Interesting reading for our students

Any of our writing profs might want to check out this story.  ”Gone in 60 Seconds: How my blog started the avalanche that buried presidential aide Tim Goeglein.”It’s about how journalist/blogger Nancy Nall Derringer accidentally uncovered a White House official’s eight year pattern of  plagiarism by simply Google fact checking an op-ed piece he had written for a small market newspaper. After posting the discovery to her own blog, other bloggers dug deeper into the story, found more, and within 12 hours the offending official had to resign.

Here’s the link:

http://www.slate.com/id/2185657/nav/tap3/

Possible ways the story might be useful to our students:

* How a little bit of journalistic curiosity can generate huge results
* The danger of cutting and pasting from other people’s work 
* How the 21st Century news cycle has gone from days to minutes
* How citizen journalists take stories and run with them

Nathan

E-paper

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring ways the Sheridan Sun could leverage electronic paper.
I think it could be a way for the newspapers of the future to retain the user friendly layout of conventional paper-based content, something that the Web arguably still hasn’t matched, while freeing publications (like ours) of the constraints of space, ad to ed. ratios, etc. Plus the environmental advantages of e-paper could make the technology something the industry will have no choice but to embrace.

The blog link below is from an opponent of using e-paper as a vehicle for traditional newspapers. the writer argues that it’s foolish to constrain e-paper with conventaionl print content. Others defend the idea.

If you are interested… the link is here:

http://reportr.net/2008/02/22/a-misguided-approach-to-electronic-paper/

Paper vs. Web — Which is worse for the environment?

Hello all:

Here’s an interesting item from Slate.com about how newspapers may actually be more environmentally sound than Web publishing.

Here’s a pullquote:
“The environmental difference between dead-tree newspapers and their online editions is a lot smaller than you might imagine. In fact, there are learned experts who contend that traditional newsprint ultimately comes out ahead, at least in terms of net carbon-dioxide emissions.”

Here’s the full story:

http://www.slate.com/id/2185143/nav/tap3/

Sun Online story gets mention on MacLean’s Blog

Chris Souva’s “Jail and Bail” story was mentioned in a blog by MacLean’s reporter Joey Coleman on Feb 20. Take a look:

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2008/02/20/and-this-little-tory-took-the-payoff/

Nathan

Getting started

As I mentioned in the recent staff meeting, the faculty can use this to post thoughts, ideas, links, etc. for each other and the students (both past and present).

If you want to put something up here, see me (Nathan) in the newsroom and I’ll give you the password.