Interview with Mark Luckie

As I mentioned yesterday, I sent an e-mail to Mark Luckie from 10,000 Words explaining our class simulation to him and asking for his advice for The Atlantic Online. Here's what he wrote back:

I took a look at [The Atlantic] and believe the site has fallen victim to a common problem among magazines making a transition to the web: simply importing print copy and treating multimedia as an afterthought. The site could place multimedia stories side by side with print stories, but label them with small icons (i.e. video, podcasts). Also, the multimedia section has everything labeled as podcasts or slideshows, when in actually a substantial number of stories are actually video. Those users looking for video will appreciate the differentiation.

Most importantly, the Atlantic would benefit from a diversity of media tools. Static graphics could be turned into interactive graphics, photos can be turned into slideshows. It's up to the staff to both learn these new technologies and to decide what technology best presents the story.

Geo-Tagging

As I was reading today's post on 10,000 words about maps and YouTube, I got to thinking about how online newspapers could better utilize tools like Google Maps. A lot of multimedia sites, now, use something called Geo-Tagging. For example, I use Flickr for my photography and I geo-tag some of my photos, placing them on a map exactly where I took them. That way, when anyone wants to browse something like photos I took in Europe, they can literally click on Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum, and all my photos taken there will pop up. Of course, that's just with Flickr, but by making a custom map using Google Maps, you can literally geo-tag anything, even news stories.

In class we were talking about ways to make the Atlantic more relevant locally, and I was thinking that an interactive map (probably relegated to a side-bar somewhere on the site) might be a cool way to get people interacting with the site and finding news that's relevant to them. As it turns out, the Associated Press already has a Google Map, and I'm sure other news resources do as well. Maybe something like this could be incorporated onto The Atlantic's site so that after getting the national headlines, people could literally zoom in on their state (even on their neighborhood) and see what's going on near them.

To get an idea of some of the Google Maps already out there, check out the Google Maps Directory.

10,000 Words

Courtney e-mailed me a link to this great blog called 10,000 Words about multimedia journalism. The author of the blog, Mark Luckie, posts every day about new media and journalism, which is definitely helpful to everyone on The Atlantic team in our class.

I've sent an e-mail to Mr. Luckie and will hopefully be hearing back soon with his ideas which I'll post here.

Citizen News

This is kind of interesting. It's a YouTube channel called Citizen News that's basically a compilation of the best news stories on YouTube from citizen journalists across the country.

2012 Republicans

"The Fix," a political blog from The Washington Post, has chosen its top 10 picks for Republican nominee in 2012. Noticably absent from the list was Sarah Palin. Is it possible she'll stay in Alaska? Probably not.

Here's the list of the top ten:

10. Steve Poizner
9. Haley Barbour
8. Jon Huntsman Jr.
7. Eric Cantor
6. Mark Sanford
5. Bob McDonnell
4. Mitch Daniels
3. Mitt Romney
2. John Thune
1. Bobby Jindal

So far, it seems like the media loves Jindal even though he's a (gasp) Republican. To read a profile on each of the picks that "The Fix" came up with, check out this article on the 10 Republicans to watch.

What Happened?

Check out this vintage McCain SNL skit HERE (embedding was disabled, so you have to go to the site).

It definitely made me start to wonder... where did McCain's personality go? He lacked any real personal attributes all the way up until the very end of campaign season, but every once in a while we get a little glimmer of what might be a kinda, sorta, maybe just a little bit... likable guy. It seems he might actually be funny and... personable?

So it left me asking, what happened?

Obama - "Whatever I Like"

Remember back when we were talking about humor in the election and wondering how we would ever be able to turn Obama into something funny? Here's the answer: