Joe Murphy » Features http://joethink.com/blog A Denver web developer and journalist's thoughts on local online journalism, community, context and storytelling. Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:42:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0-alpha en hourly 1 One great mind-bender of an example of why copyediting is important: http://joethink.com/blog/2010/06/one-great-mind-bender-of-an-example-of-why-copyediting-is-important/ http://joethink.com/blog/2010/06/one-great-mind-bender-of-an-example-of-why-copyediting-is-important/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 02:40:05 +0000 Joe http://joethink.com/blog/?p=469 One great mind-bender of an example of why copyediting is important

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2010/06/one-great-mind-bender-of-an-example-of-why-copyediting-is-important/feed/ 0 Oh god, you want to structure *what*? (the challenges of structured data in prep sports systems) http://joethink.com/blog/2010/05/oh-god-you-want-to-structure-what-the-challenges-of-prep-sports-systems/ http://joethink.com/blog/2010/05/oh-god-you-want-to-structure-what-the-challenges-of-prep-sports-systems/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 18:28:13 +0000 Joe http://joethink.com/blog/?p=462 This email came in to our preps sports team, clearing up a few issues with a prep baseball standings:

FYI – The 4/20 baseball game bewtween ECA & CSCS was tied 8-8 when it was suspended by rain and never completed. The regular season ECA @ Calhan doubleheader originally scheduled for 4/24 was moved to 5/3. Calhan won the first game 11-0 and ECA won the second game 9-4. The 5/4 game between ECA & TCA was converted to a JV game. ECA did beat Kiowa 17-0 at 12:30 and Calhan 7-3 at 3:00 on 5/8. However, the only other 2A District 3 playoff game that day was Calhan over Cripple Creek-Victor 10-0 at 10:00. There was no ECA vs. Calhan game prior to 3:00 on 5/8.

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2010/05/oh-god-you-want-to-structure-what-the-challenges-of-prep-sports-systems/feed/ 1 Question: Newspapers and the monopoly mentality http://joethink.com/blog/2009/11/question-newspapers-and-the-monopoly-mentality/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/11/question-newspapers-and-the-monopoly-mentality/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:11:47 +0000 Joe http://joethink.com/blog/?p=440 Update: Sorry about the spam posted with this entry on the RSS feed.

Someone wrote this on an article about Sam Zell and newspapers: “The biggest single thing holding [newspapers] back right now is the monopoly mentality that pervades sales, marketing and editorial at most big papers.”

Do you agree?

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2009/11/question-newspapers-and-the-monopoly-mentality/feed/ 0 [screenshot] KING5, bringing you the news http://joethink.com/blog/2009/08/screenshot-king5-bringing-you-the-news/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/08/screenshot-king5-bringing-you-the-news/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:55:07 +0000 Joe http://www.joethink.com/blog/?p=417 Here’s a screenshot of a breaking news alert from KING5:
KING5 BREAKING NEWS ALERT

(thanks, @conarroe)

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2009/08/screenshot-king5-bringing-you-the-news/feed/ 1 About the two types of knowledge (and a proposition for the third, and fourth) http://joethink.com/blog/2009/06/about-the-two-types-of-knowledge-and-a-proposition-for-the-third-and-fourth/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/06/about-the-two-types-of-knowledge-and-a-proposition-for-the-third-and-fourth/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:30:25 +0000 Joe http://www.joethink.com/blog/?p=407 I was reading Ryan Sholin’s piece Why we link: A brief rundown of the reasons your news organization needs to tie the Web together and the part where he wrote “Because we absolutely do not know everything, but we know where to find out most of what we don’t know” reminded me of the saying etched in a wall that I read in the Multnomah County Library of Portland Oregon back when I was in high school and thought that run-on sentences were bad.

That saying was about the two types of knowledge:

There is knowledge that you know, and there is knowledge that you know where to look to find.

Thinking about that now I can imagine a third:

What you think you know, but don’t.

And a fourth:

What you think you know where to find on the web, but which has since disappeared from that location and is no longer in google’s cache.

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2009/06/about-the-two-types-of-knowledge-and-a-proposition-for-the-third-and-fourth/feed/ 1 Quote: Grading a corporate network http://joethink.com/blog/2009/05/quote-grading-a-corporate-network/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/05/quote-grading-a-corporate-network/#comments Sun, 31 May 2009 20:34:32 +0000 Joe http://www.joethink.com/blog/?p=387 HP Networking had evaluated some company’s network, and this is what they said about it (at least, this is what the people in the meeting I was at said that they said): “We would have given [your network] an F, but we only give F’s to networks that aren’t working. Yours is working, but we don’t know why, which is why we’re giving it a D-.”

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2009/05/quote-grading-a-corporate-network/feed/ 0 My favorite Steve Outing quote about online news http://joethink.com/blog/2009/05/my-favorite-steve-outing-quote-about-online-news/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/05/my-favorite-steve-outing-quote-about-online-news/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 15:00:06 +0000 Joe http://www.joethink.com/blog/?p=382 ‘Rather than have a coder/programmer on staff who can create, fix or modify things quickly, they’d prefer a “hands-off” system where to do much innovation they have to wait for the vendor to get to it, which could be months. Hell, using Drupal, say, a small newspaper could probably get by with one programmer and contract out new feature requests to local Drupal shops/consultancies — or some inexpensive shop in India. And they’d save loads of money over the proprietary solutions.

Have newspaper execs who make those decisions learned anything in the last decade? Geez, they’ve hired expert tradesmen to run the printing presses for years. Along comes the Internet and they won’t hire enough tech experts to maintain and innovate as a Gutenberg moment in history slams into them and which requires major adaptation.’

–Steve Outing, posted on the Online News listserv

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2009/05/my-favorite-steve-outing-quote-about-online-news/feed/ 1 Question of the every-so-often: Got any “charging-for-content” angles you think might work? http://joethink.com/blog/2009/04/question-of-the-every-so-often-got-any-charging-for-content-angles-you-think-might-work/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/04/question-of-the-every-so-often-got-any-charging-for-content-angles-you-think-might-work/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:16:45 +0000 Joe http://www.joethink.com/blog/?p=348 As in, got any “charging-for-content” angles you think might work? Extra points if it has worked before. Extra extra points for market research.

I’ve got one angle, it’s not very good but it’s what I had in my head tonight: Find out who’s downloading and saving the articles you publish on your site. Groups and organizations do this — often they’re government orgs, putting together information for their employees. Your news org doesn’t get anything when they’re saving your stuff to their servers, but, if your news org provided a service that put this news together for them on your site, and charged for that service, those organizations wouldn’t have to spend the time looking for that data, and your news org wouldn’t lose the page views to the people pulling your content for their own uses.

Here’s a better riff on the “news concierge” angle (because, honestly, who knows the information you publish better than you do?): Law firms often have to look up specific information. Many times they call newsrooms looking for that information online. What are newsrooms doing answering those phone calls for free? No, what we need is an information retainer fee. No questions asked or answered until the law firm (or, heck, pr firm) pays up. This is a service a newsroom library could provide.

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2009/04/question-of-the-every-so-often-got-any-charging-for-content-angles-you-think-might-work/feed/ 1 Charging for content penalizes the “here let me recommend this” nature of the internet http://joethink.com/blog/2009/03/charging-for-content-penalizes-the-here-let-me-recommend-this-nature-of-the-internet/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/03/charging-for-content-penalizes-the-here-let-me-recommend-this-nature-of-the-internet/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:15:25 +0000 Joe http://www.joethink.com/blog/?p=340 People like recommending things. Linking — whether it’s done on a web site, via email, or word-of-mouth — is a fundamental activity. It’s an activity that gets rewarded. The Drudge Report does nothing but recommend news with their links.

When you hide your information behind a pay-wall or registration-wall, you’re penalizing people’s money or time for access to your stuff.

Charging for your content penalizes all involved in the linking / recommending of that content.

]]> http://joethink.com/blog/2009/03/charging-for-content-penalizes-the-here-let-me-recommend-this-nature-of-the-internet/feed/ 1 The best from the “good reads” on my online news reading list http://joethink.com/blog/2009/03/the-best-from-the-good-reads-on-my-online-news-reading-list/ http://joethink.com/blog/2009/03/the-best-from-the-good-reads-on-my-online-news-reading-list/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:28:37 +0000 Joe http://www.joethink.com/blog/?p=351 Last week I put together a highlight package of links and blogs for the new boss of the Post’s online department, Kevin Dale. It’s worth sharing, and so I give it to you.

Hey Kevin,

Here are two articles most worth reading:

And here are links to the blogs in my “must-read” category on my feed reader:

Clay Shirky’s links on del.icio.us are sometimes interesting too

And if you’re interested in the online news-types I follow on twitter, this is my online news-oriented / professional-joe twitter account

I’ve kept a library of online news-related links for four years — this is the category of links I call “Good Reads” for online journalism there.

I know there are 151 links in there, so here are the highlights (in cases where the title of the post wasn’t obvious in the URL, I pasted it after):

  1. www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000501.php ( “How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control” )
  2. www.mattmcalister.com/blog/2006/05/26/59/media-needs-to-reflect-attention-not-collect-attention/
  3. publishing2.com/2008/08/07/how-newsrooms-throw-away-value-by-not-linking-to-sources-on-the-web/
  4. bokardo.com/archives/activity-centered-design/
  5. www.howardowens.com/2008/not-all-information-needs-to-be-crafted-into-a-story/
  6. www.useit.com/alertbox/bounce-rates.html
  7. www.slate.com/id/2193552/ ( “How we read” )
  8. www.doshdosh.com/how-to-build-a-better-content-model-for-your-site/
  9. www.wmhartnett.com/2008/05/19/lets-not-forget-what-was-killing-us-before-the-internet/
  10. www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-03-31-tv-advertising.htm ( “Finding is the new advertising: Traditional advertising is broken because it charges us time, when time is becoming our most valuable resource. ” )
  11. newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/03/think-big-act-small.html
  12. The big lie about free
  13. www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/02/databases-as-entry-points-to-investigative-stories005.html
  14. Why Building The Geographic Web Is Hard, and Why It’s Worth Doing
  15. When local newspapers aren’t local
  16. www.howardowens.com/2008/looking-ahead-local-will-be-the-big-media-winner/
  17. www.thepomoblog.com/archive/the-incomparable-umair-haque/
  18. ryansholin.com/2007/04/24/a-few-long-tail-basics-for-newspapers/
  19. The programmer as journalist: a Q&A with Adrian Holovaty
  20. www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_overview.php
  21. www.howardowens.com/2006/great-essay-about-online-communities/
  22. www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-08-15-simplicity.htm ( “Simplicity is hard work” )
  23. sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/11/understanding_l.html ( “Understanding Local Max” )

I just remembered one more — this guy is the smartest read I’ve seen when it comes to the online economy and publishing: Umair Haque.  Umair mostly publishes on his Harvard blog here, but he used to write on BubbleGeneration, here.

You can have these links (well, links in the same vein) delivered: Get these links delivered via twitter here, or subscribe to this online journalism link feed (low-frequency, 3-5 posts a week) via rss / web feeds here.

Also, if you have an article or two you’d like on the list, post it in the comments below.

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