Posts tagged journalism

The site seems different today because it is different. Not only have we entirely redesigned the way this site looks, we’ve changed the way it operates. Yesterday, you were a reader and a commenter. Today you can be a writer, an arbiter, an editor, and a publisher. You’ll still read, but now you can also contribute.
Jalopnik’s Matt Hardegree, on the site’s redesign. First take: This is an amazing idea for the few sites that enjoy a well-informed readership.

Meet the groundbreaking new encryption app set to revolutionize privacy and freak out the feds.

Until now, sending encrypted documents has been frustratingly difficult for anyone who isn’t a sophisticated technology user, requiring knowledge of how to use and install various kinds of specialist software. What Silent Circle has done is to remove these hurdles, essentially democratizing encryption. It’s a game-changer that will almost certainly make life easier and safer for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, and companies trying to evade state surveillance or corporate espionage. Governments pushing for more snooping powers, however, will not be pleased.

By design, Silent Circle’s server infrastructure stores minimal information about its users. The company, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., doesn’t retain metadata (such as times and dates calls are made using Silent Circle), and IP server logs showing who is visiting the Silent Circle website are currently held for only seven days. The same privacy-by-design approach will be adopted to protect the security of users’ encrypted files. When a user sends a picture or document, it will be encrypted, digitally “shredded” into thousands of pieces, and temporarily stored in a “Secure Cloud Broker” until it is transmitted to the recipient. Silent Circle, which charges $20 a month for its service, has no way of accessing the encrypted files because the “key” to open them is held on the users’ devices and then deleted after it has been used to open the files.

brooklynmutt: Context here Can we all agree that the news outlet handled this appropriately?

brooklynmutt:

Context here

Can we all agree that the news outlet handled this appropriately?

think-progress: Newspaper front pages on Obama’s new immigration policy to stop deporting DREAM-eligible youth.

think-progress:

Newspaper front pages on Obama’s new immigration policy to stop deporting DREAM-eligible youth.

Editors on the politics beat could learn something from this epic honesty.

Editors on the politics beat could learn something from this epic honesty.

Forget That Survey. Here's Why Journalism Is The Best Job Ever.

theatlantic: Everything Is Terrible: Trolling For Dummies This week, Esquire magazine joined the proud tradition of media trolling with its Sex Issue, a cocktail of self-aware misogyny, arm-chair sociology, and pinup photos that engendered near-universal disgust, resulting in lots of ”buzz.” The publishing world’s intentional plot to “stir up the shit” and get some attention is nothing new, but every time a media organization goes trolling, it seems to get exactly the response it wants, inspiring more blatant attempts at manufacturing pseudo-controversy. But how is it done, you ask? Here’s a short guide of the most common techniques for raising outrage (and traffic): This Person Who Just Died Was a Piece of Shit Ah, the timely anti-obituary. Some are more justified than others but it’s clear that the quickly-written character assassination of the recently-departed has become something of a trend. Whether it’s an assault on Christopher Hitchens, Steve Jobs or the creator of the Berenstain Bears (for Christ’s sake), we can all admit that the routinized dancing on the graves of public figures could be scaled back just a tad. Is the Opposite of What You Think True? Counter-intuitive writing is a blessing, and Slate has published many great works in this vein, but it’s also taken this editorial approach to levels of almost comical parody. William Saletan’s “Bush the Liberal” and Christopher Hitchens’s “How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I Didn’t” are splendid examples. This Famous Person Is Crazy, Just Look at This Crazy Picture of Them Many examples abound but troll queen Tina Brown took this age-old technique to new heights (or depths?) last August with a withering cover story of Michele Bachmann promoted with a photo of her looking absolutely insane. The reaction was harsh and mostly deserved but the cover itself wasn’t terribly outside the bounds of what happens regularly with public figures who controversy-seeking editors have millions of photographs of. Sure it’s a low blow but it’s also a technique that prone to over-reaction (see: Washington City Paper’s famous “antisemitic” cover of Dan Snyder). This Terrible Mainstream Artist Is Great When a trite mainstream artists reaches commercial success, it doesn’t deserve to be defended for its latent (read: non-existent) merits. See: Jonah Weiner’s defense of Creed in Slate and my good friend Derek Thompson’s defense of Coldplay. Read the rest.

theatlantic:

Everything Is Terrible: Trolling For Dummies

This week, Esquire magazine joined the proud tradition of media trolling with its Sex Issue, a cocktail of self-aware misogyny, arm-chair sociology, and pinup photos that engendered near-universal disgust, resulting in lots of ”buzz.” The publishing world’s intentional plot to “stir up the shit” and get some attention is nothing new, but every time a media organization goes trolling, it seems to get exactly the response it wants, inspiring more blatant attempts at manufacturing pseudo-controversy.

But how is it done, you ask? Here’s a short guide of the most common techniques for raising outrage (and traffic):

This Person Who Just Died Was a Piece of Shit Ah, the timely anti-obituary. Some are more justified than others but it’s clear that the quickly-written character assassination of the recently-departed has become something of a trend. Whether it’s an assault on Christopher Hitchens, Steve Jobs or the creator of the Berenstain Bears (for Christ’s sake), we can all admit that the routinized dancing on the graves of public figures could be scaled back just a tad.

Is the Opposite of What You Think True? Counter-intuitive writing is a blessing, and Slate has published many great works in this vein, but it’s also taken this editorial approach to levels of almost comical parody. William Saletan’s “Bush the Liberal” and Christopher Hitchens’s “How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I Didn’t” are splendid examples.

This Famous Person Is Crazy, Just Look at This Crazy Picture of Them Many examples abound but troll queen Tina Brown took this age-old technique to new heights (or depths?) last August with a withering cover story of Michele Bachmann promoted with a photo of her looking absolutely insane. The reaction was harsh and mostly deserved but the cover itself wasn’t terribly outside the bounds of what happens regularly with public figures who controversy-seeking editors have millions of photographs of. Sure it’s a low blow but it’s also a technique that prone to over-reaction (see: Washington City Paper’s famous “antisemitic” cover of Dan Snyder).

This Terrible Mainstream Artist Is Great When a trite mainstream artists reaches commercial success, it doesn’t deserve to be defended for its latent (read: non-existent) merits. See: Jonah Weiner’s defense of Creed in Slate and my good friend Derek Thompson’s defense of Coldplay.

Read the rest.

theatlanticwire.com

Why I hired a journalist to run my company blog

He reigns me in when it comes to tooting my own horn. He helps me practice some restraint and diplomacy when I feel compelled to blast my competitors. He makes sure that I’m not just repeating headlines but focusing my thoughts around particular news events.

He’s making me relevant.

More importantly, he’s charging me a fraction of what a PR firm might charge me for a bunch of other services that I might not really need. Because he’s juggling a number of other clients, he’s not devoting 40 hours a week to my blog strategy and content, and that’s OK with me. My blog is an important part of my business but it’s not a full-time element.

Why Publishers Are About to Go Data Crazy

If you saw “Page One,” the documentary about The New York Times, you might remember several scenes where editors sat around a big table discussing what stories should make the front page for the next day’s paper.

It’s almost comical, looking forward to 2012, to think of a newsroom going purely off of gut and intuition when making those decisions.

Next year, these editorial decisions will still require the knowledge and experience of editors who know their readership intimately well; but those editors will soon have a wealth of data at their fingertips to inform their opinions and, ultimately, editorial decisions.

Predictive analytics will give them a sense of how a story will perform, and real-time analytics will give them an up-to-the-second understanding of the collective interests of their readership.

But hunches and instinct will take a back seat to new kinds of technology-driven metrics.

For anyone who missed this last week, now is a good time to dig in. Another great analysis from the folks at Short Form Blog.

shortformblog:

Does Time water down its story coverage in the U.S.? That’s a question which has been floating around the interwebs since yesterday, when the internet hivemind figured out that Time ran a soft feature in this week’s U.S. edition, while the rest of the world got a much more important story about Egypt. (Fellow Tumblr Jessica Binsch did a Storify breakdown of the online reaction.) Most of us can agree Time probably blew this cover choice. However, we’d like to offer another argument here: That the magazine is merely playing to different markets, rather than blatantly dumbing down its U.S. coverage. Our latest Tumbl-zine (it’s been a while, we know) breaks down the past year in Time covers, by region and type of content. Here’s what we found.

Clarification: Any cover in this list that didn’t run in the U.S. does not necessarily mean the story attached to the cover didn’t get played in the U.S. edition of the magazine. Any commentary is specifically in regards to the covers themselves, not the stories.