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America is raising a generation of interns – The Week

After hearing these numbers, I began to understand why Jessica felt lucky. Maybe she is fortunate to be earning $4.35 an hour at her ivory-tower job while she works nights and weekends as a waitress. Maybe a 10-month paid internship followed by graduate school and then perhaps another internship is the new lucky, particularly at [...]

Business | Cyberculture | Social_Software | Technology

Twitter Cheat Sheet to Help Increase Engagement

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-Brands see 17 percent more engagement during the weekend, yet only 19 percent of brands’ tweets are sent out on Saturday and Sunday

-92 percent of engagement with a brand’s tweets are link clicks

-Engagement rates are highest for brands that tweet once a day

-Tweets with image links see double the engagement rate when [...]

Business | Cyberculture | Ethics | Media | Rhetoric | Technology

Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards

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The DRM proposals at the W3C exist for a simple reason: they are an attempt to appease Hollywood, which has been angry about the Internet for almost as long as the Web has existed, and has always demanded that it be given elaborate technical infrastructure to control how its audience’s computers function. The perception is [...]

Business | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Journalism | Social_Software | Writing

Washington Post seeks blogger to post ‘at least’ 12 times per day

The ideal candidate would have experience reporting, writing and producing online content as well as a proven fluency in social media. We need someone with the confidence to work independently, but also a team player who can collaborate with our critics, columnists and reporters.

This blogger should be able to identify trends, cutting through the [...]

Business | Culture | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Journalism | Media

Pew’s State of the Media: Ignore the doomsaying. American journalism has never been healthier.

American news media has never been in better shape. That’s just common sense. Almost anything you’d want to know about any subject is available at your fingertips. You don’t need to take my analysis of the Cyprus bank bailout crisis as the last word on the matter: You can quickly and easily find coverage from [...]

Business | Culture | Essays | Ethics | History | Psychology | Rhetoric | Sociology

Diamonds Are Bullsh*t

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I did propose with a diamond ring, for which I paid a substantial portion of my income, but since I was in grad school at the time, my income was very modest.

The next time you look at a diamond, consider this. Nearly every American marriage begins with a diamond because a bunch of rich [...]

Business | Culture | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Essays | Ethics | Government | Modding | Technology | Usability

Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own

As long as Congress focuses on just unlocking cellphones, they’re missing the larger point. Senators could pass a hundred unlocking bills; five years from now large companies will find some other copyright claim to limit consumer choice. To really solve the problem, Congress must enact meaningful copyright reform. The potential economic benefits are significant, as [...]

Business | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Journalism | Media | Technology

Washington Post to begin charging regular website, mobile app. users for digital subscriptions

The Washington Post says it will begin selling digital subscriptions this summer, asking frequent visitors to its website and mobile apps to pay a fee supporting the company’s journalism.

The Post announced plans Monday for a metered subscription model. It will require a paid subscription after the viewing of 20 articles or multimedia features per [...]

Business | Cyberculture | Design | Ethics | Media | Rhetoric

Fired for Making a Game: The Inside Story of I Get This Call Every Day

He knows that if he’d instead posted a song or a poem or a comedy routine on YouTube, the bosses would have watched that, and might have understood what he was trying to say to them. If he’d created something that told the same story through a more traditional form than a game, he’d probably [...]

Academia | Business | Cyberculture | Education | Rhetoric | Social_Software | Technology

Don’t hide your online self when applying for college or career

Great advice.

[I]t is common to hear students applying for college or a job say before doing so, they plan to take down their online profiles or change their name to something unidentifiable. Innovative educators know this is not the best strategy. Instead our job is to support young people in creating a responsible digital [...]