Needless Style Mistakes

According to the AP Stylebook, how should the word  "protestor's" in the headline be spelled?

In the opening paragraph, which is difficult to read says this:

"Twitter Inc. has to turn over information about an Occupy Wall Street protetster's posts of face a fine, a judge ruled, giving the company three days to show it isn't in contempt of court."

Did the headline writer get it correct? Or did the writer of the story get it correct?

NYT's Tom Friedman: In Today's Media, you have to 'work harder and smarter and develop new skills faster'

New York Times economic columnist Tom Friedman is always wringing his hands about how the United States is falling behind the rest of the world--in everything.

This week, he wrote a column that combined this familiar refrain with his thoughts on the recent political conventions held by the Democrats and Republicans.

One paragraph caught my attention:

"I covered the Republican convention, and I was impressed in watching my Times colleagues at how much their jobs have changed. Here’s what a reporter does in a typical day: report, file for the Web edition, file for The International Herald Tribune, tweet, update for the Web edition, report more, track other people’s tweets, do a Web-video spot and then write the story for the print paper. You want to be a Times reporter today? That’s your day. You have to work harder and smarter and develop new skills faster."

He's right.

Nothing stays the same in today's media environment. There's always a new platform to reach your audience. There are always new skills that you need to have, or at the very least, need to have basic knowledge.

That's one of the goals of our class, to make sure you walk away feeling comfortable with the digital tools of the moment, and have the confidence to try the tools of the future.

More on FIA

In our last class, I mentioned "FOIA," the Freedom of Information Act.

Here is some more about FOIA.

According the the Electronic Freedom Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that works with digital journalists, "The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a federal law that gives people the right to request information kept by federal government agencies.

"The law also requires agencies to make certain information automatically available to the public in online "reading rooms. This includes regulations, general policy statements, staff instructions, final opinions, and other records that affect members of the public.
"Furthermore," according to  the EFF, "FOIA says that information that is or is likely to be frequently requested should be automatically published on the Internet. You can check an office's reading room, which should be accessible from the office's website, to see if the records you are seeking are available online. The U.S. Department of Justice maintains a list of links to federal offices' reading rooms."

Here's a link to more about FOIA and why it's an important tool for journalists.

Social Media Fueling Resurgence of Infographics

Conventional wisdom said that infographics, those one-page, visual delights that packed lots of information into drawings and illustrations, were just about dead.

Social media looks as if it might change all of that.

BuzzMgr is a new firm that takes social media information and transforms it into great looking graphics. Here's what it did with information generated by the Republican convention. Take a look at how BuzzMgr captured the first night of the Democrat's convention.

Here's how BuzzMgr's founder, Kathleen Hessert  describes the goals of her company.