Here’s another site by a tech guy – but it is a great compilation of photos and he has done a Web 2.0 mash-up by linking almost every photo to a YouTube or Google video about the photo. Now that is a cool project. Would be a great student project!
And yet another site with great photos that changed the world. Here it is.
Mr. C
I know this is a little like a one-off for this blog, more politics, than teaching – but it is about media in today’s world. Tony Blair gave a great speech/op-ed about the role of media in today’s politics. I think he is “spot-on” as they say across the pond. He really nailed it about the “Impact Media” trying harder and harder for attention as their audience slips away. It is coarsening our culture and hurting democracy. A free press has a higher calling, than the scandal of the day. We should be informing the people about what the government is doing and the various sides in the debate. Too much post Watergate journalism is over-the-top and scandal driven. You have to shout fire to get any attention from the media today.
Mr. C
I’ve been reading a couple of blog posts lately (1, 2, 3 ) that say we are getting much better reporting on government, especially at the national level from The Daily Show & The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, than we do from NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN or FOX. This is sad. I like both of these shows, I rarely watch them on TV – but I do like to watch clips on the internet.
I really like the way that “investigative reporter” Samantha (Sam) Bee does her interview segments. She really weaves the perfect broadcast story methodology into hilarious send-ups of reporting. If you can’t laugh at yourself…
As the teachers of future reporters, we really need to stay current with the trends in our industry. Right now those trends are not very encouraging. Newspapers are profitable, but under pressure to cut costs and staff. The Mercury News (one of the country’s top mid-size papers) is cutting staff and this is just another in a series of cutbacks. TV news is being invaded by infotainment reporters like Katie Couric. Too many media outlets have been taken over by partisan politics of one flavor or another. And the industry keeps getting rocked by scandals: Jason Blair, Dan Rather, Stephen Glass, etc.
It is scary that some really good reporting is happening on comedy shows. They are pointing out the hypocrisy and finding the mistakes that the mainstream media is supposed to catch, but is too busy with Paris Hilton’s jail term, Angelina Jolie’s newest adoption, and who is the baby-daddy of the celebrity pregnancy of the week. If it is not that, then it is mudslinging on Olberman, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc. That is what passes for reporting today.
There I said it! That has always been one of my deep, dark, journalism teacher secrets. My students either can not, or will not turn in their work on deadline. I’ve tried all kinds of things. We have artificial mini-deadlines, but after a while, the kids are smart enough to figure it out. They just don’t see the problem with not making a deadline.
My broadcast kids get it! My yearbook/news magazine/web designers don’t. We have a weekly TV show. This last year, I told the kids if they want an audience, they have to have a show every week, or they will lose their audience. It has to come on the same day, at the same time – every week. That is how you build an audience. They put out twice as many shows as the year before. They came out almost every week on time! They got a lot of response from students. They were watching!
The yearbook only comes out once a year. You don’t get enough feedback. I’m not really sure how to motivate them to meet deadlines. I’d really like to hear from readers of this blog as to how you handle it. I’ve tried, and continue to tie it to grades, but at my school grades do not motivate the majority of kids. So, I’m looking for something else.
Please write in your comments.
Mr. C
I am forever wanting to be able to record lessons that I do in Photoshop, InDesign, etc. Sometimes they are difficult, or sometimes I have to give them to several classes – either way it would be cool to be able to record them. Now there is a way – Screencast-o-Matic. This cool new tool allows you to record what you are doing on your screen without any additional software needed – except a browser and Java.
I tried it out on both my laptop OS X (10.4.9) non-Intel and my iMac 10.4.9 Intel using Firefox 2.0. On my laptop it worked great, but my iMac was problematic. First it wouldn’t work with Firefox. I tried upgrading my Java, no luck. Then I tried SeaMonkey (another Mozilla browser). It worked! But it only likes 1024×786 and even when I set my iMac monitor to that depth – it was still no go on full screen recording.
So I recorded a simple lesson on how to balance the levels on a grayscale photo in Photoshop. So far, so good. Saving to the desktop took a long time, but it did finally save. So, I recommend it, great tool.
I also recommend using the full version of Quicktime or iMovie to edit the .MOV files that it saves. I also don’t recommend saving to desktop. It is available for windows too! And it is FREE!
Thanks to Andy for leading me there.
Mr. C
Great resource to go along with the article on “A Mighty Heart.” The CPJ has stats and other info on nearly every journalist killed since 1992.
http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed_archives/stats.html
Daniel Pearl’s info is on the 2002 Page under Pakistan
http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed_archives/2002_list.html
Mr C
If you teach photojournalism, then you must watch the PBS documentary on Ansel Adams. Here’s the web site with all kinds of great extras that you can use in class.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ansel/index.html
Mr. C
In spite of all the media anti-buzz about Angelina Jolie trying to control her interviews for this film, it looks like a great film about the tragic events that took WSJ bureau chief’s life in Pakistan. He was a great reporter who gave his life for our craft – trying to get the news.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/amightyheart/medium.html
Mr. C
http://www.newseum.org/newsmania/main.htm
From the Newseum
Back in the day, 1998 or so, we had Netscape Navigator Suite. It was cool, you could surf the web, read your email and even build a web page in Composer. But Explorer killed the Internet star (Netscape). It merged with AOL and went to the internet abyss. But before Netscape died, it gave up it’s code to the Mozilla group. They put out the Mozilla browser, basically Netscape, only better. But it too got old and died, but not before having children – Firefox; the best browser on the web and SeaMonkey, a WYSIWYG easy to use, graphical web page builder. If you can use InDesign or Photoshop, you can figure out SeaMonkey. And the price is right FREE.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/
It is available for Mac, Windows, Linux, you name it.
Mr. C
TEACH J: For Teachers of Journalism And Media 