Lori Fradkin used to copyedit for New York magazine. As a former full-time copy editor myself, I think her essay, “What It’s Really Like To Be A Copy Editor,” captures the trials of the job and the personality required to do it.

Copy editors will often say the role is invisible and thankless. Like most jobs, it defines who you are all of the time. But unlike, say, being a lawyer or a teacher, it tends to inspire uncomfortable and sometimes dorky conversations with strangers.

Fradkin writes:

No one will look at an edited article and think, I am certain that, once upon a time, there was a double quote where there should have been a single, and a wise person fixed the issue for my benefit. But if you let a “their” slip through in the place of a “there,” you are a complete moron. And if you are working online, commenters will let you know so. Then your boss will let you know that the commenters are saying so in case you didn’t see it yourself. Also, people will want to talk to you—outside of work—about grammar. Aside from the guy who called me “awkward, in a cute way,” I think the worst line I’ve heard was from the dude who asked my thoughts on the serial comma.

Nevertheless, those of us attracted to the job and who stay in it for a while, are special. In a good way. After all, as I once wrote in my farewell note to my colleagues at the L.A. Times, I saw the job as “readers’ advocate and writer’s champion.” In other words whether you create the story or see the finished product, we’ve got your back.

Read Lori Fradkin’s full essay at The Awl.

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“Enough already with this hyperactive behavior, this techno-tyranny and nonstop freneticism. We need to slow down and take a deep breath.”

—Bob Herbert
From his New York Times op-ed, “Tweet Less, Kiss More“

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Who’s got the biggest social network per country? The BBC charted Nielsen’s figures from June 2010 and from a year ago. Facebook had the largest audience by far in both months, while MySpace has dropped quite a bit.

What’s more interesting is the change in the amount of time people are spending on Facebook every month. I’d really like to know the demographics of the surveyed population. Anyone have info?

(via BBC News)

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…but the customer reviews in the iTunes store make me think: “Not quite ready for prime time.”

If you’ve downloaded Flipboard already, what’s your experience been? Is the app working for you?

To learn more about Flipboard’s promise, visit the website.

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These are quick notes I’m sharing with the NYC Ruby Women’s group, which I organize. One of my developer friends, Peter Harkins, recommended I share them with the world at large, so here they are.

More about Ruby and the NYC Ruby Women’s group in a bit.

SOME HELPFUL LINKS

• rubygems.org – The official Ruby Gem repository
• ruby-toolbox.com/ – Shows the most popular Ruby gems (how many people who’ve looked at it, how many have downloaded it, how many have forked it)
• railsplugins.org/ – Compatibility tracking of plugins and gems (what works with various version of Ruby and Rails 3)

SOME HELPFUL RUBY COMMANDS

• gem update --system – updates all gems on in your system
• gem environment gemdir – displays the system directory for gems
• gem help – basic help directory
• gem env – shows the Ruby gem environment
• gem list – finds gems. You can include letters afterward as wildcards.
• gem cleanup – deletes old gem versions. Use with caution — you don’t want to unwittingly break anything that depends on an older gem
• rake -T – Rake helpfile

So let’s get started. These instructions assume you’re running Mac OS with Ruby version 1.8.7 installed. These tips should also work for Ruby 1.8.6, but if they don’t, leave a comment — and a fix if you find one.

INSTALL THESE GEMS (or check if you have them already)
(You may need/want to add “sudo” [no quotes] in front of each of these commands to install)

gem install rubygems-update
gem install thoughtbot-shoulda – Read Me at: http://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda
gem install rspec-rails
gem install jeweler - Read Me at: http://github.com/technicalpickles/jeweler


ESTABLISH VERSION CONTROL
Download Git from the official repository.

CONFIGURE YOUR LOCAL SYSTEM TO TALK TO GITHUB (once you’ve established an account at github.com)

git config --global user.name "Real Name"
git config --global user.email "youremail@foo.com"
git config --global github.user username

SET UP YOUR PUBLIC KEY
(See the help pages for Mac, Windows, or Linux if you run into trouble or need additional details.)

Check if you have a key

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

If you do have a key:

$ ls
config id_rsa id_rsa.pub known_hosts
$ mkdir key_backup
$ cp id_rsa* key_backup
$ rm id_rsa*

If you don’t have a key, then create one:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "youremail@foo.com"

CREATE A GEM ON YOUR LOCAL SYSTEM USING JEWELER (I’m calling my test gem “dabeers”.)

jeweler dabeers --rspec --rdoc --create-repo

If you get a FileUtils error (this may happen if you’re running Ruby 1.8.6), try:

mate /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/jeweler-1.4.0/
require 'FileUtils' in generator.rb (if that's the error)
jeweler dabeers --rspec --rdoc --create-repo

VERSION YOUR GEM

rake version:write

Since it’s our first rake, the version is set to 0.0.0. If you wanted something different for your initial version, write: rake version BUILD=alpha1 [or change "alpha1" a word or number without quotes]

UPDATE VERSIONS AS YOU UPDATE YOUR GEM
You’ve got three choices. They should be self-explanatory, but if they aren’t ask a question in comments.

rake version:bump:major
rake version:bump:minor
rake version:bump:patch

COMMIT TO GITHUB

rake github:release

COMMIT TO GEMCUTTER (a.k.a. committing to the official Ruby repository at rubygems.org/)

rake gemcutter:release

Thanks to the NYC Ruby Meetup for the intro to Jeweler and Gemcutter and Peter Harkins for QA of these notes.

And finally, if you’re a woman in New York developing in Ruby or interested in developing in Ruby, join a terrific group of us on the NYC Ruby Women mailing list. All levels of development experience are welcome.

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I once knew a business editor who griped a lot about the typical story that would cross his desk: “You’re dazzling people with big numbers instead of telling them anything meaningful!”

My takeaway: Always create context around data.

When most people think of data, they think numbers. But most dictionary definitions define the term along the lines of “facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.” Remember that.

As the technical foundation of online journalism moves toward structured, semantic data examined by people with expertise (or at least curiosity), we will probably find ourselves wondering how many people we’re reaching and how it happens.

Site metrics is one way. Another is social network analysis.

Among the interesting tools out there is the Infochimps API, which is currently in beta. On their blog, you’ll see this:

It shows one Twitter user’s network and the connections between them. While the example was produced by someone running a business, it could easily be applied to a journalist interested in understanding their own networks (sources, readers, colleagues, etc.).

From the Infochimps blog post:

Coupling Influencer Metrics with Trstrank would enable a promoter to identify not only the users most likely to engage, but also the most influential of those users. Throw Wordbag into the mix and a promoter could also discover if users in the active, influential target population have a potential interest in their product.

What other examples can you come up with?

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A tipster to my blog discovered an easy way to get around the Press+ paywall, which recently launched on the Lancaster Online obits page: Turn off JavaScript.

I tested this on several browsers yesterday, and sure enough. It works.

LancasterOnline has not yet responded to my inquiry, but this morning, David Brauer of MinnPost received a reply. Basically, LancasterOnline is not worried. Obit readers and the tech savvy do not meet in their Venn diagram of online readership, they say.

While this may be true, anyone who plans to use Press+ to make money should be aware of the easy methods for circumventing the tool that’s meant to bring in extra revenue and take into account what kind of hit their profit plans could take, should people get the hang of changing a setting or applying a script.

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The New York Times investigation into national water quality and pollution regulation required a tremendous effort in reporting and data analysis. The project, titled “Toxic Waters,” was enhanced by the painstaking efforts of many in the newsroom, including journalist-developer Derek Willis, a member of NYT’s Interactive News Technology team.

He described how the Times produced its award-winning series to members of the Online News Association and Hacks & Hackers in Washington yesterday. The recording of his presentation is below.

(Note: I’m an active member of both organizations.)

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Today marks the start of Privacy Week. It’s timely, given the reaction to Facebook’s Open Graph announcement a couple weeks ago.

As we become more dependent on digital interconnectedness to stay in the know, it’s important to consider the data trail we leave behind — and not just on social networks. Earlier this year, President Obama signed signed a one-year extension of the Patriot Act, a law that was written in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, but which critics say gives the federal government unprecedented surveillance authority over private citizens.

“Having information about other individuals is a very important way of having leverage over them,” says University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone.

Watch the short film above. If you’re concerned about your privacy and want to take action, sign the Privacy Week petition to congress, and read the latest information from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). If you’re specifically concerned about Facebook, follow these instructions to opt-out of instant personalization or these instructions to permanently delete your account.

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• Stake Your Claim, Protect Your Brand, or Be Sorry Later

Words to work by.

(Hat tip to the always terrific swissmiss.)

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