Wednesday, May 30, 2007

“I’m NOT a Porn Star” - Once you’re on the net, it’s for life

Porn company TVX Films snagged a self-portrait of (then) 14-year-old British photographer Lara Jade and used it on a porn cover, without consent or permission. When asked to replace the stole photo the company gave a rude answer, but eventually changed the cover.

But, the old cover with the stolen photo is everywhere. Suing TVX Films is pointless regarding removing the photo – The old cover is still in distribution all over the web at distributor TVX Films does not have any control over.
A sad proof of that once you’re on the net, it’s for life.


Saturday, May 26, 2007

Persistent work pays off – innovation journalism is a real issue

Was wrapping up the conference and did a search on Technorati this morning (5/26/2007).

260 blog posts about innovation journalism

28 blog posts about innovationjournalism

Four years ago we didn’t even get a single hit on Google. Enough said.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Doug Engelbart - Augmenting the collective IQ of societies


Doug Engelbart
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.
Key-note speech by Doug Engelbart, the father of the concept of the personal computer and inventor of the computer mouse. He is a supporter of the development and use of computers and networks to build collective intelligence that can solve the world's problems.

Harry McCracken’s guide to Ethics in On-Line Journalism

If you don’t have readers who trust you, you don’t have a business. Period.

Good ethics are good business and smart media companies understand that.

You know the story: about the resignation of Harry McCracken, Editor-in-Chief of PC World, and the sudden return. We manage to get Harry to speak at The Fourth Conference on Innovation Journalism at Stanford. He was late to the conference the due to a road accident at 101. But he did the presentation. His first on this topic since the turmoil.

“On-Line journalism has different issues than print” he said. “First, figure out what’s wrong right and wrong at a high level, then apply them to every potential pitfall you encounter.”

High-level rules that work

Journalists still need to serve the readers, not the industry.

They must be willing to criticize advertisers without giving it a moment’s thought.

Top editors must be enabled to serve as a firewall between the editorial staff and the business.

It should be clear what’s an ad and what’s editorial content.

When in doubt, label.

Don’t try to fool your editorial customers.

Always ask yourself: “Would an intelligent reader understand what’s going on here? Would he or she be okay with it?”

Set ethic rules that avoid both actual conflicts of interest and the perception of conflicts of interest.

Disclose relationships between your company and those you report on.

It’s okay (but tricky) for industry people to contribute to your site, with proper disclosure.

Make your rules public.

Don’t loosen ethical guidelines simply because it’s a tough time to make money in the media business.

If you have a solid basic framework for ethical decisions, you can approach the Web confidently, and the fact that it’s different from print won’t be scary.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?


Joel Brinkley, the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor of Journalism, is moderating the Symposium “Pressing Times: Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?”

I spent an evening at a crowded Stanford Cubberley Auditorium, at the 41st Annual Carlos Kelly McClatchy Memorial Symposium “Pressing Times: Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?” moderated by visiting Journalism Professor Joel Brinkley.
There were four panelists: Bill Keller, Pulitzer Prize winner and Executive Editor of the New York Times, Harry Chandler former executive at Los Angeles Time, Marissa Mayer from Google, and Gary Pruitt CEO of The McClatchy Company, a newspaper and Internet publisher headquartered in Sacramento, California.
All thought the printed newspaper would survive. None claimed to know what the medium will look like down the road. So much for visions and innovations. I was expecting a bit more.
Marissa Mayer, vice president at Google and in charge of search products and “user experience”, suggested that the future of journalism may lie in the hands of MySpace and Facebook reporters. They write first-hand reports that could be edited and aggregated by citizen journalists. (Bloggers, that is.) Ms Mayer didn’t add anything more than confirm that Google is not a publishing company, but aggregating, data mining and filtering of information.
Hm… More consumer oriented news sites like Google News, individual.com and crayon.net, where users can adapt the information flow from their own preferences and filter out all that they think is unnecessary or don’t like, will certainly increase the fragmentizing and polarizing between different groups in society. It will create conformism within these groups. Bad for democratic society, in my opinion.
Gary Pruitt, CEO of McClatchy Company said that “There’s a big print audience still in existence here. That’s not the profile of a dying industry.” He was quite optimistic and had, I think, done his homework well. He pointed out that the newspaper industry must be willing to adapt to new technology. (So, what’s new?) He pointed out that newspapers have survived the telegraph, the radio and the television, even though analysts warned about each new technology would harm the traditional print newspaper.
Well, it had impact. 80 percent of all news papers in the U.S. did not survive, and part of it is new technology that changes the business model.
Bill Keller, Executive Editor of The New York Times, said that Wikipedia got most hits after the Virginia shooting. Interesting. “There is stuff going on out there, and if we don’t understand it, it’s not just the newspaper industry that suffers.”
Harry Chandler of the L.A. Times, whose family recently sold its stake in the Tribune Co. to billionaire Sam Zell last month, was pessimistic. I was surprised of his complete lack of vision. He suggested outsourcing reporting jobs to India and ratings of news media, like the television. Stupid idea. Television is entertainment – news papers are a different issue.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Time for the Annual InJo Conference in Slovenia

http://www.innovationjournalism.si/si/page.php?6
It will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 14 to 15, 2007, at the Univerza of Ljubljana.

Public Health Blog covers Injo

Farzaneh Behroozi from Boston University School of Public Health has blogged about Innovation Journalism:
http://thdblog.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/future-forward-innovation-journalism/trackback/
A good short summary of the basic ideas.

First Prize for Innovation Journalism


Sami Suojanen, a writer for the Finnish morning paper Aamulehti in Tampere did.He won the first prize for Finnish Innovationjournalism, handed out by the InJo Society and sponsored by Nokia.
Sami Suojanen's winning article Puhdasta valoa (Pure light) discussed the future prospects of the Finnish laser industry and presented a number of the most promising laser technology start-up companies of the Tampere region.
Sami won 2500 EUR. Congrats!!