Who's counting? Everybody, it seems, at this time of year. Everywhere you look, there's a top 10 list for the year's best and worst, so why should journalism be different? And why reinvent the wheel? Instead of creating our own 2011 rundown, we've put together …
What do you get when you put two terrific storytellers in charge of a PR shoot? A great story, that's what, and some useful lessons on how to capture stunning video with compact, light-weight equipment. "The Sewing Machine" is a video produced by former NBC reporter John …
It's the latest "must have" gadget for TV news, or so it appears from all the references I've heard lately to the GoPro camera. Small, rugged and light-weight, it shoots in HD and sports a wide-angle lens so it goes where other cameras can't. It's often used …
"Everyone should have a smartphone in the future; it's baseline gear," says Damon Kiesow, senior product manager at Boston.com. Speaking at the Excellence in Journalism convention in New Orleans, Kiesow said newsrooms have to get more "intentional and strategic" when it comes to mobile. "It doesn't work to …
Let's say you've been a journalist for a while but you feel a bit out of the loop when it comes to using social media and multimedia. OK, not just out of the loop--totally overwhelmed. And you're worried some kid just out of college is …
Anyone with a smart phone knows that it's difficult to read a standard website on the screen. Sure, you can zoom in, but then you have to scroll around to see the rest of the page. I've known for some time that we should offer …
When NPR's David Folkenflik called me for an interview last week, I wasn't sure I could oblige. The usual routine involves my going to their DC studios for taping and my schedule that day just wouldn't allow it. Turns out I didn't need to, as …
Information travels so fast these days that it's hard to keep track of where it came from. Technology makes plagiarism and deception a snap. Online text can be copied and pasted in seconds, photos can be manipulated and no one may be the wiser. But …
Taking notes used to be a simple matter. You pulled out a pen and a pad of paper and you wrote things down. Over time, if you developed your own shorthand, you could take notes faster and more accurately. If you could read your own …
Many journalists already use their smartphones as news gathering and publishing tools, but Mark Briggs of KING5.com in Seattle and the blog Journalism 2.0 says mobile devices can do so much more. "Few reporters use smartphones as a research device," Briggs says--a missed opportunity, in his …
Every time a new gadget comes on the market, someone tries to figure out if it's as good as or better than what came before. There have been plenty of reviews of Apple's latest tablet, comparing it to the previous iteration and to similar devices. …
More and more news organizations are creating interactive graphics that help users explore and understand their worlds. Some are pretty basic, others are more visually appealing, but all serve the same function of bringing data to life. On the hunt for some new examples, I searched …
