Clickity Clickity
Okay, I’ve decided to make a new regular feature on my blog… a list of links to random and helpful stuff that I’ve been browsing for the past week.
Enjoy!
1. The trailer for Where the Wild Things Are. It looks fantastic, and makes me want to sew up my own Max-pajamas. I’d love a tail.
2. Dollywood. Dolly Parton’s Great Smoky Mountain Family Amusement Park. How long has this existed? I had no idea until Kelly told me about it this week. We all want to go. But $53.50 for a ticket? Jeez Dolly.
3. The Do’s and Don’ts of D-I-Y Design. Or, why your Uncle Rick shouldn’t be allowed to design your new logo using Microsoft PowerPoint.
4. Multimedia Training and Resources. Compiled by 10000words.net. A fantastic list, and I love the J-Learning love!
5. 1998 Pirate Ship Limo. In the words of Nick Schwellenbach, “Could this save journalism?” I’m not sure, but I’d like to think so. We need it.
6. Scanwiches. Images of scanned sandwiches. Ridiculous? Yes. But fun.
7. Stretch those Photoshop legs. Tutorials on creating authentic photo effects.
8. Looking for business cards? Design inspiration.
9. Super Chameleon:
It Should be Said…
That last week’s issue of the Observer was one of the best so far. All of the articles were interesting, the podcast went off without a hitch, and we even had time to do a “behind the scenes” video. I’m very impressed.
Of course, I should also mention that I committed an amateur’s mistake when putting together my breakfast taco video. I needed music for the background, so I went and found a song by Los Lobos and put it in there. I credited the artist, but when I went back and read the terms of use, it explicitly said DO NOT USE THIS MUSIC EVERRRRR THAT WOULD BE STEALING!!
Which, honestly, was kind of annoying, because if you find an mp3 easily available for download, and you credit the artist and don’t try to pass it off as your own work, shouldn’t that be okay? I’m obviously a big fan of creative commons licensing, and for a simple reason: It makes sense. I have yet to go back and plug in new music, but I obviously had to take down the video until I get a chance to do that.
Copyright law is, as we know, super complicated, and it is the only reason I would want to go to law school: To study and eventually fight for or against it. But that’s a subject for another day.
I’d be interested to hear what my fellow Observers think about Creative Commons, though.
Food for thought, watch Larry Lessig’s talk from TED.
Cross-posted to AmericanObserved and Blog10.
Welcome Back
So, hello again, dear readers. I was away on Spring Break all last week, hence the pause in posting. I went to my hometown, Austin, but it wasn’t the most enjoyable trip in the world.
First, it was cold and rainy, which is not the good Texas weather I was expecting. I pulled my swimsuit out from the bottom of my suitcase last night and nearly wept. Not really, but… you know.
Second, I got sick off some Chinese food the second day there… which meant I was kneeling before the porcelain god way too many times. Awful.
Third, because of the sickness, I couldn’t drop by SXSWi or see my media friends, which was disappointing.
And lastly, due to the weather, no one was lined up around the block for breakfast tacos, which I was hoping for. I am doing a video on these legendary tortilla-wrapped lovelies, and it’s going to be crap. Ugh.
So here’s this, to cheer us all up. Day 15, check out that wicked cool kitty tshirt.
So I’m back. Expect regular posts from now on, including more pointless videos and needless whining.
You know you missed me.
On Contributions
This week the American Observer tackled the weighty issue of lobbying in D.C… or rather, lobbying in general, including the new laws and a history of modern advocacy.
Unfortunately, as Russ mentioned earlier this week, several of us were tied up in editing and choosing decent advocate profiles from a giant pile sent to us by Jane Hall’s Advanced Reporting class. Out of the 15 or so that were submitted, we chose to publish four. Kind of sad, huh? Well… I think we could have curbed our problems with the articles if we had laid out the following guidelines:
- Contributions have to be well-sourced. All of these profiles had a single source, which, had we published them without editing, would have sounded as if the American Observer was advocating them, too. We can’t have that.
- We need to know EXACTLY what the stories are before we agree to receive contributions. Apparently Professor Hall told her students it was okay to only speak to one person as the source for the piece… had we known that, we would have said no from the beginning and saved everyone a lot of time and work.
- Art is required. Since the beginning of the semester, we decided to make the Observer more magazine-y and multimedia heavy. That means art. Give us a photo, a graphic, whatever… just give us SOMETHING.
So that’s what I think. As managing editor for the past week, I was very involved in the entire process, so consider it a word from the experienced, and now the wiser.
Cross-posted to American Observer and American Observed.
Adios
We’ve probably all heard about the Rocky Mountain News closing the doors last Friday, but I wanted to make sure you take a look at the video created about the final month, created by Matthew Roberts:
A sad day, for sure. Yet as bad as I feel for those people, I still can’t help but wonder if they should have seen it coming. Or even if they could have. Or maybe Scripps pulled the plug too soon? We won’t ever know for sure.
A word to baby journalists: Master the 2.0 skills and be ready for the 3.0 ones.
