsters, but from the youngsters. At least that's the way you'll feel after reading New York University student Alvin Chang's op-ed about his inability to find a journalism job: I want someone to tell me I will ... http://willsommer.com/2009/02/17/the-whiniest-article-about-journalism-so-far/