Archives for posts with tag: ethics

Draft update and discussion of Missourian conflicts policy

December 1, 10 //
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General background
Graduate students in the Advanced Reporting course in S2010 proposed revisions to the long-standing personal/political and business conflicts policies. Editors acknowledged the need for change, though differed on some specifics. The proposed revisions in business conflicts and the addition of a section addressing social media were the subject of an evening conversation at the Reynolds Journalism Institute co-sponsored by the MU chapter of SPJ as well as discussions at newsroom meetings, this semester’s journalism capstone class, newsroom budget meetings, beat meetings and informal exchanges in and outside of the newsroom.

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A new constitution for information

November 23, 10 //
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Are we entitled to information? Katy Bergen says so. The following is from the advanced reporting blog, and I wanted to share it here:

I, Katy Bergen, as a member of Generation Y, Generation Millenial, Generation Next (Call it what you will) have grown up with the idea that I am entitled to information. This entitlement began at birth and will cease when I die. It exists because I exist and because I exist in America.

This is the generation that has taken “public information” to a whole new level, blurred the lines between the personal and the public and changed communication (and is pegged to continue to change it). Our list of entitlement can get rather long, but after all we’ve created a world where we are:

  • entitled to your relationship status, your political views, photo montages of your life.
  • entitled to see what our History of Jackson classmate is tweeting. Or Anderson Cooper. Or Taylor Swift.
  • entitled to go to a library and not be denied any form of information that we wish to possess.
  • entitled to create our own website or blog, to share information we deem important.
  • entitled to the free flow of information, formerly known as journalism. It is free because it is important, because, ideally, it is the truth and because information is power that long ago our country decided everyone should embody. Journalism doesn’t single out people who are avidly interested in the news or the people that can afford its price. It doesn’t shut out the half-interested, the infrequent visitor, the fair-weather fan. It doesn’t shut out my swim club teammate who would never pay $96 to read the newspaper. Or the household that would, but can’t afford it anyway.

I don’t see a world where people pay to read their news on a computer. I don’t think my generation would stand for that.

September projects update

October 1, 10 //
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Here’s your monthly update, courtesy of those most involved in the projects:

Vox iPad app – Designing Vox for the iPad with ideas and techniques to share with the magazine industry. – Kristin Kellogg

September report: We presented mockups (in pdf form) of the Vox app to members of the magazine faculty to get their feedback. They signed off on the idea of launching in stages (having a basic version of the app with department content) then adding more features later on. Also agreed that we would make the app using real text, instead of having every page be an entire image (doing the whole thing as an image makes the file size huge — we felt this would be impractical for a weekly). Overall, everyone seemed OK with the look of the app. I’m basing this off the style guide of the print edition, with some modifications. The plan is to navigate the app by swiping (to go between pages) or clicking on a section icon at the bottom of the screen. Each department will have a landing page, functioning as a mini-TOC listing the stories contained in this section (so you don’t have to swipe through — you can click directly on the link from here). The navigation icons also function to let you know where you are within the app — it indicates which section you’re in and goes in order of the pages in the app.

Also worked with Noah to make sure we’re on the same page about what’s possible for the app, from a programming perspective. We should be able to pull in Twitter feeds and allow commenting between the app and the site, which is exciting news.

October plans: I’m revising the design of the app. We’ve agreed that we want the layout to change depending on if it’s in portrait or landscape view. I’m working on creating templates that can accommodate this. The tricky part is keeping about the same amount of text on the screen in either orientation (although it’s probably unlikely that users will be flipping the iPad back and forth within stories, I think it’s still a good goal to have). I need to look into different font combinations. For example, in the current mockup, I’m using the print magazine’s body copy font. This may not be the best choice for screen reading, so will need to look into other options. The body copy is my primary concern — the fonts for the display type seem to have translated pretty well to screen.

Launch date: Week of Nov. 15

CMYK (The CoMo You Know) — The Columbia Missourian’s community encyclopedia — Laura Johnston

September update: Most of the month was spent trying to determine what software would be best suited for publication. Nothing was settled yet and that issue remains a hurdle to getting this launched.

Chris Carmody and I have divided the editing work so that most of the entries will be verified and vetted in time for (more…)

Projects — August update

September 1, 10 //
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Last month I described several of the projects under way. Here’s the first monthly update, as described by the people leading the effort. (They’ll be submitting updates every month, and I’ll pass them along.)

Missourian Mobile — content development and distribution – Katherine Reed

August report: Talked to application developers about creating apps for Missourian news, and specifically Tiger sports as a way to brand Missourian mobile news. I’m also developing a simple survey of mobile use among students, specifically the students in 4450/7450, as a “sketch” of mobile use among a potentially lucrative target group (for advertising and coupons). 7450 students may have a role in doing research on mobile reporting as it’s now practiced in newsrooms.

September: More research on Mizzou sports apps, business models for Missourian mobile news content and testing free software available to many of our students for doing mobile reporting.

Launch date: December, if we chose a vendor by mid-September, on app; Oct. 1 for mobile site.

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Changing, several projects at a time

August 3, 10 //
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Transitions are rarely so clean as to have a discrete beginning, middle or end. Some of the projects within our transition, though, can have more finite targets.

Below you’ll see descriptions of some of those projects, followed by “launch date.” I expect some of these launches to change, or more interim goals added. But we all need a deadline, so I’ve attached them.

You’ll also see a name. Consider the person attached to the project as the primary coordinator. Plenty of other people will be involved. The coordinator will be at the point, and the one I’ll look to for monthly updates.

Here they are. Others will be added in coming days.

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