Chris Boese's Weblog

This is neat: Ford named Brand of the Year for social media innovation

2009-10-31T18:18:18-04:00

Link: Society for New Communications Research Announces 2009 Fellows` Choice Award Winners for Innovator, Visionary, Brand and Humanitarian of the Year | Reuters. Neat write up below on Ford (I work for Ford at Razorfish). Society for New Communications Research Announces 2009 Fellows` Choice Award Winners for Innovator, Visionary, Brand and Humanitarian of the Year SAN JOSE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--The Society for New Communications Research (http://sncr.org), a global nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank focused on the latest developments in new media and communications and their impact on business, media, culture and society, today announced the Society`s Fellows` Choice...

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

What to think about the CNN.com redesign?

2009-10-25T19:08:28-04:00

I've been checking out the screenshots and early weekend implementation of the new CNN.com redesign. Several of my journalist and non-journalist friends have been weighing in on links I've posted on Facebook (although my CNN buds have been keeping fairly quiet, as is proper. I did same in public forums when I worked there). What follows is my opinion and my opinion only, and in no way represents the views of any of my employers, past or present.

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

Dan Gillmor proposes some "New Rules of News." I pick my favorites.

2009-10-07T00:08:02-04:00

Link: The new rules of news | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. Constantly risking absurdity and death... er, no. That's Ferlinghetti. Um, clearly risking IRONY without death, Dan has waded into trying to define what journalism is yet again! Thanks Dan! Don't know what I'd do without you, and I mean that seriously (having taught from and even blurbed, I think, your terrific book We the Media). But for the irony! It's so postmodern! From this insightful list of 22 New Rules for News, we first must talk about Rule Number 11... 11. We would never publish...

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking make beautiful music together

2009-10-04T03:39:35-04:00

Link: YouTube - Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn' ft Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed). You know you want to watch it!

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

Rocky Mountain News Postmortem by John Temple, former editor/publisher

2009-10-03T21:17:41-04:00

Link: TEMPLE TALK: Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News - Text and video of speech delivered at UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google in Silicon Valley. I couldn't resist pulling some really interesting and insightful quotations from the text of this speech by John Temple at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit. I'd noted the earthquake the closing of the Rocky Mountain News sent through the journalism world back when it happened, and this follow-up sort of gives it additional context. Background on John Temple: (bio pulled from his blog) "John Temple is the former editor, president and publisher...

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

I was born in Kenya too!

2009-08-05T17:11:23-04:00

Link: Kenyan Birth Certificate Generator - Make your own! Invalidating legitimate presidencies since 2009!.

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

Is this what happens when too many journalists and copyeditors are laid off?

2009-08-03T23:24:53-04:00

Link: The Public Editor - How Did This Happen? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com. So the story below runs a little something like this: The NYTimes ombudsman (Public Editor) is asked to look into a problem with the Walter Cronkite obituaries that ran in the paper, obits that turned out to be pretty riddled with errors. The public editor asks: How did this happen? But in asking that question, he came up with a lot of technical answers, while still avoiding the elephant in the room (or rather, missing from the room, the way so many reporters, copyeditors, etc. are now...

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

A telling smackdown for those who blame the "Great Wall" of Journalism for the field's decline

2009-07-11T11:13:27-04:00

LINK: Andrew Alexander - The Stumbles That Led to an Ethics Blunder - washingtonpost.com. The upshot of the Washington Post's ongoing influence-peddling (influence for sale) debacle is that some tone-deaf business managers and execs with some kind of distant understanding of journalism walked into this nightmare with their unthinking eyes open, somehow ignoring warnings (or hiding documents that would lead to the warnings) from the editors and beat reporters whose influence was being peddled, at pay-to-play dinners at the publisher's house, no less! But what if that isn't the story at all? With the rampant decline of journalism, there has...

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.

Note to Self: Avoid "stenographers to liars." Dan Froomkin's final WashPo column

2009-06-26T12:45:03-04:00

Link: White House Watch - White House Watched. In his final column for the Washington Post, Dan Froomkins gives us fair warning of what to watch out for, and a fine shout-out to people who were NOT "stenographers to liars," journalists and political writers who made a difference. So I just had to echo the shout. Some of my very favorite writers are on Froomkin's good list. Yay them! Boo, "stenographers to liars." [...] And while this wasn't as readily apparent until President Obama took office, it's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can...

Want to read the whole long-winded bit? Check out my blog at www.serendipit-e.com/blog for links and tweets and more.