Feral Beast: Yahoo's unconference rocks!

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Yahoo's unconference rocks!

A media 'un-conference', called NewsTools2008: Journalism That Matters, is underway in Sunnyvale, California. Put on by Bill Densmore, who runs the Media Giraffe Project at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, NewsTools2008 intent is to gather journalists, web developers, entrepreneurs, academics and students to discuss technology’s disruption of journalism — and brainstorm on ways to use tools for good. Colleagues Ricardo Sandoval and Susan Ferriss are veteran reporters/documentary filmmakers and are part of the sophisticated and plugged-in mix; Feral Beast plans to glean some insights from them this afternoon.
Despite complaints that even in uber-Tech Sunnyvale, home of Yahoo, internet access from conference rooms is problematical. There's a live video link which helps.

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.