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Archive for the 'Ideas' Category

Maybe a computer reading the news isn’t the best idea

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

I noticed something I never have when reading a story at the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun today. There was an audio icon and click to listen in the corner of the story.

I know Springfield has been experimenting with editors doing daily headlines via video. So I thought, maybe they’re having reporters read their stories. That’s strange but kind of cool.

It is the story, read aloud, which you download or listen to. But it wasn’t the reporter, it was a computer. And it was kind of creepy.

When we got our very first Windows computer, I was about 10. And there was this program that would read your text in whatever computer voice you chose. It would try to have the right inflection, but mostly it was just humorous and in some instances creepy. It amused my friends and I plenty as we crank called other friends. (Come on, this was middle school! And soundboards hadn’t been invented yet.)

That is kind of how I felt listening to the story. It was very creepy to me, and disjointed. It stumbled over words and slowed down the flow when it came to numbers and dates.

This service is apparently offered by Newsworthy Audio, which offers its services to other newspapers as well. I couldn’t find a list, but Springfield’s sister paper the Dayton Daily News has the same icon on its stories. Not sure if all Cox papers do or if it’s an Ohio thing, but it’s on some stories at Cox’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, including this one, which I will use as an example here.

[audio:http://merandawrites.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/schoolsgarden_newsaudio.mp3]

Schools plant gardens to sprout healthy eaters

By ELIZABETH LEE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

On the kind of sunny, clear fall afternoon that torments children cooped up in classrooms, a group of fifth-graders is living every kid’s dream.

They’re roaming around a courtyard, soaking up the sun and talking with friends. And their teacher couldn’t be happier. As first one, then another runs up to her with an assignment, Marsha Cherichel checks their work and urges them to plug away at the solution.

The right answer to this math word problem, which involves multiplication, division and decimals, means more than just getting a check mark on a paper. It means within a few weeks, the students will harvest radishes from the garden they’re designing, getting their first taste of one of the hottest trends in hands-on education.

School gardens are enjoying a revival energized by the local food movement and concern over childhood obesity. Growing fruits and vegetables, the thinking goes, will teach science, math, even literature — and, garden organizers hope, a lifetime of healthier eating habits.

… (you get the idea)

I thought, maybe a straight news story would be better. But after jumping over some annoying registration walls, I found one and clicked the audio link and was disappointed to find it’s almost as bad.

I think it’s a good idea in theory, to be able to listen to the newspaper instead of having to sit down and actively read it. Busy lifestyles and all. But as a writer, I cringe at the idea of my words being mangled and interpreted by a computer reading it the way the stories I clicked on were. I’d rather not, thank you. I just don’t see how a reader, or in this case listener, could stand more than 10 seconds of listening. It was painful.

I don’t know if there will ever be a replacement for a real human reading, at least not without a lot of hand-holding and tweaking by audio engineers. Whether it’s audio books or audio stories (or broadcast even), I find it hard to believe these on-the-fly computer-generated audio stories could gain any kind of traction or regular listeners. Perhaps after a while you are able to parse it out and listen beyond the horrible and annoying pronunciation to the stories themselves. I just don’t see how. And again, if I could reiterate, as a writer AND reader, I cringed while listening to these.

Facebook, the beginning of the end?

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

Just this morning in the NPD meeting, I was talking about how eventually even the behemoth Facebook will lose its cool and kids will flee it for greener pastures of the next great thing.

Though I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet, or will anytime soon, I did laugh when I saw this Business Week article today that says Microsoft bought a $240 million chunk of the company, which puts its value in the, oh, $15 billion range. (More about the news.)

It’s good news for Microsoft, which beat out Google for the 1.6 percent share, but as I told the ME when I pointed the story out: This partnership with king-of-the-less-than-hip Microsoft could be the first kiss of death for a company that relies on its cool factor to hold the attention of Generation-Permanently-Distracted.

If not that, this: “Zuckerberg, 23, wants to take Facebook public at some point.” There’s something cool about the site precisely because it started as a college kid’s idea to link up with peers. Though it’s cool to be part of something that big, what really makes it a sticky site is that it seems small and personal. Your network is who you know, and who they know, and who may be in your class or in your city. But it’s defined and not really a free for all. Going public seems like opening some floodgates that I’m not sure wouldn’t wash away some of the roots holding kids down there. It’s not like there isn’t a plethora of other options around that could just as easily become the next big trend. Who knows?

But there’s the rub. Nobody knows. Facebook could continue to innovate, stay ahead and predict the turns in preference and consumption of the kids it’s pandering to. So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my kids and my kids’ kids will still be posting on their friends’ walls when I’m old and complaining about how “back in my day, we had these CDs and if you so much as sneezed the disk would scratch.” And I’ll be wishing when Facebook had its IPO I’d cashed in. But at the rate it’s going, Facebook’s a bit too rich for my blood.

ZIPSkippy?

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

Have you heard of ZIPskippy?

I have to give my friend Grace the hat tip for pointing out this site to me. This site is AWESOME.

I plugged in my zip code, 47904. I learned a lot about my neighborhood I never knew. Including how my neighborhood (one of the downtown zip codes) stacks up to others in the area. Just as an FYI, 47901 is the main downtown zip code and 47906 is West Lafayette, which is where Purdue and most of the Purdue students faculty live.

ZIP Skippy 47904 neighbors

This looks like a great tool to quickly assess how different areas of the community stack up. There’s a disclaimer that though this is census data, it’s just a sample. So I probably wouldn’t rely too heavily on it as a source. But it’s very useful for me to assess the different school communities/neighborhoods. Right now pretty much what I have to go on is anecdotal, what the DOE puts out and what I’m able to cull from other sources/data in a disaggregated way.

This information, presented in such a readable format, though? Seriously gold mine. Check it out.

As an aside, would this be a great project for a news organization to undertake? Or even just to link to. Lots of papers break things down by neighborhood. This could add another layer to that beyond the news and photos typical of those sections.

True story

Friday, October 12th, 2007

A quick post before I head off to work.

In a meeting yesterday, one of the older (possibly oldest?) members of the assembled group brings up this off-topic point:

“Has there ever been any consideration given to putting the online folks in the newsroom? I know this building is old and doesn’t suit itself well to that, but it just seems like being close together there’d be more synergy and collaboration.”

I was both intrigued and excited to hear someone else thinking like this.

But the idea was shot down almost as quick because other areas of the paper also utilize the online dept. (which is currently a floor above the newsroom) and because the online people are more techies and personalities don’t mesh with the word folks in the newsroom. True story. I can’t remember the exact words, but those were the reasons.

At least we do work a lot with the online department, and are probably more aggressive and progressive in that area than many papers our size. But still. Ugh.

An education tumblelog?

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

I’ve stumbled — ironically, I supposed — upon a few tumble logs before. The idea fascinated me, but given my preponderance of communication methods (what with Meranda Writes, del.icio.us, twitter, facebook, aim and gmail statuses, to name a few) I never actually created one.

Until now: stumblEDucation.

I’ve been thinking for several weeks about how I would like to create an education blog to complement my beat coverage and stories. But, as I mentioned in a previous post, it was kind of shot down for my perceived lack of time to keep it. Enter the tumble log.

Basically, a tumble log is just a quick-hit collection of entries. Could be completely random snippets of conversation or links or photos or videos or quotes you come across and want to post. Its format is both more restricting and yet more free than a traditional blog.

Here’s the rub: Because it’s not a sanctioned work blog, I’ve decided I’ll stick mostly to larger education issues and stories I come across that I want to note or think are interesting. I’ll pretty much stay out of my local beat unless it’s something I think would have mass appeal. This way, I’ll look at it more as a catalog of interesting education-related items and less an extension of my paper’s newshole, which again because it’s not part of the paper, it isn’t. This catalog idea was part of what I wanted to accomplish with the blog I pitched.

I don’t know how successful I’ll be. I have a feeling as time wears on, I’ll settle into a routine of what gets posted and what doesn’t, or I’ll find it too restricting to actually be useful to me.

But I have a feeling, this is a better method of sharing with the world the education stories I’m reading and topics I’m researching than tagging them education on my (quite disorganized) del.icio.us list. It’s also a more effective presentation for this with less work and upkeep than a real blog.

At least this will satisfy my desire to collect the cool stories I read in one location. And then, if I ever do get that blog, I’ll be able to easily port this habit. Or who knows, maybe I’ll decide the tumble log was the way to go all along.

Letting the young’ns have our say

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

I read this post, Brain Drain, (via: Melissa Worden) and couldn’t resist throwing my own 2 cents into the conversation.

One of the passages in his post that really struck me was this: (emphasis mine)

He summed up the frustration of the twenty- and thirty-something professionals who grew up with a keyboard at their fingertips and an iPod, or at least a Walkman, plugged in their ears. They use modern media the way their generation does, not the way their fifty-something bosses wish they would.

But the young net natives, for the most part, rank too low in the organizations that employ them to be invited to the pivotal discussions determining the strategic initiatives that could help their employers sustain their franchises.

I have to admit, I have sat in on more than one conversation where people discussed an idea that there is no way in hell would float with my peers. How do I know? Because like those peers, *I* am attached to my iPod, digital camera and cell phone on a 24/7 basis. (OK except in the shower or bed, but within reach of both should the need to text a friend or hear my favorite song strike me.) *I* am more comfortable going without food than the Internet, because I know skipping a meal won’t kill me, missing up-to-the-date information seems like it might. *I* barely remember a time before Google was a verb and IM was an acceptable form of conversation even with my parents. *I* have never subscribed to a print newspaper or paid for cable news, and yet *I* am never the last to know, because I have breaking news and Google alerts, RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook newsfeed, among other things, keeping me in the loop both with what’s happening across the globe and also among my closest buds.

But here’s the thing: *I* was invited to those conversations.

I remember earlier this year when my M.E. came up to me and said he had an “opportunity” for me. Two things to note about this: First, the way he phrased it sounded like “opportunity” meant “more work.” Second, I had only been here about four months, and you can’t really tell your boss no. Right?

Luckily, it did turn out to be a great opportunity. He invited me, yes, me, the girl who six months earlier hadn’t yet earned a college diploma, to be part of the new product development group. Not only did it expose me to people working in other departments in the building, people I would never have encountered in my reporting role, but it also exposed me to the types of new products and audiences we’re working to develop. And knowing we’re actually being proactive makes me feel better about this company.

But more important — and I knew within 10 minutes of attending my first meeting — was why I was tapped for that “opportunity.” It was precisely because of my age and because I was quite literally the freshest college graduate employed there. They WANTED that voice at the table. And though I by no means claim to represent an entire generation of professional individuals, I could at least attest to my own Gen-Y experiences.

So far we’ve gotten a few products off the ground, none I’ve worked closely on — except the high school micro-site which wasn’t through NPD — but some I’ve gotten to bounce feedback and ideas into. More are on their way. And more important, some things that sounded like a good idea but wouldn’t stand a chance were left on the cutting room floor after I reasoned with them.

That said, this isn’t a fairy tale I’m living. And for the successes I’ve watched, I’ve also seen and been disappointed. I’ve seen our own best intentions get in the way of what could be really cool. And no specifics, but I will say I’m still not happy that my own Web skills are so underutilized on a day-to-day basis. It’s probably my biggest complaint about the job I otherwise love.

I’ve often caught myself longing to do more online but for lack of time and resources, what can I do? I pitched the idea of an education blog after reading Mindy’s post about staff journalists blogging. I love the idea of getting more community conversation going with the parents and schools and to hit on some national stories I’ll never write about but would love to get people discussing as well as some of those fall-through-the-crack things that don’t really fit anywhere else. Albeit I didn’t press too hard, the response was basically that I have more than enough on my plate already, which to be fair is definitely true. But it begs the question, are the right things on the right plate?

Which goes back to the original point of the article. Is the best use of my talents at this point as a reporter covering school assemblies and school board meetings with a few in-depth enterprise packages thrown in each week? Or am I squandering — or allowing to be squandered — the best years of my life, when I really should be able to experiment, take chances and occasionally even screw up, just because I have to pay my dues to get to the point where I can do those things?

I don’t have an answer for this. I feel silly every time someone looks to me for my opinion about the future of an idea. Because all I have at this point is an opinion based solely on my own life’s media interactions and my, as yet, limited journalism experience. All I have are my gut instincts and observations.

I am fortunate to be at a place where the editors do respect my ideas, and where my M.E. tolerates an awful lot of me complaining about problems with RSS feeds or quirks I noticed on the Web site. But I sometimes feel like, especially in my current position, I’m really just along for the ride at this point. Catching the waves as they come and trying to figure out how it all works when nobody else knows to teach me. I get the impression that’s how everyone feels right now. And those same people looking for my opinions, are also watching the way I crest the waves for tips of their own. That’s both exciting and scary, which I guess are the two words that best sum up the state of this industry right now.

NYTimes gives motto 21st Century twist

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

I didn’t believe this post over at the Innovation in College Media blog, even when I saw the screen shot Bryan posted.

But I’ll be damned if the New York Times hasn’t given its motto — “All the news that’s fit to print” — a 21st Century twist at the top of its homepage.

I had to go check it out myself. Here’s what I saw (highlighting the most important part of course):

NYTIMES: All the news that's fit to blog

That’s right folks. It’s not about the print. It’s “All the news that’s fit to blog,” online at least.

As I said in the comments on that post, this just shows there is nothing so ingrained that it can’t be re-thought. Nothing is off-limits.

I think it’s an awesome move to consider switching things up, but is blog the right word? (They do link the text to their blogs section, however.) But What about photos uploaded to Flickr or videos at YouTube? What about non-blog citizen journalism efforts?

I don’t have a better phrase off the top of my head. I’m just glad to see the beacon of tradition is willing to re-think everything.