First map mashup for TheMiamiHurricane.com

It’s not a technological marvel by any means, but it’s an important first step to having interactive maps on TheMiamiHurricane.com – and later on the future site (expect an update post on that Thursday night, most likely).

As you can see, I used Google Maps.


View Larger Map

Why now to start?
As we were sending the paper to the printer, I was copyediting and came across a story in news about the Red Road Commons. I was disappointed to see there was no map requested (we need to do more print maps as well), so I felt inspired to just make a map for online.

Looking forward
We will definitely include more maps in the future. I also plan to expand this map by adding all of the on-campus dormitories and eventually popular off-campus.

One thing I need to play with and figure out: how to make smaller the windows that appear when you click the placemarkers.

Job/internship panel to be livestreamed today at 12:30 p.m.

I’ll be moderating a panel today that will discuss what students need to know and do to prepare for journalism jobs and internships.

My money is on mindset and skillset, in addition to the fundamentals.

The event will begin at 12: 30 p.m. in Studio A of the School of Communication and is hosted by the UM student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (and organized by me!).

The speakers are:

The first part of the event will be a Q & A session with the panelists, each of which does recruiting work for his/her respective organization. After that, they will meet individually with students to provide personalized feedback, critique resumes, etc.

Inspiration for the livecast medium
After watching the livecast of a video strategy session (The Northern Short Course in Photojournalism) on ustream.tv, which Howard Owens teased on his blog, I thought it would be good to do the same with our session using that service.

And yesterday I saw Kyle Hansen’s post LIVE Video! announcing that The Spartan Daily at San Jose (Calif.) State would be using ustream as well to broadcast a session Monday with the university president: The live video worked!

I had originally thought to do our livestream through the School of Comm‘s Web channel, but they don’t have a player that I could use to embed the video.

Background
You may recall that this event was originally scheduled to take place during this year’s Communication Week on Feb. 19. Unfortunately, we had to cancel because Fidel Castro decided to announcement that he was stepping down as president of Cuba that day.

Ask a question: Feel free to comment on this post or use the video player’s built-in chat feature to submit a question, which requires registering with ustream.

Full disclosure: I interned at the Sentinel last summer and will be at The Herald this summer.

The discussion gets more interesting: Blogging about blogging, part deux

No, this is not a repeat post; this is “The Empire Strikes Back” version (sort of) to my last post, Blogging about blogging.

In that previous entry I linked to a March 12 post — and a great follow-up — by Howard Owens of GateHouse Media. With the first post, Owens responded to Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban‘s explanation (March 10) of why he banned bloggers in the Mavs locker room.

Here are some of Cuban’s comments from a March 13 post that came a day after Owens’ remarks, most likely aimed at the general response to his March 10 announcement:

  • “…newspapers having ‘bloggers’ is easily one of the many bad decisions that newspapers have made over the past 10 years.”
  • “Never, ever, ever consider something that any literate human being with Internet access can create in under 5 minutes to be a product or service that can in any way differentiate your business.” [My reaction: really?]
  • “A blog is a blog is a blog is a blog.”
  • “if I were marketing for them [The New York Times], I would be doing everything I could to send the message that ‘The NY Times does not have blogs, we have Real Time Reports from the most qualified reporters in the world.’ “

I comprehend his point regarding the Real Time Reports title, but this idea still seems contradictory to his “a blog is a blog is a blog” statement.

The Times’ Saul Hansell responded earlier this evening with What I’ve Learned as a Blogger for The New York Times. Here are some of his points:

  • “I’d say that blog is the name of a format for information and opinion that is roughly analogous to ‘column’ or ‘newsletter.’ The format itself doesn’t tell you whether the content is pedestrian or inflammatory, impressionistic or deeply researched.”
  • “…blogs are part of a conversation”
  • “…blogs can be a great extension to articles reported initially for the newspaper”
  • “One of the traditions of this place is an aversion to euphemisms. So call it whatever you want, but if it links like a blog, and is open like a blog, and interacts like a blog, then it is a blog.”

These are all right on the mark, as is one of Owens’ concluding remarks, which came before Cuba’s more recent post: “So Cuban sells bloggers short, sadly.”

Weigh in: What do you think of all these opinions? With whom do you agree?

Blogging about blogging

Several interesting blog posts about blogging have appeared in my Google Reader recently. Here are a few that I would recommend:

Security, namely regarding WordPress, has also been a hot topic after MultimediaShooter.com was hacked and put out of business. See two of Pat Thornton‘s posts here (about the hacking) and here (discussing WordPress and security) for a taste of the discussion.

As a side note, if you’re interested in online journalism, blogging, etc., you should subscribe to each of these bloggers — they always provide great insight.

See who else I read by scrolling down to “Journalism Blogs” on the right side of the page.

Weigh in: What’s you favorite blog?