Ideas

Matt Frank has been on the staff at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism as a New Media Consultant since 2009. Before moving to USC Matt worked as , photographer, editor for KPTS (the Wichita, Kansas PBS affiliate) from 2001 – 2005 primarily focused on public affairs and Kansas politics. During the same timeframe he also edited and photographed independent films in the Wichita area. In 2007, Matt crossed into academia as a Multimedia Consultant for the creation of Penn State University’s Media Commons program which then took him to USC.

Brian Steffens, Director of Communications

Monetize the user, not the content

Reinventing local with multiplatform focus

Digital news heating up in Philadelphia

Another look at pay to play

The Daily to add Android in spring

Will Sullivan, 2010-2011 Fellow

This afternoon the media embargo on Motorola Xoom tablet reviews dropped in preparation for tomorrow’s opening of sales and every tech site worth their domain name had reviews. In general, reviews have been pretty positive and it sounds like this is actually a worthy iPad competitor.

One of the most interesting reviews I read came from Robert Scoble, a self-confessed iPad lover who owns three (yes, three!) iPads:

Brian Steffens, Director of Communications

More from this week’s MultiMedia Summit for Key Executives:

Sales guru Mike Blinder: “If we don’t do it (serve small businesses-SMBs), someone else will.”

“SMBs are not tech savvy and they resent geek speak. Half of SMBs hate their website” (if they have one at all).

“The average retailer is approached 22 times a month, and talks to just two — you need to be one of those two.”

“It’s all about them (the advertisers), not you.”

Brian Steffens, Director of Communications

More from the SNPA/SNA/Inland mega-summit on MultiMedia for Key Executives:

For awhile now I’ve believed that journalism isn’t broken, at least not precipitously so. A lot of smart folks are doing wonderful things in journalism, much of it in the digital space. But good reporting and storytelling haven’t disappeared.

What digital has done is to introduce dozens of ways to approach revenue, very few of which our industry has mastered … so far.

Steve Yelvington has a distinguished background in journalism and he is currently helping revamp newspapers at Morris Communications.

During a recent trip to Columbia, Missouri Steve sat down with me to discuss the potential for future growth in mobile journalism and to share the wealth of knowledge he has about mobile devices and their growing role in newsrooms.

Brian Steffens, Director of Communications

More from the SNPA/SNA/Inland mega-summit for MultiMedia Executives:

* You can’t make (enough) money online (to justify the investment).
* The MBAs and academics have great theories but no practical experience.

Two common statements that Clark Gilbert is proving wrong.

Brian Steffens, Director of Communications

In what may foretell the future, the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association (SNPA), Suburban Newspapers of America (SNA) and Inland Press are throwing a mega-conference this week in St. Petersburg, Florida. With more than 400 senior newspaper executives and more than 30 vendors demonstrating their services, it’s a good bet we’ll see more of these industry association collaborations in the future.

“When all the equipment you need to file video is in your backpack, it frees you from the burdens of conventional journalism.” – Elise Hu.

Elise Hu is a graduate of the University of Missouri and currently works with NPR as a digital editorial coordinator working on the Impact of Government Initiative. This new project focuses on exploring the impact of government throughout the country, state by state. This $1.8 million project aims to place two journalists in each State Capitol Bureau. Hu is also working with NPR on another project called Argo, in which NPR was able to customize a WordPress account to work as a content management system for partner stations. Hu says that a single platform system cuts down on wasted time.

Jennifer Pagliaro is a Senior at Carlton University in Ottowa, Canada. This past fall she and some other seniors compiled the Website Strikesituation.com to document and report on the possibility of three different faculty strikes on campus. She and a team of four other journalists were able to report using primarily BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter and WordPress to gather and report information on the strikes.

Will Sullivan, 2010-2011 Fellow

Today was an interesting day with a lot of future think sessions. A lot of ideas made me think of sci fi movies, like Minority Report. My mind is overwhelmed. One panel about Mobile in 2020 was particularly inspiring to listen to and see a lot of examples of mobile products from leading R&D firms (and panels usually are pretty difficult to make amazing).

Will Sullivan, 2010-2011 Fellow

HTC announced today at Mobile World Congress that it is releasing two new phones with tight Facebook integration all the way down to dedicated (and somewhat awkwardly placed, imho) Facebook buttons.

Will Sullivan, 2010-2011 Fellow

I’m at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain right now and much like the Consumer Electronics Show this year, MWC is ablaze in Android tablets.

Also, much like CES, pricing and real-world availability is still TBD.

Scott Kleinberg is the resident iPhone blogger for iPhone, Therefore I Blog. He is the social media director and the web editor for Chicago Now, a RedEye blog.

Jim Seida is a senior multimedia producer for MSNBC.com.

He managed to converge mobile tools and reporting by experimenting with using an iPhone 4 to report on a story about test driving an electric car from Seattle to San Francisco in two days. Seida used nothing but his phone to report and found that some particular apps helped him get the job done.

Bill Densmore, 2008-2009 Fellow

In 2008-2009, Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Fellow Mike Fancher concluded that journalists needed to develop a “new ethic of public engagement” as an enhancement or amendment to The Journalist’s Creed. This year, Reynolds Fellow Joy Mayer has been following that thread. She’s been asking: “What do we mean by engagement?”

Brian Steffens, Director of Communications

Print has a pulse, but radio has a rebirth

AP reports cutbacks on video and layoffs of video journalists at 100 papers surveyed

USA Today to add Microsoft Tags (mobile barcodes) to its newspaper

Washington Post to launch free news aggregation website

Five ideas to improve The Daily