What would you teach aspiring journalists about the internet?

Eric Ulken on October 2, 2009

It’s officially official: I’m headed to Vancouver in January to spend a semester as the Canwest Global Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. I will be teaching online journalism as part of the school’s integrated journalism course.

I’m looking forward to helping students think critically about the internet as a platform for news, and I would appreciate suggestions on how best to do that. In other words, if you had this gig, what would you teach?

Police radio play-by-play lands German Twitterer in trouble

Eric Ulken on September 2, 2009

I did this online journalism-related write-up last week for Spiegel International. It didn’t run there, so I’m posting it here (with permission, of course):

When a 71-year-old pensioner killed three people and wounded a fourth in a shooting spree last month in North Rhine-Westphalia, the police response unfolded in real time on Twitter. A user of the microblogging site, who was listening in on official radio communications taking place at the scene in the town of Schwalmtal, posted a running report of the suspect’s standoff with authorities.

The Twitter account was soon deleted, but not before much of user @JO31DH’s minute-by-minute account was repeated in blogs and other Twitter posts: “1 confirmed dead in rampage. … The commando unit has arrived on site … The forces will move to Hermmann-Löh Street in Amern … The helicopter is on Pletschweg … News channel N24 is also in Schwalmtal now.”

While listening in on police radio transmissions is legal in some countries, including the United States, it is forbidden in Germany and carries a penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment.

In the midst of the two-hour standoff, with reports coming in that the suspect had taken hostages, Philipp Ostrop, an editor at RuhrNachrichten.de, tweeted, “If there’s really a hostage situation in Schwalmtal, can the perpetrator follow along with @JO31DH on what the police are up to? Is that such a good thing?”

Other posts warned the user that what he was doing was illegal.

The anonymous twitterer claimed protection as a journalist: “I call myself the press. That’s enough… Now shut up.”

The next day the would-be journalist posted a contrite message on his blog (now also offline but quoted by the Rheinische Post): “I would like to formally apologize. I see, in spite of everything, how these social networks can be misused. I don’t feel good about this. I hope things will soon settle down and others won’t repeat this stupid idea.”

The newspaper later reported that authorities had identified the Twitter user and would file criminal charges. According to police, the man did not threaten the operation because the commando unit on the scene was using secure mobile phones to communicate.

Breaking the silence here

Eric Ulken on July 16, 2009

I haven’t gone totally off the grid. I just stopped contributing to it for a while. I needed to recharge my mental battery. Now I’m back and playing catch-up. Here, briefly, is what I’ve been up to the last few months.

April was “conference month” on two continents:

In May I visited old friends and colleagues in L.A. and Kansas City and family in Atlanta and Boston. I also traveled back to my alma mater, the University of Missouri (from which I’d graduated exactly 10 years earlier), to attend IRE’s excellent Django boot camp. I highly recommend this to anybody who wants to build web interfaces to newsy data. IRE offers a couple such classes a year, including at its annual conference. This one was run by a fellow Mizzou J alum, NYT’s Brian Hamman.

In June I went to Japan with my little brother. It was mostly a leisure trip, but in Tokyo I sat down with some folks from a telecom think tank to talk about paid content on mobile devices. There’s a write-up here.

That piece marks the start of an occasional column I’ll be writing for De Nieuwe Reporter, a Dutch blog that covers developments in online journalism. (I volunteered to write in Dutch, but thankfully they were happy with English. Which is good because I write Dutch at a pre-K level.)

Now I’m preparing to leave for a two-month Arthur Burns Fellowship in Germany. I’ll be working in Berlin for the web-only international edition of Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newsweekly (and operator of the country’s most popular news website). I’ll also spend some time traveling within Germany and investigating trends in online journalism there. The orientation is next week in Washington, D.C., and I’ll arrive in Berlin Monday, July 27.

Stay tuned. I promise to check in soon.

Back in the States, for now

Eric Ulken on April 16, 2009

A quick update on the travels and the blogging:

I returned to the States earlier this week, after about three months abroad. I have lots of notes and ideas, and now I just have to find the focus to turn them into blog posts. Wish me luck. 🙂

What’s next? I’ll be visiting Japan in June, and while I’m there I hope to answer this question: How, in one of the most wired countries in the world, is the newspaper industry still thriving? (If you have any contacts in newspapers there, please let me know.)

And in July I’ll head back to Europe for a two-month fellowship in a German news organization (TBA), during which time I’ll also be traveling within Germany and blogging on trends in newsrooms there.

The itinerary is now updated to reflect all this.

Meanwhile, I’m in Austin for the International Symposium on Online Journalism. If you’re around, say hi.

Banking law: Holding them accountable

Eric Ulken on March 26, 2009

You know that 1999 NYT story that’s been floating around on Twitter about the passage of the bill to loosen U.S. banking regulations by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933? It includes some prescient warnings like this one from Sen. Byron Dorgan:

“I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930’s is true in 2010.”

Like any outraged citizen, my first instinct on reading this was to figure out who to blame for passing this law. So I thought I’d use WashingtonPost.com’s congressional votes database to see how members of the House and Senate voted on this bill.

The Post’s database allows users to group votes by several criteria (including some silly stuff like lawmakers’ astrological signs). The most salient stat seems to be “boomer status”: Pre-baby-boomer lawmakers were more likely to vote against the bill (especially in the Senate), presumably because many of them still remembered the Great Depression.

Maybe older really does mean wiser?

If you find other interesting trends in the data, post them here.

Update: OpenSecrets.org is a few steps ahead: Back in September 2008, they had details not only on the voting record for the banking bill but also on industry contributions to lawmakers broken down by yeas and nays. (hat tip: @bill_allison)

What I’ve been up to

Eric Ulken on February 21, 2009

OK, I’m feeling really guilty about not updating the blog, so here’s a bullet-point summary of what’s been going on since my last post, ages ago:

  • I got sick.
  • I started feeling better, so…
  • I went to BeeBCamp 2 at the BBC on Wednesday and heard lots of interesting talk about the future and the Beeb’s place in it.
  • I remained sick, but thought I was feeling better, so…
  • I went to the Guardian on Friday. Got a nice tour from Kevin Anderson and chatted with some really smart tech folks, including Django co-creator Simon Willison. I even ended up giving a little LAT Data Desk show-and-tell when the scheduled Friday afternoon guest speaker flaked.
  • I’ve been following the unfolding “effing-bloggers-vs.-real-journalists” kerfuffle here.
  • I’m still semi-sick. (I think I’ve been sick more than I’ve been well so far on this trip.)

Health permitting, I’ve got return visits to the BBC and Guardian lined up for next week, and a trip to Oxford to take in a Reuters Institute talk on news business models.

I still intend to write full posts on BBC and Guardian visits. But I’ll spare you the sickness post.

The when-and-where

Eric Ulken on January 24, 2009

As the travel plans take shape, I’ll be keeping an updated version of my itinerary here.

I wanted to use Dopplr to make a pretty map for the itinerary, but I find its interface a little too constraining. At some point I’ll figure out how to make it do what I want, but in the meantime a boring outline will have to do.

Incidentally, you can follow me on Twitter, or you can see a combination of my Twitter posts, blog entries and Delicious bookmarks on my Tumblelog.

My next assignment: covering online journalism

Eric Ulken on November 19, 2008

I’ve spent 10-plus years working from within to change newspapers in some small way. Now I hope to effect change from the outside. Earlier this month, I left my job as interactive technology editor at the Los Angeles Times to travel and learn and share stories about the great work taking place in online journalism around the world. I love the Times, my work and my colleagues, but I’ve decided it’s time to try something new: reporting.

Beginning in January, my plan is to spend six months or so writing about trends and best practices in the field, both in the U.S. and abroad. Among the questions I’d like to explore:

  • What common themes emerge as news organizations change their workflow, culture, reporting structures and newsroom geography?
  • What are newsrooms in Europe and elsewhere doing that American media can learn from?
  • How are news organizations succeeding in doing more with less? Where are they focusing their resources and what are they walking away from?
  • What lessons can we take from success stories outside traditional media, including solo practitioners and online-only outfits?
  • How are news aggregators and social media affecting coverage choices and marketing of content?
  • What new storytelling and data presentation forms are gaining traction? How are viewers reacting?
  • How are traditional media companies altering (or blowing up) their business models to compete in the new information economy?
  • What role are the people formerly known as the audience playing in the newsgathering process?

Kind of broad, yes, but I’ve always been more of a generalist than a specialist.

A lot of people are blogging their opinions about the state and the future of journalism. I have plenty of my own, and I’ll share them when I think they’re relevant. But mostly I want this to be a fact-finding mission. I am not a reporter, but that is what I’ll try to be for these few months.

I believe that much of the journalism newspapers do is still important and essential, and I want to see that work live on after print dies. So I intend to write with an eye toward helping traditional news organizations negotiate the terrain of online media, but I hope that some of these topics will be of interest to people beyond “old media”.

I’ll be blogging here at ulken.com, unless some generous benefactor agrees to finance all or part of this endeavor, in which case I’ll write wherever I’m asked to.

I’m looking for guidance on where to go, who to talk to and what topics to investigate. Please leave your advice in the comments here. I plan to base my itinerary in large part on the suggestions I receive.

More soon.

Update 2008.12.05: Thanks for all the great thoughts. A few more details on the itinerary. Also, Journalism.co.uk ran a little e-mail interview on my plans.

Update 2009.01.24: An up-to-date itinerary can be found here.

Who says newspapers are dead?

Eric Ulken on November 6, 2008

The scene at Second and Spring streets, downtown Los Angeles, 2 p.m. PST Nov. 6, 2008:

For the second day since the election, the line of people seeking copies of Tuesday’s paper outside the Los Angeles Times building is around the corner. (Copies of the paper are also listed at a substantial premium on Ebay.)

Jack Klunder, the paper’s president, told me the Times printed a “couple hundred thousand” more papers to satisfy the demand. It’s also selling plates of the paper’s front page for $10 a piece and lithographs for $5. The Times’ Reader’s Rep blog has details.

(Update 11/9: Sandy Banks has a nice column, with an accompanying Sachi Cunningham video, on the phenomenon. When I walked by the Times yesterday the line was still out the door and some enterprising independent vendors had set up shop across the street selling Obama T-shirts and other merchandise.)

Finally, for those who prefer the digital version, here’s a photo I took in the newsroom Tuesday night:

New at latimes.com: Slice and filter California election results

Eric Ulken on November 5, 2008

In my last few weeks at the Times, I’ve largely been preoccupied with imagining and building our election data widgets for use on election night.  It might seem silly to spend so much time preparing for an event that’s over so quickly.  But I think we’ve found at least one app that’ll last long enough to make it worth the effort.  It’s our California county-by-county map, and I think it’s way cool.

Sure, you can see bubbles by county for the state propositions and the presidential race, but you can also slice the vote by demographic categories (e.g.., counties that went for Bush in 2004) to see if you can spot trends. Happy filtering.

(Credit where it’s due: The filters are inspired by NYT’s excellent county-by-county maps during the primary season.)