I’m generalising wildly, of course, but journalists – particularly student journalists – often try to learn programming from books. That may sound like common sense, but it’s not in an art or a science – and programming is both. Programmers – if I’m to generalise wildly again – typically combine books (which they don’t read…
Multimedia journalism is a pretty nebulous term. As a result, in my experience, when students try to adopt the role two main problems recur: 1) having a narrow assumption of what multimedia means (i.e. video) and 2) not being able to see the multimedia possibilities of your work. Multimedia journalism is a very different beast…
I confess that I have never been all that physical. I do try to take the stairs instead of the elevator at work. I let my daughter talk me into auditioning for a community theater musical (and while my dancing was definitely in the bottom third, or maybe the bottom tenth, I didn’t humiliate myself).…
The first issue of the student paper is on campus. Similar:Police Say A Lot Of ThingsIt’s not all cops who lie. Just the bad …CultureCitizen Journalist Thrown Out of City Council Receives $200,000 SettlementKnow your rights as a journalist, and yo…EthicsKorean News Station Pokes Fun at KTVU with Fake American Pilot Names After Southwest Airli…This…
The first issue of the Seton Hill student newspaper comes out tomorrow, but the articles are already online. I’m the faculty adviser, so naturally I’m proud. Way to go, new media journos! “The human brain multitasks just fine. If you’re paying attention to me at the same time you are also regulating your heart beat…
My 10yo has a complex relationship with books. She loves being read to, and she reads quite a lot, but she says she doesn’t enjoy reading. Of the various lessons she has to accomplish each day, she will often choose reading first, but only, she says, because she hates it least. Today when I finished…
The Idealist Similar:Radio News Delivery: How to Sound Like a Radio BroadcasterListen to a short news broadcast, such a…AestheticsWhat the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means As the hoaxers explained in Areo, they …AcademiaOn Office Hours and Student Contact at the Small Liberal Arts College I don’t expect students to be constantl…AcademiaFormer student: "I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of…
The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls Of mastodons, are billiard balls. The sword of Charlemagne the Just Is ferric oxide, known as rust. The grizzly bear whose potent hug Was feared by all, is now a rug. Great Caesar’s bust is on my shelf, And I don’t feel so well myself. Similar:Seton Hill graduates…
If you have written anything you think my readers will appreciate, feel free to suggest it. Dankeschön. Similar:You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.Some people out there will never like yo…CultureJournalists prefer plain language.AestheticsWhy Were Old Video Games So Pixelated?I get all my news online now, but I…
That’s one small misspeak for a man… “The `a’ was intended,” Armstrong said. “I thought I said it. I can’t hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on Earth, so I’ll be happy if you just put it in parentheses.” Although no one in the world heard the “`a,” some research backs…
Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated. And one’s heirs stand to lose huge sums of money. “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family would…
I don’t get to teach technical writing much anymore, so when I touched on it in a new media class I took the opportunity to freshen up some older web resources. A business memo, a lab report, or a professional e-mail are all variations on the basic report structure described in this document. Feel free to modify these guidelines…
Are we moving toward an era where Americans will speak discernibly red versus blue accents? It’s hard to say. Social identities are complex, and can be defined along a number of different dimensions like class, race, or ethnicity. Not everyone feels that politics are a part of their core identity. But I suspect that political…
I’ve been meaning to create a screencast like this for a long time. Teaching an online lit course is great motivation for churning out these things. 1. What is Literary Close Reading? (0:30) Why a literary close reading doesn’t mean “anything goes” (1:00) 2. Why Do We Read Closely? (1:35) 3. Let’s Read a Text…
Newspapers and their fans make a lot of noise about the professionalism of journalism, that journalism needs to be paid for, that the Internet is no substitute for the hard core objectivity and insightful commentary newspapers offer. and so on. Whether these arguments are true or not does not interest me. I have found…
As gimmicky as “steampunk Huck and Tom” sounds, the characters actually may be quite well suited for steampunk. Twain’s novel Tom Sawyer Abroad was a play on Jules Verne-style adventure stories, and featured a mad professor and his absurd, futuristic airship. And Tom Sawyer had his own mystery story with Tom Sawyer, Detective. However, Twain…
Vote for Carolyn’s Headshot — Round 2. Similar:Blender Griffin, Part 2After another couple of hours of work, I…Aesthetics@shu.pippin was great. Four more chances to see it!PersonalThe daughter (giving the piggyback ride in pic 2) doing a thing that starts tomorrow. Tribune ReviewAmusingAngry 10yo Edits the Paper Heart She Gave Her MotherAestheticsAwesome 1935 Soviet Movie Deploys…
Here’s a fantasy workspace, that I built in Blender 3D, using various Googled images of old books and this awesome steampunk keyboard. Here’s me in my real office. The books aren’t as neat and tidy. I just took some reference photos of the chair… I’ll add it to my fantasy office the next time I…
There’s often a moment in a lit class when a student says, “Since the professor says there’s no single ‘correct’ interpretation of a story, then pretty much anything goes, so I’m going to argue ‘Huck was a girl’ or ‘Hester was a witch.’ ” Of all the possible “correct” answers, the stronger ones are better…
Mars Panorama — My 10yo Pretends Her Bed Is NASAs Curiosi – YouTube. Similar:"The threat is no longer simply from government censorship."After using examples from Warsaw and Pra…CultureOn the spiral staircase that leads from the top deck down to the officers' pub and wa…AestheticsIn January 2000, I was blogging about dancing paperclips, the transience of…