Virginia's vote featured on PBS

I noticed this on a "most viewed" list...

Virginia's Vote . NOW on PBS:

"The state of Virginia has not voted for a Democratic President since 1964, but this year its 13 electoral votes are up for grabs as late polls show the race too close to call. This week, NOW on PBS goes behind the national polls and punditry and into the living rooms of real Virginia voters to learn how they'll be making their decisions."

Along with streaming video of the original program, the site includes links to separate statements by former U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder (D) on their parties' candidates, a discussion forum (already closed to new comments), and a transcribed interview with Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, who discusses "the changing political landscape in the key swing state of Virginia, and explains why he finds Sen. Barack Obama's popularity there 'remarkable.'"

Stop the presses: Radio and TV news from 1735

Well, not exactly. But you can Tune the dial back to 1947 and hear it skip a few centuries by visiting my other blog's article about the radio and television dramatizations of the John Peter Zenger trial, a milestone in establishing freedom of the press in America.

I've just updated the page, adding the "Studio One" TV version -- which you can play directly from the blog page, thanks to the Web wizards at archive.org

After paper, what?

What would it cost to give every reader of a major newspaper an electronic newspaper? What would it save in paper and environmental impact? Here's some food for thought...

Institute for Analytic Journalism:Views from a NYTimes R&D guy

"Guest blogger Nick Bilton is with the New York Times R&D Lab during the day and NYC Resistor at night.

Working in the R&D Labs at The New York Times, I'm constantly asked, 'How long will paper be around?' or more to the point, 'When will paper really die?' It's a valid concern, and a question no one can answer with a timetable. But there will be a point--and I believe in our lifetime--when we'll see the demise of the traditional print newspaper."

Footnote: I love the two images on the page -- a Saturday Evening Post delivery boy from perhaps 75 years ago and an ad for a Radio Shack 15 megabyte hard drive from about 25 years ago -- when that massive amount of storage cost $2,495. (No computer included.) Let's see... without pulling out a calculator I can divide both by 5 and see that would be 3 megabytes for $500, or $166 each.

Since we've been talking about journalists' mathematical skills around the office recently, I made a quick check at NewEgg.com for something to compare with the $166 a megabyte price. I found a 500 gigabyte drive going for $90, which I'll round up to $100 to include sales tax or shipping -- but really just to simplify the arithmetic.

So the $2,495 that bought 15 megabytes then... would buy about 25 of these 500 gigabyte drives, with no adjustments for inflation...

Since 500 gigabytes is about 500,000 megabytes, that's $1 for 5,000 megabytes. Hmm. At $166 per meg, it looks like a comparable stack of those Radio Shack drives would have set me back about $830,000. Who says there are no bargains these days?

Or did I misplace a decimal point? Sigh. Math insecurity. Oops. I'm late for an appointment and don't have time to double-check before hitting "post." Excuses, excuses.

Related: My favorite science journalist explains how to visualize what you get with two of those 500 gigabyte drives, the terabyte.

When 'database' becomes 'storytelling'

Poynter Institute's Chip Scanlan discusses LATimes.com database reporting on last month's commuter train disaster.
The newspaper's Web team used a rapidly developed online database to let readers learn about casualties as they were identified. Says Chip:

"I was struck by how quickly the crash victims database appeared and impressed by the interactive demographics that let me learn information about each victim by the field of my choice. It turns out, as I learned from e-mail interviews with Times staffers involved in the project, there's an interesting tale of best practices behind this deadline database."

Scanlan interviewed Megan Garvey, the site's morning Metro assignment editor, and others at the paper to describe reporters and programmers working together.

Some of the job titles reflect the new world of online journalism -- "interactive technology editor" and "database producer."

Here's the story itself: http://projects.latimes.com/metrolink-crash/

Taking the buyout, with ghosts watching

Reporter Dan Conover took one of those newsroom-cutback early retirement deals, and wrote this essay, which came to the attention of my friend J in Greater Boston:
Xark!: My final newspaper article... excerpt:

"This transition will require that we consider not only our values but what makes them universal. It will require that we experiment courageously with how those values are best expressed and communicated in the new context of our politics, our economy, our rapidly morphing technologies."

To get to those values, Conover invokes the spirit of Chapel Hill's Jim Shumaker, who was profiled a few years ago with a posthumously published interview, under a headline that makes a great invitation to click: Shu: The late great Jim Shumaker in his own d*%# words

Speaking of values, Conover also blogged last spring about winning a Journalist of the Year award...

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.