Abraham Hyatt

The End of Privacy Episode 3 - Data brokers - the news business' awkward little secret

2015-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Advertisers and data brokers collect information about you as you move from site to site across the internet – including your hobbies, your politics, your religion and race, how much debt you have, what health issues you look at and much more.

There are dozens of data trackers on most news sites, too. But most news organizations only reveal that in the middle of impenetrable privacy policies. Is it time for news publishers to be more transparent about their roll in how your data is collected?

With Josh Sterns, director of journalism and sustainability at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; Cooper Quintin, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Wendy Davis, senior writer at MediaPost; Tim Libert, researcher at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania; and Mike Zaneis, executive VP and general counsel at IAB. Music by Bobby McElver.

If you’re really interested in ad tech, tracking and news sites, I would definitely suggest reading Don Marti. He has some of the most cogent, lucid writing on the topic. Here are a couple posts to start you off:

Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud or Stitcher.

The End of Privacy Episode 2 - Sources at Risk

2015-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Mass surveillance programs and aggressive government crackdowns on leaks are creating serious risks for sources. A single email or phone call to a reporter could leave a source without a job, or worse, facing criminal prosecution.

Episode 2 looks at the state of source protection around the world and how journalists are adapting to these new challenges. With Stephen Engelberg, editor in chief at ProPublica; Peter Finn national security editor at The Washington Post; Marisa Taylor investigative reporter at McClatchy’s Washington DC bureau; Julie Posetti, researcher at the University of Wollongong; and Garrett Robinson from the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Music by Bobby McElver.

Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud or via the Stitcher app.

The End of Privacy Episode 1 - When Governments Spy on Journalists

2015-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

Today I’m launching The End of Privacy, a five-part series on the intersection of journalism and privacy issues. Are journalists entitled to special privacy rights? Are news publishers helping data trackers violate users’ privacy? Is it possible to have confidential sources in the Age of the NSA? All of that and more is coming up.

In today’s episode, Jason Parkinson, a freelance video journalist from the UK, tells me what it’s like to discover the police have been spying on you for almost a decade. And Ryan Gallagher of The Intercept and Eva Blum-Dumontet from Privacy International talk about the company that makes high-end spyware governments use to spy on journalists. Music by Bobby McElver.

Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud or via the Stitcher app.

CopsCases: A bot that tweets when police are sued

2015-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CopsCases was discontinued on 4/12/16

What does it do?

CopsCases is a bot that tweets when police, sheriff or state police/trooper/patrol agencies are sued in U.S. District courts (see below for courts that aren't included). It tweets the lawsuit's number, name and state it was filed in. It links to the plaintiff's complaint (and amended complaint if there is one) and the defendant's response. CopsCases was created by @abrahamhyatt.

Does it tweet every lawsuit?

Use at your own risk. CopsCases usually tweets a few hours after a document has been filed but it is not real-time. The bot uses court RSS feeds, which may stop working or publish faulty info or take a long time (sometimes over a day) to publish updates about a lawsuit. The bot only tweets lawsuits where the law enforcement agency is explicitly named in the title of the suit. Specialized law enforcement agencies, like Fish and Wildlife or Alcoholic Beverage Control, aren't included.

Updates

Update 3/9: ~~The bot is occasionally not tweeting amended complaints and/or responses to complaints.~~ Fixed.

Update 1/25: Added Arizona, Colorado, Indiana Southern, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon (newly published feeds); removed Pennsylvania Middle (feed no longer works).

U.S. District courts included:
Alabama Middle
Alabama Southern
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas Eastern
Arkansas Western
California Central
California Northern
California Southern
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District Of Columbia
Florida Middle
Florida Southern
Georgia Middle
Guam
Idaho
Illinois Central
Illinois Northern
Indiana Northern
Indiana Southern
Iowa Northern
Iowa Southern
Kansas
Kentucky Western
Louisiana Eastern
Louisiana Middle
Louisiana Western
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan Eastern
Michigan Western
Missouri Eastern
Missouri Western
Montana
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York Eastern
New York Northern
New York Southern
North Carolina Eastern
North Carolina Middle
North Carolina Western
Northern Mariana Islands
Ohio Northern
Ohio Southern
Oklahoma Western
Oregon
Pennsylvania Eastern
Pennsylvania Western
Puerto Rico
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Tennessee Eastern
Tennessee Middle
Texas Eastern
Texas Southern
Texas Western
Utah
Vermont
Virgin Islands
Virginia Western
Washington Eastern
Washington Western
West Virginia Northern
West Virginia Southern
Wisconsin Eastern
Wisconsin Western
Tennessee Western
Wyoming

Not included (no RSS feed):
Alabama Northern
California Eastern
Florida Northern
Georgia Northern
Georgia Southern
Hawaii
Illinois Southern
Kentucky Eastern
Maryland
Minnesota
Mississippi Northern
Mississippi Southern
Nevada
New York Western
North Dakota
Oklahoma Eastern
Oklahoma Northern
Pennsylvania Middle
South Carolina
Texas Northern
Virginia Eastern

5 lessons from a 97-year-old style guide

2014-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

I like old newspaper style guides. I recently picked up The Detroit News’ from 1918. A lot of it looks familiar, with rules for headline, punctuation and capitalization. (It’s good to know editors have always been trying to ban writers from using certain words and phrases.) But unlike the AP or other contemporary style guides, there’s also a lot of advice for reporters and editors — much of it surprisingly relevant.

Mediums change, good journalism doesn’t. Here are my top five:

1 Self-promotion: “It is not necessary to tell the people that we are honest, or bright, or alert, or that a story appeared exclusively in our paper. If true, the public will find it out. An honest man does not need to advertise his honesty.”

2 Good reporting: “Nature makes facts more interesting than any reporter can imagine them. There is an interesting feature in every story, if you will dig it out. If you don’t get it, it is because you don’t dig deep enough.”

3 Enterprise reporting: “Drill yourself into searching for facts; almost anybody can write a story—it takes real brains and resourcefulness to get one.”

4 Chasing exclusives: “Do not look on newspaper work as a ‘game,’ of pitilessly printing that on which you are only half informed, for the mere sake of beating some other paper; but take it rather as a serious, constructive work in which you are to use all your energy and diligence to get all the worth-while information for your readers at the earliest possible moment.”

5 Corrections: “If you make an error you have two duties to perform—one to the person misrepresented and one to your reading public. Never leave the reader of The News misinformed on any subject. If you wrongfully write that a man has done something that he did not do, or has said something that he did not say, you do him an injustice—that’s one. But you also do thousands of readers an injustice, leaving them misinformed as to the character of the man dealt with. Corrections should never be made grudgingly. Always make them cheerfully, fully, and in larger type than the error, if there is any difference.”

Whatever You Do, Vice, Don't Hire That Copyeditor

2014-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

Update for the copyeditors and journalists I irritated today: I wasn’t debating the value of copyeditors or saying copyediting was responsible for the drop in traffic. We, the top editors, were responsible for that. We were convinced that fewer, higher-quality stories would differentiate ourselves in the tech news world and would attract readers. We hired more editors, including copyeditors, and published fewer, better stories. We went from being a site that had 20+ posts a day – many of which were published within 30 mins of news breaking – to publishing at most 10, many of which were published hours and hours after news had broken. By that point, our audience had moved onto the next thing. That’s the nature of tech news.

The copyedited stories themselves weren’t the problem. Having copyeditors was. Having an editorial process that emphasized that slower, thoughtful editing ended up being a terrible idea.

I spent three years as an editor at the tech news site ReadWrite.com. Before that I was an editor at a print news magazine. The transition from print to digital was jarring and ultimately a lot of fun. But after my first six months, I still had one little vestigial wish from my print days: I wanted to hire a copyeditor. Just like Vice wants to.

It would be groundbreaking, I thought, to bring that kind of quality to tech blogging. And a few years later, I had the chance to do it. I found two very talented editors who worked from morning Eastern time to late afternoon Pacific time. Every story went through them before being published. They were fantastic.

They also slowed the publishing process to a screeching near-halt. And, even more importantly: No. One. Cared.

Hiring them was part of a larger, and ultimately failed, experiment to bring magazine-style editing and quality control to tech blogging. We would write fewer, better stories. Our copy would gleam. Readers would swoon.

It was a train wreck. Traffic plummeted. By half. Literally, month-to-month traffic cut in half. As we tried to right the sinking ship the first thing I did was fire the copyeditors. During the eight-or-so months they worked for us no one had ever commented on our clean copy. No one told us they came to our site because we had fewer typos than TechCruch. I saw the difference. It’s not that readers didn’t, they just didn’t care.

Vice’s vast audience isn’t the same as ReadWrite’s. Vice’s editorial strategy has made them hugely popular, unlike what was happening to ReadWrite when I was helping run it. But I strongly believe that online audiences don’t notice the majority of the work a copyeditor does. Readers see misspellings and blatant errors in grammar. But tense agreement? Using a plural pronoun for a singular antecedent? Failing to hyphenate a compound modifier preceding a noun?

Six months from now, Vice, let us know if anyone, anyone at all has noticed.

My Top 12 Narrative Crime Journalism Books

2013-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History

Scott Selby, Greg Campbell

On February 15, 2003, a group of thieves broke into an allegedly airtight vault in the international diamond capital of Antwerp, Belgium and made off with over $108 million dollars worth of diamonds and other valuables. They did so without tripping an alarm or injuring a single guard in the process.

Although the crime was perfect, the getaway was not. The police zeroed in on a band of professional thieves fronted by Leonardo Notarbartolo, a dapper Italian who had rented an office in the Diamond Center and clandestinely cased its vault for over two years. The who of the crime had been answered, but the how remained largely a mystery.

Enter Scott Andrew Selby, a Harvard Law grad and diamond expert, and Greg Campbell, author of Blood Diamonds, who undertook a global goose chase to uncover the true story behind the daring heist. Tracking the threads of the story throughout Europe from Belgium to Italy, in seedy cafes and sleek diamond offices, the authors sorted through an array of conflicting details, divergent opinions and incongruous theories to put together the puzzle of what actually happened that Valentines Day weekend.

This real-life Ocean’s Eleven, a combination of diamond history, journalistic reportage, and riveting true-crime story, provides a thrilling in-depth study detailing the better-than-fiction heist of the century. Amazon

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts

Julian Rubinstein

Elmore Leonard meets Franz Kafka in the wild, improbably true story of the legendary outlaw of Budapest. Attila Ambrus was a gentleman thief, a sort of Cary Grant–if only Grant came from Transylvania, was a terrible professional hockey goalkeeper, and preferred women in leopard-skin hot pants. During the 1990s, while playing for the biggest hockey team in Budapest, Ambrus took up bank robbery to make ends meet. Arrayed against him was perhaps the most incompetent team of crime investigators the Eastern Bloc had ever seen: a robbery chief who had learned how to be a detective by watching dubbed Columbo episodes; a forensics man who wore top hat and tails on the job; and a driver so inept he was known only by a Hungarian word that translates to Mound of Ass-Head.

BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY ROBBER is the completely bizarre and hysterical story of the crime spree that made a nobody into a somebody, and told a forlorn nation that sometimes the brightest stars come from the blackest holes. Like The Professor and the Madman and The Orchid Thief, Julian Rubinsteins bizarre crime story is so odd and so wicked that it is completely irresistible. Amazon

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Allison Hoover Bartlett

Unrepentant book thief John Charles Gilkey has stolen a fortune in rare books from around the country. Yet unlike most thieves who steal for profit, Gilkey steals for love-the love of books. Perhaps equally obsessive is Ken Sanders, the self-appointed “bibliodick” who’s driven to catch him. Following this eccentric cat-and-mouse chase with a mixture of suspense, insight and humor, Allison Hoover Bartlett plunges the reader deep into a rich world of fanatical book lust and considers what it is that makes some people stop at nothing to posses the titles they love. Amazon

Honor Thy Father

Gay Talese

On New York’s Park Avenue on a rainy Tuesday night in October 1964, the famous Mafia chieftain Joseph Bonanno was kidnapped by two mobsters and reported by the police as dead on the following morning. More than a year later, Bonanno mysteriously reappeared, setting off a bloody mob feud that came to be known as the “Banana War.”

In this monumental work—packed with intimate details and brilliant reporting—bestselling author Gay Talese first brought to the American consciousness a world and a life previously known to only a few. No other book has done more to acquaint readers with the secrets, structure, wars, power plays, family lives, and fascinating, frightening personalities of the Mafia. Amazon

Godfathers: Inside Northern Ireland’s Drug Racket

Jim McDowell

‘Godfathers’ is the story of the Northern Ireland drugs trade. It names the names and tells the stories of the dealers and their enemies. Dealers like Brendan ‘Speedy’ Fegan and Brendan ‘Bap’ Campbell, two of the brashest, highest-living, most cavalier young gangsters in Belfast. They loved the high life, the flash cars, the wads of money, the champagne lifestyle, the wild women. They both ended up on a pathologist’s slab, gunned down by the paramilitaries.

But ‘Godfathers’ also reveals that the paramilitaries are in the drugs trade too. We meet Ulster’s porn queen who was the live-in lover of a UVF commander of North Belfast: she too graduated to the drugs trade. We meet the hard men who drive the trade. We look at the huge drugs problem in Ian Paisley’s constituency. We look at the links between the UVF, the late Billy Wright and the late Martin Cahill ‘The General’. King Rat and The General were in business together. McDowell reveals how the UDA and UVF are into drugs in a big way. He reveals that the Provisional IRA, despite their campaign against many dealers, have been prepared to bankroll major drugs operations in return for protection money. ‘Godfathers’ gives you the story from the streets. Amazon

True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa

Michael Finkel

On February 2002, New York Times Magazine writer Michael Finkel received a startling piece of news: a young man named Christian Longo, wanted for killing his entire family, had been captured in Mexico, where he’d taken on a new identity: Michael Finkel of the New York Times.

The next day, on page A-3 of the Times, came another troubling item: a note from the editors explaining that Finkel, having falsified parts of an investigative article, had been fired. Nonetheless, the only journalist Longo would speak with was the real Michael Finkel, and so Finkel placed a call to Oregon’s Lincoln County jail, intent on getting the true story. So began a bizarre and intense relationship—a reporting job that morphed into a shrewd game of cat-and-mouse. Part mystery, part memoir, part mea culpa, True Story weaves a spellbinding tale of murder, love, and deceit with a deeply personal inquiry into the slippery nature of truth. Amazon

The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own.

David Carr

The instant New York Times bestseller now in trade paperback: a “compelling tale of drug abuse, despair, and, finally, hope” (Chicago Sun-Times).

Critical and commercial phenomenon: The Night of the Gun hit bestseller lists thanks to a national tour and rave reviews from every major newspaper in the country. “Imagine James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces on a dose of truth serum, suffuse it with some cynical humor and a good handful of self-depreca- tion, and you get David Carr’s remarkable and immensely readable memoir,” wrote the New York Post. People magazine gave it three stars, saying “The Night of the Gun is an odyssey you’ll find hard to forget.”

Lacerating honesty, scrupulous reporting: Many memoirists of dysfunction, addiction, and recovery have told incredible stories— what distinguishes Carr is his credibility. Entertainment Weekly wrote, “Carr is an undeniably brilliant and dogged journalist, and he’s written an unforgettable memoir.” Amazon

Among the Thugs

Bill Buford

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin’ Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England’s soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson. Amazon

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Allison Hoover Bartlett

Shell Games: A True Story of Cops, Con Men, and the Smuggling of America’s Strangest Wildlife

Craig Welch

In Shell Games, journalist Craig Welch delves into our nation’s waters and wildlands in search of America’s most unusual criminals. The resulting detective story is filled with butterfly thieves, bear poachers, shark-trafficking pastors—and a rogues’ gallery of double-crossing crooks who get rich smuggling bizarre marine creatures.

Puget Sound is home to the geoduck (pronounced “gooey duck”), the world’s largest burrowing clam—a seafood delicacy worth millions on the international black market. Outlaw scuba divers pursue this prize while dodging cops, committing arson, and hiring hit men to eliminate their rivals. Detective Ed Volz has spent decades chasing fish and wildlife smugglers. Now, he and a team of federal agents are desperate to take down the most remarkable thief they’ve ever hunted: a darkly charming con man who works both sides of the law and calls himself the “Geoduck Gotti.” Amazon

The Informant: A True Story

Kurt Eichenwald

From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy—which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man . . .

It was one of the FBI’s biggest secrets: a senior executive with America’s most politically powerful corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, had become a confidential government witness, secretly recording a vast criminal conspiracy spanning five continents. Mark Whitacre, the promising golden boy of ADM, had put his career and family at risk to wear a wire and deceive his friends and colleagues. Using Whitacre and a small team of agents to tap into the secrets at ADM, the FBI discovered the company’s scheme to steal millions of dollars from its own customers.

But as the FBI and federal prosecutors closed in on ADM, using stakeouts, wiretaps, and secret recordings of illegal meetings around the world, they suddenly found that everything was not all that it appeared. At the same time Whitacre was cooperating with the Feds while playing the role of loyal company man, he had his own agenda he kept hidden from everyone around him—his wife, his lawyer, even the FBI agents who had come to trust him with the case they had put their careers on the line for. Whitacre became sucked into his own world of James Bond antics, imperiling the criminal case and creating a web of deceit that left the FBI and prosecutors uncertain where the lies stopped and the truth began.

In this gripping account unfolds one of the most captivating and bizarre tales in the history of the FBI and corporate America. Meticulously researched and richly told by New York Times senior writer Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant re-creates the drama of the story, beginning with the secret recordings, stakeouts, and interviews with suspects and witnesses to the power struggles within ADM and its board—including the high-profile chairman Dwayne Andreas, F. Ross Johnson, and Brian Mulroney—to the big-gun Washington lawyers hired by ADM and on up through the ranks of the Justice Department to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno. Amazon

Hell’s Angels

Hunter S. Thompson

‘A phalanx of motorcycles cam roaring over the hill from the west …the noise was like a landslide, or a wing of bombers passing over. Even knowing the Angels I couldn’t quite handle what I was seeing.’ Huge bikes, filthy denim and an aura of barely contained violence; the Hell’s Angels could paralyse whole towns with fear, so terrible was their reputation. But how much of that reputation was myth and how much was brutal reality? Only one man could discover the truth about these latter-day barbarians; Hunter Stockton Thompson, Dr Gonzo himself, the man who saw the fear and loathing in the heart of the American dream. This counter-culture classic is the hair-raising result. Amazon

All descriptions via Amazon.

Tech Press Critique - Churnalism Fight Club! Plus - The Science of Liveblogging And The Aftermath of Israel’s Twitter War

2012-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

In today’s episode, John Biggs, TechCrunch’s East Coast editor, and I disagree about churn and journalism; and Sara Morrison from the Columbia Journalism Review talks with me about the fight, and yes it’s a fight, over the “right” way to do journalism. Alicia Cohn from thehill.com talks about the impact of the Israeli Gaza Twitter war in Washington DC and Neil Thurman tells me about new research into liveblogging. With music by Bobby McElver.

Subscribe or listen on iTunes.

Tech Press Critique Podcast - Here Come The Secret IPOs And The Not-So-Secret Apple Secrets

2012-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

In today’s episode I talk with Chris O’Brien from the San Jose Mercury News about the new IPO process and how it’s changing the way we cover companies who’re about to go public. And Jon Mitchell, from ReadWrite.com, and I talk about how Apple’s product launch hype cycle just might have a little less hype in the future. With music by Bobby McElver.

Subscribe or listen on iTunes.

Tech Press Critique Podcast - 623 Tweets About An Embargo?

2012-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

Today I’m launching Tech Press Critique, a bi-weekly look at how the online media are covering technology. Whether it’s TechCrunch or The New York Times, this show is going to be about challenging assumptions, tipping over some sacred cows, and pushing bloggers and traditional journalists toward greater accountability.

Today’s episode: 623 Tweets About An Embargo? TechCrunch’s Ryan Lawler explains what he was trying to say about embargoes last month when he pissed off the Internet. With music by Bobby McElver.

Subscribe or listen on iTunes.

The End Of Digital Journalism Portland, The Beginning Of Something New

2011-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

_This was originally posted at Digital Journalism Portland.

After two and a half years, two conferences, eight social hour presentations, and almost a hundred job listings on the job board, it’s time for Digital Journalism Portland to come to an end. I want to deeply thank the hundreds of people who attended the events, who were a part of the online community and who helped make one of Portland’s first independent journalism organizations a reality.

The site will remain up as an archive for the conference resources (2009, 2011), but as of Jan. 1, Digital Journalism Portland is closing down.

Why Shut It Down?

Back in early 2009 we called ourselves “digital journalists” because we approached our work differently than the rest of the media world. I don’t think anyone sitting in the audience at the first Digital Journalism Camp would have guessed that two years later The Oregonian was going to partner with multiple local news blogs — the majority of which didn’t even exist at the time.

At the time there weren’t a lot of local resources for us and I wanted Digital Journalism Portland to fill that void. These days the name “digital journalist” still fits, but a lot has changed. Traditional news organizations no longer (for the most part) treat the online world as an anathema; bloggers who report on and break news are everywhere. In Portland and Vancouver we’ve seen multiple local media ventures launch, some successfully, others not so much.

Digital Journalism Portland is now one of many resources that exist both locally and online for digital journalists — a.k.a., pretty much all journalists.

Several months ago a handful of journalists began working to create a local chapter of the Online News Association. This last week they announced their first meetup: Jan. 18 at the U of O’s Turnbull Center.

I’m happy that I can contribute something to that effort. As of Jan. 4, the Portland ONA chapter will take over the @journopdx Twitter account. DJP and ONA share an almost identical mission: to be a resource for new media journalists. The conversation that ONA will have on Twitter is very similar to what Digital Journalism Portland did. If you disagree with this handover, please let me know.

Hacks/Hackers

Digital Journalism Portland was the beginning. ONA has now stepped up. But we also need a resource for those who work at the intersection of journalism and technology. Back in 2009, several journalists in New York and California founded a group called Hacks/Hackers. Their mission is to “create a network of journalists (“hacks”) and technologists (“hackers”) who rethink the future of news and information.”

Journalists sometimes call themselves “hacks,” a tongue-in-cheek term for someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code. Hacks/Hackers tries to bridge those two worlds. It’s for hackers exploring technologies to filter, visualize and distribute information, and for hacks who use technology to find and tell stories. Hacks/Hackers is a digital community of people who seek to inspire each other, share information (and code) and collaborate to invent the future of media and journalism.

There are now chapters of Hack/Hackers around the globe. If you’re interested in helping organize a local chapter, please get in touch. Multiple co-organizers are needed.

Thank You a Million Times Over

I can’t begin to thank the countless people who have been involved over the years. The social hours wouldn’t have happened without the initial co-host Libby Tucker, and wouldn’t have continued without the support — and prodding — of people like Betsy Richter, Michael Andersen and Cornelius Swart.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Al Stavitsky, the outgoing director of the University of Oregon’s Turnbull Center, and Tim Gleason, dean of the school’s journalism department. Al was one of the first potential sponsors I approached in 2009. Even though I had no experience organizing conferences he agreed to cater lunch for the event. That sponsorship was the critical cornerstone that allowed me to convince other sponsors to come on board — which then allowed the event to take place. If not for Al and Tim, DJP would likely have not have existed in its current form.

There are so many others to thank: the 40-plus conference panelists and presenters, the sponsors, the social hour presenters and regulars, and all of the people like Scott Nelson who were an advocate for DJP behind the scenes. I’m remarkably lucky to have a supportive and encouraging partner like Devon D’Ewart, who, among many other things, organized volunteers at both conferences. I wish there was a way to list everyone who helped along the way. Thank you all.

One Last Thing

Over the last two years people often offered suggestions for specific social hour topics or conference sessions. Starting at the beginning of 2011, the requests I got for training for social media and online tools increased dramatically. I’ve always been confused by that. There are a ton of places to find that kind of information online, but for some reason that connection is not happening for a lot of journalists.

If you want to do something to help journalism in Portland or elsewhere, find out why so many journalists don’t feel like they’re able to discover, utilize and adopt the many tools available online. Social hours are fun, conferences about big-picture ideas are edifying, but there is a real need for new media journalism training.

It’s been an amazing ride. I hope I see you at an ONA event or a Hacks/Hackers demo day or some other conference or workshop that someone is dreaming up right now.

Thank you all,
Abraham

Housekeeping:

As I mentioned, the new Portland chapter of ONA will take over the @journopdx Twitter account on Jan. 4. Email me with questions or comments.
After sending out a final announcement, the email addresses in the Digital Journalism Portland mailing list will be deleted.
All journopdx.com email addresses will be deleted on Jan. 1 along with the DJP Facebook page.
The website will remain online in its current state for the foreseeable future. I host the site and the bandwidth demands are very minimal. Barring some unforeseen issue, I will leave the site up indefinitely.

3 Ways to Turn Your Newsroom Into an Idea Workshop

2011-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Last week The Globe and Mail interviewed Steven Berlin Johnson, author of the book Where Good Ideas Come From, and put together eight of his ideas that can “turn your workplace into an idea workshop.” Most of them are obvious: don’t be a know-it-all, don’t keep secrets, accept failure. But I think three are missing from a lot of newsrooms.

Become an omnivore

This isn’t a new idea. New York Times staffer Nate Silver gives the same advice to new journalists. But how can you possibly add more to the firehose of information you’re faced with every day? That’s not a problem with information overload, says Clay Shirky, “It’s filter failure.” Find your filters and you’ll be able expand your focus and discover trends and ideas developing outside of your sphere.

[Johnson said,] “Steve Jobs hired people not only trained in technology but in humanities and graphic design. And he let the folks who came in with other perspectives have as much say in product development meetings as the programmers and engineers. If there was poetry in things Apple produced, it was because they have actual poets in the company.”

Show And Tell

Brainstorm happens when we’re coming up with headline ideas, with story ideas. It happens when we’re planning how we’ll cover something. But it rarely happens when there’s not a specific goal. That’s a lost opportunity. There needs to be time for unstructured brainstorming, said Johnson, but only a few companies allow it to happen.

He’s a proponent of a concept used by design company Ideo Labs, in Palo Alto, Calif., which has developed a number of cutting-edge products, including the first mouse for Apple computers. Owners Tom and David Kelly bring their managers together for 20 minutes every Monday for what they call “show and tell.” The managers talk about things that grabbed their attention: “My seven-year-old just loves this crazy new toy” or “I saw an art installation that was amazing.”

The free-wheeling session clues in people to new ideas “and it’s been a great generator of innovation for the company,” Mr. Johnson said.

Promote pollination

Like a bee who brings the pollen around, a key role of a leader today is to be a pollinator, a person who talks to the engineering people and then talks with the marketing people and then the finance group. It’s important to not only know what everyone is doing but also to encourage people to link up. “The leader can say: Bob, it might be a good idea to talk to Bill because the two of you are facing similar challenges and what he’s finding might be relevant to what you’re doing.”

Or to take Maureen Dowd out of context: “As in Darwinian evolution, cross-pollination with diverse strains promotes species development.”

The Carnival of Journalism - The Future of News Video Looks Like Crap

2011-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

This month’s Carnival of Journalism host is Andrew Pergam, who asks “What is the role of online video in the newsroom of the future?”

The future of online news video hit me for the first time in mid 2009 when I was talking to the editor of a small daily in Northern California. He was telling me how the paper had bought high-end video cameras, trained photographers to use editing software and put together beautiful video packages.

But that’s not what visitors seemed to care about. What did they click on the most? The raw, unedited footage from car accidents and local events that reporters shot and uploaded to the Web while in the field.

Not much has changed since then for a lot of small and mid-size newspapers. The future of online news video looks like it was shot on a camera phone.

That’s obviously not true for the big guys, The New York Times, et al. And if you don’t have NYT-style resources there are apps and tools that make creating OK-looking video easy and cheap. And I should add that low-quality production doesn’t mean the content is without value.

But the drift towards low-quality video is an inarguable and inescapable trend, one that stems from the basic principle of supply and demand.

In an old post on (the sadly defunct) Rebuilding Media, Vin Crosbie writes that an overabundance of news sources leads to competition that actually lowers the bar on the definition of “quality” video.

When there were few suppliers, they used higher quality content (i.e., ‘high production values’) as a competitive weapon against each other. But now that there is an overabundance of suppliers, their competition levers towards being the first to produce content that is at least of acceptable quality. Millions of videos are viewed billions of times each month on sites such as YouTube.com (+3 billion per month) not because of high production values, but because the videos are at least ‘good enough’ to watch.

So What Role Does Video Play? Advertorials, Really?

From a financial perspective, cost-intensive video production faces a big hurdle. The rate that advertisers will pay for video views is relatively low. Let’s look a non-news-media example: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Earlier this month paidContent reported that Marthastewart.com’s July traffic was up 7% to 2.6 million uniques but video views dropped 14% to 382,000. Like the rest of the media world, MSLO’s advertisers aren’t paying much for those views. So Martha ditched the editorially driven video strategy and teamed up with Frigidiare for some good old advertorial content.

Halfway through the paidContent story is a pretty depressing sentence:

As media companies look to refine their video strategies, it might make more sense to go with the custom video as MSLO is doing and wait until CPMs, along with marketer and viewer interest in supporting original, non-advertorial content emerges.

What this really means for small print news orgs is that there is no immediate future in investing in quality news video. That includes small online-only news orgs like the one I work for. If editorially independent news video can’t support itself, either through advertising or other revenue models, then it can’t be done.

There’s hope on the horizon. According to eMarketer, by 2015 US online video advertising will double in size to $2.16 billion.

Get ready for four more years of camera phone video clips.

Top 8 Journalism Apps of 2010 (That You’ll Use All Next Year)

2010-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

This year news apps were either horrible villains or lifesaving heroes depending on your perspective. But what about apps for journalists — for reporters who need information and tools on the go? I’m not talking about podcasting or video editing apps. I’m talking about mobile and cloud-based tools that the average journalist will use on a regular or even day-to-day basis. Here are my top eight choices that either launched or received significant upgrades in 2010.

1: Rapportive

Mac, PC, Firefox, Safari, Mailplane, Fluid and Chrome; free

This is my favorite tool of 2010. As my co-worker Marshall wrote last March: “Stop what you are doing and install this plugin.” He wasn’t kidding. Rapportive replaces the ads in your Gmail account with publicly available information about the person who sent you the email: links to their social networking accounts, their photo and biographical info, even a live feed of their tweets. Not only that, if you mouse over other email addresses included in the email, those people’s info shows up, too. At right is what the right half of an email from my boss looks like.

Suddenly, the sources you exchange email with have a face, and even better, their background info is at your fingertips.

It’s not omniscient. Rapportive displays data based on the specific email address that the sender is using. If they use a different email to log in to social networks, then those accounts won’t show up. One fun bonus is that it finds some hilariously old accounts. You’ll be surprised how many people have long-forgotten Friendster profiles.

2: Simplenote

Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Android, Web; free/paid (no ads)

This is my second most-used tool of 2010. By itself, Simplenote, is, well, pretty simple. It’s a note-taking app that syncs what you write — whether you’re using a mobile device or a computer — live to the Web. It’s been around for two years but got a very significant update (tags, versioning, word count, sharing) in August. Its real power lies in its ability to work with a host of other desktop and mobile apps and browser extensions. Once you link to one of those tools, you no longer have to pay attention to Simplenote. It stays in the background, instantly syncing what you write to the cloud.

For instance, I use an app called Notational Velocity for pretty much everything I write. I like it because it stores what I write within the app; I don’t have any folders full of old documents. When I started using Notational Velocity I linked it to Simplenote and then forgot about Simplenote completely. But no matter where I go, no matter what computer or smartphone I use, I have access to everything I am working on or have written in the past.

True, there are plenty of other cloud-connected note-taking apps out there (Notespark, Evernote, etc.), but none have the simplicity and versatility of Simplenote.

3: Photoshop mobile app

iPhone, iPad, Android; free

Like note-taking apps, there are tons of image-editing tools out there. The Photoshop mobile app is a simple powerhouse that outperforms everything else. It meets my criteria for an on-the-go reporting tool: it’s stable, powerful and easy to use.

If you want hip filters and splashy effects, this isn’t for you. But if you need to quickly and easily color correct or make cropping/rotating changes to an image before you send it back to your newsroom or post it on your blog, this is your best bet. Over the course of 2010 it got several updates: new tools, Facebook and Flickr connection, and more.

4: Police and fire radio scanners

iPhone: 5-0 Radio; free/paid (extra feeds). Android: Scanner Radio; free/paid (no adds, more controls)

Even thought I work for a tech news site and don’t need an app like this, I love it. I wish I had something like it back when I was a daily reporter.

Scanner Radio for Android launched this year with more than 2,300 live police and fire scanners and weather radios from around the world. One interesting feature is that it will let you know when a specific feed has a lot of listeners. According to the developer, “You could have the app alert you when any scanner in the directory has more than 500 listeners, or, you could have it alert you when scanners you choose (such as those in your area) have more than, say, 50 listeners.”

I use 5-0 Radio, which launched in 2009. It claims to have “the largest collection of live police, firefighters, aircraft, railroad, marine, emergency, and ham radio” feeds.

5: USA.gov mobile app

iPhone, mobile Web; free

This may seem a little elementary, but the USA.gov app is unmatched as a portal for searching all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal government websites, including in some cases vital birth, marriage and death records. It also does image searches and government recall searches.

Out in the field covering a fire and need some background? Punch your city name and “fire code” into the app. What about reporting about an accident at a job site? Searching for your city name plus “OSHA fatality” will bring up the agency’s website that lists accident reports.

6: Mobile document scanners

iPhone: JotNot Pro; $0.99. ScannerPro ($6.99), Document Scanner ($4.99), Scanner & Fax ($7.99)

These kinds of apps sometimes get mixed reviews (and I’m kind of cheating since some of then came out before 2010). They’re essentially camera apps that are really good at enhancing text in the images they take. Can you do the same thing by taking a photo and messing with the contrast and sharpness? Yes, in some cases. But often you can’t: the paper is wrinkled; the paper isn’t on a flat surface; you have multiple pages that need to be a single document; you need the resulting image to be a PDF.

I use JotNot Pro (right) mainly because it’s cheap. If I forked out $4.99 for something like Document Scanner I would also be able to do things like OCR (a process where images of words are turned into actual text). Each of the apps I listed have varying features that may or may not fit what you need from a tool like this.

7: DocumentCloud

Private beta

DocumentCloud made big headlines when it launched earlier this year. If you don’t remember, it’s “an index of primary source documents and a tool for annotating, organizing and publishing them on the web.” Since then, dozens of small and large news orgs have used it to annotate and augment public documents that they’ve published. As of August, there were close to 500 users and 100 newsrooms participating in the beta trial.

I don’t know when the service will go public (the development team has been rolling out updates for beta testers throughout the year), but when it does, it’s going to be an invaluable tool for newsrooms, regardless of their size.

8: The Onion mobile app

iPhone, Android; free

The Android app came out this year (the iPhone version launched in 2009), and it is, as The Onion says, the “last bastion of unbiased, reliable, and definitive news in a world dominated by superficiality, mediocrity, and non-Onion news outlets.” You need it.

Did I miss any of your favorites? What will you be using in 2011? Let me know about it in the comments.

Build a Robot Journalist Assistant in 3 Easy Steps

2010-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

Too much information, too little time to sift through it — who has time to find the few relevant stories that dozens or hundreds of beat-related blogs and company and government sites produce every day?

How about a digital assistant? There’s a way to automate that filtering process in just a few steps using Yahoo Pipes. One of the best parts about Pipes is that you don’t need to do any heavy lifting on your own to create powerful tools. You are free to copy publicly available Pipes and alter them however you need.

That’s what we’ll do to a “robot assistant” that I built. I use it to take more than 80 RSS feeds from a wide spectrum of political sites, bloggers, analysts, lobbyists and pollsters who I think are interesting and filter the hundreds-plus posts they generate each day with just a few specific keywords. The result? I end up with 10-15 posts every day that I know are likely to interest me. It’s completely automatic; I never have to think about it.

Here’s how to take that Pipe and make it your own.

1: The easiest step: Copy the Pipe I’ve already built

First off, you’ll need a Yahoo account. Once you’ve set that up and have logged in to Yahoo, visit this Pipe: Robot and click on “View source.”

Here’s how Yahoo Pipes works. The blue bubbles on the left column are commands. You drag them to the canvas, input the needed information, and then connect them together using “pipes” that you drag between the modules . It’s visual programing.

But you don’t need to worry about any of that.

Notice up in the right hand corner where it says “Save a copy”? Click on that. The screen will grey out for a minute, and then – outside of the words “Copy of” in front of the Pipe title, the whole thing will look like it did before. But now it’s your own. Click on “Back to My Pipes” at the top of the page and you’ll see where your Pipe is listed. We’ll come back to this page later on.

You’ll need to do the same copying process for this Pipe called subRobot as well. These two pipes need each other to run. But aside from copying subRobot, we won’t have to do anything to it. When you’re done, close that browser window.

2: Create a spreadsheet in Google Docs

This spreadsheet will contain the online sources you want to feed into your assistant. You can title the document whatever you want, but it needs to have two specific characteristics:

1) The first line of the first column must be called “feeds” (lowercase). 2) That first column is where all of your feed URLs should go, one on each line. Website URLs won’t work; they need to be RSS feed URLs.

Here’s what my spreadsheet looks like.

Think of your spreadsheet as a working document. Even after the Pipe is set up you can always add more feeds or remove feeds. The more the better — up to several hundred.

Now that you’ve entered all your feeds into the spreadsheet, look up in the right hand corner to where there’s a drop-down button next to the word “Share”. Click on that and select “Publish as a web page”.

A small window will open. Change “All sheets” to “Sheet1″. Click the “Start publishing” button. When you do that, the options on the bottom half of the window will now be accessible. Change the drop-down menu that says “Web page” to “CSV (comma-separated values)”. Then select and copy the link in the box below. Your window should look something like this, although with a different link. What’s most important is that your link ends in “output=csv”.

3: Copy and paste the Docs link, add your keywords, and you’re done

Now it’s time to make this Pipe your own. Go to pipes.yahoo.com and click on My Pipes. Mouseover the Robot copy pipe and click “Edit source”. The very top module is called “Fetch CSV”. Paste that URL you copied from the spreadsheet into the top field in that box. Very important: If your link starts with “https” change it to “http”.

The Pipe is now pulling in all of the posts from all of your RSS feeds. That was easy!

Now let’s do some customization. Scroll down to the box called “Filter”. It’s pretty self explanatory: As the information “flows” down through the pipes to this step, we’re going to use the “Permit” option to allow only some of it to get through. If you want to keep things easy, just change those keywords to whatever you want. If you want to get a little more detailed in your filtering, I have instructions at the bottom of this page.

One final thing. It’s a quick drag-and-drop change and then we’re done. In the module called “Loop” there’s a smaller module inside of it called “[open] subRobot”. In that smaller module, click the red box in the right corner. Poof — it disappeared.

Now go to the left hand column on your screen. Scroll down and click on “My pipes”. There will be two bubbles there — drag the one called “subRobot copy” into the hole left by the module that you deleted. Once it’s there, look for where it says “Change this >” and use that menu to select “item.feeds”.

Hit the save button and you’re done! When it’s finished saving, click on the “Run Pipe” link at the very top of the page.

More filtering info

The field called “item.description” means “everything in the RSS entry (i.e. the full or partial blog post or news story available in the RSS feed)”. In my example, I’m letting every entry that contain the words “facebook” “social media” or “twitter” get through. If I switched “Contains” to “Does not contain” I would get the opposite result. Change those keywords to whatever you want. Use the “+” button to add more fields if you need them.

If you’re interested, you have a few more options you can mix in. Click on “item.description”. In the drop-down menu, “item.Pubdate” and “item.title” are both useful. For example, use item.title to limit the flow of information to only blog posts with a certain keyword in the title. Use item.Pubdate to limit to a day or a date range.

The results

Once you’ve clicked on “Run Pipe”, it will take you to the results page. Depending on the type of information you’re getting, to see your results you may need to click on the “List” tab instead of the “Image” tab (which is just slideshow of all the various images in your results).

There are two ways to get back to this page. You can bookmark it, or you can go to your “My Pipes” page via pipes.yahoo.com. When you’re there, you’ll see both of your Pipes. Mouseover the Robot copy pipe and click “View results”.

The third and best option is to just grab the RSS feed that’s available right above the results.

Feel free to change the name from Robot to something else. But do not change the name of the sub pipe.

One last thing to note: Pipes is not real time. There can sometimes be an hour or more delay between when a site posts something and when it shows up in a Pipe. If you’re getting your Pipe results via RSS, that delay can be even longer.

If you have any questions or run into any problems, please feel free to email me: abraham@abrahamhyatt.com.

The pipes in this post are based on a method developed by the awesome Pipes guru, hapdaniel. If you start to build pipes on your own, he’s an invaluable resource in the forums.

Troubleshooting

If you’re not seeing results, double check that you haven’t accidentally made your filters too restrictive. At the bottom of the Robot pipe, click on “Pipe Output”. Use your mouse to pull up the frame at the bottom of you screen with the debugger results in it. (It will only list a few results, even though your actual output may be much larger.) Don’t like the headlines you see? Play with the keywords in the filter, and use the “Refresh” link in the debugger pane to see what your changes result in. You may have to hit refresh several times, especially if you’re dealing with a large amount of info.

If you’re still having problems, the issue maybe that you’re trying to push too much information through the Pipe. The problem isn’t in how many RSS feeds you have — that should be ok up to several hundred. But if your keywords aren’t specific enough and there are hundreds or thousands of results, the Pipe will likely break.

A Simple Tool For Finding Journalism Sources on Delicious

2010-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

A coworker of mine, Marshal Kirpatrick, once wrote, “People new to social media are often frustrated when they are told to “join the conversation” – because they aren’t sure where to find the conversation.”

That’s doubly true for journalists. We need to mine the Web for stories and sources but where do we start? The social bookmarking site Delicious is a good example. It’s filled with millions of potentially noteworthy links, but how do you filter it to find what’s valuable? To answer that question I built a simple tool for identifying Delicious users who are really interested in the same topics I am.

Last month I spoke at a conference for university admin types. The session was about the loss of higher ed reporters, and ways that a university can become their own media organization. That doesn’t just mean disseminating information, but collecting it as well. I wanted to give people at the session a simple way to get their toes wet. So I turned to Yahoo Pipes and came up with Delicious User Finder. (You can find a primer on Delicious here.)

What it does

You enter keywords. The Pipe spits out a list of Delicious users who have tagged bookmarks with your keywords — and the number of times they used those tags.

That number is the key part of this tool. Those users with high tag counts think just like you do; they see the news through the same lens you do. And now that you’ve found them, they’re your personal information mine. You can use them to find new blogs, news sources and online services. You can use them as your own news aggregator. You can use them to discover where the conversation is.

They’re not a “source” in the traditional, real-life sense; the majority of the time who they are is irrelevant. Click on their name on the Delicious User Finder search screen. That will take you to their collection of bookmarks on Delicious. You can either bookmark that page or grab the RSS feed on the bottom of that page.

What it won’t do

Some users are goldmines, but plenty of others are crap. Also, it’s a limited pool. The search will only analyze the most recent 100 bookmarks with your tags. For some searches that may go back two years, for others, two months.

Advanced

The quote from Marshall comes from a piece he did for ReadWriteWeb called “How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet.” It’s a little dated, but if you’re interested in getting even deeper into finding out where the conversation is, then I highly recommend it.

We Made The Media - What went right - and wrong

2009-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

We Make The Media was an intense day. As one of the sub organizers who spent the last few months helping Ron Buel and a core group of people create the event, it was both thrilling and heartbreaking to see how it played out.

Over the course of the day about 50 percent of attendees left and didn’t come back. Many that I talked to said they didn’t see value in simply discussing the problems of the industry. Several people told me they felt like the day was an attempt by OPB, which was a sponsor, to “steal” innovative ideas that were generated by the journalism community. (I think that’s completely unfounded.) By the end of the day, I didn’t feel inspired, I felt exhausted.

Two days later my mood has improved. When I spoke to the audience as part of the opening panel, I said I was amazed by how the journalism community in Portland has come together over this last year. Yes, it’s very “Portland-y.” But the ways we’ve been exploring ideas and learning from each other is fundamentally important to the future of journalism in Oregon. And we clearly saw that happening on Saturday. Because of that, I feel like the day was an overall success.

But I’m going to leave why and how it was successful to other attendees to write about. Here are two things I believe the conference failed at on Saturday.

Diversity
Uncomfortable: That’s the only way to describe the atmosphere in the conference room when the lack of racial diversity was brought up. When the organizers were planning the event, we contacted media outlets we were familiar with. We failed to reach out to community media, and to media that reflected the racial diversity of Portland. This was a mistake, one that I take partial responsibility for.

We were lucky to have KBOO come on as a sponsor a few days before the conference. But what if that had happened a few weeks before? Who else could we have invited? And how would that dialogue have shaped the planning of the event? If we’re going to create a media organization that breaks out of the old news models, we need to be including people from outside traditional media outlets.

Technology
From the beginning of the day, the smartphone- and laptop-using crowd congregated in a back corner of the conference room. True, that’s where the power outlets were. But like minds found like minds — and they were in the minority. I’m not inferring that the rest of the attendees were Luddites. That clearly was not the case.

But the attitude of some of the core organizers was that technology, like the printing press, is simply a method to deliver the news. Wrong. Technology is journalism — from the code that creates new projects, to the tools we use to report and communicate, to ideas we are only now discovering. The cavernous gap between those two mindsets created an us-vs.-them mentality that drove some of the Twitter crowd into a frenzy. I’m not being critical of it; the heavy flow of snark on Twitter was hilarious and absolutely spot on.

But remember how I talked about a journalism community that’s coalescing? “The corner” wasn’t feeling it. And the project they gravitated to — an incubator for journalism startups — had little or no outreach or communication with any of the other final projects.

It’s two days later and I’m asking myself, “Now what the hell am I supposed to do?” I know I’m not the only one asking that. Over the next few days I’ll gather together answers from some other participants — and try and come up with one of my own.

Becca Pollard

View November 23, 2009

Thank you for doing this, and also for adding a student rate. Despite all that was imperfect, I’m really glad that I attended and have every intention of staying involved with the New Entity proposal.

I seem to remember there being talk of contact info for everyone at the conference being distributed to attendees. Is that something that’s happening? I’ve found a couple people from my group on Twitter and Facebook, but don’t know how to reach the others.

I think another WMTM conference in a few months might be a good idea. I’d like to hear how all the groups are progressing and have the opportunity for groups to work together. It might also give us the opportunity to correct what didn’t work at Saturday’s meeting.
The Classic Carol

View November 23, 2009

“Now what the hell am I supposed to do?” We’re supposed to keep the conversation going. There were a heck of ideas that languised because they wouldn’t work in today’s newsroom. Who cares? I want to be part of the ‘newsroom’ of the future.
Grant K

View November 23, 2009

Another perspective is posted here by a coworker of mine: http://is.gd/529qq – and no, it’s not written by a kid who grew up with the internet, but most assuredly by someone who understands the power of the web.
My views on WeMakeTheMedia event – after the hangover | JOE WILSON

View November 23, 2009

[...] http://abrahamhyatt.com/2009/11/we-made-the-media-what-went-right-%e2%80%94-and-wrong/ [...]
Making the most of making the media | Lascher at Large

View November 26, 2009

[...] he does in other efforts cultivating Portland’s media community. So I looked to him first for his dissection of what went right and what went wrong at the [...]
Michael

View November 28, 2009

Hey, Abraham — I’m slow in chiming in, but this is well put. The “technology is journalism” point seems especially important. Like a lot of us, I’m glad you were part of getting this conference together, and I’m glad you’ll be pushing us to the next stuff, too.
Rod Pitman

View January 1, 2010

Abraham. I did not know about the event. I would have loved to have gone. I think the event was a success from the viewpoint that this is a necessary process to bring about change to the industry. Journalist need to face future with a vengeance for the good of the planet. As for those who may have gotten their hair mussed, pioneers are usually the ones that take the arrows.
Sharron Clemons

View December 21, 2010

Thank you for doing this, and also for adding a student rate. Despite all that was imperfect, I’m really glad that I attended and have every intention of staying involved with the New Entity proposal. I seem to remember there being talk of contact info for everyone at the conference being distributed to attendees. Is that something that’s happening? I’ve found a couple people from my group on Twitter and Facebook, but don’t know how to reach the others. I think another WMTM conference in a few months might be a good idea. I’d like to hear how all the groups are progressing and have the opportunity for groups to work together. It might also give us the opportunity to correct what didn’t work at Saturday’s meeting.

Hey media startups - J school students need your help (and you need theirs)

2009-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

I spent the better part of last weekend at the University of Oregon’s journalism school. On Saturday I was a panelist at the Building a Better Journalist conference, and on Sunday I took part in the Redefining J School barcamp. I don’t have a journalism degree. In fact, I don’t have a college degree at all. But this weekend I learned this: Professional journalists and their news organizations need to start thinking about how we can help students get the training they need.

It was a weekend of contrasts. I came away amazed by some sessions and depressed by others. The conversation during the barcamp was so fast and sharp at times it was almost impossible to take notes; the new media sessions at the conference had a great range in topics as well. Of course, there were also a few tedious veterans yabbering about “change.” I get cynical and bored with people who wave the word “digital” around like it’s some kind of healing wand without ever examining what has actually changed in our industry. Journalism students need answers, not aphorisms.

If there was one thing I took away from those two days it was this:

There are j school students out there who want more than what their universities are providing. And we may be loosing some damn good journalists because of it.

That’s not a crack at the U of O. In fact, they’re probably the most proactive university I know of. They recently changed their curriculum so that students get more hands-on training earlier in their studies. Several professors and instructors — including Ed Madison, Michael Werner and Suzi Steffen — were an integral part of the barcamp. Additionally, the university’s journalism department has been a strong supporter of community events like the Digital Journalism Camp and We Make the Media conferences. (Disclaimer: I am involved with organizing both events.)

But the reality is that as easy-to-use blogging, video, audio, programing and other digital tools increases, the number of students entering college with some type of skill is increasing as well. That doesn’t mean that a university can teach all incoming students at a higher level. It means the university has to serve a broader spectrum of students. With, of course, limited resources. Some students, like entrepreneur Daniel Bachhuber for instance, aren’t being challenged enough and they’re dropping out. That’s a tragedy not just for the school, but for the j school students who could be learning from their advanced-level peers.

One solution is to improve existing internship programs. Challenging, real-world work experience isn’t guaranteed to keep students in school, but it’s a significant start. Students at the barcamp had plenty of suggestions: Give us opportunities to add things to our portfolios, training that reflects what’s actually happening in journalism, and work that respects our time. But new journalism startups also need to start creating internship programs. J school interns are not just a source of cheap labor — they’re the talent pool you’re going to be drawing from as you grow.

Out-of-work journalists are fleeing the industry for stable work elsewhere. We can’t afford to loose talented students to other fields as well. Over the next decade we’re going to need them as much as they need us.

Updated - Digital Journalism Camp has a schedule

2009-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

I’m posting this a little belatedly. Ok, really belatedly. Over at the conference site I have a schedule for Aug. 1, as well as list of some of the presenters, panelists and moderators. I just added Carolynn Duncan, founder of the startup incubator Portland 10, to the list. Her presentation is called “Square peg, wrong hole: Why your news product doesn’t meet consumers’ needs.”

Full schedule after the jump:

Big room:
9:30-10: Introduction
10-11: Hyper-local news: What works and what doesn’t
11-12: SEO for journalists: What, why, and unique challenges
12-1: Lunch
1-2: Digital storytelling
2-3: Licensing your work: a.k.a, What the heck is Creative Commons?
3-4: Real-world successful (and almost-successful) revenue models

Room #2:
10-11: Square peg, wrong hole: Why your news product doesn’t meet consumers’ needs
11-12: Journalism basics: Understand sourcing, fact-checking, corrections
12-1: Lunch
1-2: Video 101: cheap software and editing tips
2-3: Podcasting and audio journalism
3-4: Wikipedia for journalists

Room #3:
10-11: Unconference
11-12: Reserved for caterers
12-1: Reserved for caterers
1-2: Unconference
2-3: Unconference
3-4: Unconference

Here’s a few of the panelists and speakers you’ll find at those sessions:

Cornelius Swart, editor, Portland Sentinel
Ken Aaron, NeighborhoodNotes.com
Justin Carder, Neighborlogs
Ginger Grant, director, Creative Intelligence Laboratory, Simon Fraser University
Paula Holm Jensen, attorney, Holm Jensen Law LLC
Rachel Andersen, Anvil Media
Lisa Williams, Media Forte Marketing
Greg Swanson, former director of interactive media sales for Lee Enterprises; founder of ITZ Publishing
Alex Wilhelm, co-founder, Contenture
Michelle V. Rafter, journalist
Carolynn Duncan, founder, Portland 10
Aaron Weiss, producer, KGW
Mike Gebhardt “Dr. Normal,” producer, Strange Love Live
Ethan Lindsey, OPB journalist- Our thoughts go out to Ethan and his family. For more on his health, visit http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/ethanlindsey/journal

Stay tuned in the coming days as we announce the final list of participants and moderators.

AND DON’T FORGET TO SIGN UP. Space is limited and the RSVP list will be CLOSED on July 27.

130 years of must-read stories for digital journalists - Five lessons from 1851-1981

2009-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

Members of the White House News Photographers' Association, circa 1922-1926

As journalists, the future looms so large that it feels like we’re constantly on new ground. But we’re not. Whether we tell stories with words, audio, video or a combination of all three, there are a surprising number of lessons to be found in the past. A 115-year-old slice-of-life story about a sick man falling down on a city street has the same emotional power we’re looking for in our own stories. A 28-year-old story about engineers designing a computer has a staying power we’re hoping for in our own tech reporting.

There’s another lesson that’s buried in these stories from the last two centuries. It may be the most important. If you want to create quality journalism, the most important thing is to stand up from the keyboard, walk outside with whatever tools you like best, and start reporting.

1: You can report on technology in a way that it remains compelling — and relevant — for decades afterward.
“The Soul of a New Machine,” Tracy Kidder, 1981 [Excerpt]

In the late 1970s, Kidder followed a team of engineers at a company called Data General Corporation as they frantically tried to design a new computer model. It’s a topic that could easily be confusing and dry. And 30 years later it seems like ancient history. But it’s not. The story is still a great read. Kidder took great pains to keep the technology understandable. And while the equipment is now quaintly archaic, the story around it — a crushing race to build a product that appears doomed to fail — is fascinating. “Soul” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award.

2: Don’t be afraid to get close to the action, whether you’re recording with a notepad, recorder or camera.
“When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers,” Stephen Crane, 1894 [PDF]
“Can’t Get Their Minds Ashore,” Abraham Cahan, circa 1898 [Google Books]

“When Man Falls” is slice-of-life reporting, not hard news. A man walking on the street falls over in what looks like an epileptic fit; a leering crowd gathers and waits for police and an ambulance. “Ashore” has a similar feel. Cahan is the invisible scribe as he follows a series of conversations at a receiving station for new immigrants in Manhattan. We’re no strangers to up-close journalism these days, whether on a battlefield or a crime scene. But Crane and Cahan are two great examples of reporting that gets close enough to see the smallest details, but not so close as to overshadow the story as it unfolds.

3: If you play with language, with storytelling, never forget the journalism at the core of the story.
The Pig, Ben Hecht, 1921 [Google Books]

“The Pig” is a brilliant example of voice done right. In the last forty years, there have been a few dozen print journalists who fall into that same category of “voice done right”: Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Susan Orlean. The examples of voice done poorly feel countless. If you allow a strong voice in your work, remember this: Journalists have been trying and failing miserably at it for more than 100 years. Do your homework. Learn how the masters got it right.

4: Sometimes you’re part of the story. Your honesty, not your ego, is what’s most important.
“How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” Lillian Ross, 1950 [New Yorker archive]
“Travels in Georgia,” John McPhee, 1973 [New Yorker archive]

The “I”, the first person, is a firmly entrenched element of modern journalism. The “I” can add a crucial character to a story, one that guides readers with an invisible hand. Done poorly it’s an exercise in vanity. Ross’ profile of Ernest Hemingway is a great example of the “fly on the wall” reporting style that made her famous. In “Travels,” McPhee hangs out with biologists as they do field work and occasionally eat roadkill. The “I” in each of their stories is a remarkably unobtrusive but essential voice.

5: Profiling everyday people will always be powerful.
“Court Buff,” Mark Singer, 1980 [Google Books]
“Watercress Girl,” Henry Mayhew, 1851 [Link]
“The Rivermen,” Joseph Mitchell, 1959 [Google Books]

Singer wrote about courtroom spectators. Mayhew wrote about a child living and working in incredible poverty. Mitchell (and his contemporary A.J. Liebling) spent his entire career writing about supposedly unremarkable people. “I actually believe deeply in the dignity of ordinariness,” Susan Orlean once said. Orlean wrote what I think is one of the best profiles ever crafted, a study of a 10-year-old boy (“The American Man at Age Ten“).

“An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain,” she wrote in 2001. “I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it. The challenge was to write these stories in a way that got other people as interested in them as I was.”

Melanie Haiken

View July 20, 2009

You’ve done us all a mind-expanding service with this piece. Just spent the morning querying editors and commiserating with fellow writers about how much harder it is to get assignments these days. Your piece re-lit the fire of inspiration. Thanks.
Susan Ditz

View July 20, 2009

Thanks for taking the time to create this piece which reminds me why being a writer has been such a fulfilling aspect of my career, despite the poor pay!
Meredith Pond

View July 20, 2009

This is wonderful. Thank you very much for the info . . . Meredith
Lições para jornalistas : Ponto Media

View July 21, 2009

[...] MUITO BOM – 130 years of must-read stories for digital journalists: Five lessons from 1851-1981. [...]
Carol Vinci

View August 8, 2009

I think this is one of the best pieces I have read in a while on writing. I write mostly fiction, but this information/advice is good for any kind of writing. I am always looking for that “extra” that’s different from the usual stuff and identifies the great reading that stands out. This is what we all need to study!
Sharron Clemons

View December 21, 2010

This is wonderful. Thank you very much for the info . . . Meredith
Slice of Life Analysis | Reporting 1 Blog

View April 12, 2011

[...] “When A Man Falls, A Crowd Gathers” (scroll down this link for a pdf of the story.) [...]
Slice of Life Analysis | Feature Writing

View April 14, 2011

[...] “When A Man Falls, A Crowd Gathers” (scroll down this link for a pdf of the story.) [...]

Oregon Understory Podcast - Twitter in the newsroom, hate it, love it -- why we can't shut up about it

2009-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

In this episode of Oregon Understory I interview reporters, editors and anchors in Oregon, Washington and California about that much-critiqued social media tool: Twitter.

Stop rolling your eyes — this is more than just a Twitter love fest. We talk about why journalists aren’t using it, why it’s changing how the PR industry views reporters, and why it really doesn’t matter if Twitter blows up and disappears in the next few months.

On this week’s show:

Angela Dice, @adice, web editor and food blogger at the Kitsap Sun.
Seth Long, @sethlong, director of new media at Sound Publishing.
Silas Lyons, @silaslyons, editor and VP of new media content at the Record Searchlight.
Stephanie Stricklen, @stephstricklen, anchor at KGW.
Dick Hughes, @dickhughes, editorial page editor at the Statesman Journal.

You can subscribe to this this podcast via iTunes, or you can subscribe to all stories on abrahamhyatt.com by following the rss feed.

Thanks for listening.

Digital Journalism Camp - date, survey, and tickets

2009-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

I promise not to cross post everything that happens over at Digital Journalism Camp Portland, but I wanted to mention that the conference now has a date — Aug. 1 — and that there’s a quick survey on the site that’s helping me plan what sessions people want.

If you’re coming, or even if you just think you may be coming, follow these step:

Step one: RSVP.
Step two: Fill out the survey.
Step three: Join the conversation about the conference agenda on Twitter (use the hashtag #journopdx), Facebook, or at journopdx.wordpress.com.
Step four: Buy a ticket.

Digital Journalism Camp Portland
Aug. 1
9:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.
$10. FREE
Lunch and light breakfast provided.

New location:
The Oregonian
1320 SW Broadway
Portland, Oregon 97201

CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, OR 97214

Announcing Digital Journalism Camp Portland, August 2009

2009-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

-UPDATE: Digital Journalism Camp Portland now has its own site: journopdx.wordpress.com

It’s official: Sometime in mid August, Portland will be home to a one-day conference on digital journalism. What’s digital journalism? This is my definition: It’s where traditional print and broadcast journalism, blogging and web-based innovation meet. This is not some far-off future for the industry. It’s happening right now, all around us. And reporters, bloggers, editors, and broadcasters have a lot they can learn from each other.

I want us to shut up about about the death of newspapers and start talking about how we, as journalists, are innovating right now — what’s working, what’s not, and how we can get better at what we do.

Here’s where you come in. What do you think the topics should be? What do you want to learn about? Who are innovators you want to learn from? What expertise can you share with others?

Here are some initial topics I’ve come up with:

Five things traditional journalists and bloggers can teach each other
Quick tips for producing audio and video for the web
Out of the newsroom: Success stories from non-traditional journalists
Turning data into graphics and maps
Hyper-local news: What works and what doesn’t
Learn how to share, a.k.a WTF is Creative Commons?
SEO for digital journalists

So what’s missing? The clock is ticking. How can we make digital journalism better?

You can get involved by following @journopdx on Twitter. You can use the hashtag #journopdx when you tweet about the conference. You can also email me directly at abraham@abrahamhyatt.com.

Daniel

View May 4, 2009

Looks sweet! How do you see this as similar to or different from BarCamp NewsInnovation?
Rick Turoczy

View May 4, 2009

I’m really glad to see you moving so quickly on this. Please let me know how I can help.
Steve Woodward

View May 4, 2009

Count me in, Abraham. Thanks for taking this on.
Tara

View May 5, 2009

I’m in…this sounds fantastic.
The AboutUs Weblog » Blog Archive » WikiWednesday recap - Wikipedia for Journalists and Bloggers

View May 7, 2009

[...] was also a lead-in to the digital journalism camp planned for August, and the fact that Pete will be appearing on OPB’s Think Out Loud radio [...]
WikiWednesday recap - Wikipedia for Journalists and Bloggers | talkbullion

View May 8, 2009

[...] was also a lead-in to the digital journalism camp planned for August, and the fact that Pete will be appearing on OPB’s Think Out Loud radio [...]
Wikipedia for Journalists and Bloggers — RichmondWiki Project Blog

View May 27, 2009

[...] post gives more background info that is worth exploring. If this topic interests you, check out the Digital Journalism Camp in Portland in August [...]
Burnin’ » Journalists Gather In The Oregonian’s Basement (Where Revolutions Start)

View August 2, 2009

[...] journalist Abraham Hyatt spent the last month organizing all the details that went into today’s Digital Journalism [...]
wp marketing

View March 28, 2012

wp marketing…

[...]Announcing Digital Journalism Camp Portland, August 2009 | abrahamhyatt.com[...]…

Oregon Understory Podcast - An $18 billion shadow economy, plus Steve Martin gets banned

2009-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Oregon Understory is a behind-the-scenes look at stories from the Pacific Northwest’s best reporters, editors, and bloggers.

This week Ben Jacklet and I talk about his cover story for Oregon Business magazine on the state’s billion-dollar underground economy, and Dick Mason at the La Grande Observer talks about Steve Martin and the biggest story to hit La Grande in decades.

You can subscribe to this this podcast via iTunes, or you can subscribe to all stories on abrahamhyatt.com by following the rss feed.

Thanks for listening.

Oregon Understory Podcast - Secret North Koreans and small town murders

2009-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

UPDATE: Included link to iTunes store.

Oregon Understory is a behind-the-scenes look at stories from the Pacific Northwest’s best reporters, editors, and bloggers.

This week’s edition features work by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rich Read from the Oregonian, and Kelly Moyer, news editor at the South County Spotlight.

You can subscribe to this this podcast via iTunes.

Shooting Mary in the heart

2008-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

Robert Arthur Cambridge had been to the National Gallery in London with his sawed-off shotgun once before. Not just there but the Tate Gallery, too. Both of those times he'd wandered around, looking at art, the gun hidden in a small flight bag he carried by its handles. On those days he'd kept his disquiet mind in check and had left the paintings untouched and had gone home, taking the Underground south to Wimbledon and his mother's flat where he'd been living since his divorce four years before.

At 37, Cambridge's life had fallen apart. He was unemployed, living in an apartment filled with ugly childhood memories: ceaseless battles between his domineering mother and a father he remembered as drunk and weak; cruel schoolmates; a fractured family life. He joined the army at 17 and left a year later, the same directionless, anti-social boy he'd always been. One clerical job followed another until the day he got drunk, smashed a window and was escorted from a job by police. The marriage should have stabilized him, he thought. She left after he tried to commit suicide, twice, and wouldn't get psychiatric help. Now he was a drunk with a bad back who sometimes sold antiques in a street market.

And then, quite by accident, he found the family he'd been looking for. For three months, Cambridge had been wandering aimlessly through the city, getting on and off the Tube at random stops. One day he walked into Room 7 in the National Gallery and found himself face to face with Leonardo da Vinci's tranquil, reverential drawing known as the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist. The four-foot, 6-inch tall charcoal sketch sits by itself, the only piece of artwork in the small room. The lights are dim; people speak in whispers. The face of Mary radiates serenity. Cambridge found himself seated in a chair, staring at the iconic, beatific mothers and their two boys, deeply moved by their beauty.

A week later, July 17, 1987, Cambridge arrived back the National Gallery. His plan was simple: wait until just before closing when the museum is beginning to empty, wait for a guard to give him the final warning to leave, wait for that guard to walk away, and then pull out the shotgun.

It was late afternoon as he pushed through the front revolving doors of the museum. He wandered from room to room, a feeling of pressure building inside his head. He had a cup of tea in the cafeteria. The clock inched closer to 6 p.m: closing time. He walked up the stairs from the cafeteria to the main floor. More wandering; more art-filled walls. Raphael. Michelangelo. da Vinci. Titian. Finally, Room 7. He sat on a bench. Slowly, the room cleared. 5:55 p.m. Right on schedule, the guard with the final warning. The guard turned and left. Cambridge stood. And in the space of a few seconds, he took the gun from the bag, held it waist high and blasted, without aiming, a six-inch-wide crater in the glass over the Virgin Mary's heart.

The roar of the gun blast filled the gallery and tendrils of smoke and the reek of gunpowder filled the air. Glass shattered and sprayed on the ground. Dozens of guards poured into the room. They kicked the gun away from the bench that Cambridge sat on and peppered him with questions. But Cambridge was silent. He sat with his chin resting in his hand. He was aware of the roar of people and voices, but inside of him was an incredible feeling of relief. "Suddenly, it's over," he thinks to himself. "I will be arrested and taken to hospital."

Cambridge spent four years in a maximum-security mental hospital undergoing intensive psychotherapy. The Independent in London profiled him the month before he got out and described a hyperactive man who spouted self-help platitudes — he repeatedly called it "a cry for help" — when asked why he'd attacked the painting. The story never mentions if his mother came to visit.

Sources:
The Associated Press July 18, 1987, "Art Restorers Tend Blasted Leonardo Da Vinci Drawing"
United Press International July 18, 1987, Ed Lion, "A man who pulled a sawed-off shotgun from his jacket and fired on a sketch by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci in Britain's National Gallery may have irreparably damaged the 16th century masterpiece, an art expert said Saturday."
The Associated Press July 20, 1987, "Man Charged With Damaging Da Vinci Drawing Appears In Court"
The Times (London), January 15 1988, Lynda Murdin, "Restorer tackles microscopic jigsaw"
The Independent (London), November 17, 1991, Steve Boggan, "The invisible mending"
The Independent (London), August 6, 1998, Jason Bennetto, "Man squirts yellow paint on National Gallery Rembrandt"
Cabinet Magazine Issue 3, Summer 2001, Steven Goss, "A Partial Guide to the Tools of Art Vandalism"
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/plan/floorplan.htm

The war in negative

2008-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

When the Iraq War began, I was sitting in a small steakhouse in rural Central California and as the television screens lit up with grainy, phosphorescent splashes of color, the people around me began clapping. We all knew it was coming; the build up to the war had been years in the making. But I was the one stunned into silence, amazed by the satisfaction and appreciation on the faces of the people around me.

Near the Iraq/Syria border, 3/6/06. Photo by Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon, U.S. Air Force.

Yusafiyah, Iraq, 9/7/07. Photo by Senior Master Sgt. Brian L. Boone, U.S. Air Force.

The next day, the Department of Defense released its first press photo (stock photos shot by the DoD for media outlets) of the war — an image of Donald Rumsfeld in a press conference. Since then, the agency's collection of media photos has grown into the hundreds. They're fairly uniform: Soldiers run to helicopters that are blowing up walls of dust. Soldiers with guns search homes. They stand in streets having pleasant conversations with Iraqis and they peer around brick walls with their guns at the ready. There are never any dead bodies; the smiling Iraq children are always hugging smiling soldiers — the photos are propaganda at its most transparent and banal.

And the photos are, at times, beautiful. They were shot by people with an aesthetic eye for the moment, an eye for the dramatic and powerful. The truly artistic photos are rare — only a few each year. And they're limited in their scope: dramatic composition and lighting is the best most photographers can pull off. But the images are striking and memorable all the same. Flipping through the last four years, I find myself pulled into the DoD's narrative of the war.

Sather Air Base, Iraq, 3/12/08. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Allen, U.S. Air Force.

Camp Ar Ramadi, Iraq, 9/3/06. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock, U.S. Air Force.

When I write that sentence I hear the echo of four-year-old applause in my words. I know the steak house diners were clapping for something different. Me appreciating a propaganda photo from the DoD is not the same as their Pavlovian response to foreigners dying along the axis of some fabricated argument for war. But it's disingenuous to pretend the photos are independent from the government that created them. It's like my relationship with the US Army, which I despise for its role in the war, and the individual soldier, whom I respect for her service. Each one is an intrinsic part of the other, just like a photo and the events it depicts.

To like the photos does not mean I have to be an apologist of the war. But to like them brings me into a closer relationship with the powers that created this war than I would ever want. And so I try and balance on that line. I see the art. I hear my own clapping. And I remain coldly aware of what birthed these beautiful images.

Fair al Jair, Iraq, 12/16/07. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Adrian Cadiz, U.S. Air Force.

Wounded soldiers from Iraq being offloaded in Southwest Asia, 1/17/07. Photo by Staff Sgt.
Edward D. Holzapfel, U.S. Air Force.

Falling down

2008-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Sonny Liston had 15-inch fists and a 7-foot reach. He was the son of an Arkansas sharecropper, a "labor enforcer" for the Italian Mafia, a world heavyweight champion who learned to box during a prison stint for robbing a gas station — a man who did not engender support from the civil rights leaders of the 1960s.

Liston is known for loosing two of boxing's most controversial fights, one in 1964 and one in 1965, against a man with antithetical looks and personality, Muhammad Ali. Even if you don't know boxing, that might be how you know Liston too. The iconic image of Ali standing triumphant and raging over the sprawled figure of a boxer was from the second of those two fights. Ali's muscles are taught and shiny; he looks impossibly powerful. Liston, his face obscured, looks not just defeated but destroyed.

That's the famous photo. The one above was taken as Liston struggled to stand up moments later. He would fall down again, get up and then try to defend himself from a flurry of blows from Ali before the fight was called.

The match was fixed. Or at least that's the predominate theory. He supposedly owed money to his underworld contacts. Or he threw it because he was scared of what the Nation of Islam, which was managing Ali, would do to him if he won. The punch that sent him to the floor was, from some angles, glancing at best. Four former heavyweight champions said he threw the fight. But Sports Illustrated did a frame-by-frame analysis and said he didn't. Liston was not a subtle man. His acting skills — especially for a man who'd never been knocked down in a match before — weren't that good. Either way, while he continued boxing over the next five years, Liston's career was essentially over. He was found dead in his apartment in 1970 from what police described as a suspicious heroin overdose. Liston didn't know the date of his birth; he was dead for long enough before being found that the exact date of his death is also unknown.

In the footage of the pre-fight weigh-in for the 1964 fight, the locker room is in chaos — a mass of people, helmeted police, cameramen and Ali, who formed his own whirlwind of taunts and verbal explosions. Liston looks at once both irritated and tired as he weakly tries to shout rejoinders at Ali over the crowd. Somehow, he looks sad.

But maybe that's because I know what's facing him. I watch his unsmiling face as he flashes peace signs to the crowd and wonder what it must be like to fall to the ground like he's soon to do. What a deep ache there must be in your heart as you try to get back up and your legs fail, and the lights overhead explode like stars, and you collapse with the roar of the crowd and the echoing taunts of a younger, better man ringing in your ears.

Abraham Hyatt

The End of Privacy Episode 3 - Data brokers - the news business' awkward little secret

The End of Privacy Episode 2 - Sources at Risk

The End of Privacy Episode 1 - When Governments Spy on Journalists

CopsCases: A bot that tweets when police are sued

CopsCases was discontinued on 4/12/16

What does it do?

Does it tweet every lawsuit?

Updates

5 lessons from a 97-year-old style guide

Whatever You Do, Vice, Don't Hire That Copyeditor

My Top 12 Narrative Crime Journalism Books

Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Honor Thy Father

Godfathers: Inside Northern Ireland’s Drug Racket

True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa

The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own.

Among the Thugs

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Shell Games: A True Story of Cops, Con Men, and the Smuggling of America’s Strangest Wildlife

The Informant: A True Story

Hell’s Angels

Tech Press Critique - Churnalism Fight Club! Plus - The Science of Liveblogging And The Aftermath of Israel’s Twitter War

Tech Press Critique Podcast - Here Come The Secret IPOs And The Not-So-Secret Apple Secrets

Tech Press Critique Podcast - 623 Tweets About An Embargo?

The End Of Digital Journalism Portland, The Beginning Of Something New

Why Shut It Down?

Hacks/Hackers

Thank You a Million Times Over

One Last Thing

Housekeeping:

3 Ways to Turn Your Newsroom Into an Idea Workshop

Become an omnivore

Show And Tell

Promote pollination

Top 5 Smart New Media Stories For This Week

The Carnival of Journalism - The Future of News Video Looks Like Crap

So What Role Does Video Play? Advertorials, Really?

Top 8 Journalism Apps of 2010 (That You’ll Use All Next Year)

1: Rapportive

2: Simplenote

3: Photoshop mobile app

4: Police and fire radio scanners

5: USA.gov mobile app

6: Mobile document scanners

7: DocumentCloud

8: The Onion mobile app

Build a Robot Journalist Assistant in 3 Easy Steps

A Simple Tool For Finding Journalism Sources on Delicious

What it does

What it won’t do

Advanced

We Made The Media - What went right - and wrong

Hey media startups - J school students need your help (and you need theirs)

Updated - Digital Journalism Camp has a schedule

130 years of must-read stories for digital journalists - Five lessons from 1851-1981

Oregon Understory Podcast - Twitter in the newsroom, hate it, love it -- why we can't shut up about it

Digital Journalism Camp - date, survey, and tickets

Announcing Digital Journalism Camp Portland, August 2009

Oregon Understory Podcast - An $18 billion shadow economy, plus Steve Martin gets banned

Oregon Understory Podcast - Secret North Koreans and small town murders

Shooting Mary in the heart

The war in negative

Falling down