Two versions of the same story about college-info site

The New York Times magazine tells a story one way -- and any anecdotal opening about an entrepreneurial Wesleyan grad will get my attention... (Wes '83 M.A., '88 M.A.L.S. myself)... I wasn't sure from the lead and the headline whether this was about one Web site or the college-search process in general... the "nut graf" below was a while in coming.

The College Issue - The Tell-All Campus Tour - NYTimes.com:

"One measure of an idea’s greatness is how obvious it seems in retrospect, and Unigo’s central idea — that high-school and college students would much rather learn from one another than from a book — is so self-evident that your first reaction is surprise that no one has acted on it before."

But here's something extra for news writing students -- click on John Hockenberry's "Back Story" podcast on the story page to hear him tell Unigo's story the NPR way, interviewing Times reporter Jonathan Dee. Wesalum that I am, I was especially amused when Dee talked about his own college choice.

Reporter's notes on writing a profile

...and profile subject's response

Constance Loizos got interested in Halsey Minor when she read a Virginia newspaper story saying he was interested in running for governor. She wondered what part his Silicon Valley reputation might play.

Here's her interview about reporting the story...

And here's the story, CNET Founder Halsey Minor Profile - Executive Articles - Portfolio.com:
"The Baddest Boy in Silicon Valley"

C.E.O. Halsey Minor is a successful entrepreneur with a lovely family. So why do so many of his former tech-world colleagues revile him?"

Minor, who 15 years ago founded the tech-news company CNET, the first Web-content company to go public, was interviewed in Charlottesville, where he still has a home.

Bonus: After you read the article, don't miss the comments -- including a critique signed "Halsey Minor."

I ought to read "Portfolio" more often... Luckily, I got to this issue via Waldo Jaquith's blog after starting out with his RSS tips, which I got to from richmondsunlight.com while looking for sites about public information in Virginia. I'm always relieved when my hypertext-r-us linking around leads to something timely for one of my classes... and both public records and profile writing are on the agenda this month.

Web founder to launch foundation

World Wide Web Foundation:
"On 14 September 2008, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. (USA), Tim Berners-Lee announced the creation of the World Wide Web Foundation in a speech before guests of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Following the speech, Alberto Ibarguen, Knight Foundation's president and CEO announced a seed grant of $5 million in support of the Web Foundation's mission."

Berners-Lee's speech and foundation press release

Worth special attention -- Berners-Lee's comments on the social aspects of the Web having been important from the beginning. In fact, I remember reading his original proposal for a networked hypertext system in the precursor of today's social nets -- the Usenet discussion group called "alt.hypertext," now browsable through Google Groups.

Thanks to David Sumner at Ball State for the link via the AEJMC magazine division mailing list.

YouTube offers journalism contest

The Project:Report online video journalism competition offers a $10,000 fellowship and other prizes through the Pulitzer Center, Sony, Intel and others.

The organization says the competition is "intended for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be told."



See YouTube - Citizennews's Channel too, a video blog highlighting news content at YouTube.

2008 Knight-Batten Awards Winners

• Who's rewriting history in Wikipedia entries?
  
• Where can you find a "Truth-o-meter" judging the accuracy of presidential campaign stories?
  
• Can "citizen journalism" work in a crisis situation?
  
• How can you combine a digital camera and Web mapping to cover community development?
  
• Can Web multimedia tell the story of living with HIV?
  
• How do state of the art online journalists cover the aftermath of a deadly tornado?
  
• Can your video make the grade at CNN?
  
• What new tools do citizens hae to track the influence of campaign money on elected officials?
  

For the answers, look at the projects that have been cited for 2008 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism. The Wired.com coverage of "WikiScanner" took this year's $10,000 Grand Prize for letting people "Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs," but all the winners, honorable mentions and notable entries are worth a look.

Old newspapers... Not just to wrap dead fish and train puppies...

I'll add more to this later, with reference to both my Media History class and my news writing class, which uses a textbook that presents published stories as a brown-edged chapter called "The Morgue."

Google raising newspaper morgues from the dead | News - Digital Media - CNET News:

"Google is making searchable, digital copies of old newspapers available online through partnerships with their publishers, the company said Monday.
Under the ad-supported effort, Google will digitize millions of pages of news archives, including photos, articles, headlines, and advertisements, Google said."

See ProQuest Historical Newspapers and this rather dated item on the National Digital Newspaper Program, which I should update!

For a few more links and quotes, see my longer post at my Other Journalism Weblog or the AEJMC Newspaper Division blog (same content, different context).

Charlottesville to watch for Martian invaders... again

This looks like fun -- and some "media convergence" to talk about in class.

PR students can see the fine job of "press agentry" by the University of Virginia Film Festival, bringing together the school's observatory, a major studio motion picture, and a series of underground films (described as "most hyperbolic alien invasion spectacles"), all to celebrate the most famous media hoax since the New York Sun's discovery of man-bats on the moon, from early days of network radio:

Virginia Film Festival
Special 70th Anniversary Broadcast of "War Of The Worlds"

"Just to be sure history doesn't repeat itself, we've asked the observatory to have telescopes at the ready to reassure our spectators that the skies are safe," the film festival director said, calling the Halloween show "a great way to honor one of the more bizarre evenings in Charlottesville history."

The UVa school paper's archives ("media history research") are cited as evidence that the 1938 "Martian invasion" panic over Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" broadcast brought people to the observatory, which used its big telescope to show Virginians that Mars was as arid and peaceful as ever.

If you want to get an early jump on Halloween, here's the 1938 radio broadcast that started it all (courtesy of the Internet Archive)...


Back in the spring, WNYC's Radio Lab did a terrific program on the panic over that 1938 broadcast -- and the fact that it wasn't the only incident like it. The full audio of the program is online, along with links to Orson Welles' 1938 script and more. I'll put that link in my official Media History class syllabus page later this semester, since we're not even up to the invention of printing yet...

As for the man-bats on the moon, I jumped ahead and mentioned in my Media History class that yesterday was the 105th anniversary of the founding of the original New York Sun -- I hope I didn't say "100th" the way I mistyped it here a minute ago!...

The Sun reportedly became the best-selling news sheet in this world by printing a hoax series about an entirely fictional telescopic exploration of the lunar surface. News writing students should note that story length and style have changed since then.

On Wednesday I didn't get around to mentioning that there's no connection to the current paper called the New York Sun, whose business troubles are, coincidentally, in the news today. Keep an eye out for circulation-building stories about man-bats or Martians in New Jersey!