The Newsroom: Life at J-school

The implosion of Lexmark

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:43:00 -0400

The implosion of Lexmark: Great, detailed analysis here from a local (Lexington, Ky—based) blogger about the decline and mismanagement of Lexmark and how the company’s worth basically a tenth of what it was worth five years ago. It’s ultimately a very sad story, since Lexmark is one of our biggest local employers.

Using iPhone for TV journalism

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:26:38 -0400

Using iPhone for TV journalism: A reporter at a TV station in Miami shot the video for an entire story on an iPhone, then edited it together on Final Cut back at the studio. The voice over was recorded on the iPhone’s voice recording app as well. Nice work! Now if we could just get rid of all the jiggling.

Not-So-Easy Listening: It Takes a Trek to Hear This Track

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0400

Not-So-Easy Listening: It Takes a Trek to Hear This Track :

Interesting article (from the Wall Street Journal, of all places) on a novel form of music distribution chosen by one of Sufjan Steven’s fans.

-1 style points for inane use of the word “curate,” though. It’s quickly becoming the dumbest buzzword of the ’00s.

bauldoff: In awe of The Beatles: Rock Band opening cinematic by...

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:00:00 -0400

bauldoff:

In awe of The Beatles: Rock Band opening cinematic by the consistently out-of-this-world Passion Pictures.

This is amazing. Watch it in HD at the link above. Watch it now.

Canon SD960: Great Pictures, Great Video

Thu, 14 May 2009 11:57:09 -0400

Canon SD960: Great Pictures, Great Video : I think I just found my next digital camera. That example video is amazing.

The Political Graveyard

Thu, 07 May 2009 10:05:04 -0400

The Political Graveyard: Awesome site for researching politics & politicians. What did we ever do before Google/the Internet?

Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London

Sun, 03 May 2009 09:47:32 -0400

Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London:

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

(via azspot)

Free word count services

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:51:58 -0400

Free word count services:

I tend to do a lot of plaintext writing in Mac OS X’s TextEdit, since it has all features I need to write things down. Unfortunately, it does not have a word count feature.

Enter Devon Technologies’ Word Service. A free download, Word Service lets you get a word count from any app that has a Services menu. Nice.

Panel recommends ending tenure at Kentucky's community and technical college system

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:16:56 -0400

Panel recommends ending tenure at Kentucky's community and technical college system: What a manifestly stupid thing to do.

"Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music,..."

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:49:00 -0400

“Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.”

- Michael Spencer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, on the coming evangelical collapse.

"The issue is not saving newspapers. The issue is, among other things, seeing that good journalism..."

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:43:00 -0400

“The issue is not saving newspapers. The issue is, among other things, seeing that good journalism survives. It’s also about making sure that people who “consume” media demand better than they’ve been getting, by persuading them to become activists in the way they consume.”

- Boing Boing guest blogger Dan Gillmor writing in Saving Newspapers, Part MMIX: Collude and Conspire. Here’s some cold water for the increasingly hysterical “save our newspapers!!!1” crowd. They’re not going to get saved.

Robot Programmed to Love Traps Woman in Lab, Hugs Her Repeatedly

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:30:57 -0500

Robot Programmed to Love Traps Woman in Lab, Hugs Her Repeatedly: Basically the headline says it all. It won’t be Terminators that take us down — just out-of-control robots intent on hugging.

"There is a lot of talk nowadays about what will replace the dinosaur that is the daily newspaper...."

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:04:00 -0500

“

There is a lot of talk nowadays about what will replace the dinosaur that is the daily newspaper. So-called citizen journalists and bloggers and media pundits have lined up to tell us that newspapers are dying but that the news business will endure, that this moment is less tragic than it is transformational.

Well, sorry, but I didn’t trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick’s identity and performance history. Nor were any citizen journalists at the City Council hearing in January when police officials inflated the nature and severity of the threats against officers. And there wasn’t anyone working sources in the police department to counterbalance all of the spin or omission.

I didn’t trip over a herd of hungry Sun reporters either, but that’s the point. In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.

”

- The Wire’s David Simon, writing in his article In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police

Cupertino, start your photocopiers

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:31:00 -0500

It looks like Safari 4 copies Chrome’s UI wholesale. Besides Safari’s separate “Address” and “Search” boxes, everything — including Top Sites — is the same. On Windows, the similarity is even more striking. For example, compare this image to this one. Notice that, in addition to the titlebar tabs’ position and the top sites grid, Apple has also copied the “page” and “gear” menus to the left of the location field.

Saving newspapers

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:01:00 -0500

Saving newspapers:

Fred Clark examines Walter Isaacson’s recent Time cover story:

His big solution, in short, is that somebody needs to invent some kind of convenient micropayment system that would allow newspapers to charge for the online content we’re currently giving away for free. Web advertising, Isaacson figures, will never produce sufficient revenue to cover the cost of producing all that free content.

Well, maybe that would help. Partly. Perhaps. Although I’m far from convinced that newspapers are really suffering from a problem of insufficient revenue as much as they are from a problem of foolishly inappropriate revenue expectations.

Oh yes all that, and then the added problem of any such magical micropayment system breaking the freaking Internet. As in, suddenly an entire class of Web pages are available only to users with Web browsers and operating systems blessed by content providers. It would be like the old browser wars all over again, except that anyone using a minority Web browser or operating system will be left out in the cold. A good rule of thumb: if you’re considering a Web policy that will lock some users out, it’s a bad idea. Don’t do it.

But I agree with Fred that newspapers are dying and there’s little we can do to prevent that. What we need to do, somehow, is figure out how to preserve the best qualities of newspapers in this new media world.

"Part of the problem is right there in the name: e-book. In the print world, the word..."

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:20:00 -0500

“

Part of the problem is right there in the name: e-book. In the print world, the word “book” is used to refer to both the content and the medium. In the digital realm, “e-book” refers to the content only—or rather, that’s the intention. Unfortunately, the conflation of these two concepts in the nomenclature of print naturally carries over to the digital terminology, much to the confusion of all.

This is not the case with music, for example, where the medium and the content are separate. The medium changes—vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, MP3—but music is still music. Music is the product. Music is what you’re buying. The medium is just a vessel, and that vessel changes ruthlessly. When a better, cheaper, faster, or more convenient medium appears, the music follows—with or without the content owners.

”

- John Siracusa: The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age

Regarding Anathem and the dreaded science fiction infodump

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:05:00 -0500

I received Neal Stephenson’s new opus Anathem for Christmas. It’s a big, beautiful, absolutely glorious SF book. Maybe I should qualify that with a “so far,” since the book is nearly 900 pages long and I’m only about 150 in. Regardless, it’s a wonderful and I am thoroughly enjoying it.¹

But what’s curious about the book is its approach to the dreaded SF convention of the infodump. You’ve seen them before — the few paragraphs of text (often in italics) that quickly bring readers up to speed, telling them about the robots/hyperdrive/fractious interstellar politics that will drive the story. SF movies are particularly bad about this. Take the famous opening crawl of Star Wars, for example, or the beginning of Alien or Blade Runner. Terminator 2 features a bit of opening narration.

Anathem, on the other hand, doesn’t use this crutch. Well, sort of. It’s set on a fictional world that, unlike most in SF, has a long history of several thousand years. In order to bring the reader up to speed with the strange politics, religions, and history, the book has:

An author’s note, complete with a four-page, 6,000-year timeline
Dictionary definitions of made-up words spaced liberally throughout the text
A glossary of terms
Three appendices

That’s quite a lot! But all this information is more helpful to the reader, in the end, than doing it any other way. It helps preserve the integrity of the narrative and — here’s the best part — gives readers options. Those who want to forgo the timeline and endnotes and blah blah blah can just dive in and let the story reveal itself to them. Others² can take the big picture approach. This isn’t as elegant as a solution as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’s footnotes, but then again Neal Stephenson’s world is quite a bit more complex than the alternate history dreamed up by Susanna Clarke.

In a way, Anathem reminds me of The Name of the Rose — the monastery-like setting, the world poised on the edge of disaster, the young and naïve (and overeducated) narrator. I hope that the end satisfies just as much.

Not just the text of the book, either. Despite what has been said here about the coming death of print, Morrow Publishing has created a wonderfully physical object. The text is beautifully set, with lots of little embellishments and accents. And if one removes the (pretty typical) dust jacket, one finds a wonderfully foil-stamped cover that would probably warm the heart of a mathic avout, or at least any terrestrial bibliophile unfortunate enough to live in the 21st century. ↩
Like me, who can hardly make it through a book without reading the last page first. So far I’ve read all the appendices but managed to hold off glancing at the last page. I don’t think my willpower will hold out much longer. ↩

Even Obama gets a W-approved nickname

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:22:04 -0500

Even Obama gets a W-approved nickname:

The NYT’s description of Obama’s first full day as president notes that when Obama reached the Resolute Desk this morning he found the continuation of an old tradition:

He read the note left behind by George W. Bush, which was sitting in a folder on top of the desk, with a note marked “44.” Mr. Obama was in the office alone for a brief time, aides said, starting his day after a late night celebrating and dancing at inaugural balls across Washington.

It’s touching that even Obama gets a nickname (“44”) from outgoing President Bush. I’m going to miss him.

"We can’t get good at something solely by reading about it. And we’ll never make giant leaps in any..."

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:48:00 -0500

“We can’t get good at something solely by reading about it. And we’ll never make giant leaps in any endeavor by treating it like a snack food that we munch on whenever we’re getting bored. You get good at something by doing it repeatedly. And by listening to specific criticism from people who are already good at what you do. And by a dedication to getting better, even when it’s inconvenient and may not involve a handy bulleted list.”

- Merlin Mann: Real Advice Hurts

prettify: Battlestar Galactica by Corey Marion In preparation...

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:33:11 -0500

prettify:

Battlestar Galactica by Corey Marion

In preparation for tonight’s return of everyone’s favorite robots-versus-humans space drama, we present these excellent icons. Even better: There are two more sets for a total of 20 icons.