This is a first of a series of blog posts I’ll create about my travels throughout Costa Rica for the next four months.
Studying abroad was always something I knew I needed to do, but I never thought it would be this hard.
Take packing, by far the hardest part of predeparture shenanigans. It’s not just the logistics of fitting everything needed (and nothing more) for five months in two suitcases and a backpack.
But there’s also emotional baggage to unpack.
That’s what one passenger asked me on my most recent interstate bus trip. I don’t consider myself an IT specialist, but I’m honored by the misunderstanding.
The Knight Foundation continues to fund the latest projects in news and technology, but the format of the Knight News Challenge might be near an end.
In announcing the latest recipients of the Knight News Challenge grants, Knight Foundation CEO Alberto Ibargüen slipped in that the grants “may be finished” and “it may be that, as a device for doing something, it may be that we’ve gone as far as we can take it.”
In the meantime though, the new round of grantees are specializing in making government more open and effective.
Read the rest of the story here, with tons of interviews with the winners and all of their grant proposals in their entirety.
Titles, both lofty and lowly, on a résumé really don’t make much of a difference.
Yes, more grandiose titles are a great ego boost (the same applies to the name of the organization attached to that title).
But your actual experience means much, much more than that. No use being a “fellow” if you’re only getting coffee. And “interns” do plenty more than that.
Read the rest the post here. Would love to hear your feedback here or there.
Do you love photo and video sharing? Then this episode is for you. First, Facebook announced that popular photo sharing and filtering service Instagram will add video to compete with the popularity of Vine, owned by Twitter. Meanwhile, a photographer has sued BuzzFeed for just that kind of sharing, claiming $3.6 million in damages for using his photo of a soccer player — and enabling sharing on other sites. We’ll talk to copyright lawyer Richard Stim of Nolo on the validity of the case and the role of copyright in digital journalism. Then, we’ll talk to Northwestern University in Qatar’s Dean Everette Dennis about his new study on media use in the Middle East, and the growing use of mobile phones for news there. MediaShift’s Mark Glaser hosts, along with Mónica Guzmán from the Seattle Times and GeekWire.
Meet the guests and get the facts here.
My take on Instagram’s new video capability:
What I’m most actually interested in is this Cinema app that they have attached to Instagram video, which basically lets you in post-production stabilize a really shaky video. And in my mind that has a lot of really great implications for citizen journalism, right? If you’re at a breaking news event and you’re trying to catch video, but you’re running around and it gets all shaky and it kind of lowers the quality of it. And I really like what the CEO said during the big press conference yesterday, where he said, “you know, we shouldn’t have to accept bad video.” So I really like where Instagram’s going in improving that aspect of it.
Among the younger generation in the Middle East, Internet use is surpassing TV, and that could have long-term implications in the region. And that increased engagement online comes with important, unresolved questions about media regulation online, according to new research by Northwestern University in Qatar. The study paints an in-depth picture of the role of the news industry in the Arab World with responses from 10,000 people in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and United Arab Emirates.
“Continuous focus on the conflicts and controversies of the Middle East affords little attention to the steady and growing media sector in the region, which has an amalgam of traditional and new platforms,” Northwestern University in Qatar Dean and CEO Everette Dennis writes in the introduction of the study.
Read the full story here, as well as links to the study in its entirety.
On a personal note, this was a perfect story for me to tell. Being an international communication major at American University and an International Studies and Business University Program student in high school, I was able to put to use my years of education on the subject
to use.
It’s always an odd balance to strike: As a student, I’ve always valued summer as time to relax and not worry about homework or other academic responsibilities.
But for the past two summers, I have not done that. I have worked, often fulltime, in order to get more work or internship experience under my belt. Evenings were my only time to do anything but work. And even then, sometimes my internship flooded over into home. I even had a summer class last year in the evenings, and readings for that often took up any time I would have had to read for fun.
NEW YORK — Joe Verdirame has a background at J.P. Morgan and funding startups.
Now he hopes to reshape funding for independent video journalism.
Verdirame, 39, is the founder of Vourno, a new publishing platform to help crowdfund video journalism.
The site launched on May 20 and is largely a blank slate. So far there has been one project that was completely funded in 24 hours. Verdirame hopes that, once the site builds some momentum, the concept of building multiple revenue streams for journalists (donations, advertising, licensing, etc.) will be enticing to freelancers.
Read the rest of the story here on PBS MediaShift’s sister site, Idea Lab.
Zach C. Cohen 