New Media Workshop

Whatever the technical problem was in class yesterday morning, the JMSCHKU del.icio.us tag is now filling up with the things that you guys are tagging.

As demonstrated in class, you can now use your Google readers to subscribe to the feed of the whole JMSCHKU tag, or to specific tags like (for example) pollution, or to combinations of tags like hongkong+pollution.

We focused on the del.icio.us tagging system in class and use del.icio.us in your assignments so that you can see how people are using tags all over the world, and also so that you can participate in sharing tags with people around the world who share common informational interests.

However I also want to make sure you are aware of a tagging system that has been set up by another HKU colleague Prof. Daniel Churchill. It’s called HKU Scuttle. It works just like del.icio.us but is set up specifically for people in the HKU community to share information and ideas. I encourage you to join that one too. It might also be useful and fun for you to use – and you can subscribe to feeds the same way as with del.icio.us.

As always your assignments for the week are posted on the Course Schedule page. As usual I am repeating them here:

READING:

David Weinberger, Tagging and Why it Matters” (PDF)

Pew Internet Report on Tagging(click on the link that says “view PDF of report”)

Foust, Chapter 4 pp.61-69 (you can skip or skim pp.70-82 as we will go back to those later); AND ALL OF Chapter 5

ASSIGNMENT 1: (BJ DUE FRIDAY NOON)Create your own del.icio.us account and link to your del.icio.us page on your blog. Also put the link for your del.icio.us feed next to your name on the HKstories wiki. Look at the feeds and websites you subscribed to for your project in the Week 2 assignment. Pick out at least three articles or blog posts from those feeds that you think will be useful to your work and “tag” them in your Del.icio.us account. Subscribe to the feeds of three del.icio.us tags related to your topic. Then, conduct a search of blog posts related to your topic on Technorati. Do the same search on Google using the same word or words and compare the result. The Foust text discusses a range of Internet sources for journalistic research. What do you think that tools like del.icio.us and Technorati add to your research experience beyond what those tools provide, and what are their drawbacks?

ASSIGNMENT 2: (DUE BEFORE THE START OF WEEK 5 CLASS) Look at the HKstories wiki to see which classmates are working on topics similar to yours. Subscribe to those classmates’ del.icio.us feeds. Also subscribe to the Technorati and Flickr feeds that are relevant to your topic. Pick out 3 or 4 story “leads” or ideas that you got from looking at those feeds and the material from Assignment 1. Criteria for choosing those “leads” must be: They contain information that you think is interesting enough to follow up through traditional reporting methods like phone or face-to-face interviews, or more investigative offline research to check the facts about what’s really happening, or a series of photos documenting what’s going on, or some combination thereof. Explain why you chose them and how you plan to follow up.

Over the weekend the South China Morning Post had a story on the front page about a Wikipedia-related lawsuit in the U.S. I posted this entry on my blog about it:

The South China Morning Post has a front page article today – which I can’t link to because it’s only available to paying subscribers – headlined "Golfer sues over Wikipedia entry."  It is a compilation from several sources including the Associated Press. One version of the AP story is on PGA.com, titled Zoeller sues to identify the author of a disputed entry on Wikipedia.

The basic story: Apparently in December somebody posted untrue information on golfer Fuzzy Zoeller’s Wikipedia entry, alleging drug use.  Zoeller is now suing a law firm whose computer appears to have been used by somebody to post that information. Good luck tracking down the physical person who posted the offending information via an IP address belonging to a computer belonging to that firm…. 

None of the reports about this story answer a few questions I have:

1. How long was the libelous information on the front of the Zoeller wikipedia page before it was taken off?

2. When Zoeller or one of his minions discovered what had happened, did they try to correct his page? (After all anybody can edit wikipedia without even creating a username.)

3. Apparently this information was picked up by some other websites but nobody specifies what they were. What kinds of sites were they? Sites belonging to news organizations? Chatrooms? Blogs?

Does anybody out there know the answers? If so please post them in my comments section.

One other interesting thing: the news stories all mention that the offending information was removed from Zoeller’s Wikipedia page.  Here some stuff they didn’t mention: Normally when something gets removed from Wikipedia it can still be found in the page’s history section which documents all changes ever made to it. However according to the discussion page for the Zoeller entry, the offending material has been removed by administrators even from the history page. If you scroll down that discussion page you’ll see that one wikipedian has responded to somebody’s question about whether it was correct to do so: "It makes no sense to make these revision available. Maintaining them would be asking for Wikipedia to be sued. The libel text can be viewed in the lawsuit."

From that discussion page you can see that Wikipedians continue to watch the page closely. My favorite remark: "Heh someone beat me to removing the pe–s joke in the version you reverted to :-)" [p-word was changed by me so as not to trigger filters on people's work computers and such]

Cass Sunstein, author of the excellent book Infotopia, has an essay titled A Brave New Wikiworld in today’s Washington Post. He describes Wikipedia as the small beginning of a new technology-driven reality in which the dispersed masses aggregate and shape human knowledge – not just elite editors and journalists. He argues that this is similar to how markets, comprised of small choices made by many millions of people, dictate prices:

Wikipedia’s entries are not exactly prices, but they do aggregate the widely dispersed information of countless volunteer writers and editors. In this respect, Wikipedia is merely one of many experiments in aggregating knowledge and creativity, that have been made possible by new technologies.

The good and bad of Wikipedia is not dissimilar to the good and bad of stock prices: "No less than stock prices, prediction markets may be subject to manipulation." He also believes "we’re seeing the tip of a very large iceberg."  Might it be instructive to look at how markets evolved from the early days of capitalism to get a sense of how to prevent abuses in the new and emerging "market of information" that Wikipedia represents? 

As it so happens, my class has just been learning about wikis and Wikipedia. (In addition to the obligatory assignment to edit a Wikipedia entry themselves, and observe the relevant "history" and "talk" pages, readings include the recent New Yorker piece on Wikipedia, a NYT story about how courts use Wikipedia, and Andy Carvin’s recent post about Middlebury College’s ban on the use of Wikipedia as a source in papers. I also showed them Steve Colbert’s recent hilarious comedy routine on "Wikilobbying." ) This ongoing case will be great fodder for student blogs and student-led discussions about their assignment and the readings this coming week.

(Disclosure: I am on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation.)

I received several comments but nobody answered the question of whether Zoeller and his people tried to change the Wikipedia article themselves.

Another interesting thing, as I was reading through the BJ assignments for Week 3 and looking at the history of the Wikipedia articles you worked on, I kept running across this guy who seems to be heavily involved with the Hong Kong Wikipedia community, HongQiGong. I ended up dropping a note in his user discussion page to say “hi.” You can read our exchange here.

UPDATE: Below are a few interesting discoveries from this week’s MJ Wikipedia experiences.

Wilson pointed to a very interesting article in this week’s TIME magazine about how communities like Wikipedia as part of a new “sharing economy.” Kumar unearthed a wealth of extra links about Wikipedia, which you can check out via his blog post.

I had extended the first assignment deadline and cut out this week’s second assignment due to Chinese New Year travel for many students. However some of your classmates who must prepare presentations this week have protested, pointing out that the later deadline doesn’t give them enough time to read what you have written in and incorporate your writings into their presentations. Thus I am moving the deadlines back to their original slots, although the BJ’s have till the very end of Friday. If anybody is unable to make these revised deadlines (which will not change again) due to legitimate travel reasons, please let me know. However please be considerate to your fellow classmates and post your blog posts by the new deadline if at all possible.

The readings, etc. are on the class schedule as usual. Click here to remind yourself of what they are and make sure you read them so that you can discuss them in your blog post. Meanwhile I will repeat the assignment description here. Note that while there is no 2nd blogging assignment, I need you to sort out your Wikispaces account and get your name (blog name is ok if you don’t want real name) on the HKStories page. More instructions below:

NOTE THE DEADLINE HAS CHANGED A 2ND TIME, DUE TO POPULAR STUDENT DEMAND! APOLOGIES FOR CNY-INDUCED CONFUSION.
Blog & Wiki assignment (BJ due Friday 23rd by MIDNIGHT. MJ due Tuesday Feb 27 by NOON.) Find a wikipedia page that relates to the subject that you are considering for your final project. Contribute to that page in a substantive way by adding or correcting information. Write a blog post describing what you did and linking to the specific edits you made. Or if there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject you are most interested in, try creating one and see what happens. Then describe what happened on your blog and link to the history pages that show the process. Answer the question: in what way was this journalism? Or was it something else and if so what? Reflect on what you learned from the readings in light of your own experience in editing and using Wikipedia.

NOTE THAT DUE TO CNY THERE IS ONLY ONE BLOGGING ASSIGNMENT THIS WEEK. HOWEVER YOU MUST ALSO DO THE FOLLOWING BEFORE THE START OF OUR WEEK 4 CLASS:
- If you have not already created an account on Wikispaces, please go to wikispaces.com and set up a free account for yourself (it takes about 30 seconds).
- Then go to rmack.wikispaces.com, and click on the link that says “Join this Space” at the upper right-hand corner.
- Go to the HKStories page (linked on the far right-hand side). Look at the list of topics. If none of the listed topics describe the focus of your possible final project, please add a heading describing your final topic to the page, then put your name under it. If your final project topic is already listed, please add your name under that topic.

I will also repeat here the section in my last blog post about grading, deadlines, and the topic of your final project, with a slight addition at the end:

NOTE ON ASSIGNMENTS AND GETTING CREDIT FOR THEM: If you miss a class, you will not get credit for the in-class work for that class unless you have a serious family emergency or serious illness/injury, in which case make-ups are possible. However if you post your assignment or assignments for that week on time (as stipulated on the class schedule), you can still get full credit for that assignment even if you were not present in class. Please note that if you were absent for non-emergency reasons, if the skills required to complete the assignment were taught in class, and if you are unable to figure out how to do them on your own, you must find a classmate to help you. If you have questions about any of this please ask me.

ABOUT YOUR CLASS PROJECTS: If you are working on your MJ final project this semester, it is ok if the focus of your class project overlaps with your MJ final project.

However for this class you must focus on an angle that can be told as a multimedia story, including photos and sound.
That goes for everybody’s project.

This is an important announcement for all students. As large numbers of MJ’s are absent from class this week, the second assignment for Week 3 has been removed. Your assignment, due at noon the day before your Week 4 class is outlined on the revised class schedule. Click on that link for the readings, which have not changed. The assignment and deadlines HAVE CHANGED. I repeat it here to make sure everybody is perfectly clear:

Blog & Wiki assignment (BJ due Monday Feb.26th at noon. MJ due Thursday March 1st at noon.) Find a wikipedia page that relates to the subject that you are considering for your final project. Contribute to that page in a substantive way by adding or correcting information. Write a blog post describing what you did and linking to the specific edits you made. Or if there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject you are most interested in, try creating one and see what happens. Then describe what happened on your blog and link to the history pages that show the process. Answer the question: in what way was this journalism? Or was it something else and if so what? Reflect on what you learned from this week’s assigned readings in light of your own experience in editing and using Wikipedia.

The original second assignment will be done as in-class work during Week 4.

NOTE ON ASSIGNMENTS AND GETTING CREDIT FOR THEM: If you miss a class, you will not get credit for the in-class work for that class unless you have a serious family emergency or serious illness/injury, in which case make-ups are possible. However if you post your assignment or assignments for that week on time (as stipulated on the class schedule), you can still get full credit for that assignment even if you were not present in class. Please note that if you were absent for non-emergency reasons, if the skills required to complete the assignment were taught in class, and if you are unable to figure out how to do them on your own, you must find a classmate to help you. If you have questions about any of this please ask me.

ABOUT YOUR CLASS PROJECTS: If you are working on your MJ final project this semester, it is ok if the focus of your class project overlaps with your MJ final project. However for this class you must focus on an angle that can be told as a multimedia story, including photos and sound.

Have a great Chinese New Year!

Peter is now tied with Fi-on for journalistic initiative in the face of my challenge dirty trick, offering $100 to whoever finds the SCMP’s (nonexistent) newsfeeds. While Fi-on e-mailed the SCMP and received a response informing her that a revamp of the website is coming soon, Peter picked up the phone. He writes:

I called the customer service desk and spoke to two people working on the desk. The first person I spoke to did not know what RSS was and seemed skeptical about my admittedly lay person’s explanation. The fact that even someone who works in customer service for a big media organisation has no knowledge of RSS/Newsfeeds is perhaps symptomatic of the general population’s ignorance on this issue. The second person I spoke to was fully informed and told me that a full RSS service would be launched in March. I think I deserve the HK$100 prize for initiative.

The SCMP’s revamp is coming none too soon given the trashing their web presence has been getting from many bloggers lately. For those of you who are interested, I’ve been involved in an exchange with some local bloggers about the relative roles of the SCMP and bloggers in reporting one particular story. One example of why the SCMP’s web strategy is not working was played out when blogger Roland Soong got most the web traffic and much of the credit (which he didn’t ask for, to be clear) for a particular story which the SCMP actually reported first – but which nobody could link to because it was password-protected for paying subscribers. My two cents at the end of a long post:

I hope the SCMP’s revamp includes opening up their site so that their hard-working journalists will be able to gain the same global relevance and impact that some Hong Kong bloggers have achieved singlehandedly with no marketing departments.

Joining the worldwide online conversation – from which they have so far excluded themselves – is good for the SCMP’s business and brand in the long run, I believe. Especially since, as I understand, their online paid subscriptions have hit a plateau and are not expected to grow substantially.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Let us all know in class or in the comments section of this post.

A further note: I am spending so much time discussing the SCMP not because I dislike them. I don’t “have it out” for them by any means. I know and like their editor and have known a lot of their reporters over the years. I am spending so much time discussing them because they are one of the two English language newspapers here in our local market and the contrast between them and what other newspapers around the world are doing is rather relevant to a web journalism class.

I couldn’t live in Hong Kong and live without the SCMP. I just wish the world wide web could benefit from their journalism a bit more than it currently does. For this reason, I think it would be really fabulous if they would allow our class to “beta test” their redesigned site and give them feedback before it goes live.

For your assignment this week please be sure to watch the Comedy Central video on Wikilobbying in addition to reading the two articles about Wikipedia linked on the Class Schedule.

This week’s assignments:

Blog & Wiki assignment 1: (NOTE: BECAUSE OF CHINESE NEW YEAR BJ STUDENTS HAVE UNTIL FRIDAY THE 23RD TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT. HOWEVER PLEASE NOTE WIKIPEDIA MAY BE DIFFICULT TO ACCESS FROM CHINA SO I RECOMMEND DOING THIS ASSIGNMENT BEFORE DEPARTING FOR THE MAINLAND IF YOU ARE GOING HOME.) Find a wikipedia page that relates to the subject that you are considering for your final project. Contribute to that page by adding or correcting information. Write a blog post describing what you did and linking to the specific edits you made. Or if there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject you are most interested in, try creating one and see what happens. Then describe what happened on your blog and link to the history pages that show the process. Answer the question: in what way was this journalism? Or was it something else and if so what?

Blog assignment 2: (DUE BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF THE WEEK 4 CLASS.) These instructions are long but the assignment should not take long.) In class you started to use the “Hong Kong Stories” page on the class wiki to organize a list of your project topics, grouping yourselves together on similar topics. Go back to the wiki where you listed your name under a topic and link your name to your blog’s appropriate category page. If you are the only person working on a topic, create a Wiki page for that topic with any resources you would like to list on the subject. If you share a topic with several people, one of you can create a wiki page for the topic and and the others should add a sentence or two to the page with offering suggestions about how you might divide up and focus on different angles of that topic, or any other ideas about how you might work as a team. Write a brief blog post reporting that you have done these things, linking to the “Hong Kong Stories” page as well as the new topic-specific wiki page that you or your teammates have created. MJ and BJ students will be working together on the same wiki and will be sharing teams where appropriate.

In class you will click on this badge above and learn how to contribute to a wiki. Anybody else out there in cyberspace is welcome to drop by and say hello too. But please be nice, no vandalism or spam, PLEASE! :)

We will also learn how Wikipedia works and how to contribute to it. That should fill up three hours easily.

People use wikis for many things. People often use them for group collaboration. One example is the Chinese translation project for Global Voices Online. The team members use a wiki to organize their work.

Some communities have created their own wiki projects modeled after Wikipedia. SikhiWiki is one example.

Your assignments for the week, as usual, are all laid out here on the class schedule.

Also note that there will be a global “Wikimania” conference in Taipei this summer. There may be volunteer opportunities for students.

Last week I offered HK$100 to whoever could find the news feed on SCMP.com. This was actually a joke – as all of you discovered there are no feeds for SCMP text content, though there is a podcast feed.

My trick was exposed in the Friday evening MJ class and I had to admit what I was up to. However, the challenge I posed did lead to some useful discoveries by enterprising BJ students.

Gie found an unofficial SCMP headline feed created by NewsLookup.com.

Joyce e-mailed me to let me know that she had found a del.icio.us page that somebody had used to bookmark a pseudo citizen journalism section of the SCMP. That in itself isn’t a feed, and it was definitely not an official SCMP feed. You can, however, subscribe to a feed of the “scmp” tag in del.icio.us. Don’t worry if you don’t know what I’m talking about here – we will cover del.icio.us and tagging soon after the Chinese New Year.

Fi-on displayed excellent journalistic instincts by contacting the SCMP directly and asking them where their feed is. She got the following reply:

Dear Fion,

We appreciate your enquiry and concerns.

At the moment we are in the midst of a site redesign which will include the integration of new functionalities and features, including enhanced content search, site personalisation and article clipping, RSS feed access, and faster page load times. Content organization and categorization will also be improved to ensure your site experience is enhanced.

Launch of the new scmp.com website is planned for later this quarter, and we expect its release and the significant investment behind it will address similar concerns expectations of our subscribers as you have voiced.

That said, we can always do better and your comments are very important to our focus on continuous improvement. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact us again.

Kind regards,
Scmp.com

I wonder if the SCMP would let us Beta-test their redesigned site before its release? That would be cool. Maybe we should ask them. What do you think? Interested?

(NOTE: When linking to student blogs from this blog or any other blog, I will identify you in the same way that you have chosen to identify yourself on your blog. If you only use a first name, a nickname, or a “pen name,” I will do the same when citing your blog. Please follow this same practice when linking to and discussing your classmates’ blogs.)

Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where I was a reasearch fellow until last December, is accepting applications for summer internships.

Their internship deadline is in a few days: February 15th. If you think you might be interested (after reading the rest of this post carefully and clicking on the links I’ve provided) please contact me ASAP. We can then discuss whether you might be a good fit and how to contact the internship coordinator.

More information about the Berkman Center’s internship program is here. They describe the internship program as follows:

INTERNSHIPS and SUMMER RESEARCH ASSOCIATES. These arrangements are quite informal. We have a number of ongoing projects and would welcome assistance for general and legal research, support for the summer ILAW program, open source programming, and webcasting, among other things. If you are interested in participating next summer, please send a resume that identifies your skills for such tasks and include two professional or academic references. The program runs for 10 weeks from June 1 to August 15. Be forewarned that stipends may not be sufficient to cover living expenses in the Boston area. No other benefits are provided, therefore associates must make their own housing, insurance and transportation arrangements.

The Berkman Center’s many projects involve Internet and media law, online media creation, Internet governance, digital identity, issues of privacy, research and advocacy on issues related to surveillance and online free speech, etc. To find out more details please click here and here. You can also poke around the whole website starting here.

They currently have a couple of different projects that relate to the Chinese Internet and they could use a person or two who can read and write Chinese well.

Also, depending on your citizenship, keep in mind that there could be some visa issues to sort out in the event that your application is accepted.

Well, it seems that the class is definitely launched. I’m trying to go at a pace that accommodates a very wide range of technical skill levels. If you ever feel like you’re being left behind, please talk to me. By now you’re probably starting to understand exactly why attending every class is so important.

I’m enjoying getting to know all of you better through your blogs. I hope you’ll enjoy getting to know each other in this way, and that you will also enjoy the collaborative process as you read, link to, and comment upon each other’s blogs. When you’re doing assignments, I encourage you to react to what your classmates are writing where relevant and appropriate. When you cite somebody, always link to them so your reader can go back and easily see exactly what you’re talking about.

1. ASSIGNMENTS: They are on the schedule as usual but I will repeat them here so there is no confusion:

Blogging assignment 1: (Due: MJ Tuesday noon) Since the 90’s, news organizations have been putting their news on the web, on web pages. Now they are starting to publish feeds. In your reading assignments I asked you to look at four different news websites, and specifically their pages listing feeds that they offer (if they offer more than one feed). Subscribe to at least one feed from each site (where possible). Describe the different ways in which each of the four news organizations linked above do or do or do not use feeds. Compare the difference between reading news in a newsreader and reading it on the news organization’s website through your browser. Based on your understanding of the readings above, how do you think feeds will change the way you get information on the web? As a journalist, how might feeds change the way that news organizations (or solo freelancers) report and present the news?

Blogging assignment 2: (Due before the next class starts) Find approximately 6 newsfeeds (from news sites, sections of news sites, and blogs) that relate in some way in the topic you’re considering for your final project. and add them to your aggregator. Write a blog post introducing those six feeds, explain why you are interested in following them, and discuss how they relate to your project idea as a source of information and research. If you can’t find any feeds that relate to your subject, subscribe to some newsfeeds or blogs that cover related issues in a more general way and explain why you chose them.

2. FINDING FEEDS: In case anybody is not clear about how to find feeds on websites, here is a bit more info. These days, most blogs or websites that offer feeds will display one of these icons:

Or there will be a link somewhere that says “Newsfeed,” “Feed,” “RSS,” “Atom,” “Subscribe to this feed,” or something similar.

Many websites and blogs now also display a one-click icon that enables you to dump their feed directly into your Google Reader. It looks like this:

3. CLASS SCHEDULE CHANGES: The lesson plan after Chinese New Year is going to change significantly as I adjust to the pacing of the course so far, availability of visiting speakers, etc. All changes will naturally be made very clear on this blog and on the class schedule page. It is your responsibility to make sure you check this blog for updates. Now you know how to do it in your news readers, so it should be impossible to miss anything.

4. MORE ADVANCED WORDPRESS FUNCTIONS: Some people asked me about how to put more links in their sidebar, how to add photos, and so on. We will have a whole class devoted to photos soon after the Chinese New Year, but I want all of you to know about three audio-visual tutorials available from the guys at Edublogs:

If you watch and listen to those, you’ll learn a lot of WordPress blogging tricks.

There is also a very comprehensive WordPress FAQ page with all kinds of tips and tricks.

I have linked all of these things in the Resources page on the left-hand column.

A concern came up this morning from a student about what is called “comment spam.” It appears that WordPress.com does a better job than Uniblogs.org at keeping “spammers” from posting spam on your blog. I’ll have to tell the Edublogs people about this in their forum. Meanwhile, if you are using Uniblogs and want to minimize the possibility of spam being posted in your comments, there are several things you can do:

1. Turn on you blog’s comment-moderation function: Go to “options,” then “discussion.” Then check the box that says “An administrator must approve the comment”. That administrator is you. After you have checked that box (and don’t forget to click “Update Options”) you will receive an e-mail asking you to approve or reject any comment that somebody tries to post on your blog – and it won’t become visible on your blog unless or until you approve it.

2. Hide your blog from search engines. Stay in the “options” section, but go to “general.” Un-check the box that says “I would like my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati, and in public listings around WordPress.com.” Then it won’t appear in search engines, which is the main way that spammers find blogs. It also means that the regular Googling public won’t find your blog either, but this may not matter to you since this is a blog where you are doing your homework assignments anyway. Of course if you want to be found by Google, that’s fine too, but with fame comes spam :)

3. Require people to log in to Edublogs or WordPress in order to comment. Check the box right underneath option #2 above. That is also a good way to keep out spammers, which are usually robots, not people.

1. The textbook has arrived at the bookstore! I’ve assigned a chapter from the textbook this week so please try to buy it. (Thanks to Jonathan for bringing us the breaking news last night.)

2. Uniblogs: Some of you have reported problems accessing your blogs at Uniblogs.org. I asked the developers about this in their online support forum. It turns out they have been upgrading their system over the past week or so, which has caused access problems for a lot of users. They promise that the problems will stop very soon when the upgrade is finished. Meanwhile, if you have trouble logging into your blog you may need to give it a rest for 20 minutes then try again. Most likely it will be fine after that. But by Monday things should be smooth and you won’t need to worry about it.

Nice job this week with our first presentations and subsequent discussion. It was great to see your river of blog posts flowing! As I mentioned in class, many of you taught me new things about some online media developments in Hong Kong and China. You also took to your newsreaders like fish in water during Tuesday’s class, and that was wonderful to see.

A few things. Read this post all the way to the end.

1. ASSIGNMENTS: They are on the schedule as usual but I will repeat them here so there is no confusion:

Blogging assignment 1: (Due: BJ Friday noon) Since the 90’s, news organizations have been putting their news on the web, on web pages. Now they are starting to publish feeds. In your reading assignments I asked you to look at four different news websites, and specifically their pages listing feeds that they offer (if they offer more than one feed). Subscribe to at least one feed from each site (where possible). Describe the different ways in which each of the four news organizations linked above do or do or do not use feeds. Compare the difference between reading news in a newsreader and reading it on the news organization’s website through your browser. Based on your understanding of the readings above, how do you think feeds will change the way you get information on the web? As a journalist, how might feeds change the way that news organizations (or solo freelancers) report and present the news?

Blogging assignment 2: (Due before the next class starts) Find at least 6 newsfeeds (from news sites, sections of news sites, and blogs) that relate in some way in the topic you’re considering for your final project. and add them to your aggregator. Write a blog post introducing those six feeds, explain why you are interested in following them, and discuss how they relate to your project idea as a source of information and research. If you can’t find any feeds that relate to your subject, subscribe to some newsfeeds or blogs that cover related issues in a more general way and explain why you chose them.

2. CLASS SCHEDULE REVISIONS COMING UP: I’m about to do a major revision of the future class schedule based on guest availability and the pacing of the course so far. You can always rest assured that the information on the schedule for the current week is up to date. But future weeks will always be revised as we go along in order to ensure that people are learning things in the order and pace that makes most sense.

Some other questions that came up after class which I will address below:

3. FINDING FEEDS: Some people asked some more questions after class about how to find feeds on websites. These days, most blogs or websites that offer feeds will display one of these icons:

Or there will be a link somewhere that says “Newsfeed,” “Feed,” “RSS,” “Atom,” “Subscribe to this feed,” or something similar.

Many websites and blogs now also display a one-click icon that enables you to dump their feed directly into your Google Reader. It looks like this:

4. MORE ADVANCED WORDPRESS FUNCTIONS: Some people asked me about how to put more links in their sidebar, how to add photos, and so on. We will have a whole class devoted to photos quite soon, but I want all of you to know about three audio-visual tutorials available from the guys at Edublogs:

If you watch and listen to those, you’ll learn a lot of WordPress blogging tricks.

There is also a very comprehensive WordPress FAQ page with all kinds of tips and tricks.

Thanks to Boris Anthony for telling me about this video by Prof. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University’s Digital Ethnography project. We will watch and discuss it in class after we finish discussing the student presentations.

This week we’re going to look more deeply at the nature of the World Wide Web, why we call it a “web,” how it continues to evolve, and what that means for journalism. In “Web 1.0″ we could link between pieces of content via hyperlinks. In “Web 2.0,” content is freed of its container thanks to innovations like “feeds.” We’ll look at how feeds change the way we follow news, blogs, and other content on the web. Then we’ll learn how to use feeds to make our own work easier, share content, and do our part in weaving a journalistic web. Freshly updated assignments and readings are here on the class schedule page.

UPDATE: For Tuesday morning’s JMSC0007 students here is the public feed for all of your blogs.

SECOND UPDATE FOR FRIDAY MJ’s: If you are a JMSC6019 student you can follow the blogs of all your classmates through this feed here.

Joi Ito the Japanese blogger and Internet businessman came and spoke to our Friday morning MJ class. A lot of media innovation on the web has been coming from people like him, and not from news companies. Why is that? Watch and listen.

A few of the sites that he showed were: his blog, his company Neoteny, and Creative Commons. He showed several specific blog posts, including this one about a nuclear power whistleblower and this one about Chinese-Japanese dialogue.

Naturally Joi has posted a camphone photo from the class to Flickr. It’s also worth noting that today Joi has a post speaking out against rampant racism in Japan.

Thanks to Du Ting for shooting the video!

It was great to meet all of you who came to class on Friday!

If you have not yet e-mailed your blog address to me. Please do so. As of Saturday mid-day I have received 28 blog addresses from students in both classes. I have aggregated all of them on a public Google Reader page here. (You will learn how to use Google Reader and other aggregators in the next class – without such tools it will be impossible for us to keep up with what everybody is putting on their blog.)

Several people have not yet sent me the link to their blogs. If you have not yet done so, you must do it ASAP in order to get credit for Friday’s in-class assignment.

Just to reconfirm about your assignments:

Got any questions, comments, or concerns? Please hit the comments section of this post and let me know.