New Media Unit

"Three things I read last week that show how journalism is evolving."

"Stop searching and get only what you care about. Zite delivers the best of your favorite magazines, newspapers, authors, blogs, and videos." An example of an app that personalizes the news.

"Pushing to the future of journalism - A project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard"

"Over the past decade, Facebook has evolved from a social network for college students to a source of information, connection, entertainment - and, sometimes, news - for 1.2 billion people around the world. But according to a Pew Research Center report from last year, most Americans who get news via Facebook do so as a byproduct of their other activities there - what one might call "drive-by news"."

Patrick Cooper, director of web and engagement at NPR, talks about the big trends he sees in the future of news audiences as well as what NPR is doing to invest in these audiences."

"In short: Twitter and, within the space of 17 minutes, the Internet-accessing world may have known that Philip Seymour Hoffman had been found dead in his apartment before his three young children, with whom he was scheduled to spend the day, and his longtime partner, Mimi O'Donnell."

Ezra Klein's new journalistic venture, Project X, starts with the proposition that news organizations focus too much on what's new and not enough on what's important. What will his alternative look like? A "21st Century encyclopedia" as much as a news site. "We want to think really hard about how to connect not just new information, but to bring it together with important contextual information to create a more thorough source and place to understand the world," Klein said.

This is from 2009: "Here, then, is my list of the five most indispensable multimedia journalism websites operating today."

"Lest we think that Redditors, tweeters, and bloggers have a monopoly on rushing to judgment when tragedies are unfolding, a pair of network news stations today provided a reminder that premature reports are as old as the news itself. NBC and CBS both named the same suspect in the Washington, D.C. Navy Yard shooting on Monday afternoon, then retracted their reports. NBC's Chuck Todd deleted his tweet naming the alleged shooter:"

"Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is retracing on foot the global migration of our ancestors in a 21,000-mile, seven-year odyssey that begins in Ethiopia and ends in Tierra del Fuego. This site houses our experimental journalism, cartography and educational initiatives. By the year 2020, the Out of Eden Walk will have accumulated an unprecedented chronicle of human life on Earth, 2,500 generations after our restless forebears set out on the long, slow walk into our becoming - a journey out of Eden that continues to this day. Every 100 miles (160 km) Paul is making a concise digital record of his location - a narrative Milestone. Each consists of a visual panorama, photographs of the ground and sky, ambient sound at that location, and a brief, standardized interview with the nearest person. Milestones are a slow accumulation of narrative data sets, a consistent record collected at nomad's pace on a global scale. What will they ultimately tell us about ourselves?"

A leading video news site designed for mobile use and social media.

"As we worked with our co-authors, listened to others and watched the contemporary circumstances, the first concept - seek truth and report it as fully as possible - remained primary. But the second principle - act independently - was problematic. Journalism is no longer the province of a homogenous group, once dubbed "the working press," whose financing is generated to produce journalism for its own sake. In the 21st century, journalism may come from think tanks and corporations, from advocacy groups and passionate advocates, from accidental witnesses and curious beginners, and more."

"Reasonable people can - and do - debate whether the replacement of legacy media by new forms of information gathering and distribution - including citizen journalism and smartphone photojournalism, crowdsourcing, universal access to data and, of course, a world awash in Twitter feeds - makes democracy more or less vulnerable."

"Public evaluations of news organizations' performance on key measures such as accuracy, fairness and independence remain mired near all-time lows. But there is a bright spot among these otherwise gloomy ratings: broad majorities continue to say the press acts as a watchdog by preventing political leaders from doing things that should not be done, a view that is as widely held today as at any point over the past three decades."

"In Bezos, The Post-and a handful of smaller papers owned by the company-get an owner who is considered one of the most successful business and technology entrepreneurs in the country. Bezos is considered to have a strong understanding of audience needs and the financial wherewithal to tolerate sluggish revenue numbers, at least for a while. Still, the challenges are large and not unique to The Post. Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, which has been tracking the industry for over a decade, puts the sale in context."

"Groundsource makes it easy for journalists, community organizations, researchers and others to quickly connect via mobile phone with targeted groups of people to assess their needs and gather first-hand experience. "

"A growing directory of tools for verifying, fact checking and assessing the validity of social media and user generated content. "

"That job gets more and more challenging, and even good news orgs can have lapses. I'm good with that, if they fix those lapses and hold themselves otherwise accountable, in good faith. Sure, there are legal consequences, but the bottom line is driven by trustworthy actions. The solution involves:"